There Was An Official Dodge Caliber Video Game And It’s Weirder Than You’d Ever Guess

You know what we could all use right now? Some freaking whimsy. It might seem to be in short supply these days, but if you know where to look, you just might find it. Take the Dodge Caliber, for example. It wasn’t a particularly whimsical car outside of some unusual features, but one facet of Dodge’s throw-everything-at-the-wall marketing strategy was oddly delightful, so long as you don’t fear mosquitoes.

For the 2007 model year, Dodge replaced its long-running Neon nameplate with a chunky hatchback called the Caliber, signifying the exact moment the last remnant of American mainstream 1990s optimism was taken behind the woodshed and unceremoniously Boondock Saints’d. In the eyes of Dodge, “Hi” was out, edgy was in, and the Caliber was meant to appeal to the youth by not playing nice.

Print ads from the time depicted the Dodge Caliber getting a tattoo, breaking into a bumper car track, and, um, photocopying its asscheeks. Does a hatchback version of a Jeep Compass with a Jatco CVT even have asscheeks? Moving on, one television ad from the period depicted a dog riding in a Caliber while mooning another dog and — who the hell directed this campaign anyway? Bart Simpson?

Of course, this relentless marketing barrage didn’t stop at traditional mediums because of something called Adobe Shockwave. See, in-browser games were huge in the 2000s, and Shockwave was a popular way of building them. Obviously, since nothing’s sacred, this space was prime for advertising, and Dodge’s marketers decided to pop off with something truly unhinged.

Among a series of online games promoting various Dodge products sat something called Caliber Buzz, which let you fly a computer-generated mosquito around a computer-generated Dodge Caliber interior. I’m not joking. It even comes with a waiver that kicks off with “No bugs were injured in the making of this game! The stunts and maneuvers simulated by the mosquito in this game should never be attempted in real life — almost all are impossible and all are dangerous — for mosquitoes. Don’t try this at home.”

Alrighty, then. Let’s kick things off in explore mode, where your blood-sucking avatar is free to roam the cabin of the Caliber. The spacebar adds height, the arrow keys control direction of movement, and the first thing you’ll want to do is spend 30 seconds or so trying to fly through the hole in the headrest. Once you’ve done that, it’s time to buzz about the rest of the interior, where giant arrows and text point out features like the swing-out liftgate speakers and detachable flashlight. See? I told you this is a marketing exercise.

Once you’re bored of aimless flight, you might want to try the actual game mode, which involves flying through gold hoops and collecting Dodge emblems within a time limit. I have no idea how scores are tabulated since I scored nearly 25,000 points on my first attempt, but hey, why not juice the numbers to make the player feel good? The overarching narrative here is “buy our product” not “aspire to become a mosquito.”

That’s all well and good, but how do you actually play this game in 2025, when no browsers come with Flash support? Well, a variety of free emulators exist, with Flashpoint being both at the forefront and a program that doesn’t piggyback onto your browser. So, if you’re feeling particularly bored, why not fly a computer-generated mosquito inside a Dodge Caliber? It’s kinda fun, it’s fairly easy, and it’s free so long as you have a shitty Windows computer and an internet connection.

(Lead photo credit: Dodge)

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