Random 80s computer game memory

05-09-2015 2:41am #1

Ok this is really random but it came up during a conversation about that new retro release of a spectrum computer.

I remember a game when I was a kid - on one of our computers - a text based adventure game but with pictures done in ascii at the time. But it was one of those "go north" "examine pedestal" type games.

But during the game you could say a word at any time and your character would change into a super hero. Or back again. And you had to type a word like "khazam" or "kapow" or something odd like this.

PLEASE tell me I did not dream this and someone remembers this game

The bet I have with my mates was this was a ZX spectrum game. My mate thinks it was an Atari ST one. And my brother believes it was one of the first text games on the PC.

ardinn · 05-09-2015 2:44am

Pffft - an amstrad action was where it was at!!!

Roland something..........

Will never get the music out of my head!

Ruu · 05-09-2015 2:45am

Colossal Cave Adventure?

Bongalongherb · 05-09-2015 2:49am

?...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8qemgxNLfs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riSKLqB1ZjQ

05-09-2015 3:00am

Nah - but like the second video above there was always a constant picture of your character to the side of the text. And the picture used to show if you were in human or super hero form.And you could switch between the two.

Junkyard Tom · 05-09-2015 3:11am

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0bctXFnw-Y

05-09-2015 3:15am

I remember playing sh!t like this on my ZX81....

Bongalongherb · 05-09-2015 3:19am

Junkyard Tom wrote: »

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0bctXFnw-Y

GTA 0.001.

Bongalongherb · 05-09-2015 3:28am

There might be something in this guy's collection of adventure games from the early 80's that might be it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVZfj9aR98o

justchecked · 05-09-2015 3:56am

what was the program on saturday mornings with the giant wasp.
it was some green screen team effort.

dont think it was gamesmaster although might have had the same setup where the main player had to wear a bucket over their head while their team told them to jump.

fvcking brutal whatever it was lolol.

GekkePrutser · 05-09-2015 4:14am

Ruu wrote: »

Colossal Cave Adventure?

Yes I think that was what the OP refers to. The word was 'XYZZY', it would teleport you (though not give you special powers so perhaps it was another game after all).

ceadaoin. · 05-09-2015 4:57am

justchecked wrote: »

what was the program on saturday mornings with the giant wasp.
it was some green screen team effort.

dont think it was gamesmaster although might have had the same setup where the main player had to wear a bucket over their head while their team told them to jump.

fvcking brutal whatever it was lolol.

Knightmare. Have to say, I loved it

donegaLroad · 05-09-2015 9:51am

I remember a game like the OP describes for the spectrum ZX.. it had a Japanese sounding name. I just googled it..'Kobyashi Naru'

Boom_Bap · 05-09-2015 9:58am

My first game on a 5 1/4" floppy was Alone In The Dark if I remember correctly.
This was all text based, no pictures.
I kept getting stuck in the same room no matter which way I played the game. I call it the original glitch....or else I was missing disk 2.

elfy4eva · 05-09-2015 10:02am

This possibly?? Human torch says 'flame on' to morph. Although the catchphrase you mention in the op "khazam" sounds very similar to "shazam" which is the morphing catchphrase of DC comics captain marvel/shazam. Not sure if they made a text adventure with him though. Hope this helps!

Dr Turk Turkelton · 05-09-2015 10:06am

ardinn wrote: »

Pffft - an amstrad action was where it was at!!!

Roland something..........

Will never get the music out of my head!

It was Roland In Time.
The music was the song I Love to Go A Wandering played constantly on repeat. I'm obviously still very scarred by it thirty years later!

There was other Roland games as well *shudder.

Sir Osis of Liver. · 05-09-2015 10:38am

My favourite was Chariot Race on Commodore Vic 20.(we were too poor to buy the 64)
It was so lifelike you'd swear you were in the Colloseum.

_Kaiser_ · 05-09-2015 10:49am

Sooooo many hours spent on this as a kid...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpgDqqbGd_g

None of that fancy colour stuff though. Green screen was where it was at

machiavellianme · 05-09-2015 10:59am

Dr Turk Turkelton wrote: »

It was Roland In Time.
The music was the song I Love to Go A Wandering played constantly on repeat. I'm obviously still very scarred by it thirty years later!

There was other Roland games as well *shudder.

Whats wrong with roland in time? I still play it fairly regularly for the laugh.
That and tubaruba.

Dr Turk Turkelton · 05-09-2015 12:22pm

machiavellianme wrote: »

Whats wrong with roland in time? I still play it fairly regularly for the laugh.
That and tubaruba.

Nothing wrong with the game it was the music. Some subliminal brainwashing there somewhere.

Menas · 05-09-2015 1:28pm

I remember buying those magazines that gave you POKEs for the Spectrum games....

Samaris · 05-09-2015 2:27pm

It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.

Yis can keep your Call of Duty and Final Fantasies, Zork will always hold that special place in my gamer's heart :pac:

tinner777 · 05-09-2015 2:28pm

urban upstart the beginning of gta

05-09-2015 2:41pm

donegaLroad wrote: »

I remember a game like the OP describes for the spectrum ZX.. it had a Japanese sounding name. I just googled it..'Kobyashi Naru'

Nah - in my memory it was black and white. Not sure if that memory is accurate though but almost sure it was all B+W. And the graphics were more like a comic strip than anything else.

somesoldiers · 05-09-2015 4:05pm

US tv drama Halt & Catch Fire, series 2 in particular, is centre around an 80s online gaming start up. Amazing how far we've come

We were allowed play Horace Goes Skiing once a week in primary school, my only exposure to computers til I went to college

Skerries · 05-09-2015 4:12pm

Kwah!

it was Hawk backwards

http://www.mobygames.com/game/zx-spectrum/kwah

you can play games through here

and the game is here

GHOST MGG · 05-09-2015 4:31pm

I fell in love with PARSEC on the Ti-99/4a in 82 i think it was..always remember it being "omg arcade in my room" moment
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZgFAgmJkiE

06-09-2015 11:05am

Skerries wrote: »

Kwah!

Thats the one! Thanks! I knew I was going to end up being wrong about it being black and white. But my memories of it are actually like that. I wonder was there a version without color sometime.

The_Valeyard · 06-09-2015 11:09am

General Chaos on MegaDrive II

Tompatrick · 06-09-2015 11:10am

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Ok this is really random but it came up during a conversation about that new retro release of a spectrum computer.

I remember a game when I was a kid - on one of our computers - a text based adventure game but with pictures done in ascii at the time. But it was one of those "go north" "examine pedestal" type games.

But during the game you could say a word at any time and your character would change into a super hero. Or back again. And you had to type a word like "khazam" or "kapow" or something odd like this.

PLEASE tell me I did not dream this and someone remembers this game The bet I have with my mates was this was a ZX spectrum game. My mate thinks it was an Atari ST one. And my brother believes it was one of the first text games on the PC.

Was it an interactive book ?

Massimo Cassagrande · 06-09-2015 11:18am

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

Sooooo many hours spent on this as a kid...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpgDqqbGd_g

None of that fancy colour stuff though. Green screen was where it was at

Elite - the game that taught me life was not fair..if you had cheats, you could get ahead in it, and if you could afford a disc drive, you were god...I didn't have either..

I remember "Ghouls" for the BBC Micro being one of me faves. I also remember loading it from tape being quite dull..

py2006 · 06-09-2015 11:21am

ardinn wrote: »

Pffft - an amstrad action was where it was at!!!

Roland something..........

Will never get the music out of my head!

Roland on the Ropes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6bJnZkNSQ8

5rtytry56 · 06-09-2015 11:51am

I got this in cassette tape format on "Your Sinclair" magazine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos:_The_Battle_of_Wizards

engrossing.

Skerries · 06-09-2015 12:49pm

5rtytry56 wrote: »

I got this in cassette tape format on "Your Sinclair" magazine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos:_The_Battle_of_Wizards

engrossing.

My favourite game of all time

I play various remakes of this all the time and the original author Julian Gollop of X-Com fame is remaking it and it is in early access on Steam atm

http://store.steampowered.com/app/319050/

Lenin Skynard · 06-09-2015 12:56pm

I had a game like that on the commodore 64. A monkey island type thing with just text. Pretty much every game we had were knock-off versions of the classics but I didn't know it at the time. One was called "Henry's House", it was basically Donkey Kong.

We used to get great joy out of typing "Fúck off" into the monkey island type one because it would respond with something like "Oh dear, that's not very nice language". Which of course was both fascinating and hilarious for an eight year-old in the 1980s.

randombar · 06-09-2015 2:09pm

There was an egg character one for the C64, platform based from what I remember??

There was also sleepwalker that was some kind of comic relief thing for the Amiga. Was excellent from memory (probably really crap now)

Cantona's Collars · 06-09-2015 2:11pm

ardinn wrote: »

Pffft - an amstrad action was where it was at!!!

Roland something..........

Will never get the music out of my head!

I still have a CPC 464 with monitor in a box in my attic.I learned early that a twin cassette player let you copy games.
Barbarian with the poster of the page 3 girl was very popular.

The egg fella was Dizzy,I loved Gryzor,1942,Rastan and more.Anybody remember the Ocean compilations?

SpaceSasqwatch · 06-09-2015 2:20pm

GaryCocs wrote: »

There was an egg character one for the C64, platform based from what I remember??

blatantrereg · 06-09-2015 2:26pm

There were a load of Roland games for the Amstrad. I think there was nothing related between them except the name and the fact they were for the amstrad. Super lazy branding. Roland on the Ropes, Roland in the Caves, Roland in Time, Roland on the Run, Roland Goes Digging...

Roland in Time had the Doctor Who music. Don't remember any other music so it was probably that one. Roland on the Ropes was very good though.

I liked Theatre Europe where you almost always end up destroying the world if you play it on hard when NATO and the USSR both launch their entire nuclear arsenals at each other. I remember I managed to avoid it by not using any ICBMs or chemical weapons etc at all - though I also think I read that it was impossible to do that so either that article was wrong or my memory is.

I had the genius idea of putting my saved games onto the end of the tape for Elite and quickly managed to overwrite part of the program itself.

I miss games where the programmers didn't want you to be able to finish them. Remember playing Manic Miner with 16 lives and still never getting close to completing it.

Survivor was a great game too...

But really my strongest memory has got to be the slow slideshow that was the incredibly crap Amstrad port of Double Dragon.

OldMrBrennan83 · 06-09-2015 2:26pm

This post has been deleted.

5rtytry56 · 06-09-2015 2:34pm

Last Ninja 1 and 2.

NIMAN · 06-09-2015 2:39pm

Rob Hubbard.

nxbyveromdwjpg · 06-09-2015 2:46pm

There was a c64 game that was just a stick man running across different levels, and the music was the alton towers theme music song - anyone know what that was called?

nxbyveromdwjpg · 06-09-2015 2:47pm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxzMwS4yQzo

Dr Turk Turkelton · 06-09-2015 3:31pm

Yee-arr-kung-fu on the Amstrad CPC6128. Hours of fun.

5rtytry56 · 06-09-2015 3:39pm

Kokotoni Wilf
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/09/kokoton.htm

5rtytry56 · 06-09-2015 3:42pm

Rainbow Islands
One of last games to be distributed for 8 bit formats in general
https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Rainbow_Islands

06-09-2015 3:44pm

Bruce Lee
Jet Set Willy
Citadel
SWAG
Sopwith

That was my 80s

Uriel. · 06-09-2015 3:45pm

Loved Platoon on the C64... including the music... still play it a few times a year on an emulator

blatantrereg · 06-09-2015 3:56pm

special ops. Tactical turn based combat a lot earlier than any other games like that I know of.
the great escape

Buona Fortuna · 06-09-2015 5:27pm

I remember a couple on the Spectrum:

A bridge to far - absolutely fcuking brilliant - except it took so long to play and you had to save to tape. Saving to tape was grand but the chances of reloading from tape were about 50/50.
The other one was a lord of the rings type thing. It was good but I suspect impossible to win. Every turn ended with the haunting words "Do you want the dawn?". There were four characters the only one I remember was Tolken the Skulkren. At the time that name always jarred as a little too similar and a little too poetic.

Anyway very limited controls and graphics. You could either look North, East, South or West or move that direction. Good game but never won it.

Random 80s computer game memory

Comments