Snake Rattle and Roll (NES)

Snakes, they rattle and roll.

Two snakes, one called Rattle, one called Roll in an isometric game by rare called Snake Rattle and Roll. That didn't quite pan out how I had originally hoped but I blame fatigue on this one. What we do have however is a rather charming little isometric 3D platformer by Rare that promotes team play and solo in the same way.

One looks dopey, the other looks like it takes things far too seriously

It's a little bit aloof but the basic premise is that two snakes, Rattle and Roll, have decided to climb a mountain filled with traps, enemies, spikes and Nibbly-Pibblys (I'll explain...) In order to find a spaceship and leave the moon. How they get from the mountain TO the Moon is something else but I'm not exactly going to pick apart this fine bastion of story-telling at this point.

Another bonus level, where the Nibbly-Pibblys are running away

On each level, you've got your snakes, you've got (almost always) a weighing machine and a rather unending supply of Nibbly-Pibblys that get spat out from generators or can be found under lids. Eating them will make your snake gain tail segments and more importantly, weight. Once you're heavy enough to ring the bell, the door will open and you can make your escape. Your tail will grow faster if you eat Nibbly-Pibblys of the Yellow persuasion (fast and tend to run the hell off quickly) or your own colour. Eating your friend's coloured Nibbly-Pibblys will get you a minimal boost.

Pancaked

Each segment of tail will act as a health point and getting hit, attacked, sliced, collided, bitten or such will lose you a point of health, get hit with no tail and your head blows up. You also lose a life. There are (thankfully) very few enemies that can one-shot you, such as falling to your death, spikes, Bigfoot (and Ice foot by extension) and heavy items like anvils and fishtails (to be used to climb a waterfall). Later levels will have more emphasis on boulders and such that can kill you quickly too.

Big fat snake, the only way to open the exits with weight machines.

On the way, you'll encounter a wide variety of enemies and objects. From checkers pieces to large feet, pincushions that blow out spikes, toilet seats (starting to sound like old 80s video games with random objects), ice blocks, bombs, fake lives and sharks. You've some weapons and items to help you out though, tongue extensions to make it easier to lick enemies to death (yes... including the foot, lick the foot to death), lives, continues, clockwork keys to speed you up, diamonds to make you invulnerable (hard as diamond perhaps? not sure the relevance) and more Nibbly-Pibblys than you really want.

The fish-tail power up lets you swim up this. I don't know where the snorkel set comes from though

Depending upon the location, there are some hidden secrets like level warps, for the really quick, a warp from level 1 to 8 is possible at the start of the game. While others are hidden around in places, some more obvious than others. There's also bonus rooms where you get a flurry of Nibbly-Pibblys (getting cramp typing that name out) that you have to devour quickly before they make a lap of the room and escape.

Magic carpets and flying icons, all the fun of a platform puzzle.

The dynamic of the levels change when you get further along, focusing more on jumping puzzles and later on being able to swim freely in free-space underwater though this is hindered by the lack of awareness of moving into the background unless you can see where your shadow is and the 2D perception in a 3D world REALLY hinders the progression unless you're very astute in picking up where your shadow is on the bottom of the pools. Some of the jumping puzzles are beyond annoying and later levels (ice... I hate ice levels) have decreased friction and sloped ramps to slide you off into the abyss and off the mountain with a comical "aaaaaaaaaaaarghhh" and a chipper little tune to announce your death.

Round 1, fight! Sorry... wrong game.

These niggling little issues aside, the game plays smoothly, the controls function incredibly well though you've that translation of movement where Up doesn't move you up, it moves you 45degrees around from Up to keep you moving in a compass direction along the 2D planar of the isometric view. In short, it gets fucking annoying, fast until your mind/hands adapt to the situation. It also is the cause of a lot of mis-aimed jumping and attacks as you can't tell how far into the background you actually are and appear to be the same size whether you're all the way back or right at the front of the screen.

Does exactly what it says on the tin.

It plays like it's based on a kids cartoon, the characters are bright and happily animated, being hurt makes them leap up into the air and gawp at the screen with a wide slack-jaws O.O face on their features while there's little in the way of violence beyond going pop, screaming aaaaaaaargh in a string of comical letters or getting pancaked by the heavier enemies in the game. The music is toe-tappingly pleasant enough though the more heavy music in the later levels does add to the sense that the game is tough from here on and the difficulty is about to ramp it up to the point that it's almost vertical.

Yes, you have to lick the foot. A disgustion solution to this enemy.

It would seem that the game, because of its fairly unique perspective, is difficult in only its control system and how it translates to the map/levels. Some of the jumps and traps are very fiddly (nibbly-pibbly?) and can be awkward at worst to navigate, and downright impossible save for blind luck or highly intuitive ability to control the game.

Despite this, it's still a very game, very enjoyable and fairly well polished. Another gem from Rare.

Moonwalker

Yep, THAT Michael Jackson

I have to thank my cousin for reminding me of this little gem. But Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, is probably one of the most offensive and horrific games of all time... in hindsight. It's a game that was released in 1990, developed by Sega after the release of the original Mish-Mash film, Moonwalker (which was basically several long music videos thrown together and then MJ fights Joe Pesci by turning into a car, a robot and a spaceship before leaving and coming back for a gig... I wish I was making this up but it sounds more impressive than it really is), the unfortunate side-effect of MJ's life is that in this game, you save kids by touching them...

I'll try to keep away from joking about this, but I make no promises.

Start of almost every level has this comic book approach to the level.

Dancing McPaedo (Never convicted but often insinuated, not quite the best tagline for someone, would much rather have Outnumbered but never Outgunned, but oh well..), is the only "person" for want of a better word, that can save multiple kids that were spotted hanging out with MJ when they saw Joe Pesci doing a drug deal. Joe now wants MJ dead so he kidnaps the kids (MJ's obvious weakness) and forces MJ to rescue them while trying to have him killed.

Smoking, Drugs, Drink... they all kill, but few will name Dancing as a dangerous weapon.

Cue 5 levels of isometric perspective maps, moon walking power moves, dances and turning into a robot when collecting Bubbles the Chimp... We're really trying to shoehorn a lot of MJ's life into a game here. I'm just sorry there's no plastic surgery powerups but then the game would look entirely different. I'm also surprised that arcade cabinets didn't have extra hands under the machine to try and fondle the players, but hindsight is 20-20 after all.

Onto the game, you know, the whole actual point of this article.

The threat level bounces around within the game, some areas are nice and quiet, this isn't one of those areas.

You control Dancing McPaedo (I'll try to stop now) as he moves around the levels and rescues children. Each level looks like it's been fairly closely, but not overly accurately, recreated from scenes in the film. You've Mr Big's base, (Pesci's character name, original isn't it...), a street and bar, another dark street, a graveyard with zombies (to force us to hear Thriller as the music for the game), then the last level which is the first level but backwards followed by an elevator set then the last boss. Most of time you'll get to fight and "kill" Joe Pesci in the same way we fight and kill Robotnik in Sonic The Hedgehog games and that he flies off when defeated to "get you next time, McPaedo!"... Or something along those words, the speech isn't entirely clear at this point.

As far as final bosses go... this is shit.

You move around the level in the standard 8 compass directions, which translate exactly in the game as those directions. This isn't one of those games where pressing up moves you diagonally up into the "background" of the perspective. This does make the game a little easier to avoid enemies as they tend to move on the 4 diagonals provided by the isometric view. It does become awkward when trying to navigate through narrow points unfortunately or when you're up against larger enemies that can tank the damage you dish out.

You too can dance along, and look like as much of a prick as he does.

Your primary method of fighting is a charge/release attack. Hold the button and MJ starts to moonwalk while moving, holding his hand up while charging his laser and then when released, fires in the direction he's moving (not facing, as he's backwards while moon walking... go figure). This charge also determines the size and power of the shot, so a long shot goes across the distance of the room/screen and does huge damage, while tapping the button will fire a short blast that goes less distance than an asthmatic wheezing out a death-rattle.

Joe Pesci chokes a fat kid, and MJ looks like he's being sucked off...

Thankfully, there's some help in this game in the form of Bubbles the Chimp who can be collected and then turns MJ into Robo-Paedo, where he becomes a hulking great moon walking robot that fires lasers and missiles, doesn't require large charge up times for the power move and has a greatly increased range of attack. Though this usually turns up before or around the boss areas. On top of this you've your dance attack, which is your special "Let's slap everything in the face with MJs dick" move, forcing all characters and enemies on screen to dance for a moment before being killed or heavily damaged. You get one per life and can find more in the kids pockets when you rescue them.

Robo Wacko Jacko... Sadly, MJ was the conceptual designer for this game.

More disturbingly, are some of the enemies. If you've played the game then you'll know what I mean when I talking about the 2-legged robo-cock machines. It's like one of those two legged walkers from Star Wars with an extendable strap-on that can be used to punched MJ. Perhaps someone in the design team had a glimpse into the future and saw what was going to happen, wrote this enemy and thought "That's one MJ takes instead!" But given the later years of MJ's life, it's probably even more disturbing with the hindsight.

The aptly named "Location not appearing in the film" level.

You'd think though, that the music in the game would be sublime. MJ, who at the time, was the BIGGEST name in pop-music around the planet, riding the thrill of having the biggest albums and breaking more records than almost anyone else ever, would have had decent renditions of his music in the game. We can get people speaking badly, but the musical over tones are the worst level of hell of Dante's vision for this kind of elevator musak. Bad is barely recognisable, Billy Jean is butchered (and not my lover), Thriller is vaguely recognisable and none of it really represents the music for what it was at the time. Fairly decent (until MJ opened his gob...).

"Now for today's caption contest, just send in your own quote for this picture to..."

Interestingly, the arcade game was for 1-3 players, with each rendition of MJ being in a different coloured suit, though player 3 had the added bonus of being in a black suit, with a red arm band... They got to be the Gestapo version of MJ, adding in holocaust bonuses along with playing as Dancing McPaedo. 2 fuckups for the price of 1.

It's the power of DANCE!

It's a short game, even for 1990 and won't take too many credits to get through, between 1-4 for a seasoned player of arcade games and less for someone who's played it before. But it's worth playing, just to see how MJ liked to see himself as the saviour of kids while the rest of the world recognised him as being a filthy little pae- [Obscured on legal advice] -p his own rectum.

Like Joe Pesci, this is pretty much my reaction to this entire game.

Spindizzy C64

Back in the day, there was quite a few ways to release a game. You could have written it as part of a professional team; you could have made it in your bedroom and sent it off to a publisher. You could have half-arsed a game and sent it to a publisher infamous for not giving a ripe fuck about the quality of the game and in such cases, we end up with Spindizzy.

No, not Dizzy, that game series featuring an animated egg and obscure puzzle/platform sections with item A being traded for item B and so on. I'm not talking about that here. This is a game that was relatively well received in the UK and applauded by a great number of reporters who didn't really know what a good game was, nor how it should be reviewed.

The game is a simple premise (as are most of the c64, but not all) where in you control a geometric shaped character and where the shape has no bearing on how you move or perform. Ball, spinning top or inverted square based pyramid, means no difference in the game itself. You are "it" and you are off to explore an Isometric 3D world, collecting gems, solving puzzles and all that before you run out of time/energy and your machine creature thingy shuts down and the game is over.

This already sets alarm bells ringing in the design and concept of the game.

For a start, this means there is a maximum distance you can travel in EVERY game. Which also means that you'll have to make choices to navigate one way and not another and not be able to explore those ways until you start the game over again. You will never be able to collect every gem in a single game either. You will also have to navigate the same areas REPEATEDLY in order to get to somewhere new and then explore a fork in the path you've never navigated before.

Assuming of course you can even get there in the first place. The game's control system is always confusing on the Isometric system of display. Up, moves you Up and Left, Down moves you Down and Right. The problem with isometric displays is that the translation of controls is never consistent. In this game the controls are set, though the inertia and speed can take a lot of management to get used to in order to be able to successfully navigate around 80% of the rooms in the game.

Not only are there the issues of moving around the game but there's the fact that you'll have to rotate the game world to see around pillars, obstructions and other such fun. The ability is there to be used, but you'll have to use the keyboard to in conjunction with the joystick to get around the map. On top of this, is the ability to speed up by use of the joystick fire button which can give you enough of a speed to make certain leaps and jumps (but not too big though, you can't handle too much of a landing impact). Conversely there's the lovely little ability to slow down by using the space bar, though try handling a joystick and a keyboard when performing some very intense and precise movements in this game.

The game is however, a good idea. But the lack of speed and power of the C64 means that dying (or falling off and resetting) can take a while before you have to load up the next screen, fall, bounce off a wall, load up the previous screen, fall, bounce rinse and repeat. While other times might have you falling off one level into an abyss on the next screen with NO CLUE that you're unable to go in that direction until after you've taken a Peter Pan swan dive off the fucking level.

The idea of exploration and puzzle solving is not exactly a novel one by this point but it's a brave attempt just executed poorly. The puzzles within the game are just the idea of hitting switches in a certain order to attempt to bring together a set of lifts and platforms. Making walls appear and disappear, high floors and low floors fading in and out of existence, lifts above lifts to get to higher points etc. There's potential but sometimes it's not so easy to realise.

This brings me onto another big gripe with this system. Perspective. It's hard at times to realise WHERE blocks and floors are in relation to yourself. On top of that some rooms are PURPOSEFULLY designed to obfuscate and confuse you, lead you into a false sense of awareness so that a floor that LOOKS like it's under you is actually 40ft behind you into the level and when you fall, you're absolutely nowhere near it and end up going sailing past the edge of the room and into the abyss that is reloading back where you fell from and wasting more time failing to get to rooms you now cannot access as you'd run out of time.

Nice idea, poorly executed.