A real, no-foolin' graphic adventure with all the funny elements of the MTV show.

I’ll admit one thing right up front: I used to despise Beavis and Butt-Head. I thought their MTV cartoon was the dumbest thing in television history: a crude, insulting celebration of ignorance and apathy -- in other words, I thought all the things that everybody who hates the show thinks. Turns out, I just didn’t get it.


Things changed a little over a year ago, when I started working for PC Gamer. The PCG staff is the funniest group of folks I’ve ever worked with -- and they loved Beavis and Butt-Head. I figured I must’ve missed something, so I gave the show another look. You can guess the rest; it’s enough to say that when a copy of Viacom’s Beavis and Butt-Head in Virtual Stupidity arrived at the office, I was ready to arm-wrestle all takers for the right to review it. And I wasn’t disappointed.

Virtual Stupidity revolves around a typical Beavis and Butt-Head plot: The boys want desperately to join Todd’s gang (Todd’s a strung-out, no-account hood, so naturally Beavis and Butt-Head think he’s God). They decide to prove how cool they are by recovering Todd’s car from the rival gang that stole it.

Before the game’s over, the boys will crash a Save-the-Whales meeting; steal a Sherman tank; play with electricity; escape from jail; learn all the laws of physics in countless painful ways; and make 1,001 jokes about human anatomy and bodily functions. It’s great.

One of the best things about Virtual Stupidity is that it isn’t just a series of video clips linked together by rare moments of interaction. Heaven knows Viacom could’ve gotten away with a much less impressive game; it still would’ve sold well with the popularity of Beavis and Butt-Head to carry it. But this is an honest-to-goodness graphic adventure with an actual plot (twisted as it may be), lots of choices to make, and lots of elaborate (but not too difficult) puzzles to solve. At its heart, Virtual Stupidity is a solid game that would’ve been worth playing even without the well-known characters.

But it’s not just a good graphic adventure that happens to star Beavis and Butt-Head, either. Virtual Stupidity really looks, sounds, and feels like an extra-long episode of the TV series. That’s because a whole bunch of people responsible for the show were also involved in the game. Writers Sam Johnson and Chris Marcil provided the dialog; the people at MTV Animation created the game’s transitional scenes and background art; and -- most important of all -- series creator Mike Judge provided the voice acting, just as he does for the show. Beavis and Butt-Head sound exactly the way they should -- and so do all the other familiar characters who appear in the game, from Buzz-Cut, to Mr. Anderson, to Principal McVicar, to Todd himself.

Even the music videos are here; click on the TV set in Butt-Head’s living room, and you’ll see a generous clip from Primus, Sausage, or GWAR ("They rule!"), complete with the boys’ usual, incisive commentary.

The result is a very funny game. Virtual Stupidity doesn’t evoke a chuckle or two; it makes you laugh out loud. Repeatedly. This is easily the funniest PC game since LucasArts published Sam & Max Hit the Road.

That’s assuming you like Beavis and Butt-Head, of course. If you think, as I once did, that they’re the most irretrievably stupid characters on TV, the game won’t do a single thing to change your mind. That’s probably for the best; if you don’t understand the appeal of the show, you’ll never make the connection between a condom and a gas station air hose -- and you’ll never finish the game.