Video Game / Brad Has a Pain

"My grandson...my disciple."

"This is a dramatic retelling of Lisa: The Painful RPG."

— Description on itch.io

Stupid ball.

Brad Has A Pain is a parody Fan Game of the second installment of LISA, is a prequel to Alex Has A Point, and was uploaded March 06, 2022 by Scary Lemon.

The plot follows Brad, sole creator of the Armstrong Style, and the world he fights for. What he fights against, however, is the corrupt Lisa, who Brad has successfully stopped several times in the past. One day, as he returns from partying with a stupid ball, Brad keels over as he feels an immense disturbance. He's felt it before - Lisa is back from the dead, and sapping away at his power.

Brad has a pain.

The game features the story of Painful turned completely on its head, along with 27 party members in total, the majority of them with unique gimmicks and interactions, original music, and "the feature".

You can find the game here.

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Brad Has A Pain provides these STUPID examples of:

• Adaptational Heroism:
  • Marty is far from the deadbeat abusive father he is in canon, being a Nice Guy to Brad with only mild annoyance at infant Lisa telekinetically throwing a bottle at him. Even at the end of the game he only attacks Brad as revenge for Brad treating him like garbage in the past and will only then fight you if you don’t give him your bottles.
  • Buzzo is flat-out replaced with a Suspiciously Similar Substitute that is a sickly green muscular man named Mr. Fantastic with a creepy face who hounds Brad at roughly the same points in the game. Instead of making Brad suffer via Sadistic Choice as is canon, he instead acts chummy with Brad, even giving him gifts like the Fantastic Phone and one of his own men as a party member.
  • Almost every Joy Mutant you see is still twisted like normal, but they maintain their sapience and seem to be fine with their forms. Most of them are fairly cordial as well, as they’re on Brad’s side for the entire game.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Brad himself is much more ruthless than his canon self. For example, the opening sequence shows him being the one to bully Rick, Sticky and Cheeks, and he intentionally caused the Flash in an attempt to kill all women and children. That being said, most of his more evil actions tend to fall under Comedic Sociopathy.
  • Lisa herself has gone from an Enfante Terrible living under an abusive father to an outright Satanic Archetype.
  • The Salvation Rangers are now a group of supervillains rather than wannabe superheroes.
  • Terry Hintz goes from an initially useless party member that genuinely likes Brad to a Brad wannabe who tries to kill Brad near the end of Area 2. At least Terry gets some followers who attack you and seems to lack the depression and loneliness of his canon counterpart.
• Art Shift: The final area of the game shifts the sprite art of the game into LISA: The First's EarthBound-like graphics, including unique sprites for every party member.
• Ass Kicks You: Rage is still a party member like normal, except for the one fact he now fights with his ass.
• Bilingual Bonus: The sign outside Brad's house literally just has "BRAD" written on it in Japanese.
• Black Comedy Cannibalism: Happens a lot in the game; Brad and his party can consume overworld characters, dogs (Brad can become one), and uncooperative party members, such as Clint.
• Chekhov's Gunman: MU Clarence can be seen staring off at you atop unreachable cliffs much like the Lisa hallucinations in the original game. After obtaining Super TNT, one can blow up the otherwise indestructible large rocks in Area 2 to reveal a path to an otherwise empty area where he bursts out of the wall to fight you as this game’s Superboss.
• Contrasting Sequel Protagonist: Downplayed. Alex from LISA: The Pointless is much more different than Brad from LISA, but Brad from Brad Has a Pain is still quite different from Alex from Alex Has A Point. To wit, Alex from Alex Has A Point is a Disciple of Brad, quite a jerk, a man of rather few words, and without a particularly obvious goal. Brad from Brad Has a Pain is not a Disciple of Brad; he is Brad. He is more well-intended than in LISA, and his game has a very clear end-goal: kill Lisa. Again. That is, Alex from Alex Has A Point is a student while Brad from Brad Has a Pain is the master, Brad is a better person, and Brad has more clear objectives.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Attempting to take the map to Joel Island has the two Fishmen around it attack Brad. After turning around and staring at them, there’s a Gory Discretion Shot and the entirety of Fishman Village is destroyed by Brad.
• Disproportionate Retribution: The aforementioned Curb-Stomp Battle in Fishman Village is incurred by Brad stealing a map. Checking a corpse of a Fishman has Brad state “It is punished”.
  • During your second encounter with the Salvation Rangers, Dick decides to bail on them after learning they’re supervillains, only for Brad to be in his way. Upon asking if Brad to move, he gets obliterated in one kick.
• Gameplay and Story Integration: Most of the cutscenes in the game present Brad as more or less nigh-unstoppable and nigh-unkillable (unless Lisa or other anti-Brad magic is involved). In battle, he’s going to be dealing the vast majority of your damage for most of the game thanks to his high stats, lack of Withdrawal and lack of any events that reduce them, like losing arms.
• Groin Attack:
  • Brad’s Surprise Attack has been buffed drastically in terms of damage output, making it a great trick when you have the SP for it.
  • One bottle in the game is flesh colored and between some guy’s legs. No points for guessing how he reacts when you grab it.
  • There is one notable inversion: Scott Lawson’s attempts at kicking Brad in the groin meet with Brad’s Balls of Steel, before Scott getting reduced to a crumpled and mangled mess on the ground.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Junior (Rick’s son) takes the place of Shocklord during the EWC Tag-Team Championship. He plays like a slightly weaker Brad. Unlike Shocklord, he doesn’t stay with you as a party member outside of the EWC. Completing the Tag-Team Championship still unlocks his ending slide in the Modular Epilogue.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Brad, as noble as his goal is, doesn't stop himself from bluntly insulting certain people and bullying enemies (with his fists).
• Joke Character:
  • Your first party member in this game isn’t Terry Hintz, but rather, a balloon tied to a rock, given life by Brad. It’s about as effective as it sounds... initially.
  • Another party member is an Almost Dead Guy named Dead, who joins you precisely to die in combat. Its first available move is to die in combat, removing itself from your party. He does have some skills as he levels up, culminating in a skill that kills him and deals massive damage to an enemy.
  • A bottle is another party member, though unlike the Balloon, which is combat-capable, the Bottle is a One-Hit-Point Wonder with the inability to do anything in a fight than throw itself (which kills it and removes it from your party).
  • Clint Olympic is still a recruitable character, playing just like he does in the original game, which is to say he’s an inferior Moveset Clone of Brad. What makes him fall under this trope? His price tag is a whopping 50,000 mags, a price tag you will never be able to pay, and unlike Rage doesn’t join you if you don’t have it. After defeating Satan you can actually pay the price, and Clint calls you a dumbass before joining the party.
• Lethal Joke Character
  • Mox is one of Kim Sex Machine’s disciples, and upon beating him, joins your party to make himself look better. He’s unimpressive in a fight, though he does gain a Money Multiplier and upon using four otherwise useless skills can decapitate a foe with staggering damage.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter:
  • Carp is no longer a Psycho Knife Nut, but a fisherman, who catches fish to use for moves during fights via QTE. Without any fish, he’s relegated to being an Item Caddy.
  • Gun Chambers isn’t even technically a party member, being kept in your inventory. However, he is still present in fights, with him either blowing his brains out to hurt a random enemy or inflict Wary on one by shooting with an empty cylinder at the beginning of every turn.
• Missing Secret: Invoked with Point Meyser, who has party member data, but is not recruitable anywhere in the game. Word of God mentions that his entire existence is meant to piss off data miners.
• Not His Sled: Most of the party members from the original game are present in the game, but are either heavily altered or never actually join your party with the sole exception of Clint Olympic.
  • Terry Hintz is a recurring enemy, as detailed above.
  • Rage Ironhead is now Rage Ironass. No points for guessing what he fights with.
  • Olan suffers a Cessation of Existence when Brad shares a memory with him.
  • Beastborn (now dressed in Goo Goo Getup and called Babyborn) is killed by Brad after their fight.
  • Nern is launched off a cliff before he can give his monologue.
  • Rooster is killed by Goldie, who he abandoned atop the hill Goldie’s found at. Goldie is also capable of talking, and functions as a Moveset Clone of Rooster.
  • The Hernandez brothers are all spherical beings known as Useful Fat Creatures. Fardy in particular is an accomplished wizard.
• Parody: As stated above, is a comedic retelling of LISA.
• Pet the Dog: When Brad and his gang are taken to the Russian Roulette shack, Brad steps up to play instead of his party members, claiming that “A master protects his disciples”. It helps he’s apparently Immune to Bullets, much to the chagrin of the ringleader.
• Racial Transformation: Cheeks was apparently beaten so hard by Brad, all his skin fell off, and he received a skin transplant from a black man.
• Summon Magic: Comes in three flavors:
  • As Morrace gains levels, he gains the ability to summon three different Assist Character summons to act on his turn: a skeleton child, a demon child, and Death Queen. They all act automatically on Morrace’s turn alongside his normal actions.
  • Bob Friday has the ability to summon his students into battle to perform an action for him, like punching the foe. As you’d expect from people who learnt from Bob Friday, they often aren’t the greatest…
  • Upon completing Area 1, Mr. Fantastic gives Brad the Fantastic Phone, which when equipped calls him to run over all enemies for a boatload of damage. Unfortunately, thanks to its staggeringly high SP cost, there’s only a fraction of characters who actually can use it.
• Shout-Out:
  • Maul Crower's name is a spoonerism of "Crow Mauler."
  • In Brad’s Dojo you can find a Brad Credit Card. The fact it enrages your enemies when used in battle and it’s description also bring to mind [1]’s infamous reaction to the Bat Credit Card.
• Superboss: In addition to Satan still being present, there’s also MU Clarence. Uniquely, said fight isn’t presented as a normal fight (as MU Clarence is Nigh-Invulnerable), but rather an endurance test as he whales on you before deeming you worthy, made more challenging by him obscuring your health, SP and TP as well as permanently killing a party member alongside his powerful attacks. Upon beating him, you get some very powerful wristbands for Brad and three accessories that allow the usage of any weapon type in the game for the wearer.
• Take a Third Option: Rage offers the extremely steep price of 700 mags to join you. Selecting it has him say you don’t have enough, only for Brad to say he doesn’t care and forces Rage into his party anyway.
• Took a Level in Badass: Percy is now a scarred, musclebound "Badass Disciple" who attacks with a dial combo and has finger beam moves. His badassery is such that he's immune to one-hit kill moves: if an enemy nails him with one, he simply says "What? No." and comes back to life.
• Trolling Creator: Pretty much one of the main elements throughout the game, the player must be trolled, whether it be through forcing the player to climb up the mountain with ludicrously fast Barrel Bros in order to get Goldie, turning the player invisible through Jack, or making them traverse the downright HORRID bathhouse.
• Utility Party Member:
  • Maul Crower is useless in a fight, though he makes up for it by being able to let you save anywhere, infinitely.
  • Sackboy’s only skill in a fight is to produce a random item. Unlike Maul, it cannot be used outside of combat.