Gauntlet – Retro Games

Greetings, Glancers! Yikes, it has been a while since my last retro gaming post, so why not take this opportunity to go a hells of a long way back and revisit the first entry in a longstanding and beloved series.

Gauntlet began its life in 1985 as a hit Arcade machine. Created by Atari, and inspired by Dungeons & Dragons, this version was quickly ported to home computers, saw an expanded version with over 500 additional levels (!), and has since been re-released as recently as 2014 on Windows. The game is a top-down dungeon crawler pitting you and up to three mates against hundreds of thousands of bad guys. It mixes action, shooting, puzzle, RPG, and even a bit of survival horror, has a great soundtrack with iconic music and effects, and is played at a frantic pace. Many, if not most games from that era have dated, but while the graphics are exactly what you would expect the gameplay is still fantastic – that timeless blend of running and shooting has rarely been so perfect.

These hack’n’slash games were a dime a dozen (or ‘five lighters for a pound’ if you’re from Northern Ireland) at the time, and I had a bunch of clones and imitators at the time which ranged wildly in quality. Gauntlet had everything I needed in a game at that age – from the difficulty to the gameplay, the fact that I could play it alone or with my brother, and the fact that once you got past a certain level things began generating randomly. As a kid I loved mazes, exploration, and the idea of roaming around dungeons, fighting for you life and finding precious treasure. Movies like The Goonies, The Indiana Jones series, all those Harryhausen movies, and all the Greek and Roman myths and legends books I read all helped, but actually having control over a hero and getting thrown into the action yourself was something entirely different. Naturally, me and my school mates would spend many a lost afternoon and evening roaming the streets and fields pretending we were explorers and warriors.

Instead of what we became

My experience of multi-player gaming was limited at the time – games were either challenge based where you took turns to get the highest score, or played in direct competition with each other. This, I think, was my first experience of working as part of a team towards a common goal. Naturally this common goal business was rarely mutually agreed, which led to fights between my brother and I almost every time we played, with someone accidentally picking up the wrong item or getting stranded behind a wall of sixty ghosts. Several times there was a last ditch communication breakdown as we frantically tried to escape with our lives, only for one of us to enter an exit without waiting for the other, or we both entered different exits (I think). Game Over. Shouts and fights. These multiplayer missions lasted for hours, and in those days there was no simple save or pause option – when you played, you played knowing that as soon as dinner or bed time came it was Game Over. We never did manage to complete it.

You see, there was one level. One level which I’ve tried to find online in Youtube videos and by googling, but one level which we could never get past. This level was basically a series of steps  – imagine viewing a long standard staircase from the side – filled with the standard series of enemies, and a few of those morph exit dealies which transferred you from one part of the level to the next. Whenever you entered one of those though, you simply got taken to another staircase and your health continued its unceasing march towards zero. We could just never work out what needed to be done, even though we could actually see the exit – there was no way to break through the wall to reach the section that the exit was on, and none of the morph transporters ever took us to that area. Still, it was great fun to play, and hope that one day that level would be skipped or we’d somehow work it out. (Note – I have since learned that there was a cheat which allowed you to walk through walls, one that was even published in Issues of Your Sinclair. So… so many hours in the bin).

But lets take a step back. When you start Gauntlet, you are hit with a character select screen, and a choice of four heroes; Thor, a Warrior – armed with sword and muscles – he is the strongest character; Questor, an Elf seemingly destined to spend his life in dungeons with a name like that – armed with a bow and arrow – the fastest character, who also looks like a cowboy; a Valkyrie whose name we could never quite work out due to pixels – she had the best defence; and Merlin – a tramp (Wizard). He was good at chucking magic. In two player we were almost always Thor and Questor, not that that helped us when it came to the stair level.

Why can’t I be the freak in the middle?

From there, you go through the usual control scheme screen and into the first 8 levels. I still have every inch of those opening levels burned into my brain due to playing them so many times. As mentioned, I loved the fact that the levels were not all linear, and even in these opening stages there were multiple exits – some which took you to the next level, some which skipped you forward a few. Level 1 introduced you to ghost enemies and the little (what I always thought of as) fireplaces which they sprouted from. Actually no, the fireplaces were treasure chests, the bad guys came out of a bunch of bones. The enemies would keep coming unless you destroyed that source, although they only popped out at a rate of 1 every couple of seconds so it wasn’t a big deal once you had cleared the majority away. The main problem was of course that the majority was often around a hundred – even in the first level you are hit with seemingly overwhelming odds – it was like Zulu without the patriotism (racism?). Luckily you soon realise that most enemies can be defeated with a single hit or shot, and that clearing a path and then running was often a better tactic than simply blowing them all away. The enemy AI was basic, but perfect – if they saw you they would attack with no thought of their own mortality, going straight for your nuts without asking or waiting for consent.

‘Play with us’

Here is a brief rundown of the enemies. The most common are ghosts – just like real life. They flap around, move slowly, and don’t do a lot of damage, and are only  problem due to their sheer numbers. Next up are the grunts – muscular purple freaks with no joints who strut around trying to fist you (matron), and these are followed by pigbats, or batpigs. I’m sure there is an actual name for them, but mine is better. These things are like something from Doom and then spit fire or acid or some unholy combination of both in your general direction. These bastards are annoying because they have a great aim, know how to ‘corner shoot’ (if you aim through the corner of a wall your weapon can fire through the wall) so even when you’re running away or on another screen you’re never safe.

Ghosts, pigbats, snotballs

There are purple bearded wizard types, I was never really sure what they did aside from corner you and try to walk through you, there are cute little green children who  each have one engorged arm, and who lob snot bubbles at you accompanied by a cute noise – I love those guys. One enemy I do not love, in fact one I absolutely hate is the appropriately named Death. These hooded, transparent, Terminator fuckers will wipe you out in a matter of seconds even if you have 2000 health, and if you get a couple of them chasing you you’ll barely have time to crap your pants before they use your soul as a dildo. They charge you down, hand outstretched, and they move faster than any other enemy, reacting instantaneously to your ever move. Oh, and you can’t kill them! At least not with your standard weapon. Yes, the only way to kill these screeching harpies is to use one of your precious room clearing potions, and even then it’s touch and go.

Their motto could be ‘Touch (you) and (watch you die) go’

That takes us nicely on to the additional items you can use. The aforementioned potions come in a variety of colours and flavours – some which rid the screen entirely of enemies, others which give you a boost of strength or health, and some which poison you. You see, your health is on a counter, always counting down, so you need regular health fixes to stop you from hitting the dirt and becoming entombed with a bunch of overly familiar demons. The best way to get a big boost of health is from the giant slabs of cartoon ham strewn carelessly throughout each stage, though you can also get a small upgrade by chomping on one of the bottles of moonshine you’ll find – beware, some of these are poison. It was difficult to tell back in the day as we’re not talking even 8bit quality games here and certainly not HD TVs – if it said OXO it was good, if it said XXX it was deadly (and of course we called the deadly one ‘AIDS’). The best item though either made you invincible or invisible for a while, I can’t remember which, but it was ultra rare and looked like a flaccid yellow penis host to a bewildered face.

Most accurate. Description. Ever.

The final item to mention is a holdover from the Arcade days – treasure! Getting treasure racks up points, killing and blowing shit up racks up points, walking racks up points. POINTS! I never cared about points, or beating my best score etc in games, which is why stuff like achievements nowadays just pisses me off. I want to play for fun, to complete the game, to finish the story, or to get out of the world and my head for a few hours. i don’t care about points. The game featured randomly generated (I think) treasure rooms where you could romp around and collect as much treasure as you wanted – pointless for me, but still a fun and brief distraction from the carnage of every other level. For the Spectrum version, I recall the treasure rooms were the only levels to actually feature music, a bleepy bloppy tune which sped up as your time ran out (the main gauntlet theme played briefly between levels). These levels were basic mazes with multiple exits so you could leave straight away without picking up any loot. In fact, the level design throughout the game is impressive – some are truly puzzling, with locked doors and red herrings, multiple keys unlocking multiple routes – in fact I think some levels were entirely made up of exits – surely a ‘lets see if we can get away with this shit’ by the Devs. It’s just one of the charming and quirky things which made the title work so well and carve a niche in my memory.

You know, I never played any of the sequels to Gauntlet, and I’m not sure why. Obviously we never bought them, but none of my mates had them either. I never loved another dungeon crawler as much as this until the DOS Hero Quest came along, a game I’ll probably cover here one day too. As always, let me know in the comments if you ever played Gauntlet in any of its forms, or any of the sequels. And of course, be sure to check the links below for more information on the game, including how to download for yourself. It’s great.

Gauntlet at Worldofspectrum.org

Lets Play video

Retro Games – ISS Deluxe!

Football games – a staple of home and arcade games machines for as long as man or machine can remember, they have been an endless source of fun and vitriol for me since my Spectrum days. While I played a good many football games before getting a SNES, they mostly paled in comparison to that fateful day when International Superstar Soccer Deluxe arrived in the Nightman household. At this point, the only true multiplayer experiences I had had in my own house were on Super Mario Kart and Super Bomberman – both classics, and when ISS joined the drawer of games in my brother’s bedroom we had a new King.

There’s a strong case for ISS Deluxe being the best football game ever – sure it didn’t have real player names, and it obviously cannot compete with the graphics and sheer amount of options we have in the likes of Pro Ev and Fifa today, but for pure, terrifying enjoyment there is none better. With some ultra smooth, balanced gameplay, it was and is still a delight to play, without getting bogged down by all the realism and extras of today’s versions.

As with all my gaming posts, this is part review, part personal recollection – more of why I liked it rather than why it is actually good. This was one of the many SNES games that I had immense fun playing by myself on, as well as with others and therefore have plenty of fond memories. To start with some review-ish comments, the game (as the title suggests) only features international teams meaning there was no local or national team rivalry when playing. When you’re young though you’ll find anything to be rivals over, such as who gets the pound coin from Granda, or who gets the five twenty pence pieces. I can’t recall how many teams were actually in the game, but it was at least 16 (probably more than 30), and featured all the main European and South American giants, along withe counties from Asia, Africa, and unlockable All Star teams. The teams did not feature real player names, due to licensing issue, but thanks to how much I played this game versus how much international football I watched I was probably more familiar with the invented player names than the real ones. Thanks to some graphical flourishes though, you could tell quite clearly who certain players were – Roberto Baggio had a ponytail, Ruud Gullit had a massive mop of dark weaving hair, while Chris Waddle had the uncanny ability to sky rocket every penalty.

Boutros

Before you started your game there were a wealth of options, and before you got near those you even had a nifty title sequence followed by the eternal battle cry of ‘International, Superstar Soccer – DELUXE!’ On the main menu you had a variety of game modes – one off friendly match, short league, short cup, World Cup, World Series (ahem), penalties, training, and the ever popular Scenarios mode which saw you having to meet some explicit challenge such as winning a game with only a minute remaining and being a goal behind, to beating a vastly superior team with a vastly inferior team. These were a great, addictive extra, but I never could beat them all.

Penalties mode is as you would expect, while Training allowed you to hone your skills in peace. All of this was set to some funky, jazzy, and hyper-infectious music which I’m humming out loud as I type. The meat of the game of course comes in the actual competitions, and in these you had a wealth of options I had certainly not experienced before – kit types, weather types, night versus day, stadiums to choose from, how long you wanted games to be, and even changing the skills of the team and the keeper. Before starting any game you could choose your Keeper skill out of a range of 10, from essentially a man with no limbs in goals, up to essentially a brick wall. This led to many multiplayer moments of hilarious treachery as you would switch your opponent’s keeper skill down to one when they weren’t looking and laugh as every shot you hit went sailing into the net as they screamed on helplessly confused. The outfield players skills and fitness were displayed neatly as smiling faces – pink and smiling meant they were on fire, while sagging and purple meant they were at death’s door – again you could customize these to your liking. The honest way to play in the player versus computer tournaments was of course to cope with what you were given – if your best player was purple, you had to choose to risk playing him, or dropping him for some reject on the bench who never normally got a 90 minutes.

Your typical one-sided affair

The graphics in the game are as bright and crisp as you would expect for a SNES game, but it really shines in the little details, such as player animations, and amount of stuff happening on screen. You could have multiple players on the screen, the handy map running at the bottom, rain booming down, and there would never be a drop in rate or change in how smooth the play was. Players and their kits were instantly recognizable, and there was a large selection of hilarious animations to wade through, from goal celebrations (including the Klinsman) to tackles, step overs, headers, and shrugging innocently to the crowd after being booked for snapping someone’s legs. Tackling was one of the most fun parts of the game, made even more fun by the (under-used nowadays) shoulder charge. Sometimes you would get so infuriated by your opponent, especially if they were cackling in the room beside you, as the somehow dodged every tackle and scored every goal that you would spent an entire half shoulder charging around the screen in an attempt to injure as many of their players as possible. This led, not only to a multitude of bookings and sendings-off, but also the immortal ‘DIRTY PLAY, REF!’ as you knocked someone to the ground and got away with it. Off the ball shoulder charging was great fun, and you would not be caught for doing it. Now that I mention it, you could also choose from three referees, one strict, one lenient, and one Collina. No matter who was there, I tended to get red cards more often than not for my exuberant 100 hard dash followed by elbow in the face on screen antics.

Wasn’t me, ref

One other fun thing to do was slide tackle the goalie when they had the ball in their hands. This also tended to lead to an immediate red card, but sometimes you could get away with it which was always hilarious. In my house the SNES belonged to my older brother and at weekends he would sometimes have friends round to play Bomberman, ISS, and Mario Kart, and I would get brought into the action. This of course meant 4 player tournaments, and the dreaded two versus two, or two versus 1 player games. I think in all the games we ever played against my brother, we never beat him in a 2 versus 1. I still have nightmares about coming so close to victory one or two times, only for some mishap to defeat us. My brother’s friend Keith and I would team up. I was okay at the game, not as good as my brother, while Keith was worse than me, but for some reason we thought 2 was better than 1. I still remember leading one game 1-0 with seconds to go on the clock when Keith dove in with a Dirty Play Ref and gave away a penalty. 1-1. Into injury time I had a chance and smashed the ball from all of 40 yards into the cross-bar. This somehow fell to my brother on the wing and he was able to dance his way past every challenge, glide into my box and slip it past the keeper 1-2. Final whistle. Some things are best left in the past.

Having friends round for a 10-9 Friday night thriller was always excellent entertainment, but when I played on my own my list-keeping self would always come out. I would set up my own extended super-leagues, and keep a pen and pencil record of goals scored and best performances by my beloved Brazil. I probably still have pages and pages stored of results and goals by Allejo, Gomez, Santoz, and all of my other ISS heroes. This was before I had any management sim – I would run a tight ship based on who made mistakes in my games versus who scored a glorious last minute winner. While I always played as Brazil my brother was occasionally England, but mostly Holland -led by the dreaded Van Wijk. The computer had five levels of difficulty, and each one seemed nicely weighted with 1 being exceedingly easy, and 5 being pant-fillingly brutal, but all the more satisfying to slaughter.

Scoring goals in the game was perfection, from leaping headers, to hoofing one into the top corner from just inside the halfway line. Free-kicks were difficult to score, but not impossible, while hat tricks were common place. If you did score a hat trick you would get a bonus animation shown on the stadium screen. Likewise, if you came from behind to lead you would get a further stadium screen animation. It’s these little touches that felt beautiful and helped you rub the shattered remains of your best friend’s dignity into their stinking faces. The commentary was good fun too, and would pervade my every day speech, from ‘IT’S A BIIIG KICK’ to ‘NO FOUL?’ It was all charming and effective, and didn’t distract. Some of the controls would occasionally distract, like when you were trying to get the ball off an opponent and repeatedly hitting the tackle button, sometimes they would lose the ball by mistake and your tackle suddenly turned into a massive ‘boot the ball out of play’ as you couldn’t cancel the action. It all added to the fun though. Adding to the fun too was the good old ‘turn the referee’ into a dog cheat – pointless, but pretty funny.

ISS Deluxe is an immortal watershed in football games. It must be one of the few sports titles that truly stands the test of time, over 20 years after its release, and a reminder of a time when Konami was king. Did you have the game? What are your cherished memories of it, or are there moments you have tried to forget? Let us know in the comments!

Sh*t I Used To Watch/Sh*t I Watch

In this latest series of posts, I’m going to talk briefly about some of my favourite TV shows of yesteryear, and some which I’m watching at the moment. In ‘Sh*t I Used To Watch’ I’ll reminisce about some TV shows that I used to watch, from my childhood up until roughly the time I graduated from University – by and large these will be shows that I haven’t watched since that period, or have only caught a small numbers of episodes of. In ‘Sh*t I Watch’ I will talk briefly about the shows I’m watching at the moment, and will deal with both current series which have not yet been cancelled or completed, and those which I am catching up on having missed first time around. I’ll try to post one of these each week, but as regular Glancers will be aware, my regular posts are fairly irregular. Some of the shows in both categories which I’ll talk about will be ones you should all be familiar with, while others will be extremely niche and I can only imagine about three other people will have ever heard of.

It’s my assumption in these posts, perhaps more than all the other junk on this blog, that you will get a murky picture of the person I both am and once was, and that maybe in a wider lens you’ll get a higher level look at the White, Western, child of the 80s. I’ll let you make your own conclusions, but the most obvious may be that we are what we consume, and our lives are rarely more than a procession of vicarious experience. Drill deeper though and we find a less bleak vision, seeing a communal, shared, loving experience as the most important moments of our lives as a species are no longer things like ‘Which Side Won The War’ or ‘Who Got To The Moon First’ or even ‘Why Are We Here’, but rather ‘Will Rachel And Ross Get It Together’ ‘Who Killed JR/Laura Palmer’ and ‘ WTF is Laddergoat’. Actually, that is kind of bleak.

In today’s post, I will be looking at one of the seminal after-school comedies of my childhood, one backed by a legion of talent and which is still spoken of today in Holy terms.

Maid Marian And Her Merry Men ran for a glorious 5 years from 1989 to 1994, though in that time a meagre 26 episodes were produced. I think those episodes have been repeated several times over the years as I remember watching them during my mid teen years, and laughing my balls off all over again. But, what is the show about, some of you may be asking? The show is very British and features many, many in jokes and topical humour which you’ll likely only ‘get’ if you’re from England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland. However, the humour is so sharp and wide-ranging that there is much to enjoy here for anyone with a sense of humour, from childhood to adulthood. Having watched some highlights recently on Youtube to see if it still holds up, the answer is a resounding YES.

The show a cross between Monty Python and Blackadder, but aimed at a younger audience, and set around the Robin Hood mythology. The central twist in the tale is that our hero, Robin Hood, is in fact a big sissy, getting by on an invented reputation and that it is actually Maid Marian who is the brains and brawn of the operation. We also have the band of Merry Men, each wonderfully written and with twists upon the character you know from legend – the show had such a power on me that it’s difficult for me to take the ‘real’ Robin Hood characters over the ones here. Each episode basically follows the misadventures of Ye Goodies as they try to mess up the plans of the wicked Sheriff Of Nottingham, King John, and his assorted Goons.

Episodes featured slapstick humour, offbeat, bizarre, and wacky plots, and lots of wonderful songs which will get stuck in your head for days. My favourite though was the satire and how the show would blend its historical setting to modern-day issues, with frequent meta references to movies and TV. I remember when I first watched Prince Of Theives I was laughing my head off that the actor of played Rabies appeared, and that later the show parodied both that movie, and his appearance. The show was always one that I talked about with friends of a similar mind in school the next day, particularly on the reruns, as you could tell instantly the caliber of a person by whether they appreciated the show or not (Spoiler – if you don’t like this, you’re a moron).

As I’ve been typing this, the wonderful theme music hasn’t left my brain – once heard never forgot. I admit I had a big crush on Marian when I was younger, as played by Kate Lonergan. According to various site, Lonergan has since left acting after featuring in a small number of other movies and TV shows, a pity as she was such a delight, but if she’s happy I’m happy. Other talents in the show included Tony Robinson (Blackadder, Time Team), Danny John-Jules (Red Dwarf, Blade II), Mike Edmonds (Return Of The Jedi, Dark Crystal) and a host of other familiar British actors. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – as a child of the 80s, we truly did grow up in a Golden Age of Kids TV – and not only from an animated perspective. Aside from all the kid oriented movies of the time, from The Goonies To The Karate Kid and beyond, we had shows like this to give us hope and entertainment and respite from the grim realities of school, homework, and just being young and frustrated, defenseless and voiceless. I think this will be a recurring thought over the rest of these posts.

If you’re interested, please seek out this wonderful series – available to purchase on DVD, and many clips available to browse on streaming sites. You’ll be a better person for it. If you have fond memories of the show, feel free to drop a comment below and if you’re particularly bitter you can even shake your fist at the sky and scream about how they don’t make kids shows like this any more!

Retro Gaming – Paperboy

Hello Gamers and Glancers! Today on The Spac Hole we look back fondly at one of the most successful games of the Arcade Generation, one which was subsequently ported to every home computer and console in existence. Paperboy was released in 1985 by Atari Games, and its blend of fast paced action, dog-avoiding, slapstick humour, camp Batman exclamations, and media delivery was an instant hit.

Holy Shit, Batman!

The Arcade version had a fancy cab to simulate the thrill of riding a bike whilst… sitting down… and featured a lot of humour which didn’t make its way oer to home versions due to hardware limitations. I remember seeing the Arcade version when I was younger, and I’m fairly certain there was a less expensive version which ditched the cabinet and the handlebar controls, but I can’t (be arsed) find (ing) proof of this. A few of my friends and family members had the game on various systems, ranging from Commodore 64 to NES to Master System, but I owned the Spectrum version and can say without any slither of doubt that it was the best port.

Gaze upon my face and weep

Converted by those geniuses at Elite, the Spectrum version provided me with hours of fun and frustration. I’ll be honest here and state that I never completed the game – in order to complete the game you had to complete 7 levels (one per day of the week) of successful newspaper delivery to subscribers, without crashing and losing all your lives. I only loosely grasped this concept when I was young, but I remember struggling to work out exactly who it was I was supposed to be delivering to, and instead simply chucked newspapers at every house – through windows, onto lawns, and otherwise missing wildly. If I’m super-honest, I can’t confidently say I completed a single day successfully, delivering to those who I was supposed to.

My attitude towards virtual careers has since translated to real world careers

But the fun of Paperboy, especially as I wasn’t forever pumping pennies into an Arcade machine, was simply racing around on the BMX, avoiding all manner of obstacles, and causing as much carnage as possible with my newspapers, Rampage style. Getting to the end of your cycle route meant you were presented with an obstacle course where you could rack up extra points – could you win back lost lives here too? I can’t recall, but again back then it didn’t matter, I just enjoyed tearing about on the jumps. You see, as a young boy in the 80s, I had a BMX. I had a skateboard too. Hell, I even had a baseball cap and backwards-wore the shit out of it. This was not only escapism, but it was an extension of those long summer days of freedom, cruising the neighbourhood with friends on our bikes, our only concerns whether or not tonight was bath night. While we may not have been launching weaponized newspapers through exploding tombstones, or decapitating the elderly as we wheelied past, the neighbourhood remained our warzone/play area, our sandbox, our Vice City, and the BMX was at once our Ferrari, our Harley-Davidson, and our trusty steed.

Looking back at my childhood, I can remember a very small number of 2nd and 3rd tier friends (you know, not your best buds, but either ones you sometimes messed about with in school or outside of school if your besties were unavailable, or those in higher or lower years in school, or even those neighbours of your friends who would occasionally get integrated into your group… you know – Gingers) who had a local paper round. I don’t recall any of them ever using a bike, instead logging around a bright orange satchel which seemed to be almost the same size and weight as the kid carrying it. Sometimes some of us would accompany the friends, or meet them unexpectedly at our local garage (Gas Station) where they would be collecting their paper round, and follow them on their route whilst talking about football or Eerie Indiana, or boobs, or Predator.

Childhood

It wasn’t as exciting as either the game, or Hollywood made out. Furthermore it always seemed like a very American thing to be doing – racing about on BMX in perpetual sunlight, dropping off papers to early risers in their slippers who stood High Noon style surveying their meticulously preened little corner of suburbia, always on the merge of stumbling across some pirate mystery or cute alien orphan you needs your help. Where I grew up, it was dull and wet 80% of the year, there were no cute aliens, papers were always delivered in the evenings, and the only pirate was old One-Eyed McDrunky, who would sooner give you the mysterious treasure of herpes than rubies.

Save me, Obi Wan Nightman, you’re my only hope!

While I’m reminiscing rather than reviewing, another semi-related recollection returns to me – that of our local milkman. Sometimes the paperboy route would overlap with the milkman route at the same time and place (I have no idea why the milkman was still driving around at that time of the day, but anyhoo). As we were on speaking/thieving terms with the milkman, we would often hitch a ride on the back of his truck and help ourselves to cartons of juice. We tried this with the local ice cream man, but he wouldn’t allow it. A warning for any kids reading – it is generally ill-advised to talk to strangers, but even more so to go out of your way to interact with them, especially when they own a multi-purpose getaway vehicle – it’s probably best to stay inside and play videogames than go outside and be exposed to such dangers as living.

Back to the game; I remember that the controls were quite difficult and sensitive, which when coupled with the many obstacles meant that frustration levels were constantly of the joypad teethmark level. The area of the screen which you could traverse was quite small, the pace of the game was high, and the pavement/sidewalk was littered with enemies who seemed hellbent on keeping you from your minimum wage bounty. There were old guys on wheelchairs, drunks wobbling towards you, sentient tyres, kids on karts, and suddenly reversing cars. The pavement would curve and bend meaning you had to slow down to get round the slight bend successfully, and there were sections where you had to cross a busy road too. There was always a lot going on on screen, and I remember it got more chaotic with each progressive day. I’m not sure I questioned why there were so many drunks on the street every day, maybe it’s because I’m old enough to remember armed soldiers walking down streets during the day and thinking nothing of it. I did question why every garden seemed to have multiple tombstones.

My house only had one

The game didn’t have a soundtrack during levels, just some jingles before the start of each level, but there was an assortment of standard computerized blips and blaps to exaggerate the fact that you’d just plopped a paper through someone’s bathroom window. The colour pallet wasn’t too exciting, with only black, blue, and white making up the bulk of detail, yet the screen border was a little brighter. Such things didn’t concern me back then, as I’ve never been much of a graphics fiend – as long as it plays well and looks reasonable, I’m happy.

Plays well, looks reasonable – happy

I thought I would have more to say about it, but the more I thought about it the more I remembered that it was a fairly linear game that I wasn’t very good at and probably spent more time watching others play than actual play myself. So that’s all I have to say about Paperboy – a game that I had a lot of fun with in my youth, and one which I’ve had a lot of fun remembering.

For a cool comparison video showcasing around 20 different versions of the game (with a special WTF for the N64 version), check out Gaming History Source’s channel here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ol-O1RXG_PA

As always, my screenshots have been taken from the gods at World Of Spectrum.org, and the Spectrum cover has been taken from spong.com.

And finally, if you have any thoughts and memories you’d care to share on Paperboy – which version you played, if you ever finished the game, please drop a comment below. Check out some of my other retro memories here:

https://carlosnightman.wordpress.com/2014/05/09/retro-gaming-daley-thompsons-supertest/

https://carlosnightman.wordpress.com/2013/10/17/retro-gaming-barbarian-the-ultimate-warrior/

https://carlosnightman.wordpress.com/2013/08/18/retro-gaming/

Are You Afraid Of The Dark? The Tale Of The Hungry Hounds

Reading the synopsis of this episode on Lovefilm (now Amazon Prime streaming) before watching, I remembered very clearly some pieces from when I first watched it many years ago. In fact, this is the episode I previously alluded to in a previous post as remembering. Having re-watched it now, I’m not certain why it had such an impact on me, especially when I’ve enjoyed some previous episodes more than I enjoyed this one – maybe it was the first I saw. It does have its merits, which we’ll get to, but overall it isn’t a particularly good show. Then again, when you’re a man of the world, they say you always remember your first, rather than all the hundreds which follow –

My first… the two beside her came soon after. Ahem.

A brief look online suggests that this is one of the most oft and fondly remembered episodes of the series, so it must come down to the performances, the atmosphere, and the visuals, because everything else is rather lackluster. But before we get down to business, lets see what the blurb has to offer:

‘During summer vacation, Amy visits her cousin Pam, who lives in the country. While rummaging through the old family possessions in the attic, they come across a picture of Aunt Dora, who died tragically at a very young age. To their amazement, she looks strikingly like Pam. The girls find a trunk from which a scratching sound emerges at the mention of Aunt Dora’s name’

So, as I mentioned above, the episode has some clear strengths – it has easily the best acting of the series so far, and it has a truly unique, unusual atmosphere – something more akin to Twin Peaks, Jacob’s Ladder, or a nightmare. There is a sadness ripe throughout, and this would have been a much more powerful episode had all the other vital elements been up to scratch. Sadly though, the story is a complete mess, with more hole than plot, and you’ll be left bewildered and frustrated by questions – it truly does seem to be a half-assed story which no-one understands, writers included. The basics are that Pam puts on her Aunt Dora’s old horse-riding jacket which simultaneously turns her into Dora, and opens a portal in the attic to the past/some other dimension, and the cousins/aunts/girls, try to right a past injustice before Al appears and makes some lurid wisecrack.

Horses eh? They used to say I was hung like a –

The whole thing seems to be about guilt, with Pam’s mother never forgiving herself for forgetting to feed the Hungry Hounds of the title – if this still doesn’t make sense, you should probably watch the episode (spoiler – it still won’t make sense). Just a note on that title – I used to live near a chippie called The Hungry Hound. Further up the road, there was a Hungry Hound II. Possibly there was some wacky inter-dimensional salt and vinegar goings on going on on that road. Regardless, both were tasty.

The episode starts with Kristen arriving late to the party, bringing her dog, Elvis, along for effect. This prompts some truly bizarre activity, including the completely absurd ‘my dad says Elvis is king’ comment, which arrives and leaves without prompting or follow-up. That was one of the most cringe-inducing moments of the series so far. Once the pleasantries are out-of-the-way, we meet Pam and Amy, cousins and friends. continuing the dual kid dynamic from previous episodes, this time the girls are actually good friends, and on a level with each other, though there is some basic city girl versus country gal fun early on which doesn’t lead anywhere. Pam loves to ride horses, but her mother tried to stop her at every turn, continuing the useless/absent parents theme of the series – early on Pam’s mother almost causes Pam to break her spine by honking on her horn as Pam is trying to mount a horse. When will these crazy parents learn that being overly cautious only leads inevitably to broken spines!?

Speaking of weird things – what’s with the weird midi file music? And why is the chest of riding gear in the attic covered by a shroud of smoke? Anyway, once the riding jacket goes on, the weird goes off, with a portal and stairs opening to another world and/or time. The image of those stairs was one which I could remember vividly, so kudos to the show for some brain-etching. The girls do a Red Riding Hood through a forest and end up in a graveyard, naturally. Pam goes for an Emmy with a lovely little speech about Foxes, hunger, and being ripped to shreds, and suddenly, a creepy old ghost appears – again, kudos for this startling and unsettling image. Unfortunately, his weird accent veers towards Irish and his voice has some cheesy vocal effect added, so the chills fade rapidly. So Giles had a heart-attack running away from the Hounds? Did Dora die when she fell off the horse? Was she eaten? The build-up to Pam/Dora opening the door is filled with tension for the young-hearted, but even the most timid child would laugh when we see the hungry hounds are a group of the least frightening, small, happy dogs you’re every likely to meet.

RIP THIS BITCH APART!

After somehow surviving this terrible onslaught, Amy makes it back to the attic, where it turns out Pam was hiding all along, behind a pile of jackets. Was it all a dream? Does Pam remember nothing? What was it all about? I’m still none the wiser about why Pam’s mother is so guilty and frightened of horses. Anyway, the curse is lifted and everyone lives happily ever after.

As I mentioned, the acting in this episode was the best so far, at least from the kids. Lets pay our respects. The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted that Pam is played by a young Mia Kirshner, known for her adult roles in a variety of TV shows and movies – Mandy from 24, Kenya from Defiance, Jenny from The L Word, and the titular Elizabeth Short from the poor Black Dahlia. Her successful career is unfortunately not matched by her cousin Amy, played by Jennifer Gula. Gula only has 3 other credits to her name, nothing of note. Equally short-lived is the mother of the piece, played by Ais Snyder who appeared in tiny roles in a handful of 90s films, while David Francis, who played the ghost has popped up in minor parts in big movies like 300 and in bigger parts in a number of notable TV Series like Fortier.  He even returns for 2 more episodes of AYAOTD.

A strange episode then which, though messy, manages to successfully stay with you. Don’t forget to share your memories in the comments and check out my other episode reviews. Next up, we go back to school with The Tale Of The Prom Queen. Sweet Dreams!

Ziggy!

Retro Gaming – Barbarian: The Ultimate Warrior

Before we get started, I feel like I should be setting the scene via some apt eye-sights:

For those who don’t understand, let me explain – the 80s were a different time; a stranger time. Men were MEN and women were women, and some other men were women.

Men….?

It’s not like today. Our heroes could pull your head from your shoulders (one-handed) whilst simultaneously ravaging your wife and looting your kitchen cupboards, before taking down a military jet by throwing your decapitated head 12000 feet into the air causing catastrophic damage to the jet’s chassis. They were tough, get it? And as boys in the 80s, this is what we aspired to. If your arms weren’t the circumference of a beta-max, there was no point in living. If your hair wasn’t longer than your mum’s, you were a sissy. If you didn’t play Barbarian, you were an outcast.

Not In A Cool Way Though

Barbarian was probably the first one on one beat-em-up I ever played, long before Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter. It doesn’t have the rosters of any of the 8-16bit console fighters, featuring instead the same pair of fighters in every fight, but it did have a variety of attacks, a sick sense of humour, and it was pretty vicious – that head-chopping spin move was an instant win – you didn’t have to wait until a certain amount of damage had been delivered, you could just whip it out at a moment’s notice. This of course led to a Peace Treaty between those who played the game – that this decapitation move was a War Atrocity and must never be used, or at least could only be employed once both fighters had lost a certain amount of energy – but, unfortunately this Treaty was frequently mocked and many heads were removed from shoulders in a moment of hilarity and tears. In a case of life imitating art, many real life fights erupted because of this, and a few times we received a beating from the parents due to screaming at each other.

There was a single player game on one side of the cassette, and the 2 player on the other side. If I’m honest, I really don’t remember playing the single player myself, and only have vague memories of my brother playing it. Looking at Wikipedia and World Of Spectrum I can see the plot saw a nameless Barbarian rampaging through a series of battles before facing the evil Wizard Drax in order to save a prehistoric page 3 model

Behold, my huge, thirsting…sword

Naturally, if you are going to go pouring through a Wasteland relieving swordsmen of their heads, you want to do it for a good reason – looking at the cover above, it seems there are two. Sorry. But the game was a huge success for Palace Software, and I’m guessing a lot of the success was down to the artwork for each system.

An 80s Miley Cyrus

Before Barbarian, most game artwork featured in game-esque graphics, wacky writing fonts, or bizarre blocks zooming about. With Barbarian, artist Steve Brown basically said ‘lets tits this thing up’ and lo and behold, Maria Whittaker gave a legion of gamers their first power-up (erection) and Palace Software a tonne of money. Not that this was only a case of clever advertising, but the game itself garnered mostly positive reviews and remains a revered title to this day. It’s still fun to play over 20 years later. The movements of the fighters are smooth, the fighting is suitably ugly, the effects and music are great, and there is a heap of gore. The backgrounds are one of my favourite things about the game, eerie, freak show coloured wastes, like a wreath of corruption has fallen over a land, giving the sense of anything which lives in this place being sickly, dying, or outlandish. As previously mentioned, the humour gets high marks – my favourite moment being the little goblin creature who comes out to kick away a beheaded fighters skull and retrieve the carcass for Lord only knows what purpose.

So there you have it – one of the first and finest beat-em ups to grace the Spectrum. I’ll close by saying that I would highly recommend the game to any retro fiends, and give you a few links where better people than me give better information:

World Of Spectrum Barbarian Page with emulators, pics, and sounds galore: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0000407

Youtube walk-through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHHKDdrrfQ8

Youtube Title Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-IlYYYQtgQ

Retro Gaming

Let me take you back; hold on tight – nostalgic rides are often the most bumpy. Imagine the 1980s, yourself as a child. Endless summer afternoons and sunsets which clung onto the last shards of day like slime on Man-E-Faces many faces.

And the smell still lingers in my nostrils

Every Sunday evening you were guaranteed to catch The Goonies, one of the Karate Kid movies, or Temple Of Doom between episodes of Blockbusters and Bullseye. Those were family moments, sitting down on the bean-bag and imagining you could swing your legs like Short-Round and Daniel-san, and knowing that the following day after school you would be trying to swing between branches like Indiana Jones with a whip fashioned from your friend’s sister’s skipping rope.

But the 80s wasn’t all about emulating your big screen idols by barreling down hills on your skateboard/bmx, taking out countless baddies like Commando, or convincing your friend’s sister to steal pic’n’mix from Woolworth’s for you. No, the 80s was also the decade when everyone’s favourite wife-avoiding past-time of today was truly born – video games. Arcades sprung up like a Piranha Plant from a pipe, and slots were filled like a Shannon Tweed movie. Everyone I knew had a Master System or a NES, but most of my friends also had an Amiga, an Amstrad, an Atari, a Commodore 64. I had a Spectrum. A Spectrum +3 128k to be precise.

This Guy

Or more accurately, my older brother had one. I was allowed to watch, and help out with the 2 player games. Over time I worked out how to switch the thing on myself, and entered a world of a thousand games, a million dreams, and a billion loading-failed nightmares. Rainy weekends were spent in front of this thing, experimenting with primitive programming, cursing the unforgiving loading times and difficulty of some games, and playing hour after hour of games both wonderful and awful. Waiting for the new edition of Crash or Your Sinclair to see what free games were included, heading down to the Saturday Market to hunt through the cardboard boxes of 2nd hand Spectrum Cassettes,  or screaming until Daddy drove you over to the next town where they had an actual ‘Computer Games Shop’ to pick up some of the newer releases. All you Call Of Duty, High Definiton, online-gaming chumps of today don’t know what you’re missing.

Over the next few weeks, months, and years, I’m going to ‘review’ some of my most fondly related Spectrum experiences and hopefully will spark a few memories in some of you. And for the younger reader, I’m also going to cover all the other consoles of my youth from 8-bit era to today. Feel free to share your gaming memories, whether they be about the games themselves, or even your memories of buying them, sharing them, talking about them.