Teen Priest

Are you all ready? You get plenty of time to wait. It takes a long time for the first person to show up.

Right. So the first guy had sex with some chickens.

Johnny's private judgment boils down to just one word.

Next up is a woman who gets the opposite decree.

And lastly we get the suicidal individual who Johnny is definitely on board with.

Needless to say, the confessional scene's shock humor was a lot more palatable in the 90s.

All that and Johnny's no closer to learning anything about the mysterious killer Juda.

Johnny heads back to the abbey, takes off his clothes, and heads to bed. Who knows what's in store for tomorrow?

Rise and shine.

With no idea what Johnny's schedule is supposed to be for the day, I head on into the church to either give mass or look at the schedule.

No mass on Friday though. Instead there's some charity work to be done and then another confession...

Taking a look at the copy machine lets Johnny duplicate the teaching license found the other day, and also reveal that it's a fake! Father O'Flarrety is a fraud?

Johnny drives on down to the local Quickie. (Whoops I forgot to pick up the money mentioned on the schedule.)

Of note is where the player is placed when they arrive on this board. The car door is open and they get to step out of the vehicle and towards the store. Any player who is trying to follow along with the intended gameplay will do just that. At the same time though, that dark blue tile above the player's starting point is actually a passage to the next board. If you pay close enough attention you can totally skip this board, but unless you're trying to break the game, I'm pretty confident nobody ever actually would.

Ha ha it's our old pal "very foreign convenient store owner who speaks only broken English". Yes, excellent. Good.

Why arent there any english-speaking clerks anywhere?!

Srini doesn't want to have anything to do with this.

Hi, Srini.

He's a cool guy though. He smokes weed.

Anyway, he'll tell Johnny that there's some on the shelf.

Johnny is not a sympathetic character.

Grabbing the canned food results in the only other customer getting in line to make her purchase.

Retail is absolutely terrible by the way. The old woman runs off as soon as Johnny takes a look at her bag giving him the chance to buy his canned food and get the hell out.

Except as I mentioned, I kind of forgot to pick up the money. This puts the game in an unwinnable state since there's no way back to the church if you left unprepared. On the one hand, I am not a fan of the game trapping me like this, but on the other it explicitly told me to take the money and where it could be found and I completely ignored it.

With the money in hand this time, Johnny can buy the food, waste tons of cash, and head to the food bank.

There are a few of the local homeless waiting around outside, all either written to be angry or written to be horny.

Johnny sexually harasses her immediately. The can is donated and it's time to head back and pretend none of this ever happened, but suddenly the homeless begin to attack Johnny's ride!

Johnny is very much ready to kill somebody for property damage, but has a change of heart wants to keep his job as a cop.

Entering the car's passage suddenly leads to the leader of this homeless crew to try to run Johnny down with his car. Johnny, previously on a wide street runs down an alley and immediately traps himself.

I save my game.

And am nearly immediately killed. This scene gives you no time to get your bearings.

After a few attempts I make it to this tiny alcove at the end of the alleyway, and am still killed despite the car objects never actually running into me.

The safe spot you're intended to stand in is over here. You can also see the deformation of the car as ZZT cannot handle smooth animation for blocks of objects like this.

The car crashes and Johnny is safe. The driver, not so much.

There's a prompt on whether or not the player wants to leave, but there's nothing else to actually do which makes it a bit odd.

Johnny is now forced to walk through the bad part of town in order to get back to church. Another homeless person immediately begins attacking. Father Danger is getting a reputation here.

For a second I thought to myself, "surely even if it's bad public transit there must be some alternative to walking", but then I realized Johnny has no money. Then I realized the reason he has no money is because he spent $100 on a single can of food as he doesn't give two shits about anything, whether it be money or the hungry.

Johnny is a bad cop and I do not like him.

Using the abandoned car lets Johnny evade the latest person who wants him dead.

Also look at this little detail here where the player gets to idly witness a shooting!

Credit where it's due, Draco did a fine job illustrating how dangerous this part of town is.

The next board is a cutscene on a board identical to the previous except without the car or telephone pole, and with the sidewalk now fully intact.

Oh hey, Juan's back. Remember the surly teen who said "fuck" in a classroom? Well, Johnny wastes no time in slamming his face into a wall.

For all the issues I may have with this game, I do absolutely love the dialog with the gangsta here.

Johnny goes on to show these teenage gang members what it's all for. A little animation plays of Johnny pacing back and forth and kicking Juan repeatedly.

Johnny continues to beat up Juan until the player leaves the board.

And our next scene is in a club? I don't know why Johnny is here, but he is. The player won't get very far as one of the objects in the club runs directly towards Johnny, though for once not in a murderous rage. They just want to talk with him.

Yes. It's going there. I am sorry.

But first, Johnny must try and win some beer in a dance competition.

In this era before Dance Dance Revolution took off in the states, rhythm games meant Parappa The Rapper, and here the player is treated to a dancing minigame.

It goes on for a very long time. There is no music playing. There is no feedback. If you make 3 mistakes your rank drops. Your rank can never rise. It's very very bad.

I died quite often on this scene. I went as far as to write down the steps in advance so I wouldn't have to worry about reading the text and could just process it as up/down/left/right. The way the arrows are coded results in lag between pressing a direction on your keyboard and the game processing that you pressed that direction for the purposes of the engine. It is a nightmare and I absolutely had to cheat to skip it and I promise that if you play Teen Priest yourself, you will too.

The dialog for winning doesn't change much between the first two ranks, just the girl inviting you to her place to dance some more. The third rank has her invite you to her place so she can teach you how to dance better.

The scene shifts to the girl's apartment where Johnny is already in bed and waiting to take advantage of this drunk woman the night before her wedding, etc. etc.

So, I guess when I started this project there are some questions I didn't think to ask myself, like "How should I handle an art board where a woman's face is dripping with semen?" I'm going to go with a link to it since while I don't think anybody's job is in danger because of some white on gray normal/breakable walls, I'd prefer to not put that on people's screens without warning.

The Worlds of ZZT Twitter feed I now realize, is a ticking timebomb.

NSFW NSFW

And so the day ends. This is the second game this series has covered that's included a rape scene! And like the previous, it's "softened" in a way by not occurring from direct physical violence, but instead by taking advantage of a drunk woman. Something easier for a community of teenage boys to not bat an eye at back in the day. For the second time we see the protagonist eager to capitalize on the situation, and while Johnny may or may not be intended to be seen as a good person by the player, I'd definitely say he's at the very least meant to be somebody the player roots for.

On a whim I took a quick glance at the game's sequel, because while I can recall Teen Priest 2 being controversial, I couldn't recall anything in it that would compare to this scene, in a game which didn't really have backlash against it. Spoilers: There is one in the sequel as well, but it's Johnny and played for laughs instead.