Corporate Flash Games Overanalyzed

Procter & Gamble Present: Always Maxipads Roller Coaster Ride

Gameplay: Experience the thrill-ride of menstruation! Control a Maxipad roller coaster as it climbs up hills and plunges into troughs. Press space bar to make the roller coaster jump. Sure. Makes sense.

Along the path of the pad coaster you collect coins and power ups that are always invulnerability. The randomly-placed baddies are based on symptoms of the menstrual cycle and one touch will derail your fun in a splat, bringing an end to the game.

Goal: Get to the end, collect money, and try not to hit (experience) a symptom of menstruation. Because the enemies are randomly placed this may be completely impossible or extremely easy. The entire roller coaster ride lasts about 30 seconds. There is only one level.

Overt Message: Menstruation, like an unsafe carnival ride, is exciting and dangerous. Always Maxipads will take you on that ride and allow you to jump over obstacles including being a bitch, being a crabby bitch, bleeding out of your woman hole, and looking fat, you fatty. Because life is unpredictable you may just have to deal with being a bitch and not having fun several times in a row. Periods are also very, very short.

Deconstructed: A skeletal roller coaster towers above buildings and people seen only in silhouette. The rails are lined with coins that we must collect to gain, but the numbers are meaningless. On this roller coaster we can only travel forward, but do we forge ahead for the rewards of monetary gain or for the intoxicating thrill of danger? We are told to reach the end safely, but is the end the goal or is it the journey? These questions are left open-ended by the developer, the only thing certain is that half of the risk involved in the menstrual cycle relates to women throwing tantrums.

A Better Version: A rhythm game depicting a woman's uterus. Create a play list of your own mp3s and keep time with your favorite Joanna Newsom track to shed bloody gobs of the uterine lining. An Always pad clutches the gory trench accepting the crimson rain of Her lunar sacrifice.

Moral: Under no circumstance should you ever get aboard a roller coaster made out of Maxipads. It is very dangerous and likely to derail. It also jumps.