Bird Mother (C64)

Creative Sparks, 1984

Every voice is lifted skyward, not in joy but in terror and woe. The eagle, whose entire presence is wrapped in unearthly shadow, looms above all, accompanied by a thick, fat lightning bolt that would terrify any reasonable bird mom. The feather in the cap of this one is the tag line directly beneath the title: “LIFE’S A STRUGGLE.”

You think you walk the razor’s edge? Try raising a clutch of gross little bird-babies in today’s world. The decrepit house in the background leads me to believe that the humans have already called it quits; in Bird Mother, mankind has finally been swallowed by its own brute decadence, and now avian parents everywhere have inherited the stark existential horror we left upon the last battlefield.

Her kids look like lead paint or fetal alcohol syndrome could have been a factor. Who can blame her for drinking when the black eagle and the vector-bolt stand as certain signs that her world is nothing but kindling for the fires of the void? One of the kids is trying to eat a bee, which seems like a poor idea, especially since it has launched itself beyond the threshold of the nest. The other two sing an idiot song to no one as their mother screeches in torment, oblivious to her children’s plight as she is bathed in the cold liquid of her own.

Gobbleman (ZX Spectrum)

Artic Computing, 1982

For some reason, this song seems entirely appropriate.

Question one: God forbid the very notion, but is this thing sentient? Sapient? It looks like a tipped over McDonald’s french fry container. It has no eyes whatsoever, but a gigantic and terrible mouth filled with chunky teeth.

Question two: In what city is this chaos tolerated? After dusk, Gobbleman fires up his… I guess his anti-grav thrusters, and rips across the urban landscape, devouring what I hope aren’t prescription painkillers or amphetamines. Gobbleman has the entire city at his mercy, he himself in turn being solidly in the grip of a tragic addiction. It’s made him mean.

Question three: How big is Gobbleman supposed to be? The scaling is hard to interpret, and I have a feeling that’s because there is none implied at all. My best guess is that Gobbleman is about the size of a subway car.

This is a future that seems familiar, but it is one that I will not miss.

Deathsville (Amstrad CPC)

Bubble Bus Software, 1986

“Oh, the castle? Nah, it’s not mine. More of a timeshare thing. Point of advice, kid, not that it matters since we all die anyway: don’t buy into a fuckin’ timeshare.”

If you leave the interstate at a certain point, trace the back roads through mortality and fog, and grab route 0 heading straight downward, you’ll find yourself in a cozy little rural backwater called Deathsville. Population skeletons.

The robed corpse meanders out of the cold mist, shaking its hands like they’ve got something unpleasant stuck to them (if Death weren’t OCD, he’d be a lot worse at his job, but the germophobia thing still runs him ragged sometimes). The creature shoots you a surprisingly calm look of polite confusion, its one eye glittering red like a laser tripwire.

“Are you… you the one who emailed me on Craigslist about the futon?” it croaks out in a dry whisper. You shake your head. You know nothing of superfluous collapsible couch-beds. You know only that you have met Death at home, and that Death actually seems like kind of a fucking slob.

The hooded skeleton lights a Pall Mall, struggling to block the wind through its fleshless hands. Two hours later, you’re in the local Waffle House, waiting for the Bubble Bus (which has never run on time, the irresponsible little bastard). Death hangs out. He keeps you company, though his company is often silent and passively heavy, like winter snow on a freshly dug grave. Turns out he’s a pretty cool guy, but even though you exchange numbers, you never text or call him after. It just seems, unspoken, to be a childish breach of decorum.

Bun Fun (BBC Micro)

Squirrel Software, 1983

This is lewd. Gigeresque, even. In the biomechanical landscape, there’s pelnty of room for confectionary frosting and hot poop.

While untold thousands across the world labor and ultimately die miserable in sweatshops every year, this young man is absolutely overjoyed to be the one hitting the Simon buttons that make the… unidentified but suggestive cream exude onto the passing buns. Not even the obvious and repellent sight of a steaming pile of turds on the conveyor belt could ruin the moment! Nor the fact that he is also covered in the “cream,” for better or worse. This dude just decides to make the best of it, and puts little heaps of shit on top of every bun. The young man’s decency and stability long ago eroded completely, and though his current occupation is clearly a fool’s errand, he has that same trait that binds all madmen, buffoons, and captains of industry together: pride of workmanship and a grossly distorted sense of greater purpose.

It was he who shat upon the conveyor, who dumped creamy cream all over his own head, and who slew the factory’s night watchman with a chair leg before firing up the machinery.

Puckman (VIC-20)

Mikro-Gen, 1981

Whatever is happening, it’s on a cosmic scale, and we are beneath Puckman’s notice.

I don’t know what the fuck Puckman is, nor what he is meant to resemble or represent. While he bears a passing resemblance to the simple reptiles of our world’s Carboniferous pre-human chaos, he’s not that. He’s not a thing, maybe not even a living thing. Those eyes are a crude and clumsy attempt to appear real, and the outer shapes of him are so vague and unformed that Puckman is more an idea than a being. He exists, or something like it, in the spaces between. Puckman was there when the world was formed, and he knows the sum of its eventual fate, and none of this evokes anything within him except the same stark certitude that has passed for his consciousness from day one: all space is finite, and all things existing within that space are edible.

My gut feeling is that the grid-like area to the left is just filler, a pattern, an abstract meant to imply occupied space. Puckman is chewing – nay, inhaling – the very reality of that space. The sound of his meal is that of vacuum silence; by way of quantum singularity, Puckman is digesting the very substance of time-space. The serrated plates of his turtle-like skull are merely a non-sequitur, for he needs to chew nothing.

Shit, I’ve got this all wrong. Maybe Puckman is laughing out a universe, his joy giving birth to the sublime poetry of matter and void. Maybe this is an unbridled act of primal creation. Once again heat death has been defeated, for the moment. Puckman has laid his threads upon the loom and stitched reality a little more breathing room in the inseam.

Either way, Puckman is impossibly gigantic and proves all human cultures completely wrong about God. And look at him. Just fucking look at him.

We’ve been thins way before, and we’ll probably come back here again. Every wise man and woman acknowledges that even chaos has patterns, cycles. It is the mind-stretching notion that governs the movement of bodies in the night sky, the labyrinthine vagaries of chance, and it’s the same reason I’ll probably see you back soon with another set of box art images and my own delusional ideas about them. Stay Retro!

To look back wistfully for the hundredth or so time, I’ve written a lot of articles for NRW about a lot of classic games. All these games, with very few exceptions, were ones that originated in the arcade or for one console and were subsequently ported to other systems. The clear intent of this is to maximize the number of potential consumers, since very few households back then were multi-system owners, and there were a crowd of different machines being used to play video games at home across the Western world and beyond. I tend to mention these ports in brief near the end of my articles; one name you may see often, but may not be closely familiar with (depending on your location and age), is the Spectrum.

In the very late 1970s and the early 1980s, Britain was beginning to embrace computers the same way the US was. There was the same acknowledgment of how useful thinking machines could be, and the two nations also shared an optimistic sense of futurism. This futurism was the lifeblood of Sinclair Research in Cambridge, UK. The early 80s were a time of uncertainty and even of some conflict in the United Kingdom, but just like in America, they were also a time of looking forward. Sinclair was a firm focused on looking forward, with ideas from computers to futuristic transportation making up their offering to the modern world.

The Sinclair C5. Envisioned as a revolution in personal transport, it met with marginal initial success before… well to keep a long story short, it didn’t revolutionize shit. It looks cool as hell, though.

The Spectrum was not the only home computer available in England during the 1980s, nor was it the first Sinclair had released. Its predecessor, the ZX80, had broken barriers upon its 1980 release as the first personal computer available for under US $200. The Commodore product line was available in the UK as well, and in 1981 Acorn partnered with the BBC to release the BBC Micro. The Micro’s intent was not only to make home computers the norm, but to make programming more approachable to those interested in learning. Other than the C64, however, one important flaw remained: You couldn’t play many GAMES on these devices! Well at least not any good ones.

Before proceeding, I would like to state that none of the text beyond this paragraph is meant to malign the Sinclair ZX Spectrum as an overall computing machine, nor diminish its well deserved place in computing/gaming history.

But I have got to be frank… thank the Machine Gods we’ve come a long way since then.

Black with a bold rainbow down one corner. compact, grey TI-83 style buttons. SIX WHOLE COLORS IN ITS PALETTE!

The ZX Spectrum could read and write data using either of the commonly accepted ways: via tape cassettes (slower, cheaper) or a 3 inch floppy (faster, more costly). With a Zilog z80 CPU forming the core of its nerve system, the machine kept up with most of its sister computers of the time (and in fact that same CPU was used in many gaming consoles throughout the 80s, namely the ColecoVision and the predecessors to the Master System). Throughout the 1980s and early 90s, the system was improved and redesigned, both by Sinclair and by their newly acquired company Amstrad. As time went on, the peripherals improved, with later versions even featuring built-in tape and floppy drives. As far as usability and utility, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was a wonder.

Graphically and sound-wise, however, the Spectrum was ass. It was pure ass.

Blend, dither and disappear: the overall effect could vary from confusing to depressing.

Let’s start with the graphics. I won’t be that hard on them; I understand that nothing was out-of-this-world graphically in the early 80s, although the C64 was all right and arcade games were on their way. With the Spectrum, you don’t really have much of a spectrum at all. Unless you count black and white, and dimmed tones of the colors, you have exactly six colors. They are bright colors, and if certain ones dominate the screen, you will want your cool 80s shades because your cone and rod receptors will be screaming. This is compounded by the fact that sprites often assume the background’s colors while moving through it; this can add a visual challenge to games that may not need it as both you and other sprites seem to shift into chameleon mode. The Amstrad CPC, a popular later version of the Spectrum, improved on this whole situation somewhat, as shown below.

So… the CPC could almost run the version of MSPaint that came with Windows 3.1!

Now, let’s get to sound. Again, before I get going, I know… it was 1982. But this is the department they seemed to drag the most ass on, for the longest time, with the least real improvement. Below I provide an example; turn your speakers down or anyone you live with might think some kind of nuclear alarm is going off. This is how the Ninja Turtles sound on the Sinclair Spectrum…

Sometimes I share what I find in my travels, and I sent this video to synth-head and gamer Brendon Hicks. Direct quote from Brendon on TMNT’s sound for the Spectrum version:

“It sounds like someone tongue-punching an asshole.”

And he’s not wrong. Here’s another challenge… see if you can handle the whole “theme song” for the Spectrum adaptation of the Stallone hit Cobra:

If you’re a kid who used the family Spectrum to play games, how long do you think you’d have before a parent or other family member came barreling toward you demanding that you turn that shit off? Better get out your stopwatch timer.

All of this said, there’s still a huge community of retro-gamers who love the Spectrum family of computers and still even develop indie software for it. To those of you out there doing that: I do not understand at all, but you are doing something you love, and I can’t speak ill of that.

This examination is done. The patient has a strange set of symptoms, but they seem to be harmless. I don’t think this case is terminal or contagious. You’re free to leave quarantine, Mr. Spectrum.

OW! SHIELDS UP!

Today we’ll tackle another notable game that’s long overdue for a NRW once-over. I’d been saving this one, because I’d really like to pluck heavily from 1987 this year, and Karnov is one of the most laughed-at yet loved games from the era. Karnov is a nested set of dichotomies; It’s nothing complex, yet a deeper look reveals it as far from simple. It’s a fairly silly game in some regards, but its solid gameplay and decent overall production value make it difficult to casually disregard.

Karnov was originally released in 1987 as an arcade game by Data East. I won’t wast a lot of time on the “fluff” because there isn’t much. Karnov (Jinborov Karnovski is his full name according to original Japanese material) is a strongman from The Soviet Union who has set off on a quest to find the ultimate treasure. I guess it’s good not to get bogged down in a bunch of lofty morality-play crap every time we want to shoot some fireballs or murder some dinosaurs. It’s nice to just have some buttons, a joystick, and an army of bizarre monsters begging you to slaughter them as you stomp your way to glory.

Pictured: Jinborov Karnovski, strongman/firebreather/adventurer/pimp, literally stomping his way directly to glory. Those gold bracelets ain’t gonna finance themselves.

Karnov’s main weapon as he treasure-hunts across a monster-filled wasteland is his ability to breathe fireballs. Despite being a strongman, who would likely consider using a baseball bat or even his massive fists, Karnov didn’t settle for being a one-trick pony. He learned how to breathe fire. No big deal. You wouldn’t get it anyway. You don’t even lift, bro. You don’t even look good in Zubaz like he does. Just leave this shit to Karnov.

“Your girl wish you look like this. Flex like Karnov. FLEX!” To be fair, all the non-digital art is incredibly flattering to Karnov. In-game you see that he’s taken to eating rich foods and drinking cheap beer, and has just really let himself go. The treasure is to hire a really good personal trainer because he knows he’s lost the willpower to fix it himself.

Anyway, inexplicably breathing fire isn’t the only trick Karnov has up his sleeve. As you move through the game world, our broad-shouldered buddy can pick up trick shoes, magic ladders, and even disposable pairs of wings. There are also power-ups that will improve your fire breath, and one even makes you crazy fast and super dangerous for a while. It doesn’t last long, but you’re basically a tubby little volcano god while it does. The more mundane tool-like power-ups go into an inventory below your field of view, and you can select and activate them from there. The only maddening part is that you select them using the same controls you use to move, so being precise with something like the ladder can be a tricky task until you get the hang of it. But then, who’s ever as precise as they’d like to be when they’re using a magic ladder? Shit, my insurance premiums are through the roof just from the last incident.

After minimal power-up seeking, you become the burly, land-based equivalent of an A-10 Warthog. Notice the birds at the top of the screen, understandably reluctant to swoop down and witness this science.

There aren’t a staggering array of baddies in Karnov, but what’s staggering about them is their sheer weirdness. My personal favorites are the fish dude who tosses shit at you out of his purse, the disturbingly undressed regular human dude who jumps down on you, the skeleton riding the ostrich, and the prominently featured dinosaur who ends up being an absolute bitch. If you’re fast and can keep from getting whacked (and losing the power-up that turns your fire breath into the equivalent of three hardworking artillery crews), then you’re probably in good shape. If not, your gaming experience with Karnov will probably be short. The game does two things that aren’t uncommon elsewhere in gaming, to keep things spicy: it recycles bosses later as regulars and it has no shame when it comes to using huge fuckoff crowds of monsters. You’ll also find that birds win their usual award as “most annoying enemy,” and they’re not the only thing that flies. Only the later bosses are super hard, but Karnov‘s daunting feel diminishes when you realize it’s kind of like a shoot-em-up game, except your fat little ship walks and jumps, and you’re able to move forward at your own pace.

A goofy punk-ass dinosaur braces itself to catch a lethal dose of a disease called “these hands.” Karnov’s current inventory contains some kind of bubblegum bottle, some fluffy Charmin wings, and a pretty princess’s party mask. He took one look at what he had in his pockets and knew he had to do this shit the Chicago way.

The arcade version’s graphics are pretty good, being standard for 1987 and comparable to most other similar titles released around the time. They take a huge hit on any of the console/computer ports, but that’s to be expected. The sound is minimal, and the music is comprised of only a few tracks. It’s not bad, though… there’s just not a lot there. Karnov is all about the game itself, and the dressing is served on the side.

The game was officially ported to the NES, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC machines. Karnov himself went on to star in a series of fighting games, one of which is titled Karnov’s Revenge. He also makes appearances in other Data East games, most notably in Bad Dudes vs. Dragonninja as the boss of the first level. He’s become something of a staple in that region of pop culture where video game stuff sticks well… just search on YouTube and elsewhere and you’ll see what I mean. Jinborov Karnovski may have started out as a weird but novel protagonist for an arcade game, but he’s found a place for himself.

Screenshots of the NES and ZX Spectrum versions. The C64 version looks remarkably similar to the ZX, and the Amstrad one looks horrible, so you can look that one up yourself and blame you, not me. Click to open either image in a new tab at full size.

Karnov gets a 7/10 from me, mostly because it’s just a solid platformer with some good style crossover. It’s not what one would expect at first glance, and while it’s a bit bland on its broad face, it delivers once you start playing it. Even the ports are decent fun, although the NES one rules the roost. The game and the character have ended up etched into the collective culture of retro gaming, and it’s not just because a chubby Russian fire-breathing weightlifter is a funny idea.

“Hello, ladies…”

Well, that wraps it up. More coming throughout February. If you’ve got a game you’d like to see covered in an article or video, don’t hesitate to drop me a line or stop by the Facebook page to chime in. Later, gamers!

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the video game developers who were active in Japan in the 1980s and early 90s, and I’ve learned some of interesting stuff. A lot of it has to do with these companies’ origins and beginnings – some of which differ greatly from what one might assume. Taito, for instance? You know, the very Japanese corporation that gave us Bubble Bobble and Operation Wolf? That company was founded in 1953 by a Russian Jewish immigrant named Michael Kogan. What began as a distributor of amusements during post-war Japan’s recovery would grow into one of the most prolific developers of 1980s and 90s gaming. Kogan had proved that being adventurous can really pay off.

In 1987, Taito hit the world with a truly badass barbarian who would heartily agree with that sentiment. Rastan Saga (or simply Rastan outside Japan) was released to arcades as a kit; existing cabinets could be converted with a little bit of work into Rastan cabinets. Taito released the game this way not only to save money, but to hedge their bets; by not using a dedicated cabinet, the company stood to take less of a hit if Rastan failed to take off.

The marquee slide from the conversion kit, featuring Rastan enjoying one of his favorite hobbies: choking the shit out of pterodactyl-men.

This skepticism, while wise in theory, proved unnecessary in practice. Rastan did well domestically and in America, but took surprising hold in Europe’s market. It spawned a truly prolific set of ports for nearly every European home system of the time. Rastan was ported to the Apple IIGS, the Amstrad, C64, IBM/DOS, the Sega Master System, the MSX2, and even the garishly-hued ZX Spectrum. Later on, it even received a Japan-only port for the Sega Game Gear.

A badass poster promoting the MSX2 version, which depicts Rastan, to quote McCartney, “comin’ down fast from miles above you.”

In the long and noble tradition of 1980s pop culture barbarians, our protagonist in this hack-and-slash adventure tale is Rastan, a ripped dude in a loincloth who bears an absolutely uncanny resemblance to Robert E. Howard’s legendary Conan character. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I suppose. The storyline exposition is left out of the Western version of the arcade game, but Rastan is out to slay himself a dragon. See, he made a deal with the princess of the land of Ceim: dispose of the dragon, and get paid ALL OF THE KINGDOM’S TREASURE. Either Rastan is one hell of a bargainer, or the Princess could use some work at it.

100% absolute clone of Conan the Cimmerian. Well, except for the fact that his vertical leap is about thirty feet.

The game begins with Rastan dropping from an unreasonable height into the first level, where you can immediately begin slashing through monsters and making your way across the game world. Rastan is pretty athletic, not to mention acrobatic; his prodigious leap is an essential tool for getting around and can also be used to get the drop on enemies while minimizing the risk of reprisal. Clever combat is worth considering, since the variety of enemy monsters in Rastan looks like someone held a Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual over this world and shook it until everything fell out. Lizard men, undead wizards, an astounding volume of dog-sized chimaeras, and gargoyle swordsmen make up a small sliver of the creatures trying to end your quest with a trip to an early grave. Thankfully, in addition to being a huge badass, Rastan also has periodic access to some power ups found throughout the game’s environments. While most of them only work for a limited amount of time, all of them are worth having. Armor (something Rastan should should have thought about while getting dressed for this trip) can help absorb some of the punishment you’ll take. There are three different weapons, too: a mace, an axe, and the sword you start with. There are also potions, but beware – Taito decided to be shitheads and make some of them deplete your health instead of restore it!

I was gonna think of some joke to crack, but I’m at a loss. This shit just may be too awesome to joke about. Rastan is a murderer born. These three screenshots speak for both the game and the character.

One look at any screenshot or video of the arcade version will tell you that Rastan was well ahead of its time in 1987. The level of detail and the color depth are astounding, and animation is very smooth. Rastan‘s movements are especially fluid, which really enhances the playing experience. Most ports don’t reproduce it fully (or at all), but the weather even changes over time in the arcade original. This is done very smoothly and gradually, and adds a subtle but noticeable layer of visual richness to outdoor levels. The sound effects, while far closer to average for the time, are still well done. Rastan‘s soundtrack isn’t very populated, but this shit is definitely barbarian music! The soundtrack gets faster as you get closer to dying, which is another little touch that makes the game more intense.

In addition to its above-mentioned ports, Rastan was eventually released as part of Taito Legends Vol. 1 for the PS2, Xbox and PC in 2006. There were also two proper sequels; Rastan Saga II (Nastar in North America) was released in ’89, While Warrior Blade: Rastan Saga Episode III came out in 1991 and was more of a scrolling beat-em-up.

The unbelievably epic flyer art for Rastan Saga II.

I gladly grant Rastan an 8 out of 10. It’s really fun to play, visually impressive for an arcade title of its era, and there’s nothing like playing as a barbarian who hacks up monsters.

See you at the end of January!