[The Game Doctor has been a legend in the electronic gaming industry since he debuted in the world's first video/computer game publication, "Electronic Games" in 1981. He has answered software-related questions in more than a dozen magazines and gaming sites. As a long-time fan of POSTAL, he has made periodic pilgrimages to the gopostal.com site and now returns to answer questions for The Urinal. Doctor, your patients await… The Gimp]

Well, I got a month off last issue and now The Gimp tells me we're even MORE crowded this time out! Well, that leather-suited freak isn't dumping ME two issues in a row. Now that my book, "Confessions of The Game Doctor" is complete (look for it this November online and in bookstores from Rolenta Press), I no longer take orders from that imbecile – unless and until someone is stupid enough to publish HIS memoirs.

But enough internecine squabbling, we are crowded this month, so let's get the show started...

The REAL Secret Origin of "The Dude!"

Q: One of the most commonly-asked questions we get here regard the nature of that most enigmatic of characters, The Postal Dude. What's he REALLY like? Does he enjoy killing or is he merely doing what must be done? What's his favorite weapon? Boxers or tightie whities?

Well, let's skip past the conjecture and go right to the source, the man whose creativity has given life to the Postal Dude, Mark II, designer Steve "Postalmeister" Wik, and see what HE thinks.

A: STEVE SAYS: "Expanding the character of The Postal Dude in Postal2/Apocalypse Weekend was an interesting challenge. Other than the "demon voice" dialog that I wrote, The Dude didn't have much of a personality in the first Postal. Players barely had any idea what he looked like, being only 12 pixels tall and having no cinematics to speak of. All we knew was that he wore a trenchcoat (long before Neo and Blade made them so fashionable). A bit of not-really-very-interesting trivia: in the original Postal, The Dude's coat was red. This wasn't an aesthetic desicision, we did it so players could more easily find him onscreen. He was so small that when his coat was black it was impossible to see him!"

"About his name: Originally I fought and fought that he never be named. I wanted to keep him a blank slate for the player to impose whatever they wanted onto, like Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name." But, even The Man With No Name is referred to as "The Man With No Name", so in the end I resigned myself to the fact that we had to refer to him as something. Vince randomly called him "The Postal Dude" in an interview and the name stuck."

"When we started Postal2, we had one old character sketch from 1996 done by our former art director Randy Briley. It depicted a long-haired Dude that I used as a starting point for an update of his design. Our current art director Josh Leichliter has done an awesome job continuing to refine the look of The Dude. As for the audio, I liked local radio personality Rick Hunter's deadpan dialog so much that I decided to drop the "demon voice" idea and just make that The Dude's real voice. It's pretty surreal living in Tucson where you can randomly hear The Postal Dude's voice on radio ads for insurance agents and discount furniture outlets. Rick is awesome to work with, he pretty much nails every line on the first take! He usually makes me let him do additional takes, but don't tell him that I always end up using the first one. "

Left: Original Dude on the front page of the WallStreet Journal 1997. Right: Redesign 2000.

"Basically, The Dude is an oppressed White male in his late thirties/early forties. He's not a burned out old guy who has been beaten down, he's just come to expect the worst in every situation but surprisingly isn't demoralized by that. He's jaded but not bitter; he can still see the dark absurdity in every situation. He also deals with everyday corruption and irony in a totally matter of fact way. Of COURSE he's only been given a traffic ticket so the cop who wrote it can get some kickback into his retirement fund.  Why ELSE would he get a ticket? Of COURSE Krotchy is hoarding the last toy to sell on eBay. Why WOULDN'T he be? Of COURSE the priests have a secret child porn grotto, what else would priests DO? It's all just business as usual and The Dude really can't understand why anyone would ever be surprised by such things."

"He lives at the dark heart of ironic American culture and likes it there, because it affords him an entertaining view. Despite his sardonic sense of humor (and is it even a sense of humor?  Or is it just his honest and slightly slow-witted reaction to the absurdity of the world?), he has a Bugs Bunny-like innocence and resiliency. Shit just seems to seek him out and he responds to it in his own, insanely violent way. But clearly he sees things others don't. Like when he's confronted by police and says: "Hey, don't look at me... book the kid with the keyboard!" or when he goes to pay his traffic ticket and feels compelled to mention that 'Clearly all the cars in this town are merely explodeable props.' He seems to accept that he's just a puppet in the grand scheme of things and plays along in his own way. "

"...I regret nothing..."

"The Dude rarely has an ulterior motive, a scheme or even a clue. He is not a survivalist, a ninja, ex-military or even trained in weapons discipline, he's just a guy. A guy who likes to blow the shit out of stuff and has a few errands to run. I don't think it came across very clearly, but in AW , he doesn't actually know he's wiring up a nuke, he just found the thing laying around in the military base and figured it looked like something that would blow up real good. To him it was fireworks. Not that it would've mattered if he'd known...

"The Dude has a kind of demented childish innocence that allows him to blast the shit out of a secret Taliban training camp one day, and show up at their front door looking for demolitions tips the next. To him it's as though he argued with the neighbor Monday and asked to borrow a cup of sugar Tuesday. He's just a little bit disconnected. He's got a sort of short-circuited morality where while mowing down a crowd he'll realize that 'it would've been more politically correct to kill the women and minorities first.' In his own way he's trying to fit in but it just never seems to work out. He doesn't really mean to be 'bad', those are just the most amusing activities that come immediately to his mind and there's so little fun left in the world..."

"Ultimately, to me The Dude is a post-modern Frankenstein's monster. Instead of being a corpse reanimated by science, he's a child raised by the entertainment industry and 24-hour headline news. He is the poster child for negligent parents allowing American pop culture to raise their children. It makes perfect sense that his voice would sound like a radio announcer and he would speak in catchphrases! Duh!"

"It annoys me when foriegn publishers commission box art that portrays the Dude as a tattooed/pierced angry street kid or drooling psychopath!  The Dude isn't evil or insane (at least he wasn't before the head injury), he's just making 'bad' choices and relating to the world in the only way he knows. His moral compass is just a bit misaligned and his sense of perspective is just a little skewed. Well, maybe more than just a little, but I blame CNN and Pat Robertson's 700 Club for that. Who wouldn't be a little bit damaged in the face of 24/7 news updates about how shitty the human race is? "

Gay or Eurotrash? What straight man would wear that shirt?!?

"In a way The Dude reminds me a little of Bruce Willis in 'Die Hard.' He's just a nearly indestructible schmuck who survives against all odds. Or maybe a bit like an out-of-place Road Warrior, 'road-warrioring' it a little prematurely as the post-apocalyptic feral world hasn't actually started yet. He's just a little bit ahead of his time! The difference is that The Dude accepts the predicaments in which he finds himself and tries to have a little fun while dealing with them. Perhaps a bit too much fun."

"I also love the iconography of The Dude. I've never talked about it with anyone before, but the psychology behind the holy trinity of an alien head, a crucifix and a smiley face just makes me all warm inside. A heady blend of institutionalized morality, disenfranchisement and mindless consumerism... fucking beautiful if I do say so myself. "

"oh, and boxers. Definitely boxers."

Thus it comes, direct from the horse's ass, so to speak.

-The Game Doctor

For answers to the most Frequently Asked Questions, check out the official GoPostal.com site. But send any new questions regarding RWS, the POSTAL franchise and anything else that occurs to you to: GameDoctorKunkel@gopostal.com.