I certainly don’t see it as a production game, and the designer himself didn’t pitch it that way. Then again, this show isn’t a straight documentary, containing plenty of scripted material, so who knows?

And note-- I’m a bit of a MAME fan, and have never run in to this one under the name “Herpes,” nor seen it on any list.

Also, speaking as someone well-familiar with C64 and Apple ][ graphics from this era, I’d lean towards the graphics looking like an 8-bit Atari’s, as you say. Based on the sophistication of the gameplay, I’d guess he wrote this in AtariBasic, then built a little cabinet around the game unit. I suppose me & my high school buddies could have done the same for some of our old 1983 games, given sufficient motivation.

In any case, discounting this is all scripted, I really do get the sense this is just a little social experiment, maybe partly for his own amusement, maybe partly to talk about for the show. The gameplay and concept certainly don’t scream to me that he intended to make it big with this game, and his demeanor and way of talking about it don’t seem to suggest that, either.

I’ve looked at the credits for this ep at various places (including the IMDB), and the actors’ list seems to cut off after the Ray Davies - Mari Wilson segment, before this guy’s starts. Guess you’ll have to dig further to figure that out. The total lack of context for his segment certainly doesn’t help, but I guess that was the style of the show at that point.