Rocketship Weird Retro Captain's Blog - Weird Retro

Retro Gaming: Harvester (1996)

21/2/2015

I recently wrote about Phantasmagoria the 1995, FMV point-and-click adventure game, that was considered one the most controversial games of its time, due the graphic violence it contained. However a year later, a game came out that possibly trumped it. And if it wasn't for a delay in publishing, it may well have been hailed as the most controversial adventure game of the mid-90s.

Harvester was designed to shock, to be controversial, it described itself as "The most violent adventure game of all time." Originally scheduled for release in 1994, the game didn't hit the shelves until 1996. The game was an all out assault on the media hype that video gaming made players violent. It was a no-holds-barred bloody gore-fest, where you kill pretty much just kill whoever you wanted. The deaths were brutal and bloody.

But, the twist of the story of dark Satanic cults and mass murder is all just a game, that the player's character is playing. A game within a game, where you are giving a choice. To become a real-life serial-killer or stay and have a full "normal" life in the game! The game set-out to outrage. It was banned in Germany, censored in the UK, and Australia did even ban it, they just didn't even bother releasing it at all. In the US, it caused consternation among the moral majority. Assuring itself a cult status. Clever stuff for what is essence an example of the tradition of exploitation cinema appearing in video game format.

Like an exploitation film, much of the game is laughably tongue-in-cheek. Th makers knew who they were offending and who they were entertaining. It's not a great game, it's confusing at times, conversations with NPCs is stilted and seemingly pointless. But hey, aren't they also the characteristics of a good exploitation flick? Take it for what it is, don't take it too seriously, and just keep repeating to yourself... It's just a game... It's just a game!

Having just pulled out your girlfriend's brain and spinal cord.

The Future Of The Internet (1981)

17/2/2015

In my head 1981 doesn't seem that long ago, but in computing terms it was just the beginning of the modern technological age we all accept as normal today. IBM released their first home computer (PC), with Apple congratulating them in a famously sardonic advert in the August of that year. The Osbourne 1 was released to market, considered the first affordable "laptop". Affordable at $1725, and 24lb behemoth my have been a bit uncomfortable on your lap, but all that same.

The Osbourne 1 was doomed, and with the introduction of the IBM PC and it's MS-Dos operation system, the Osbourne was obsolete by 1983. That same year saw the introduction of the two home computers, the predecessors of computing giants that would revolutionise home computing only a year later. Commodore introduced the VIC-20, and Sinclair the ZX-81. By 1982, they would bring out the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Also 1981, KRON news did a little report about a small revolution happening in San Francisco, where people with a "modem" could read their daily newspapers via their home computer. "It's not as far fetched as it may seem", says the news anchor. You have to love the bit when the tech-guy from the San Francisco Examiner says they won't make any money from it, and the tag-line to the consumer/reader Richard Halloran, that simply states "Owns Home Computer".

And how Mr. Halloran goes on to say, that you can copy the information off the computer onto "paper" to "save it". Oh how wonderfully naive things were back then. Now we're plugged into that "Internet" 24/7, on multiple devices with more computing power than the massive mainframe in Ohio, that Mr. Halloran was calling-up on his dial-up modem to read the newspaper.

Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970)

15/2/2015

Cybernetic revolt, the technological singularity! Is it just a matter of time now, rather than science fiction? Horror and sci-fi movies, literature and computer games have been warning us for years of the inevitable/possibility of a computer taking over and controlling humanity.

One of the seminal movies that addresses this is the 1970 sci-fi thriller, Colossus: The Forbin Project. Based on a 1966 sci-fi novel Colossus, by D.F. Jones. In the story a massive AI computer, designed to control the United States nuclear defence system, becomes sentient. Colossus becomes aware of the existence of a Soviet supercomputer, like itself. The two computers start to communicate, but their link is cut by their governments. So the two computers launch nuclear attacks on each other's country, until their link is re-established. The two computers become one entity, and proclaims itself "the voice of World Control". Making its mission to end war among humans. The human choice? They have none! They must accept that with peace comes control, its control, and that "freedom is just an illusion".

Below are other links to posts that cover computers/entities that have managed to or tried to take-over humanity. Now... That give me an idea for an article about computers that take over the world!

The Revolution Started Here: Beneath A Steel Sky- The "revolutionary" adventure game from a small software house in Hull, that went up against the big U.S. software houses, and kicked arse!

EarthBound: The Trippiest And Most Fucked-Up Cutesy RPG Ever! - The weird world of the SNES game from 1994. How it mirrored real world events, and created a nightmare.

I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream (1967) - Harlan Ellison short-story about a computer that take over the world, that was made into a creepy 1995 point-and-click adventure game.

Retro Gaming: Alien (1984)

26/1/2015

In space no one can hear you scream at your computer screen at how frustratingly hard Alien the game was for the Commodore 64. Although that said, I did manage to complete it on a number of occasions, but it did take some tense hours of game play, sat in the dark, knowing the sirens could go off at any second and my crew would be attacked by a badly animated 8-bit xenomorph.

Alien the computer game was released as a belated movie tie-in to the 1979 cult sci-fi horror in 1984, by Argus Press Software. It was released on Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC home computer formats. And despite its god-awfully basic graphics, and the aforementioned painfully difficult game play, it was one of the most heart-pounding atmospheric games that ever came out for the early 8-bit home computers.

The game follows the movie, in that at the beginning of the game a crew member (not always, but often Kane) gives "birth" to the alien. It's then up to the rest of the crew the player controls to move around the three levels of the Nostromo using the air ducts, attempting to isolate the alien and destroy it. Or blow it out of the airlock of the Nostromo, or as in the movie set the self-destruct on the ship and get away in the escape pod.

As with the movie one your crew is an android (not always, but often Ash). The android will at some point go haywire, and cause your crew additional problems. The rest of the crew will listen to your commands, as long as they are happy, but if they become anxious they will disobey your commands. And your crew will meet the alien and they will die. In fact when anyone first plays the game, it's likely they will all die. Time and time again!

As you move your crew around the Nostromo, via the ducting they will encounter the alien, and very likely not survive it. It's a tense game, with minimal graphics and even more minimal sound. You can hear the constant heart-beat of the crew members you command, the beep of the tracker (that sometimes Jones the cat sets off), and the opening and closing of hatches, and the piecing siren sound when you meet the alien. That makes you jump!

There was nothing else even close in atmosphere in gaming at the time. I would switch the light off and play it for hours, feeling a palpable tension in the room, as I had crew members search room after room for the alien, only to be caught by it in the ducting. I still recall almost jumping backwards off my chair the first time I saw it. Alien was a true classic of game play out-stripping the need for all singing and dancing graphics.

Retro Gaming: Killswitch (1989)

5/1/2015

Killswitch is an urban legend revolving around a game created by Soviet gaming company Karvina Corporation in 1989, in which the player had the choice of playing either Ghast, or Porto. It was nearly impossible to play as Ghast, as he was invisible fire demon, not only invisible to the NPCs but to the player themselves. This meant that pretty much everyone would chose Porto the alternative woman character in the game.

Porto’s story-line is that she awakens in the dark with wounds on her knees and elbows and no idea how she got there. As she searches for a way out of this strange dark place, it becomes apparent that she is moving through the levels of a coal mine at which she was once an employee.The mine has now been shut and is now populated with demons. Eventually, Porto escapes with a tape recorder containing the mine’s terrible story. But as she crawls through the final tunnel, the screen goes white...

Killswitch was said to be an early example of the survival horror genre, like Myth or Silent Hill.However, the weird part is that no-one knows for sure, as the game supposedly deleted itself upon completion, and the game could not be copied. Only 5000 or so copies of the game were created, and eventually the game fell into obscurity. An intact copy of the game turned up on Ebay where it fetched $733,000 by a Japanese man named Yamamoto Ryuichi. Ryichi wanted to document his play-through of the game on YouTube, but the only video Ryuchi posted was of his gentle weeping while staring at his computer screen.

The reality is that Killswitch never existed, no-one has seen the supposed YouTube video. Although fans of the legend have made "reproduction" game versions of Killswitch, and there are videos on YouTube of people supposedly playing the game.

Weird Retro Fact: Other urban legends about gaming include, The Creepy Legend Of The Arcade Game Polybius, You Must Defeat Sheng Long To Stand A Chance and Retro Gaming: Bezerk Death.

Kremvax: The Internet Hoax From 1984

3/1/2015

The hoax of Krevax came about when a message was distributed on Usenet, the early form of the Internet, that was a worldwide network discussion board system. The message announced that the Soviet Union was joining the network. This generated enormous excitement, since most Usenet members had assumed that cold war security concerns would prevent such a link-up ever happening. The creation of Kremvax was announced in a post that appeared on April 1st, 1984, as was said to have originated from the then Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The message created a flood of responses, but two weeks later its true author, a Dutch Internet pioneer named Piet Beertema, revealed it was a hoax. It is credited with being the first hoax on the internet. The fictitious Usenet site at the Kremlin, along with other fictitious sites moskvax and kgbvax. The actual origin of the email was mcvax, one of the first European sites on the internet.

Six years later Usenet was joined by Demos.su, the first genuine site based in Moscow. Some readers needed convincing that the postings from it were not just another prank. Vadim Antonov, the senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there until mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, and referred to it frequently in his own postings. Antonov later arranged to have the domain's gateway site named kremvax.demos.su, in honour of the hoax.

Weird Retro Fact: Another pre-Weird Wide Web urban legend related to computing is that of Polybius, a mythical arcade game that supposedly appeared briefly in a number of arcades in the Portland, Oregon area in the early 80s. Read the full story: The Creepy Legend Of The Arcade Game Polybius.

Weird Retro Fact: A gaming legend that exists to this day, is that of Sheng Long, the non-existent hidden character from the Street Fighter series of games. Sheng Long started out as a mistranslation, in the game text, was picked-up as a April Fool's gag and has lived in gaming legend ever since. Read: You Must Defeat Sheng Long To Stand A Chance. Another gaming urban legend from the 80s, is that of the deaths caused by playing the arcade game Berzerk. Read the Captain's Blog post Retro Gaming: Bezerk Death.

Retro Gaming: A Popples Christmas (1986)

18/12/2014

How the hell did I miss this one, when I did my list of Xmas Games: Festive Freebies & Christmas Cassettes? A give-away licensed game for the Commodore 64 from 1986, would have easily made the list. Only if I'd have known about it earlier. To be fair, this game was only a give-away to retailers of American Greetings, who manufactured the jolly gaudy coloured quasi-marsupials come teddy bears that could be turned completely inside-out. So how would I know?

What we have here is a weak (at best) loose adventure game, that even the makers should hang their heads in shame over producing. Even if it was a marketing give-away. A series of crappy ill-considered non-interactive 4 colour graphic set pieces, or just simply a slap-dash throw together bunch of weak tasks revolving around the Popples being in Santa's workshop. Or both! Who cares? It was utter garbage. A bad promotional tool for a bad toy. Let's move on and never talk of this again.

It's An Early Commodore 64 Christmas At Rocketship Weird Retro.

10/12/2014

Pure instinct kicked in, as my lad knew exactly where the joystick needed to be plugged in.

We woke-up to an early Christmas present on Rocketship Weird Retro this morning. The original bread-bin style Commodore 64 I'd ordered finally arrived. My lad and I immediately unpacked it, and got to work installing in the the command module of the rocketship.

It came with an array of classic games, some I'd forgotten about until I held the cassette box in my hand. Beach-head, Impossible Mission, Pitstop II, Bubble Bobble, Spy Hunter... The list of games went on and on. Was pleased to find a cartridge copy of International Soccer. And The Hobbit, for a bit of text based adventuring late into the night. Let the old school times roll.

My lad seemed most interested in the forgotten Arctic Computing classic "Humpty Dumpty in the Garden". He was all over that when he saw the cassette. Funny, he knew right away how to stick the cassette in and press play. Retro computing must be in the genes.

Retro Gaming: Doom II's Easter Egg

2/12/2014

When the first Doom game came out in 1993, I played it in a straight session for hours until I completed it. It blew me away, and still to this day is hailed as one of the most important first-person-shooters of all time. So when Doom II: Hell On Earth came out in 1995, I was just a little excited. In fact at the time I was working in a computer store, and we had done a game launch for Beneath A Steel Sky (that story is for another post). But because of our connections in the gaming industry, we sometimes managed to get pre-release copies of games.

Doom II was a game we managed to our grubby little hands on. Immediately loading it up, we decided to try the cheat codes from Doom that we knew to see if they would work on Doom II. To our surprise they did. Without even discussing the implications of it, and how it may ruin the game for us, we leapt to the last level where we encountered the final boss. Still messing around we suddenly we passed through where the boss was in the game, and found a hidden room with a head impaled on a spike! Little did we realise at the time, that we had discovered (and probably the first players other than the developers and testers) what has become one of the most legendary 'easter eggs' of gaming history.

In gaming an easter egg is a secret element of the game, placed there by the programmers. It is usually found by entering a set of secret commands, following a set sequence of actions, there any number of ways to unlock and discover these secret gaming gems. Often in-jokes, in the Doom II easter egg the head on the stake was that of John Romero, one of the lead programmers of Doom II. And in fact the head was the hit detection element for the final boss.

Easter eggs aren't exclusive to games. I remember digging around early copies of Microsoft Windows, and Office looking for rumoured hidden elements. Funnily enough Microsoft Excel 95 contained a hidden Doom-like action game called The Hall of Tortured Souls. And who can forget finding the hidden flight simulator in the 1997 version of Microsoft Office include a hidden flight simulator in Microsoft Excel and a pinball game in Microsoft Word? Now the fun has been taken out of finding these things, since most games have them, and how to find them is blasted across the Internet the second the first person discovers one. Back then, you had to find them for yourselves, not sure if they even existed. Wondering if the whole rumour was no more than urban legend.

Weird Retro Fact: There is an absolutely brilliant easter egg that exists in Google Maps. If your go to Earls Court Road in London, you will find on street view an old police public call box. Any sci-fi fan will recognise it immediately as the TARDIS. Which you can click on and enter, getting a panoramic view of the inside. Go ahead, try it!

Retro Gaming: Chuck Norris Superkicks

29/11/2014

For some reason I can't fathom, Chuck Norris post are always really popular. So I thought I'd chuck out another one. (See what I did there?) Chuck Norris Superkicks (1983), was a cartridge based video game that was released on the Commodore 64, Commodore VIC-20, Atari 2600, and Colecovision platforms. Packaged as a "double-ender" (*snigger*) cartridge by XONOX.

The game was an early beat-'em-up style game. What else would it be with Chuck Norris's name attached to it? After the license to use his name the game was re-released under the title Kung Fu Superkicks. Which considering the game is set in Japan, the home of Karate and not China, the home of Kung Fu, it seems a bit of an over-sight. The manual stated. "You are 'Chuck Norris' trying to reach an ancient monastery to rescue a famous leader that is being held hostage. BEWARE!

Dangerous warriors lie in waiting to spoil your efforts to reach your goal. You begin your journey as a White Belt, the first belt in the sport of Karate. By defeating the attackers, scoring points, and learning new martial skills, you will earn each of the colored belts associated with the 'Tang Soo Do' style of karate. You must achieve the highest rank of all, the Black Belt, in order to reach and enter the monastery which is guarded by the fearsome NINJA assassins." Erm... A lot of mentions of "karate" in there, oh and "ninjas" hope they changed that in the manual when they renamed it Kung Fu Superkicks!!! Oh, and changed the country it was set to China!

Weird Retro Fact: The Captain's Blog post entitled Japanese Chuck Norris Action Sex Doll, is the most popular blog post to date on Weird Retro.

Weird Retro Fact: In the 1980s, not only did Chuck Norris lend his name to this game, but also the infamous Action Jeans. Read the brief history of Kickin' Action Jeans and Chuck's involvement.