Home Life 2002 for The Sims

(This is something weird I whipped up from a spur-of-the-moment idea. I'm not a particuarly amazing horror writer, but I do enjoy pandering to weird overly-specific nostalgia.)

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What's the most crass, offensive, deplorable thing that you've ever witnessed in a retail release video game? Most of the time, this kind of thing is deliberate, meant to invoke shock, laughter, or a mix of the two. However, for me, however, what disgusted me the most was something far, far more ill in intent than a simple cheap shock. It was something I found laying around at a Goodwill. It's called Home Life 2002. And to this day, I can't believe it's real.

Home Life 2002, from obscure publisher Daliware (Their logo is a melting clock), is an unofficial expansion pack for The Sims 1 in... well, 2002. Around the time, these things weren't than uncommon, though were slowly (and thankfully) dying out. Doom had them, SimCity 2000 had them, pretty much any game that was openly and easily moddable had them. So as long as the publisher had a stable internet connection, they could go on community pages, steal some poor fan's work and slap a price sticker on it. Three cheers for integrity!

However, the focus of our story is... different. Home Life 2002 not only commits the cardinal sin of capitalising off of fans, but was also developed by fucking sociopaths. Now, you might be saying I'm being a little quick to judge, but... well, let's just start from the beginning.

I have an old Windows 98 computer laying around from my grandpa (rest in peace). I already thought this thing looked pretty shady, and Sims 1 is a PITA to get working on modern Windows (I already owned it, so I don't see much use in buying it again digitally), so I wasn't risking on putting it in my new, expensive $1200 PC with all of my projects and games on it. Also, novelty. Yay!

However, turning it on again after about a decade proved to be a surprisingly emotional experience. I remembered that had made me an account on his computer, and through some sort of sheer chance of fate, all of my old paint drawings, dumb stories and "movies" I recorded (me dancing around like a maniac in front of a camera with action figures, usually) were still there.

Was it worth getting these files infected or losing them? I didn't have any real good way of getting these files off of there, and I wasn't ready to run out to Best Buy or something to grab a pack of CD-Rs, since it was pretty late and I just felt incredibly "bleh". So, reluctantly, I put the disc in the machine.

The expansion pack booted with a cheesy, but not unexpected autorun menu. A little compressed stock jingle played and I was greeted with a cartoonish man off to the side gesturing at the menu icons (this man will be very important soon enough), and a few little logos and bits and bobs here and there, including a little selectable company logo which would take you to "www.daliware.com", a site that doesn't seem to exist anymore. Such a shame, because I really wish I could get more info on these freaks.

Clicking "Install" took me to a typical old-school blue gradient background installer. Nothing really out of the ordinary happens for the duration of the installation. Then, I got my first warning sign that something was very, very wrong. Subtle as it was, I feel like I should've been a little more alarmed than I was at the time.

There appeared a hideously stretched fullscreen window of the same cartoon man with a large speech bubble off to the right. It read as follows (written as-is):

"HELLO. I am DR DALI! I Am Here to Tell YOU to REGISTER THIS EXCELLENT PRODUCT with DALIWARE SOFTWARE. If You Do Not... Expect Game Problems Because You Are Not Ensured to the BEST QUALITY GAME PROGRAM... Would You Like to REGISTER NOW?"

Obviously, if I couldn't get onto the site, there was no way in hell I was gonna be able to register this. Even then, I generally don't bother with these screens. So, I just clicked no.

"Are You SURE???"

No.

"Please Make Sure To Register On Time. You Will Not Enjoy The Game Without It. See You Soon..."

That seemed like a pretty weird message even at the time, but I figured they were non-native English speakers or something given the previous message. On reflection, it makes complete sense. And not in any remotely good way.

I was greeted by a very basic object selection window. There were hundreds of different clothes, pieces of furniture, sim character models, etc. Pretty standard stuff, most of it stolen. If this is all it was, however, I wouldn't be writing this tale. This was only the beginning.

Upon launching the game through the pack's menu, everything seemed as expected. I made a new family, played around a bit with the weird new content, and relived a game I hadn't played in years, realizing how much I had missed it. For a few hours, I had almost forgotten what I was doing and got lost in raising my own virtual family. And then the first truly hard-to-ignore warning sign reared its ugly head.

While all of my Sims were asleep, the home phone went off strangely early in the morning. I figured it was just one of the prank calls you'd get at random, where the person on the other end would say menacing or goofy things like "The end is near. Make preparations", or "Do you canoe?".

"DR DALI Here Again to REMIND YOU to REGISTER YOUR SOFTWARE..."

"No fucking way." I blurted out.

I stared at the screen in disbelief, laughing intensely. It certainly pulled me out of the immersion, but it was the funniest thing I had seen all week. They modded the game just to nag you for not registering their shitty bootleg expansion pack. I didn't even know it was possible to do such a thing. Then I clicked OK.

"If You Do Not Register, I'm Comming!!!"

I didn't know how to react to that one. It was still kind of funny and absurd, but the implications were a bit more ominous than expected. This was a family I had spent the last few hours actually trying to build up. The father, David, had a job as a surgeon, the mother, Sandra, was a Field Sales Representative, and their son, Timmy, was doing well in school. I hoped the mod wasn't gonna try and fuck me over somehow.

Oh lord.

Halfway into the day after that fateful phone call, Something happened that made me genuinely jump 50 feet in the air. While I was guiding David out of the bathroom, a disgusting abomination of a 3D model just... appeared in the living room. Despite its... crudeness, I instantly recognized it as none other than Dr. Dali. He had manifested himself in the game world, and I looked in awe at his horrific beauty.

Without missing a beat, Dr. Dali walked straight towards David and began talking to him. Instantly, he became terrified and all of his mood meters dropped down to red. Then, he turned roughly in the screen's direction, prompting a message box to appear.

"Register Your Game Now!!! This is Your FIRST WARNING..."

As soon as I pressed OK, Dali vanished without a trace. I now knew in my heart that there was some skeevy shit afoot in this pack, and I wasn't ready just yet to have some low-poly motherfucker coming in and ruining my family's life. But, I decided I was curious enough to see what depths these lunatics would go to get people to sign up for their bullshit, even if it meant losing a decent amount of progress.

I wasn't prepared.

As the first instance of what I will now dub "The Scourges of Dr. Dali" began, things were pretty easy to deal with. It took a bit of time, but I was able to get David back into modest shape by the end of the following day, allowing him to go back to work. But Dali had yet to show his full hand of his evil, dispicable tricks.

The second Scourge began quietly, but it was hard not to notice. Plates of rotten food and trash began to appear suddenly around the house in an increasing rate. It seemed pretty stupid at first, but it made playing the game more frustrating as my Sims would react to it constantly with no apparent way to stop it, slowly sapping away at their morale.

However, in the midst of the trash-spam, Dali decided to pull some high-class bullshit by setting fire to a random corner of the house. Being as stupid as I am, I realized that I had not bought a fire alarm in the midst of everything else I had done, and in The Sims 1, Sims are as dumb as bricks when it comes to fire.

Luckily, however, I was able to guide Timmy to the phone before anyone could get seriously hurt. However, it left a bad taste in my mouth knowing that these developers were willing to kill off your family over such a stupid thing. Then, as soon as the firefighter did his job and drove away, Dr. Dali came back in physical form, this time looking straight directly at the screen.

"Did You Enjoy That! Ha Ha Ha Ha... It's Time To Register Your Software. This Is Your LAST WARNING..."

The third and final Scourge is when those fucks over at Daliware went off the deep end. What happened next, I couldn't believe.

After a few more in-game days (which I was much more cautious about), Dali re-appeared for the last time, standing ominously at the center. Suddenly, all of my Sims walked to the center of the house in unison.

"Good Bye..."

I lost control of my Sims in that moment. I clicked on them as many times as I could, but they wouldn't budge. And then... they just died. All of them. No fanfare. Just... dead.

Dali vanished, and the HUD disappeared along with him. I was left staring at the bodies of my poor family. It honestly just kind of made me mad. It wasn't funny anymore. The game closed. And as I was kicked back to my desktop, my wallpaper had changed to a screenshot of that very same scene.

As if things couldn't get any more surreal, a window appeared with the same cartoon image of Dr. Dali from earlier.

"That's What You Get!!!

©2002 Daliware Ltd."

The computer rebooted the moment I closed it.

"Invalid System Disk Replace the disk, and then press any key"

For a few minutes, I just sat at the DOS screen. I could not process what just happened. If I were a child, I would've had nightmares for years. If I were some grandma, I would've been so distraught. All of that over a stupid registration form. All of that over something I had no control over. I just wanted to play some old dumb game. It's a shame we haven't learned since then.