Papa’s Pizzeria "On-The-Rack Gamez" Version

When it comes to Flash games, nothing more popular comes to mind than Papa Louie and its series of “Gamerias.” Even when Flash support had ended and was removed from most browsers, Papa’s legacy continues to hold up today with Flipline Studios still making games for the series on mobile devices.
Although, with most popular online games, there are bootleg “unblocked” websites that would host them, most likely without permission from their creators. The only reason they became popular was because, as the name suggested, they were not blocked by schools which meant its students could play the games hosted to help pass the time, or to distract themselves in lessons.
Related to the topic, I had an odd experience with one of them involving a very strange bootleg version of Papa’s Pizzeria. Although it had been years ago at this point (2015 to be exact), I remember notable parts of it that stuck with me ever since I played it, and I decided to share them here, in case I inevitably forget.
If I recall correctly, the version was on a website called “On-The-Rack Gamez” which advertised itself as a website that hosted ‘the best flash games you’ll ever play,’ and its claim was quite bizarre as almost half of them were poorly made ones from Newgrounds. I had stumbled across this site during lunch break at High School when I was looking for something to do, since I had finished all of my homework and didn’t really have many friends to hang with at the time. After some looking through the generic and lame titles that I didn’t really care about, I had finally spotted a well-made game to play, which was Papa’s Pizzeria, of course.
Upon starting up the game, I noticed that the intro in that version was not the same, as it was very roughly animated and had two things off about it. For starters, Roy was wearing different clothing consisting of a pale blue shirt, light gray trousers and hat, and near dark shoes, compared to his red and blue clothing he usually wears. Secondly, instead of driving a delivery car, Roy was on a school bus and it stopped at the back entrance of Papa’s Pizzeria, before he got out. The rest of the cutscene played out as you would expect, with Roy calling out for Papa Louie only to find out that he is away and is needed to run the pizzeria.
The rest of the game, for the most part, was basically the same, taking customers’ orders, making and cooking the pizza, and cutting it before serving it to them as they give you tips based on how well you have done. Although the intro had bugged me out, I initally didn’t really mind it that much, as that was obviously not the focus of the series.
After spending about 10 minutes of playing, I was starting to get bored and wanted to try out making a new profile under the name “almostpapa,” which allowed Papa Louie to be unlocked as a customer very quickly, by starting on Day 99 with most of the customers earning Gold Customer rewards, since I had never reached that part of the game and wanted to find out what his order was like.
Upon playing with the new profile for a little while, I unlocked Papa Louie, much to my excitement, and I prepared myself to take his order, which ended up being complicated just like in the real version of the game. When I had finally finished with his pizza, Papa Louie was very pissed off about it as all the scores from each station had a staggering 0%, much to my disappointment. I refreshed the game to try again, as I thought I'd overcooked the pizza without realizing it. Nope. Papa was still annoyed and I got 0% on everything, despite my best efforts to please him. I refreshed the game multiple times, hoping to get at least a better score. Nothing changed. Papa could not be pleased in any way. Thinking it was just a bug with the version from On-The-Rack, I decided to just continue playing and let off some steam. However, when I had finished the day in-game, I did not expect the following to happen.
thumb|A recreation of one the shots in the cutscene; made in Papa Louie Pals.
After the last customer was served, instead of going to the “Today’s Results” section, the game began to play a cutscene which had the same quality as the one in the intro. Roy was preparing to leave the pizzeria, when he heard a loud bang coming from the entrance. He was shocked by this and demanded to know who it was, as he grabbed a pizza paddle to defend himself, only to become cold by what he saw. It was Papa Louie and he looked furious. Roy apologized to Papa and tried to explain himself, only for the chef to rant about how he had done a bad job at looking after his restaurant and how he is a failure in the industry. As the chef continued to yell, Roy visibly became more stressed as his expressions kept changing with each scene between him and Papa. This continued on for nearly a minute until it happened. Roy, out of pure stress and frustration, slapped Papa real hard with the pizza paddle he had in hand. Upon being hit, Papa landed onto the cold floor, unconscious. Roy took some deep breaths, before becoming horrified by what he had done. As he stared at the unmoving chef, Roy began to fear the possibility of being thrown in jail for what he did and had to think of a plan fast.
Then, for some reason, it began to play a recording of somebody spilling gasoline all over the floor, with some sobbing that came from the person doing it. My best guess would be that it was supposed to be connected with the cutscene prior, but if so, then why not make that animated so it wouldn’t feel out of place?
thumb|The only screenshot available, circa 2015.
Once that recording was over, it faded into a poorly made ‘Thanks for playing’ screen consisting of Roy standing behind a burning building, most likely the same one that was seen in the video. That was the only screenshot I took of that bootleg version as I thought it was hilariously badass without the context of the ending.
If I took a screenshot of it, then why don’t I have the SWF file used on the website? Lunch time was nearly over when I took it, and I planned on downloading the file after I finished school. However, when I got home, my heart dropped as I found out that trying to go to On-The-Rack’s website would just lead me to a 404 error. I tried going onto the website for a few days after that, thinking On-The-Rack was doing some maintenance on their server, but to no avail.
To this day, I have very little clue on who made that bootleg version of Papa’s Pizzeria, why these changes were made, or what was the point of that ending cutscene. If you have any information regarding this, do let me know.
Category:Anon's Pasta Corner
Category:Video Games
Category:Internet
Category:Bootleg
Category:Weird