Gaming: Top Ten: Weird, Wonderful And Wacky 80s Computer Games

Top Ten: Weird, Wonderful And Wacky 80s Computer Games

While writing a Captain's Blog post about the 1985 computer game Frankie Goes To Hollywood, it got me thinking about other computer games I loved playing as a kid for their weirdness more than just their gameplay. Games that stuck in my head for their innovation under constrained circumstances. We're talking predominately here about games that appeared for the popular home computer platforms of the time. Namely the Commodore 64, the ZX Spectrum other similar platforms and early home PCs. These machines had tiny memory capacity compared to the machines of today, and so to stand-out from the crowd many game-makers employed some wonderfully clever and sometimes deeply weird innovations. This is a personal list of games that stood-out for me. I hope however that it is representative of the times, and of a broad range of styles of game that broke the mould, were seminal moments of gaming history, or just stand alone as genius moments of utter and complete madness.

Released 1983.

Attack Of The Mutant Camels was a surreal computer game released for the Commodore 64 in 1983 by Jeff Minter's Llamasoft. It is a horizontally-scrolling shooter. Inspired by the 1982 Atari 2600 game Empire Strikes Back, after Jeff read a review that described the A-AT Walkers as "giant mechanical camels". only that the AT-ATs were replaced with camels. "And that just got me thinking about giant camels in general," said Minter. "Normal camels aren't that big, and so if they weren't to be robot camels then they must be mutant camels. And thus was born a very silly game sequence indeed." What ensued became a psychedelic cult classic, that set-up the little British softerware house Llamasoft as having a reputation that exist to this day of producing trippy and quirky games.

In the United States a different game from Jeff Minter's Gridrunner series was released under the name Attack Of The Mutant Camels. However in 2011, the original British version of Attack Of The Mutant Camels was chosen to be featured in the Smithsonian Institution's "The Art of Video Games" exhibit.

Deus Ex Machina by writer and game designer Mel Croucher was an astonishing mind bending trip for its time. Even just to simply describe it as a game, is under-rating it. More a game crossed with surrealist art installation, a poetic dystopian cyber-punk novel based on Shakespeare's "seven ages of man" and 80s electronica, all packed onto a computer cassette tape. I've heard it described as "a prog rock album as a game". Which is probably the best description of it, without actually playing it. It's hard to believe now, looking at the graphics of the game compared to modern games, but this game un-nerved the hell out of me. It was a a truly bizarre trip of a game, like nothing that had come before, and in many ways that has come along since. To add to the head messing gameplay and graphics, the game came with an audio cassette tape that you played in sync with the game. The cassette featured such British luminaries as Jon Pertwee (Dr. Who and Wozel Gummidge), Ian Dury (of ... And The Blockheads) and Frankie Howerd. If that isn't a weird mix itself, I don't know what is. The game gave the player a mixture of high concept art in the form of an 8-bit computer game. The best way to understand the game, apart from actually playing it, is to look it up YouTube videos of the game being played alongside the audio soundtrack. It screams the 80s at you, in the best possible and most surreal way you can imagine. Art as a game.

Released 1984.

Elite the whole universe held on a cassette tape. No mean feat, for a seminal game that created and defined a whole genre of games, the open-ended space trading game. The Elite universe contains eight galaxies, each with 256 planets to explore. All unique, due to an ingenious algorithm system developed for the game. Originally published on the Acorn Electron and the BBC Micro, it quickly ported across to other formats. Elite was one of the first ever home computer games to use a wire-frame 3D style of graphics with hidden line removal. Another novelty was the inclusion of The Dark Wheel, a novella by Robert Holdstock which gave players insight into the moral and legal codes to which they might aspire.

Originally described when it came out as "the game that couldn't be written" due to its massiveness held in such a small number of kilobytes. It has been called one of the most influential games in history, and has been credited as being the first truly open-ended game, without which some of the most popular games of the modern age wouldn't exist.

Eureka! isn't the best game on the list by any stretch of the imagination, but the imagination in its marketing and its origins do make it worthy of the list. Games Workshop founder and Fighting Fantasy author Ian Livingstone turned his attention to the video game industry in the mid-80s, and the result was Eureka!, a sprawling work of epoch spanning sci-fi insanity. Both arcade game and text adventure, conceptually ambitious almost beyond the capabilities of 8-bit computing. Note, as the cover says "250K of pure mystery", a huge amount considering most computers at the time only had an average 64K capacity. Therefore the mystery being having to find the next point in the game, by fast-forwarding and rewinding the cassette tape to the next section. Something that players could very easily cock-up and thus ruin the experience and the hours of gameplay they had already committed.

The kicker with the game however was the cash prize that was on offer to the first person to complete the game. A £25,000 cash prize was put up for the first player to solve the game's conundrums and ring a UK telephone number with a secret code. The prize was eventually won by a 15-year-old lad.

Released 1984.

Impossible Mission originally released on the Commodore 64 in 1984, but quickly ported across to other formats, although the Commodore 64 version was by far the best. It was a wonderfully blended mixture of platform, adventure, action a puzzle solving. One of the first games to contain digitized speech, on the Commodore 64 version. With the all-time classic speech that still sticks in my head today. "Another visitor. Stay awhile, stay forever!" Followed by a manic laugh! The main sprite was quite life-like and beautifully animated for the time, with realistic running and somersaulting action. Apparently the main character sprite designer used references from photos in a book on athletics that he got out of the local library.

As I said the Commodore 64 version featured early use of digitized speech. The digitized speech was provided by the company Electronic Speech Systems (ESS), who drastically raised their prices after the success of the game. Epyx did not deal with ESS again as a result. Though the company did go on to produce digitized speech for the Commodore 64 movie tie-in game Ghostbusters with the immortal line "He slimed me!"

Frankie Goes To Hollywood was like a surreal LSD induced dream of a game, based on the music and imagery of one of the most successful bands of time. Taking place in and around a group of anonymous British terraced houses, the game unfolded like a fevered dream. The player took control of an anonymous silhouette, whose aim was to find the mysterious Pleasure Dome, and in your quest, you could explore the houses and find all sorts of items and trinkets along the way. Solving certain puzzles would increase four bars on the right of the screen, and occasionally messages would appear on the screen saying things like, "You're 20 percent a real person." Considering it was a tie-in to a pop band, you would imagine it would be lacklustre, but far from it. Frankie... Stands out as one of the most innovative and truly extraordinary gaming experiences ever. (And that is no exaggeration!) Deeply complex, deeply philosophical (as an 8-bit game could be), an almost unfathomable mystery (somewhat like the band themselves.) Frankie Goes The Hollywood was a massively underrated game, that has done the rare thing for games of that period by achieving a genuine cult status. It was like nothing else that had gone before or that in many ways has come along since.

Released 1985.

Little Computer People was an odd game, and I use the term "game" loosely in the context of the time. It was like nothing else that had come before, and was the precursor to games like The Sims. The simple premise was that a little character lived inside you computer, in a quaint little house. The cassette didn;t contain the game, just that it gave you the ability to see the person living inside your computer and interact with him. You could send him commands, that he often chose to ignore, instead choosing to brush his teeth, watch TV or play a tune on his piano. Appearing frustratingly for the player to have a will of his own. There was no goal, no winning, just hours (and I did sit for hours) of watching the little guy potter around his house doing his thing.

Each version of the game generated a unique character, no two little computer people were alike. Creating a bizarre and unique experience for the player (sorry "caretaker"), as the pretence that the little guy really did live inside your computer was played out in never ending frustration for the players.

The Rocky Horror Show computer game was a 1985 video game for the Commodore 64, Commodore 128, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. In the game, the player could play as either Brad or Janet. It’s a bit difficult to follow, but the task seems to be to construct a machine that will counteract the effects of the Medusa Transducer, pieces of which (and keys to open various portals) are scattered all over the castle, in order to free your partner from stone and escape the castle before it blasts off for the planet Transsexual, in the galaxy of Transylvania. The castle’s freaky denizens attempt to block your progress by stealing your clothes and your inventory (but more interestingly, your clothes. Your character spent big chunks of the game naked). Riff-Raff has a deadly laser gun, and Eddie can run the player over with his motorcycle, and so on. Oh and let's not forget the weird room your ended up in full of various illegal drugs bouncing around the screen. If you grew-up as a teenager in the 80s, as I did. And you were into alternative culture, as I was. And went to dark goth punk nightclubs, that played The Rocky Horror Picture Show on repeat, as I did. This was a must have game. In it's limited 8-bit capacity, it managed some how to capture the weirdness of the movie in gaudy 8-bit glory.

Released 1985.

Released 1986.

Hacker II (Full title Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers) was wonderfully clever simulation game, that bought into the the spread of home computers and the development of BBS's, inspired to some extent by the 1983 movie War Games. A sequel to the 1985 game Hacker, Hacker II was much more rounded and complex in its ingenuity, interface and gameplay. With the idea of being able to hack into a four-way CCTV monitor system, it created a beautifully immersive and tense game. The tension was almost palpable, as you felt you were actually hacking a system for real. Or as real as an 8-bit cassette based game could deliver.

The game contained a story-line worthy of any Hollywood espionage thriller, with unexpected in-game twists and turns. I remember purposely sitting in my darkened bedroom playing the game to create the right atmosphere, feeling my heart racing with the fear of being caught by the security services as I hacked my way through a United States government facility. One of the most tense game ever!

Leisure Suit Larry (Full title Leisure Suit Larry In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards) was essentially a soft-porn game for adults but played mostly by adolescent kids, in those more innocent times before the Internet. Published by Sierra, who became famous for innovation in early point-and-click crossed with the then standard format of text adventures. Larry was first released as a 16 colour text based graphic adventure, and released in glorious 256 colour version with point-and-click in 1991. Originally developed for the PC and the Apple II, it was later ported to other platforms. The game's story follows a middle-aged male virgin named Larry Laffer as he desperately tries to "get lucky" in the fictional American city of Lost Wages. Apparently Sierra were slightly embarrassed by teh adult theme of the game, and so it was released without any publicity. Selling only 4000 copies initially, however word spread and by the end of 1987 it had sold 250,000 copies. Interestingly for me personally, I first came across the game installed on a college computer in around October 1987. In fact it was installed on all the computers, and as students we all played it to death instead of studying as we were supposed to.

Released 1987.

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