Pursuant to DyRE's writeup on this freeware masterpiece, in 2003-4 two further editions -
Catch the Sperm 2 and Catch the Sperm Unlimited were produced.
Developed by German company Phenomedia AG, the games are basically side-scrolling
shoot-em-ups, in which you, using the mouse, control a cannon at the right-hand side of the
screen. Upon a noise which is the equivalent of a starting gun (it sounds something like "Ahh,
Ahh, Ahh, AHHH, AHHH, AAAAAAAHHHhhhhhh....") funky music involving blues guitar begins playing -
or, in the case of Catch the Sperm Unlimited, music appropriate to the scenario - and
slightly cartoonish spermatozoa start swimming left to right onto the screen and you must catch
them by shooting condoms at them against a background which is meant to resemble the interior of
somebody's vagina (although if your vagina is purple, orange, and green and generally
psychedelic inside then I advise you to see your gynaecologist - they should have kept the
standard pink background and kept it devoid what what appears to be close-ups of pubic hair)
Now you are awarded points for the sperm you catch and lose points for each condom you shoot and
miss with; this is to try and penalise people for simply firing randomly and carpet-bombing the
unfortunate reproductive cells. If a few sperm slip past you, then that's no big deal, but there
are also sexually transmitted diseases of various severities which must be caught, for if any
disease gets past you, you immediately lose. And the STDs sometimes try evasive manoeuvres, such
as splitting into two halfway along the screen or, in the case of the syphilis germs, swooping in
in a corkscrew motion, which makes things a bit harder. This persists in waves of 90 seconds or
so, gradually speeding up with time, and the last 10 seconds are usually a great flurry of sperm
and whatnot. If you make it to the end of a wave, you are awarded a large bonus and go on to the
next one. And so on over five waves, after which your final score can be uploaded to the Internet
to compare against others'. For the record, my best score at CTS2 (all 5 waves) is about 170k. But
bear in mind that, for completion of each wave in CTS2 one gets a 10,000-point bonus and, for
completion of the final wave, an extra 50,000. Also, there are very high-value gold, silver, and
bronze sperm in CTS2 and Unlimited, not to mention the 1,000-point bonus for a "formation
catch".
Sounds fun? Well, although the side-scrolling shmup is, of course, an outdated format, the
sheer amount of detail and care that's gone into pulling it off is tremendous. The sperm, STDs,
and other things are all rendered in 3D, and the sound effects are worth the price of admission in
themselves, from the frenzied moaning of the starting noise, through the "Whoooo!!" sound made when
a spiky green HIV virus is caught, to the falsetto "Yippee!" when a sperm escapes off the
right-hand side of the screen.
Not to mention the various special weapons that can be obtained by bagging sperm in Superman
costumes (which gives torpedo condoms which can fly through huge clumps of stuff at once), glowing
green cyber-sperm (which cause arrows to appear showing where the next threat will emerge) and
Olympic bonus sperm (gold, silver, and bronze) and similar. And if all that fails to amuse,
there's still the whole sublimely absurd premise that you're controlling a condom cannon perched in
someone's vagina shooting at invading male gametes.
Oh, and then there's Catch the Sperm Unlimited, which is a special edition of the game
with various single-wave scenarios, such as the Rio Carnaval (where the sperm have lurid costumes
and whatnot), Euro 2004 (in which the sperm are dressed in football shirts and the background is
of a football pitch), Christmas, Summer (off a tropical beach, with sperm dressed in wetsuits,
mini submarines, and bathing costumes), and even Internet Duel play, in which you shoot
wireframe sperm against a glowing green background and, for each sperm you catch, another one
appears on the opponent's screen. CTS Unlimited also has different "grades" of sperm, with standard
ones netting 100 points but ones dressed up appropriately to the scenario net up to 200 points -
for example, in the Euro 2004 scenario, spermatozoa in scarves net you 120 points, those in
French football shirts net you 140, those in Swiss shirts 160, and those dressed in black as the
referee get you 200 points.
So why would anyone want to produce such a game? Well, the folks at the Swiss Federal Office
of Public Health, that's who. The whole thing was part of their anti-AIDS campaign to raise
awareness that people should practice safe sex. Indeed, in Catch the Sperm Unlimited,
while the game is loading there's a random screen which flashes up explaining some statistics and
why the use of a condom is recommended, although there's also one which says, "Small and
Punky? An Average Appendage? Or a Giant of a Genital? As with the condom, with the penis, to
each their own," which detracts from the seriousness of it all rather. Not to mention that,
in some of the scenarios in Catch the Sperm Unlimited, the Durex logo appears on the sides
of the condoms, so there may well be some commercial interest in it...
If this writeup has tickled your fancy, then I suggest downloading the game free from
www.stopaids.ch or, for Catch the Sperm 2 go to Home of the Underdogs. Though I
must warn you that tracking down all the CTS Unlimited scenarios is quite tough. I think I have
them all though... if you can't find any, /msg me and I'll see if I can get those ones to you.
So have fun, and watch out for those syphilis germs!