| Postal | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Running with Scissors |
| Publishers |
|
| Director | Mike Riedel |
| Producer | Vince Desi |
| Designers |
|
| Composer | Christian Salyer |
| Series | Postal |
| Platforms | Mac OS,Windows,Linux,Android,Dreamcast |
| Release | |
| Genre | Shoot 'em up |
| Modes | Single-player,multiplayer |
Postal is a 1997isometrictop-down shooter video game developed byRunning with Scissors and published byRipcord Games. It is the first installment in thePostal franchise. Players assume the role of the Postal Dude, a man who commitsmass murder throughout the fictional town of Paradise,Arizona, to cure what he believes to be a "hate plague" released by theUnited States Air Force.
A March 2001 re-release of the game, calledPostal Plus, included a "Special Delivery"add-on. The game was followed byPostal 2 (2003),Postal III (2011) andPostal 4: No Regerts (2022). German film directorUwe Boll bought the movie rights for the series and produced afilm of the same name. Aremake of the game,Postal Redux, was released for Windows in May 2016, and was later released for thePlayStation 4 andNintendo Switch. In 2016, the game'ssource code was released under theGNU General Public License, and in 2019, Running with Scissors released the game asfreeware.[6][7] A port for theDreamcast was released in June 2022.
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Postal is a shooter withisometric projection. Gameplay and interface are similar tofirst-person shooters of the time, but not on all counts:
A man referred to simply as the "Postal Dude" has beenevicted from his home. He believes theUnited States Air Force is releasing an airborne agent upon his town of Paradise and that he is the only individual unaffected by the ensuing "hate plague". He fights his way from his house to an Air Force Base through various locations, including a ghetto, train station, trailer park, truck stop, and an ostrich farm. During the course of the gameplay, a voice in the protagonist's head (voiced by Rick Hunter) can be heard taunting his victims through cryptic absurdity, often through consecutive kills or when switching through the player's arsenal.
After raiding the Air Force Base, he is shown attempting to massacre an elementary school. Despite his best efforts, his weapons have no effect on the children. Suffering a mental breakdown amidst innocent laughter, he finds himself restrained in a mental asylum as hellish images cover the screen: A body bound to chains in a corridor, the protagonist in a straitjacket curled in the fetal position; a close-up of his face, covered in bindings; and the door to his cell numbered 593.
A disembodied voice, possibly a psychologist, gives a report on the protagonist's mental state. He suggests that the stress of urban life may have been the root cause of his rampage, prompting him to "go postal". The lack of any mentions of military interference with the civilian population implies that the Postal Dude's murders were the result of his own paranoid delusions. Amid distorted audio, the psychologist gives a final remark: "We may never know exactly what set him off, but rest assured we will have plenty of time to study him". Upon completion of the credits, manic cackling can be heard as the screen fades to black.
Due to the controversy surrounding the game's release, along with numerous American school shootings in the years following, the ending was changed inPostal Redux. The developers stated that they changed the ending because school shootings had lost the shock value they had when the originalPostal released. Replacing the elementary school vision is the player witnessing the burial of an unknown person in a decaying field, widely believed to be his own funeral. Completion of the game on the hardest difficulty features the inclusion of an unknown male and female mourning over the grave as it descends. Both outcomes prompt a similar mental breakdown and an identical asylum cutscene, though consisting of animated shots over the original release's still image artwork.
Development ofPostal began in March 1996.[8] The developers atRiedel Software Productions (RSP), bored of developing child-friendly games, established the Running with Scissors (RWS) brand label to develop mature games they would want to play themselves.[9][10][11]Postal, the first project under the new label, was inspired byRobotron: 2084, which was playable in the RSP offices.[11][12]The Last Nail andThe Postman Always Shoots Twice, a reference to the 1946 filmThe Postman Always Rings Twice, were titles also considered for the game.[13]
The player character, a nameless man, was intentionally left without a backstory and obscured in shadows and filters in artwork to allow players to impose their own views onto him. The character's "Postal Dude" moniker was coined by RWS CEO Vince Desi in an early interview about the game. The Postal Dude's jacket was originally black, but RWS discovered during playtesting that the Dude was difficult to track onscreen in the darkly-lit levels and among other characters; his jacket was changed to red for the final game to compensate, which the team disliked.[14] The Postal Dude's pain sounds were voiced by Desi, while the comedic "demon" voice heard from the Dude's mind was voiced by radio personality Rick Hunter.[14]
Postal uses RSPiX, a cross-platformgame engine developed internally at RSP[15] that was previously used for the company's child-friendly products, includingWishbone Activity Zone andMuppets Inside.
Postal: Special Delivery, an expansion to the originalPostal, was released on August 28, 1998[16] and featured four new levels and various new characters and voices. One level, in particular, was set in a parody ofWal-Mart and began with the Dude's demon chastising the store for not sellingPostal, which foreshadows the off-kilter humor seen inPostal 2.
In 2000 a Japanese version ofPostal calledSuper Postal was released featuring Japanese voices and two exclusive levels, "Tokyo" and "Osaka". These levels remained exclusive toSuper Postal until the release ofPostal Redux in 2016.
A March 2001 re-release of the game, calledPostal Plus, included the "Special Delivery"add-on. It was ported toLinux byLoki Entertainment in the same year.
In 2002,Postal Plus (known asPostal: Classic and Uncut in Europe) bundledPostal and theSpecial Delivery expansion, with retail copies also including a demo forPostal 2.
Postal Plus was released on thedigital distributorGOG.com in 2009 and a few years later on Steam. In 2013, it was updated with support for widescreen resolutions and modern hardware. The multiplayer component and level editor were removed, however. In 2015, it was updated with fullXbox 360 controller support. The "Tokyo" and "Osaka" levels, originally exclusive toSuper Postal, were also added to both versions.
In 2015, the developers announced that they will release thesource code of the game "if someone promises to port it to theDreamcast".[17] In June 2016 the developers gave the source code to a community developer whoported the game to Linux for theOpenPandorahandheld.[18][19] On December 28, 2016, the source code was released onBitbucket under theGNU GPL-2.0-only.[6][20]
On February 14, 2022, independent publisher Wave Game Studios announced a port of the game to the Sega Dreamcast was to be released on June 2, officially licensed by Running with Scissors.[21]
| Aggregator | Score |
|---|---|
| Metacritic | 56/100[22] |
| Publication | Score |
|---|---|
| GameRevolution | B−[23] |
| GameSpot | 6.6/10[24] |
| Next Generation |   [25] |
| Computer Games Magazine |  [26] |
| Games Domain | mixed[27] |
NPD Techworld, a firm that tracked sales in the United States,[28] reported 49,036 units sold ofPostal by December 2002.[29]
Next Generation reviewed the PC version of the game, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "Overall,Postal is a title that breaks absolutely no new ground, but its tongue-in-cheek shooting action comes together to form a well-above-average shooter that adds to the genre."[25]
Postal received mixed reviews from critics. It holds aMetacritic score of 56/100.[22]GameSpot's Mark East gave the game a 6.6/10 score and commented: "The lack of longevity in the single-player mode and the simplistic multiplayer options make Postal a moderately fun ride, at best."[24] On regards to The Postal Dude's aggressive personality East comments on the Postal Dude's phrases from his diary, which indicate "something's not quite right in Postal Dude's noggin".[30]
In a retrospective, GamingOnLinux reviewer Hamish Paul Wilson gave the game 7/10, commenting that "there is no denying thatPostal has some faults even when compared to some of the other games that were released around the same time as it, and time has definitely not been very kind to the title itself. But the concepts that the game explores, the ideas being expressed, and much of their actual implementations are just so interesting and compelling that one can still actually look past many of these faults and see the hidden gem that lies underneath."[31]
The reviewer fromPyramid #30 (March/April 1998) stated that "Many people have thought the premise for the game is sick. Well, it is. But, that's what makes it fun. There's no quest for secret, lost treasure. There's no time-clock ticking away as you try desperately to save the world. There's no alien spaceships or fantastical powers. There's just good old fashioned, psychotic violence - something that our mass media entertainment powers have been bringing us on prime time for years."[32]
A sequel to the game,Postal 2, was released in 2003. DirectorUwe Boll bought the movie rights for the series and produced afilm of the same name. Two additional sequels,Postal III andPostal 4: No Regerts, were released in 2011 and 2022, respectively.
Running with Scissors developed aremake ofPostal, titledPostal Redux, usingUnreal Engine 4. The project was announced asPostal: Redux in November 2014, then targeting a 2015 release forLinux,macOS, andMicrosoft Windows.[33][34] In addition to these platforms, Running with Scissors announcedPostal Redux as coming toPlayStation 4 in February 2016.[35] The Microsoft Windows version was released on May 20, 2016, while Linux, macOS, and PlayStation 4 versions were scheduled for a later release.[36] The PlayStation 4 version was canceled by June 2017, with Jaret Schachter of Running with Scissors blaming a lack of sales of the PC version.[37] MD Games portedPostal Redux to theNintendo Switch, releasing it via theNintendo eShop on October 16, 2020.[38] The PlayStation 4 version was later uncancelled and released on March 5, 2021.[39]
Now Shipping: ... Postal (Ripcord)
Another big day for releases: ... Postal and Forced Alliance from Ripcord ... should all be found in stores today.
10.29.01 Postal Plus is now shipping!
POSTAL For Dreamcast – OUT NOW!
From now on you can also get the first part of the POSTAL series for free on GOG.COM, this time permanently.
