Have You Played... Interactive Buddy?

Poor Interactive Buddy. Victim of childlike sadism, innocent digital person of unknown address, rotund receiver of grenades and fireballs. I'm sorry for everything I did to you, and sorry for what I am about to do.

Interactive Buddy was a Flash game about sometimes tickling a wee virtua-person. But mostly it was about knocking them out with furiously flung baseballs and using "God powers" to make them sad and hurt. You can still throw a fist at poor Buddy today. But please, show some restraint. Buddy has been through a lot.

It was a dark time, the early 2000s, and we were dark children, the whole miserable spread of our millennial disillusionment was still ahead of us, unseen and thin, like too little avocado spread over too much toast. We could not have known all this would happen [gestures at the entire world]. We were too busy pulling Buddy into a swirling gravity vortex. Sorry.

You also got in-game money for hurting little Bud-bud. You could buy new items, like a medieval flail, and let rip. It was the Flash equivalent of pouring hot water onto a load of ants. Probably less harmful than that. Poor ants. Poor Buddy.

Also, you could dress Buddo up as George Bush and hose him down in a corner, then throw bowling balls at him. Truly, a game of its time.