Nene Interactive Suicide
Help the despondent Nene bring an end to her tortured existence. - Newgrounds Description
Nene Interactive Suicide is an interactive Flash game created by Tom Fulp and released on March 29, 1999. Originally posted prior to the creation of the Flash Portal, it acts as the second official entry in the Pico franchise, and was one of the more better-known Flash games on Newgrounds. The game follows Nene, who discovers that she has contracted herpes. To avoid embarrassment, she decides that she must "die with honor" by killing herself, and chooses between several different methods to die (or attempt to die) by suicide.
Story
The game opens with a cutscene involving Nene waking up in her bedroom. She smacks her lips, finding them itchy and sore, and at first assumes that they're "worn out from kissing Jordan Katalano last night". Ignoring this, she is eager for the school prom, confident that she'll be in the yearbook with him as "Best Couple". Nene smacks her lips again and grows concerned about her mouth. She looks in the mirror of her dresser, only to discover that she has caught a severe case of herpes. Rather than face public humiliation, Nene decides that the best course of action is to "die with honor" and kill herself as soon as possible. The cutscene ends as the game displays a HUD containing the ways Nene can end her life.
Gameplay
Nene Interactive Suicide is as much of an interactive movie as it is a game. Players can make the decision to have Nene die by suicide in one of six different ways by clicking on different objects in her room. Each of these methods leads to an incredibly violent and/or comedic demise. After each death, the player may choose another form of suicide, or restart the game from the beginning. The gameplay doesn't have much to offer, but the game itself is a decent time-killer (no pun intended).
The ways Nene can kill herself are as follows:
- Drink milk: Nene picks up a carton of milk from the side of her bed. Before drinking it, she mentions that she is lactose-intolerant and, thus, will have a negative reaction to the dairy afterward. She proceeds to take a sip and ends up vomiting in graphic detail. She begins choking on her own gurgling blood before her head then immediately explodes into gory chunks.
- Hang herself: Nene places a noose around her neck and proclaims, "The day of reckoning has come". She hangs the other end of the noose on her ceiling fan, and her body is swung across the room until she is pulled into the fan and sliced into pieces.
- Pray to the Lord: Nene makes a prayer to God to "free [her] soul from this earth and welcome it to [His] holy kingdom." After her prayer is finished, the sky turns dark, and she asks if God has come to rescue her. He swiftly answers by smiting Nene with a lightning bolt, electrocuting her to death and leaving nothing behind but her charred skeleton.
- Jump out the window: Self-explanatory; Nene jumps out of her bedroom window, letting out a blood-curdling scream as she falls to her death.
- Open her drawer and either pull out:
- A gun, which Nene uses to shoot herself in the face, killing her instantly, or...
- A razorblade, which Nene cuts herself with. However, she doesn't die immediately, as a huge amount of blood sprays out of her wrist. Shocked by this outcome, she remarks that it "looks much easier in television" and had never known it took longer to die from it. Nene's mother knocks on her door, asking if she's okay. She lies, claiming that she's reading a book. Her mother is skeptical, hearing the blood droplets hitting the walls and believing she's spray-painting graffiti. Nene denies this, promising her "[she]'d never do something that stupid again". Actually believing the lie, her mother lets her know that she's heading to her grandmother's house. Now left all by herself, Nene is immediately worried that her mother will "flip" when she sees her bedroom walls sprayed with her blood.
Characters
- Nene (debut)
- Jordan Katalano (debut) (mentioned)
- God (mentioned)
- Nene's mother (debut) (mentioned)
- Nene's grandmother (debut) (mentioned)
Transcript
- Main article: Nene Interactive Suicide/Transcript
Reception
Like many other Flash games created in Newgrounds' early history, the popularity of Nene Interactive Suicide upon its debut is hard to gauge due to its initial absence from the Flash Portal. In anticipation of Pico Day, the game would be re-released on April 29, 2006, approximately seven years after its initial creation. Remarkably, it would prove to still be a success years later, having gathered a total of over 2.2 million views with an average review score of 4.41/5.00, and winning the Daily 4th Place award a day later.
Additionally, Nene Interactive Suicide is featured in the Pico collection.
Gallery
Nene thinking her mouth is sore from kissing "Jordan Katalano".
Nene praying to God for her death.
Video
Trivia
- Nene Interactive Suicide is the first entry within the Pico franchise to have audible voice acting, as both Tom Fulp and his friend Sean would provide the voice of Nene.
- Fulp delivered the "HOLY SHIT!!!" line heard after Nene looks in the mirror, as well as the sounds of her yawning, smacking her lips, and puking blood after drinking milk.
- The sound effect of Nene vomiting blood, along with the animation of her head exploding during the "drink milk" death, were later reused in Alien Hominid for whenever an enemy was killed.
- Sean recorded Nene's scream that is heard when she jumps out the window.
- Fulp delivered the "HOLY SHIT!!!" line heard after Nene looks in the mirror, as well as the sounds of her yawning, smacking her lips, and puking blood after drinking milk.
- In the opening cutscene, Nene briefly mentions that she had a love affair with Jordan Catalano, who is a main character from the 1994 teen drama My So-Called Life, though his surname is misspelled as Katalano.
- In the same opening, Nene exclaims "HARI KARI!!!", which is a grammatical misspelling and mispronunciation of harakiri (腹切り), the Japanese term for ritualistic suicide, specifically the act of self-inflicted disembowelment/impalement.
- The "I (heart) Seals!" poster in Nene's bedroom is a reference to Club a Seal, another one of Tom Fulp's controversial Flash games that was released two years prior in 1997.
- In the "drinking milk" option, Nene demonstrates a severe and deadly case of lactose intolerance, in which her head explodes. In reality, when a lactose intolerant person consumes dairy products, it instead results in them suffering from indigestion, which leads to nausea, bloating, flatulence and diarrhea rather than anything lethal.
- The "razorblade" option is the only in-game sequence that doesn't show Nene dying on-screen.
- Since Nene continues to appear in future games, it is possible that selecting the razor blade is the true canonical choice, since she is never shown dying in the end.
References
Pico | |
---|---|
Main Series | Pico's School - Pico 2 - Nene Interactive Suicide - Darnell Plays With Fire - Pico vs. Bear - Pico vs. Überkids - Resident Pico - Pico's School: Love Conquers All |
Spin-offs | Samurai Asshole - UFA |