Pick Up the Phone Booth and Aisle

What if the simple two-joke game Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die worked like the one-turn multi-ending game Aisle? What if, instead of being under-implemented like the original, it was overly-implemented instead and every conceivable command the player could enter led to some sort of weird ending? That's what this is.

I'm going to go against the popular opinion that this game is vastly superior to Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die. I'm going to say that the original joke worked better because it was so simple, and the lolrandom chaos added to this "remake" just makes the game waste more of the player's time. Both of these Phone Booth games are amusing in their way, but neither is as good as Aisle.

This is an artful piece: the disciplined minimalism of Pick Up The Phone Booth And Die, combined with the rich implementation of Aisle.

The authors of PUTPBAA have, through their concerted effort, realized what was missing in PUTPBAD. With dozens upon dozens of recognized verbs, each yielding a different ending, what we have here is not extensive but rather extremely intensive. Almost any action your imagination might dream up is accounted for in some way.

As a parody of the original PUTPBAD, it works brilliantly. As a game unto itself, it works brilliantly. Perhaps my only complaint is that it does not aspire to the emotional depth of Aisle, but as far as lighthearted comedies go, Pick Up The Phone Booth And Aisle is a shining example of a joke that goes all-out.

A parody of Aisle and IF in general, several well-known authors teamed up to write this hilarious send-up.

Rob Noyes created a silly, pointless game called Pick up the Phone Booth and Die, which is exactly as complicated as the title implies. Its stupid charm made it more famous than should have been possible, though being released in 1996 no doubt helped. Here you are faced with the same phone booth, only instead of having two possible endings, you again have over 100 possible endings in the same vein of Aisle.

Only play if you are a veteran of interactive fiction (meaning you have played at least ten games, including the aforementioned two this game parodies); otherwise, many of the jokes will go over your head. I replay this every five years or so and it amuses me without fail, including several laugh out loud moments.