COMPUTER GAME OVERVIEW 2004

COMPUTER GAME OVERVIEW 2003

COMPUTER GAME OVERVIEW 2002

Retro games and gaming.

Nothing new this month, as I have mainly been finishing off Half Life 2 (odd ending, but well worth the effort), playing a legitimately bought copy of Tron 2.0 instead of the dubious copy I had before (plays much better with intact video clips and no 15 minute load times), and dragging Tommy Vercetti’s butt through Vice City just one more time before San Andreas arrives on the PC.

So, instead of a (nearly) new game being looked at, I thought I’d write about a few extremely elderly ones. I’ve trawled through a couple of dozen websites, looking for recreated versions of the games I used to play to death when I was small and gullible. I’ve been playing games from the age of about 8 or 9, first on a Dragon 32 ( a game called Crusader, and a cheap rip-off of Donkey Kong), then an Acorn Electron (Citadel, Citadel 2, Repton and Elite), before arriving in the Land Of Colour Clash, better known as the ZX Spectrum.

I had a 48K+, and then later a 128K+2 with built in tape deck, and I played a fairly stupid number of games. Most were, to modern eyes, absolute crap, and a few hours with a Spectrum emulator only went to prove the point. In the late 1980’s, I played Operation Wolf on the Spectrum, and it was a towering testament to monochrome graphics, no animation, and mindless game play. I loved it. One of the first ever first person shooter games, your viewpoint scrolls sideways while you gun down a rather stupid number of enemies. Then - high-class programming; now - an embarrassing waste of 25 minutes.

But some of the games do hold up remarkably well to modern scrutiny. It seems that for a rare few, good game play just doesn’t date at all. Below are links to a few sites I have found, and descriptions of some of the better games they have to offer.

Elite

Elite is perhaps still the daddy of them all, as evidenced by the huge buzz of excitement in various corners of the internet concerning the proposed Elite 4, intended to run as an MMOG. If you know Elite, you’re likely to be drooling about now. If you don’t know Elite, you don’t know games. Sorry to be so harsh, but you deserve it. Fly around 8 galaxies, a total of 2000 separate worlds, trade your way to riches, fight your way to glory. Victory in combat brings increase in your combat status, from a Harmless rating, through Mostly Harmless, Competent, Dangerous, Deadly, and then the final prize Elite status. Good trading brings bigger and better toys, all the better to vaporize pirates. It is one of the first truly open-ended games, with no story and no ending.

Starquake

Starquake is a cheesy platform/adventure game at its core, but it was still perhaps the most addictive game I owned for my Spectrum. This java version is a direct port from the Spectrum version, and still plays just as well. If you’ve never played the game before, it’s a little hard to figure out, but the instructions, cassette inlay and artwork are all out there to download.

Bombjack

Loads of cool stuff on this site, but the one that caught my eye was the Flash version of Bombjack, another platform game. This one is more traditional, just jump around and collect all the bombs, Do it in the right order (the one that’s fizzing) for bonus points. This could be played 2 player on the Spectrum, but sadly not in this version.

Tetris

The version of Tetris on this site is pretty good, as is the version of Space Invaders. Personally though, I always did like Asteroids.

Donkey Kong

Some of these are taken from other sites, but the Flash version of Donkey Kong on this site took me right back to the old Dragon 32. A little bit slower than I remember, and a little frustrating (when you die, it’s quite a while before you reappear and start fresh), but still oddly playable.

Klass of 99

If I wasn’t playing Starquake, then I was playing either Skooldaze or Bak 2 Skool, two platform/adventure games set in a school. You play Eric, whose mission is to steal his school report from the Headmaster’s safe. Knock a teacher over, get caught where you aren’t supposed to be, write on the blackboard, skip a lesson, or just be in the way when someone else does those things, and you get a few hundred lines. Get 10,000 lines, and you get expelled, game over.

Klass of ’99 isn’t a direct conversion of either, more a third game in the series. The 80’s cast is all present and correct, with a new teacher for the Computer Dept. Your goal is the same; get your report out of the safe. The game provides hints and tips, and there is apparently a full solution buried within a text file telling the story of Eric’s week in school. Well worth an hour of your time.

Manic Miner

The granddaddy of all platform games is still worth a play. The version on this site is a modern re-working, but there are still plenty of emulators out there.

Spectrum Magic
Chuckie Egg

Two places where you can find playable versions of Chuckie Egg, another all-time classic platformer. The various playable Windows versions are identical to all the old 8-bit computer versions. Sadly, although I found cheats for the C64 version, and screenshots of the Amstrad CPC version, there wasn’t a playable copy of Chuckie Egg 2 to be found anywhere. Purists would say this was a good thing, me, I always liked the dog at the start.