Nick Bounty

INTRODUCTION

Nick Bounty is the titular protagonist of a series of point-and-click comedy adventure games, created by Mark Darin and produced by Pinhead Games from 2004-2005 and 2020. The games center around Nick Bounty, a “Public M” who’s parody on film noir private detectives. In each game he must solve a ridiculous case, such as finding a goat or investigating who murdered a man with the only clue being the fact that he was selling crabs.

In my eternal thirst for finding anything noir-related online, I once looked at a Reddit thread asking about a noir-styled Flash game, thus leading me to find out about Nick Bounty through there. The more I looked into the series, the crazier it got. Not because of the contents of the games themselves, but rather everything that surrounds them.

According to Watt, a friend of Darin’s, Nick Bounty was created in the late 1980’s as a series of VHS movies that later evolved into 2 freeware Flash games produced under Darin’s game company Pinhead Games (created in 1987). Bounty as a character hasn’t changed much over the years, consistently being a noir detective parody.

The first ever Nick Bounty game, released in 2004 and later remade in 2020. The plot starts out with Nick Bounty in his office when all of a sudden a man comes in selling shellfish. And then he gets stabbed in the back. So, it’s up to Nick to investigate who murdered this mysterious fellow, an investigation that later uncovers something more sinister… and crab-counterfeting-mafia-related.

The game itself is very straightforward, only taking around 20-30 minutes to finish- including the time spent clicking on random things for funny flavor text or possible jokes. In the original 2004 Flash release, you can interact with objects in 6 different ways: Look, Get, Use, Talk, Move and Shoot. This mechanic is completely erased in the 2020 remake. There’s nothing much else to say about A Case of the Crabs! other than, well, I think the art style is nice. It’s simple yet effective.

The Goat in the Grey Fedora is the second game in the series, released only a year after A Case of the Crabs! but demonstrated a slightly bigger scope in terms of gameplay. The game’s about a mysterious yet beautiful dame assigning Nick to find her lost ceramic goat statue. If the previous game is anything to go by, it’s easy to say the investigation will quickly spiral into something bigger and more ridiculous.

In terms of graphics, Goat in the Grey Fedora is my personal favorite. It has a nice blend of 3D models and 2D-looking faces and the entire experience just screams 2005 Flash game, a feeling I find quite delightful. The only thing I dislike about it is the sudden random kiiinda racist bit with the Chinese shopkeep, which serves as a dated reminder of the year this game came out.

After Telltale shut down in 2018 (I’ll explain why I’m mentioning this detail a bit later), Mark Darin started a KickStarter campaign for a new Nick Bounty game after 13 years since the last one. The campaign was successful, gathering a little over half more than its original goal ($16,025 with a $10,000 goal) and releasing on April 18th 2020. On a technical level, the Dame with the Blue Chewed Shoe is the most impressive out of all three games; the player has more dialogue and story options, now being able to choose one out of three partners for the investigation of a murdered dame, adding a level of replayability to the game. The voice cast is incredible, with former Telltale talents such as Melissa Hutchison, Dave Fennoy, Adam Harrington and various others well known voice actors and actresses.

My main gripe with the game is the art style. It’s made in Unity and every single character 3D model seems to have been made from some sort of template / character creator. It feels like a step down from what the original games looked like. That aside, the writing is as funny and witty as always. Glad to know it didn’t change!

RADIO PLAY

In 2013, Mark Darin and Ron “AAlgar” Watt created a 33-minute-long radio play for the Nick Bounty series titled “A Brick Full of Bullets”. The play tells the story of Bounty swearing to take more “normal” cases right before immediately being hit in the face with the case of a missing toy poodle. The following sequence of events are very cleverly written (not to mention funny) and I definitely recommend you listen to it yourself. It’s available for free on Watt’s website here:

SOUNDTRACK

The soundtrack for Nick Bounty and the Dame with the Blue Chewed Shoe was composed by none other than Jared Emerson-Johnson, who you might know from other games, most notably the Telltale’s Sam & Max seasons, The Walking Dead, Wolf Among Us and many, many, many other titles. And, similarly to his previous work, Nick Bounty’s soundtrack is absolutely wonderful, jazzy and moody all throughout. You can get some of the songs for free on Bandcamp (the digital album costs 5 dollars).

But... WHO is Mark Darin?

One thing that stood out to me as I looked up information on Nick Bounty was the fact that Mark Darin was a Telltale employee, working as Lead Designer, Creative Director, Lead Writer and Content Programmer for various games published by the late company. He even helped with the development for Sam & Max Season 2 as a programmer and with Technical Art & Effects (though he only seemed to work on the first two episodes). It's no wonder he got so many well-known Telltale talents to work with him on his game.

CONCLUSION

There isn't really a conclusion but moreso a final statement. I'm not sure how to wrap this webshrine up? I'm not, like, a Nick Bounty superfan. I do think it's a very interesting series mostly because of its connection to Telltale and my interest towards anything noir related, but I'm fine if Nick Bounty never gets picked up again for whatever reason. Still, the NB series is awesome. I really like its humor.