What happens when you bring a “popular” drinking game to the Wii, then remove the alcohol context and activities?  You get Pong Toss.  A wholly ridiculous  Wii Ware offering from JV Games.  Find out why they destroyed what might have been a pretty fun diversion for inebriated gamers, after the jump.

Beer Pong started out as a straight up drinking game.  A game played by college kids and 40-something rednecks across the US.  Everyone plays the game a little bit differently, but here’s the official Wikipedia description.

Beer pong (also called beirut, lob pong, and other names) is a drinking game in which players throw a table tennis ball across a table with the intent of landing the ball in one of several cups of beer on the other end. The game typically consists of two two-player teams, one on each side of a table, and a number of cups set up on each side.[1] There are no official rules, so rules may vary widely, though usually there are six or ten plastic cups arranged in a triangle on each side. The number of players on a team can vary as well, from one to three or more.

When a ball lands in a cup, the defending team must consume all of the beer inside that cup. The game is won by eliminating all the other team’s cups before one’s own cups are eliminated. The losing team must then consume all the beer remaining in the winning team’s cups.[1] The order of play varies - both players on one team shoot followed by both players on the other team, or players on opposite teams can alternate back and forth.[2]

Now imagine how fun that could be with a Wiimote and a few friends.

Enter the Attorney General from Connecticut (It’s a real state… I looked it up).  He took issue with the fact that this drinking game got a T rating, an argument that even I can at least respect.  He wanted the game to get a stronger rating or totally pulled from availability.

He got the latter of his dreams-come-true, and the game was retooled as “Pong Toss.”

No he’s STILL up in arms about the game, despite the fact that there are exactly ZERO alcohol references now in the title.  I am beginning to suspect that other forces are at play here.  The louder this man screams about this game, the more aware teenagers are going to be of both the game and it’s ORIGINAL theme.  See where this is going?

The game is becoming a more certifiably rad drinking game every time this guy opens his mouth.  Even the ESRB’s president stepped to warn AG Blumenthal about the dangerous waters in which he’s dog paddling.

“Our concern is that a greater number of consumers (including the age group about which you are most concerned) will be made aware of this game and resolve to play it as a result of publicized statements of advocacy groups and others. Ironically, this is likely to result in more rather than less consumers being drawn to this game, particularly those very minors all of us seek to protect.”

At the end of the day it’s kinda like a million other stories we’ve heard.  Those stories USUALLY include a lawyer from Florida.  I sure hope these guys haven’t been drinking out of the same water fountain.  There seem to be traces of goofy juice in it.

At the end of the day, this game still doesn’t sound like something I would ever buy, unless for some reason I (1) bought a Wii, (2) was drunk, (3) had friends, and (4) had absolutely nothing better to do than play a game that involved people not doing what I was actually doing without the help of a game.

For the record, I’d like to tell our younger readers, and the older ones who think they’re indestructible, that drinking games are the most moronic thing ever invented.  If you’re of legal age and want to drink, do it.  If you need a game to make drinking fun, you’re hanging out with the wrong people.

Source:  GamePolitics via Wired

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