Pico's Surprise Party
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Can Pico survive his own birthday party? - Newgrounds Description
Pico's Surprise Party (titled onscreen as Pico's Surprise Birthday Party) is a run 'n gun 2D shooter game created by dietzribi and released on April 29, 2007, for Pico Day. In this game, Pico's surprise birthday party is interrupted by a band of murderous nerds and goths; as such, Pico takes action to get rid of the unwelcome guests.
Plot
In the game's intro, we open at the junior high school on April 30th, 2007, when Pico's birthday has come around. Nene, not wanting him to know about the surprise party for him, signals Darnell to distract him. After sending Pico outside, Nene hands everyone in the class invitations to the party. However, one student, named Giko, catches wind of this and is less than happy, swearing that Pico is "going to be real surprised". Later that day, Giko arrives at Pico's house with his cronies and shoots up the party, killing nearly everyone except Nene, who manages to run off frightened. Once Pico finally arrives at his house a couple of minutes later, he finds a bloody mess of corpses, all caused by the "nerds, geeks and heavy metal freaks" walking around his house. Pico then pulls out his iconic MAC-10s for battle, exclaiming, "It's party time".
After shooting down a couple of mooks, Pico heads up the stairs and faces the first boss. He uses a mechanical device that summons an invisible shield in front of him as defense. Pico maneuvers around this, shooting the geek from behind where he's vulnerable. After defeating the boss, he grabs a nearby katana from the wall as a melee weapon. He then uses it to cut some wooden boards blocking one of the rooms. After causing many more deaths of enemies, Pico comes across the second boss. This boss uses a pizza box as his "ultimate weapon", acting as an improvised boomerang; he also performs a rolling attack and fires pizza slices while in midair (the latter of which must be shot down). Once that boss dies, he will drop a key that Pico picks up and uses to unlock the door to his room.
There, he finally confronts Giko, who reveals to him the reason he crashed Pico's birthday party: they both shared the exact same birthdate and nobody in their class was aware of this, leading Giko to grow jealous of Pico. However, Pico points out that his actions aren't justified, since Giko chose to be an antisocial loner and not interact with his peers, instead focusing on chemistry. Giko then proclaims that he plans to achieve world domination for the sole purpose of popularity, and drinks a chemical potion that transforms him into a muscular beast, whom Pico defeats by knocking his glasses off his face with his MAC-10s, and striking a bullet in both of his eyeballs.
In the epilogue, taking place a few minutes later, a concerned neighbor shows up at Pico's house in the bloody aftermath to see if everything's okay. Pico reassures him, stating that it's "just [his] birthday party". Baffled by the carnage, the neighbor blurts out that this is madness, to which Pico indignantly responds, "Madness? THIS IS SPARTAAAAA!".
Characters
Reception
Pico's Surprise Party received positive reception since its release. Many players took to the game's action-oriented gameplay and mechanics, though some noted the game's frustrating difficulty at times. The Flash game received up to nearly 350,000 views on Newgrounds, and currently holds an average rating score of 4.21/5.00. It would receive accolades in winning the Daily 3rd Place Award and being featured on the front page.
Additionally, Pico's Surprise Party is featured in the Pico Day 2007 collection.
Video
Trivia
- Giko, the main antagonist of the game, acts as a foil to Pico: while Pico's the well-respected, popular kid at the school, Giko is a completely antisocial nerd who barely interacts with his classmates, more interested in doing chemistry.
- In the ending, Pico quotes the famous "This is Sparta!" scene from Zack Snyder's 2006 historical epic film 300, which is an adaptation of the 1998 comic miniseries of the same name by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley.
- dietzribi, the creator of the game, would go on to be a popular indie game developer, creating games such as Toodee and Topdee and Trouble Juice.