Club a Seal (also known as Club a Seal 2) is a Flash game that was developed by Tom Fulp and released in 1999, featuring three minigames that revolve around violence towards seals (primarily clubbing). It is one of the earliest Flash games to be released on Newgrounds along with Pico's School, even before the Portal system was implemented.
Links[]
The game can be found here:
- Newgrounds.com
- On the Flashpoint Archive under the name "Club A Seal 2"
- Archive.org
History[]
According to the game's About section, Tom Fulp has gotten the idea to develop Club A Seal from a moment where during his childhood, his father showed him footage of seal clubbing on National Geographic Television, which made him "cry for the rest of his evening." Despite Fulp's disapproval of seal clubbing and saying that anyone who takes part in it should be shot, he has created Club a Seal simply because "it's funny."
Before Club A Seal, Fulp made another game of the same name in 1997 with HTML5, featuring a baby segment and an adult segment. In the baby segment, there are three baby seals which can be clubbed by clicking on each of them, and clubbing a seal once will injure it while doing so twice in a row will kill it. However, if you club another seal after clubbing a seal, the latter will heal from the injury. In the adult segment, there is only one adult seal which you can club, and it must be attacked 8 times until it dies. Both of these segments feature text commenting on your actions in the game.
Gameplay[]
Virtual Seal[]
A seal is given to you in a virtual pet-esque game, and there are six options for things to do with him. You can click on the seal's head to club him, and doing so 5 times will lead to his death. You can click on the bucket of fish (mislabeled as a can of fish) to feed the seal, and will heal any injuries he got from clubbing (except if he's already dead). You can click on the moon to make the seal sleep, making the moon change into a sun in the process, and the sun can then be clicked to wake him up (by clubbing him). You can click on the ball to make him play, although it doesn't seem to function whatsoever. The last two options below the seal lead to the "endings" of the game, letting you choose to either destroy him or set him free. If you destroy the seal, a nuke is dropped onto him and he disappears, while the game scolds you for doing such a thing. If you set the seal free, he'll be launched off a cannon into an iceberg in the ocean, only for his neck to hit the edge of the iceberg which beheads and kills him.
Bop a Seal[]
A simple Whac-a-Mole clone with three holes, where a seal will occasionally poke its head out from one of the holes. Clicking on a seal will club it, forcing it back down the hole. If a seal is left untouched, it'll quickly go back down its respective hole, sometimes looking around before going back down.
Seal Volleyball[]
There are two orca whales playing tennis using a baby seal, and you need to help each of the whales pass the seal to the other by clicking a whale when the seal is about to reach it. Clicking too late or not clicking will result in the seal being dropped in the water, while clicking too early will make the seal fly towards the screen, both leading to a game over. As the seal moves quite quickly, each click must be timed very precisely, making this a very difficult minigame.
Legacy[]
Due to Club a Seal's theme being considered quite offensive at the time, it has led to Tom Fulp getting lots of hate mail, the game itself even having an entire section dedicated to collecting hate mail. However, some people also defended the game, one of them claiming that clubbing seals is the most humane way to kill them. This game's decent amount of popularity has led to violence and seals becoming a staple of Newgrounds culture.