The Games of my Life

From Julian Gollop, the author of Chaos, came this masterpiece, in 1988: Laser Squad. Quite probably, the best and most popular turn-based tactical game in the 80s.

What made LS so popular, even with action game fans? Among other things, it was polished, easy to learn, and had arcade-style graphics, instead of the common symbolic representations in strategy games. In other words, the player was able to see things as if he was actually there (only, of course, looking from above). This may seem normal these days (e.g. Jagged Alliance, Pathway to Glory, Gollop’s own later X-Com), but Laser Squad was the first game which showed everything so well. And all was controllable with a mere one-button joystick, or with 5 keys (4 directions plus fire). The graphics were good and realistic, and the explosions were a pleasure to watch – especially if it was an enemy caught in them.

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No, I haven’t forgotten the C64 – although I only had one quite late in its life, there were some unforgettable masterpieces for that little 1 MHz (!) beast. This, System 3’s The Last Ninja 2 is certainly one of them.

Oddly enough, I played the Spectrum version first, and one tends to get attached to the version he plays first. But the C64 version blew me away. One screen of this game has more atmosphere than many entire games. The music is hauntingly beautiful (all 13 tunes). There’s a sense of almost tangible despair, of being in a world where everyone tries to kill you, yet, everything is familiar – a park, city streets, sewers, an office building, and so on. And the environment is at least as dangerous an enemy as your human enemies. The whole game is hard and unforgiving – no “tutorials where you can’t do wrong”, or any kind of hand-holding here. But the feeling of finally passing a level (after hours or even days), and getting a beautifully drawn loading screen for the next one, complete with a new tune, and the suspense of not knowing what’s next…

Oh, and there’s an alligator in the sewers. I knew it all along.

If you’re not a graphics junkie (or even if you are, but can see games in the context of when they were released), get an emulator and the game, and try it for yourself. You’ll truly appreciate how sad it is that these days there are only first person shooters, sports games and MMORPGs.

Hint: even if you, at the time, finished the Spectrum version (or even another one, such as the Amiga or the PC ports), try the original C64 version. It’s the only one that really “got” it.

It could be called a Double Dragon clone. It could also be called a River City Ransom clone. But one thing is certain: there’s no better game of this kind on an 8-bit computer than Imagine’s Target: Renegade. Well, the Spectrum version, at least.

T:R isn’t a very complex game – in fact, it’s a sequel to Imagine’s previous “Renegade”, which was a port of the Taito arcade game (but the Spectrum version was much better than the original, which had one of the worst control schemes in history. Don’t believe me? Try the arcade version in MAME, and weep.) The sequel, however, is a completely original game for 8-bit computers, although, as I said, derivative of Double Dragon and others.

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Do you like “Lord of the Rings”? Tolkien’s epic, the best known fantasy book in the world? Do you like Peter Jackson’s fantastic movie adaptations? If so, isn’t the idea of living the epic, even if “just” in a video game, tempting?

If you want to re-live the movies, the best choice is Electronic Arts’ two games, “The Two Towers”, and, especially, “Return of the King”. They’re fantastic, whether on a console or on the PC. But they’re movie adaptations – basically, you “play” the movies’ main battles. Those two are great action games, I’m not trying to diminish them in any way.

But if you want to re-live the books…

… there’s not a better choice than Mike Singleton’s 1984 classic, Lords of Midnight.

Nope, it’s not “Tolkien-licensed”. It’s not an official LotR adaptation in any way. And Mike actually wrote a short novella, which was included with the game, and was a joy to read.

But the game, a mix of adventure and strategy, was, 21 years ago, and is, right now, the best way to re-live Lord of the Rings – not an exploration of Middle Earth, not a meeting with Tolkien’s characters, but, instead, what Gandalf – who orchestrated the entire strategy – must have felt, and the challenges he had to meet.

Lords of Midnight is the perfect, still unequaled blend of grand strategy – defeating, or stopping, or at least delaying the Dark Lord’s might by force of arms – with high adventure – a heroic quest of a brave hero who attempts, without an army behind him, using only stealth and courage, to destroy the Dark Lord’s main source of power – which, obviously, can only be done deep inside the Dark Lord’s territory. Sound familiar?

Really, play this game. There’s a reason it still has an active community, with enhancements, remakes, multi-player versions and so on… after 21 years.