The Wild World of Flash Games: “Turbo Turbo Turbo” Edition
In Adult Swim’s “Turbo Turbo Turbo,” you’ll be burning rubber and throwing punches in equal measure.
Before support for Adobe Flash was officially ceased in 2021, it was the delivery method for some of the wildest and most bizarre interactive games the internet has ever seen. Some creations led to amazing things. Some floundered in obscurity. Others were simply too strange to ignore. Whatever they may have have led to, these games deserve to be illuminated once more.
To kick-start this series, we’re taking a look at a particularly strange entry from the now-defunct catalog of flash games provided by Adult Swim, a popular late-night television network. Prior to the Warner Bros. Discovery merger in 2022, Adult Swim’s website was once host to a plethora of unconventional multimedia experiences. These included the likes of bizarre live-streams focused around fish-oriented competitions, experimental short films, and — you guessed it — flash games of all shapes and sizes.
While they may have varied in quality, you’d be surprisd at not just the breadth of content these miniature games offered, but the taboo subjects and bizarre concepts they featured as well. Case in point, the subject of this showcase: Turbo Turbo Turbo.
Playing Turbo Turbo Turbo
Turbo Turbo Turbo starts out, bizarrely enough, with an aggressive proposition. A strange man, one that somewhat resembles a Matthew McConaughey type circa Dazed and Confused, proposes a blunt plan:
Want race turbocars? Race for me fame glory. Always best no matter what. If not best? I break thumbs, agree?
If you agree to his plan, you are thrust into a manic world of high-speed car racing, broken thumbs, and energy drink-fueled brawls against mobs of monochromatic men.
Let’s take a step back. Turbo Turbo Turbo is a short multigenre game that broadly focuses on racing from a top-down perspective, with a unique way of handling its fail states. Across less than a dozen or so tracks split across three themes — a traditional race track, a volcanic mountainside, and a futuristic speedway — you’re tasked with overcoming an increasing horde of competing racers. To win, all you have to do is finish in first place. No other position will be accepted, and should you fail to meet this requirement, the gentleman you met previously will offer you two options: eliminate the competition by any means necessary, or lose a thumb. If both your thumbs are broken, the game ends.
Naturally, in a world implied to be full of chaos and non sequiturs, there’s more than one way to finish a race in first place. You could simply out-perform the competition with the careful use of a speedy dash, which is made accessible via a meter that slowly refills over time. However, the more economical way to win is to simply smash through the competition and eliminate them from the race entirely. You’re not dissuaded from doing this either. You’re encouraged to.
Ramming an opposing vehicle immediately refills your entire dash meter, prompting you to immediately close the distance and chain another collision together. It’s not uncommon to find a group of vehicles flocking together, as if they’re begging to be ran off the road, and quickly knock them off the pavement in as little as a second or two. Even if you try your best to be a pacifist, the occasional road hazards you find will do the job for you more often than not. Once you’re the last man standing, the race just stops. There’s no point in continuing.
Burning Rubber Turns Into Something Else
Things change, however, when you fail. If you crash, that’s it: you’re out. The race is over, and those who were left alive graciously flock to a nearby bar to imbibe and celebrate their newfound glory. But herein lies an opportunity.
Turbosauce feel good energy, drink! Many people — invisible fist! Remember! For the fame glory, before late!
Under a strict time limit, you’re then tasked to take down the winner by systematically beating down every patron in the establishment, slamming energy drinks for health and inciting a full-scale riot within the spacious business. When everyone but you isn’t standing, you once more become the winner by default. Later levels dissuade you from taking this approach by introducing swarms upon swarms of enemies from the entrance, but you can just as quickly convince them to take each other out via a few errant haymakers.
It goes without saying, but should you not pursue this option and refuse to fight, you’ll lose a thumb.
The game eventually creates a simplistic, branching pattern. Win the race, and you move onto the next. Lose the race, and you’re sucked into the bar brawl. Lose the bar brawl, and you lose a thumb. Win the bar brawl, and you move onto the next race. It’s straightforward, but it thankfully doesn’t wear out its welcome due to its short length.
In so little time, it paints a bizarre world seemingly ruled by a need to rise above all else. Winning takes precedence over sportsmanship, over fairness, over the concept of competition itself. The game even flouts your thumbs as a symbol, one of approval and recognition. It extends beyond just telling you on the game over screen that “you can’t drive without thumbs.” After all, the player character is seen giving a thumbs up with whatever functioning digits they have every time you complete a race. If you’re not willing to do whatever it takes to be the best, you’re seemingly unworthy of this kind of recognition.
Or it could’ve just been silly for silliness’ sake. It got a light laugh out of me, at least.
Either way, it all amounts to a pretty standard time killer with an interesting style and some decent music to boot. Not completely out of line with what you’d come to expect from Adult Swim, all things considered. But things get more interesting when you learn who exactly authored this flash game behind the scenes.
Who Made Turbo Turbo Turbo?
The title screen of Turbo Turbo Turbo is the only inclination we have as to who assembled this bizarre piece of burning rubber and bloodied knuckles. If you’re a fan of a certain niche one-on-one fighting game, the developer may surprise you: Mark Essen, aka Messhof.
That’s right, the same mind behind the beloved Nidhogg series of fighting games, whose first entry released in 2014, was the sole developer behind Turbo Turbo Turbo. While I was unable to track down a concrete release date for Turbo Turbo Turbo, I was able to find a preserved Adult Swim “bumper” that advertised the game dated as far back as September 2010. The bumper can be viewed in its entirety on Bumpworthy. Likewise, a brief but informative piece from Ars Technica in 2011 confirmed his involvement with not just Turbo Turbo Turbo, but also Pipedreamz, a similarly-bizarre flash game that focuses on surfing.
Even if Turbo Turbo Turbo isn’t necessarily indicative of the kinds of games Messhof would make in the future, it’s still an intriguing time capsule of where Essen was in the gaming industry prior to the success of Nidhogg. At the time of Turbo Turbo Turbo’s release, he had already collaborated with Pixeljam — a repeat contributor to Adult Swim’s flash game library — and produced Cream Wolf, a game involving ice cream and werewolves.
This is just one of many examples of Adobe Flash offering up something genuinely compelling in such a condensed format. Even years after I originally played Turbo Turbo Turbo, the bizarre pacing, the intriguing setup, the violence, the overall strange and unwieldy atmosphere it invoked, it all still stuck with me after all this time.
And with that, it’s time to say goodbye to this bizarre piece of flash history. For being a simple game meant to provide some extra content on a television network’s website, it certainly left quite an impression on a fledgling writer. Replaying it years later, it’s easy to see why.