The school is borrowed from Saved by the Bell, its mansion from Batman

As the ironically named Player, a thug for hire, you cause mayhem, "borrowing" cars, shooting civilians, and committing a number of odd, illegal jobs. The setting, the city of Theftropolis in the year 1985, is built from the materials of our collective childhood memories. Its school is borrowed from Saved by the Bell; its mansion borrowed from Batman. Even the bike shop is owned by the trainer from Punch-Out!. Of course, to avoid copyright infringement, these characters and settings have slightly different names, but when you meet a squat mustachioed plumber, you know who he is.

The references extend far beyond sight gags and one-liners. The game's missions, dispensed by a would-be Doc Brown who's commissioned your help with creating a Delorean-like time machine, are snack-sized parodies of video game classics. Commando, Outrun, Tapper: I'd be more reluctant to spoil these shout-outs were the game not so densely packed, and a complete list would expend my word count.

With nearly every stage borrowing from a different game, the variety is impressive. The rub is many of the parodies are too superficial, or worse, are inspired by games that weren't particularly good back then, let alone now. The game tries to mitigate this problem with self-aware humor. Before a "follow a vehicle" mission, Player monologues about the tedium of the stage, that it is a tired cliche repeated ad nauseum in the open world genre. The joke is, to stave off boredom while following the vehicle, Player must pick up coffee from numerous vending machines.