Bozo's Night Out

Bozo’s Night Out was released in 1984 on the Commodore 64 by a company called Taskset, which released several games for the system.  This was back when games like this were commonly released on cassette tape instead of on floppy disk (imagine trying to explain that to today’s kids, to whom even the floppy disk would be a foreign concept).

The Commodore 64 was a very sophisticated system for its time, and was very popular as a gaming platform, predating the PC.  It was an 8-bit system, putting it in a similar realm as the Nintendo Entertainment System, but as a personal computer was on some levels capable of much greater sophistication.  This can be readily seen in the extremely large library of RPG titles available, including the extremely popular “Gold Box” series of Dungeons and Dragons titles released by SSI.  Some of these titles also saw ports to the NES, but a great deal was always lost in the transition.  The Commodore 64 sports some of the largest (not to mention most difficult) RPGs released, so fans of the genre have a lot to love about the system.

Then again, on the other side of things, you have Bozo’s Night Out.  A simple arcade game, one amongst hundreds of such titles released on the C64, Bozo hardly pushed the system to its limits.  Gameplay on arcade-style games like Bozo was generally less sophisticated, and yet Bozo exudes a certain charm and sense of fun that made it one of my favorite titles on the system.

The premise is simple: you play the role of Bozo, a drunk whom you must guide safely home from the bar each night.  There is a meter at the top of the screen showing the number of pints consumed by Bozo, and each night this meter increases by several pints.  With each new level and its corresponding pint increase, Bozo becomes more difficult to control, and will often stumble randomly about to the left and the right, making it a challenge keeping him on the straight and narrow path to safety.  Although this sounds like a particularly frustrating mechanic on paper, in gameplay it actually works pretty well for the game.  True, it is frustrating trying to walk Bozo between a thug and an open manhole, only to have him unexpectedly veer into one of them, but you learn to keep as much distance as possible and sweat your way through the close encounters, and it only truly becomes a matter of difficulty in the very last few nights of the game, when Bozo’s drinking has gone to extremes.

The obstacles Bozo must avoid include police officers who will haul him to jail, thugs, old ladies and women (hookers?) who will beat him to a pulp, and open manholes.  On the latter stages, as Bozo’s pint intake increases high enough, pink elephants will also begin roaming the streets.  Fail to keep Bozo away from these, and he does not die but restarts with fewer pints.  Run the pint meter all the way down, and it’s game over.

What makes the game so charming?  It’s the little things, mostly.  Bozo himself if a comical enough character, and being beaten by an old lady with a cane and sent to the hospital is entertaining as well.  Even the younger women have their own unique touches: Bozo’s Night Out sported bouncy boobies long before Dead or Alive and its dedication to “breast physics” ever came on the scene.  The music is a high point as well.  There is only one tune, but it is upbeat and very catchy.

As this is October and I’ve been focusing on horror-themed games, Bozo’s Night Out does have on last thing to offer: the town you wander through is surrounded by a brick wall, and here and there are doorways to go through and into the woods beyond.   This can be a handy way to escape some of the more dangerous situations on the street, however, attempting to shortcut through the park can be treacherous as well, as it is filled with monsters and goblins who will hunt Bozo down.  These freakish creatures include what appear to be mutant squirrels, strange mushroom men and skull-faced demons.  Whether the park is haunted or the ghouls are the figment of Bozo’s boozy imagination is hard to decide, but as a kid I generally avoided the park as meeting your fate amongst the ghouls seemed worse than incurring the wrath of Grandma’s cane.

2600 Horror: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween

Wizard Video Games was a title created by the slightly better-known distribution company Wizard Video to distribute Atari 2600 games based on horror movie titles.  Wizard Video was created by Charles Band, who would go on to create Full Moon Productions (now Full Moon Features), the company behind cult horror titles like Puppet Master and Subspecies.

Wizard, known for distributing sleaze titles like I Spit on Your Grave (a film Roger Ebert would describe as one of the worst he ever saw, which left him feeling uncomfortable sitting amongst movie-goers who were clearly enjoying the sadistic on-screen depravity), had home distribution rights for the The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, a 1974 cult-classic horror film released on VHS by Wizard Video in the 1980s.  During this time Wizard Video determined that there may be money in video game adaptions of adult horror films, and thus the Wizard Video Games label was born and the Atari 2600 adaptations of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween came to life.

Although horror and video games fit together well nowadays, the hardware of the 2600 was not sophisticated enough to create a truly atmospheric game.  Perhaps the best example of this basic hardware used to good effect for horror would be Atari’s own Haunted House, which used lack of visibility, claustrophobic environments, a one-item-at-a-time inventory and enemies which could not be killed to create tension.  Wizard Video Games opted for more visceral imagery to set the games apart.  Unfortunately, this resulted in a very mixed bag, seeing as the Atari 2600’s graphical capabilities made it difficult to create an effective shock based on imagery.  In the end, Wizard Video Games produced only two titles, one a very pathetic attempt at adult horror, the other a decent effort that at least produced some suspense.  Owing to the graphic imagery in both, however, retail distribution was slim, and the retailers that did carry the titles often sold them behind the counter.  Thus the games gained very low exposure and, in a time where graphic violence in video games (still largely seen as toys) was uncommon or unheard of, the games developed notoriety.  Low production and poor sales mean that these two titles are now highly sought by collectors, especially if they can be found with intact packaging.

Starting with the worst, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre does not even make a pretense at being scary, only at being “adult” through its use of violence.  The player takes the roll of Leatherface and chases girls through a field, killing them with a chainsaw for points.  Graphically the game comes across as ridiculous, with Leatherface wearing what could easily be taken for blue pajamas and “chainsaw” that looks like a child’s rendition sticking right out of his chest.  Should you catch any victims, killing them results in an odd jumble of pixels, perhaps to suggest a mutilated body, but it is really hard to tell what they were going for.  There are other objects littering the field, and touching them temporarily freezes your character.

The game is extremely simplistic and involves almost no strategy.  You simple run, saw up your victims and avoid obstacles.  Your chainsaw constantly loses fuel, which acts as the game timer.  Once the fuel is gone, the game is over.  It’s strictly a race to gain as many points as possible, but the game is so basic and easy that if it were not for the idea of chasing people with a chainsaw, the game would have dropped into obscurity without much notice.

Halloween, on the other hand, is a game where Wizard Video Games revealed that they could produce a half-way decent product.  In it, the player takes on the role of a babysitter, and you and the children under your care are being stalked by Michael Myers.  The graphics are decent for the 2600 and the house has multiple rooms and floors to explore.  The objective is to run through the house, collect the children and lead them, one at a time, to the front door to escape.  While you search, Michael will appear, seemingly at random, to threaten you and the kids.  Whenever he appears onscreen, a rendition of the iconic Halloween theme begins to play, which is a great touch and adds to the tension.  When Michael appears, you can either run and try to lose him, or if you find a knife in one of the rooms, can turn and attack him instead.  Also changing things up, some rooms in the house experience power outages, and you can only see in these rooms through brief flashes of lightning.

Apart from the theme, Halloween’s “adult” status comes from actual depictions of animated blood.  If Michael catches you, he cuts off your head and your character runs back a few paces, spurting blood from the neck.  The same thing happens should Michael catch one of the children you are trying to protect.  Find a knife, however, and you can give Michael a taste of his own medicine, although in true Halloween fashion, he will still show up later, apparently unharmed, so this is a temporary (though satisfying) relief.

Unlike The Texas Chainsaw Massacre this title is actually fun to play, at least for a little while, and it displays some decent 2600 graphics and a reasonable amount of tension.  Had it not been for the bloody decapitations, the title may have had a chance for more wide-spread appeal and could have been remembered as a classic title on the 2600.  As it is, it is an obscure gem and collector’s item.

Haunted House

Haunted House, released for the Atari 2600 in 1982, is easily one of the best titles on the system.  The 2600 had few adventure games available for it, and most people readily think of Adventure as the sole example, but Haunted House was both an adventure title and one of the earliest examples of survival horror.

Played from a top-down perspective, you are an adventurer sneaking into the haunted mansion of Zachary Graves in search of an urn.  The ghost of Graves roams the dark halls of the mansion, and spiders and bats have taken up residence as well.  Your character appears as a pair of eyes shining out of the darkness, which has a certain minimalistic charm about it.  2600 titles are rarely known for their graphics, but the setting of Haunted House allowed the rudimentary graphical capabilities to be used to good effect.

At first look the game may not seem either frightening or challenging.  The brightly colored walls in the screenshots certainly don’t create much atmosphere, but these shots are actually of the game on its easiest setting.  It makes for a better image, allowing you to see more of the game field, but on all but the easiest difficulty settings those walls and the playfield are completely black.  You find your way around the mansion by lighting matches (you have an endless supply) which create a small glow around your character and will show the walls, doors and any items hidden in the rooms.  Items are urn pieces (it is broken into three, all of which must be found to reassemble it), a scepter that wards off ghosts, and key that can be used to open locked doors.  The trick is that you can only hold one item at a time.  Once the urn is rebuilt, you must make your way to the front door of the mansion and make your escape.

At the higher levels of difficulty the game can be quite exhilarating.  Trying to escape from the ghost of Mr. Graves as he chases you through dark rooms only to come to a locked door for which you have no key is probably one of the more thrilling moments of frustration you’ll encounter in a 2600 title, and having the urn completed but trying to find a route to the front door that doesn’t require a key (since you cannot carry it and the urn at the same time) can leave you scratching your head, especially when you catch the notice of a bat or spider.  The gameplay is simple and basic, but is an excellent example of how the early hardware of the 2600 could create an engrossing gaming experience that is better than the sum of its parts.  The game is still in circulation as part of an iOS release (Atari’s Greatest Hits) and part of the Microsoft Game Room for XBox 360.

In 2010 Atari released a direct sequel to the original game on Windows, Wii and Xbox Live Arcade.  A cartoonish style was given to the game, which tells the tale of the original hero’s two grandchildren searching the Graves manor for clues to their grandfather’s disappearance (apparently he never did escape with that urn).  Gameplay is fairly simple as you search throughout the manor for clues, fight off ghosts and ghouls (which are harmed by light sources) and solve simple puzzles to get around.

The game takes queues from the original title, but has received poor marks for its simple and somewhat repetitive gameplay.  However, this new title is clearly aimed more at children, and taken as such it’s actually a rather fun little romp.  If you were looking at the game and honestly expecting something along the lines of Resident Evil, you’ve only yourself to blame for that.

2014 saw the release of yet another Haunted House title from Atari, this time an iOS game.  Although it is playing homage to the original game in title and theme, the game otherwise bears no resemblance, being instead another “endless runner” game.  What the game has going for it is a cartoonish style that’s rather fun and a twist on the usual game mechanic: you do not control your character directly, but as he runs you instead interact with the environment around him, using swipes and gestures to ward off monsters, open up new pathways and spring traps before he triggers them himself.  It makes for a slightly more cerebral exercise than the usual runner, and deserves points for trying something new.

Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night

Halloween draws ever nearer, and with it comes tales of Gothic horror, the most famous of which may be the tale of Dracula; and the most famous of games involving Dracula surely must be Konami's Castlevania.

To detail the history of the Castlevania series would be a feat whole webpages have been dedicated to, so this review will only showcase a single title, the mobile game Castlevania Puzzle: Encore of the Night, released on iOS in 2010 and Windows Phone in 2011.

The game retells the story of Symphony of the Night, utilizing sprites, animation and dialog from the famous Playstation title, but revamps the gameplay to a more casual mode of play in keeping with its status as a mobile offering. Yet for a game that can be played in short bursts, there is a surprising amount of depth and longevity in the title.

Musically and graphically the game deviates little from its namesake title, but this is hardly a bad thing. Symphony of the Night had an excellent soundtrack which is fully realized in Encore, and the graphics of the original still hold up today, and look sharp on the smaller mobile screen.

Gameplay has made a drastic turn, converting from the action/RPG styling moving into a puzzle/RPG hybrid. You move Alucard through Dracula's castle room by room (the layout follows that of Symphony of the Night, including the locations of hidden areas) and battles occur as random encounters. Once engaged, combat takes place in a sequence very much like the Capcom title Puzzle Fighter: pairs of colored tiles fall from the top of the screen and you and your opponent match them up to eliminate them and set up chain reactions to inflict damage. It is a simplistic and intuitive game mechanic, but the complexity goes far deeper than its trappings: when you become familiar with it you find that you can perform complex maneuvers and even parry your enemy's attacks (and they yours) by not only setting up chains, but timing the  execution of them to the movements of your foe.

With each battle you win, you gain experience that you use to level-up Alucard.  Once you achieve a new level, you will has attribute points that you can assign as you choose to customize Alucard's power.  You can increase his defense, attack, luck and magical abilities to name a few.  You may choose to round out the character in each attribute, or specialize in just a few, creating a character who is both more powerful and more vulnerable.  Whatever decisions you make will have an impact on the game.  In addition to experience, enemies also randomly drop items, which may be one-use healing items or more robust and rare things like pieces of armor you can equip to further extend Alucard's powers.

All in all there is lots of customization, lots of items to collect and combine for different effects, and lots of areas to explore and foes to defeat.  The difficulty as you progress increases steadily, and bouts with boss enemies will test everything you've learned.  The challenge and the rewards are high, but like many RPGs, the game can lend itself to long periods of grinding to level up a character before a particularly brutal face-off.

If you're expecting the action-oriented gameplay of the rest of the Castlevania franchise, you will be disappointed with Encore of the Night, but if you are a fan of puzzle games and RPGs, it has a lot to offer even if you are unfamiliar with Castlevania in general.

Into The Dead

Released in November 2012 by PikPok (and still receiving updates and support from the developers), Into The Dead is a grand mobile game for iOS that falls within the "Endless Runner" genre, but is a far cry from the gameplay of Temple Run and its kin.  I would say a more accurate understanding of the game would be to image Call of Duty's Zombies mode translated into a casual mobile game that you can pick up and put down with ease (as opposed to the full translation of the same, which exists also).

Taking place during the zombie apocalypse, the game starts you off right in the middle of the action, having your avatar pick himself up from a helicopter crash surrounded by the undead. You're alone and unarmed, so running is your only option.  Unfortunately, you're exposed in the country, the undead are everywhere and there is no place to hide.

Gameplay takes place from a first person perspective.  The landscape is dark and foggy provides a claustrophobic feeling, especially when running through heavily wooded areas filled with zombies.  Here and there you will come across weapons lying on the ground that you can pick up and use to clear the path ahead of you.  These range from pistols to chainsaws and sub-machine guns, and all are fun to use.  Ammo can be an issue though, so conservation is generally recommended if you are going for distance.

Not that distance is the only way to play.  Into The Dead includes multiple unlockable play modes, such as Massacre where the primary objective is not to run as far as possible, but to take out as many zombies as you can.

The game is free to play, but is worth a $2.99 fee that disables ads (banners and video ads on the menu screens).  You earn money based on your performance each round which you can save to unlock additional items or purchase single-use bonuses.  If you're the impatient type you can also purchase coins to unlock things more quickly.

Games are generally quick and the gameplay is quite frantic. Zombies are everywhere, and even if you don't directly run into one, they will reach out to grab you and can knock you off-course with their swings, resulting in some hair-raising experiences as you race between large groups of ghouls.  Get too close, and you'll meet with a terrible, messy fate.

The fast-paced gameplay and the variety of weaponry keeps things entertaining, as does the atmosphere.  The game is a bit on the dark side, but makes a great choice for playing in bed at night with the lights turned out.  The game also provides you with missions, which increase in difficulty and ask you to perform tasks such as killing a set number of zombies with a given weapon.  Completing certain missions can also unlock new weapons.

Overall it's a very well-designed, difficult yet addictive game that you can pick up and put down quickly.  If you want a zombie-killing fix and don't have a lot of time, it's a top-of-the-line choice.

Baron Baldric: A Grave Adventure and Mystic Towers

Baron Baldric: A Grave Adventure is an oft overlooked game developed by Animation F/X in 1992 Amiga and PC.  Overlooked, perhaps, because it was sold only in Australia, but the game’s primary character became more widely known owing to a much more prominent sequel published by Apogee in 1994.

Possessing a decided whimsical quality that sets it apart from other titles, you do not play as a muscle-bound hero or a scantly-clad amazon, but rather a peculiar, somewhat uncouth but very humorous old man with a walking stick.  Baron Baldric is hardly the stuff gaming mascots are made out of, but he’s so amusing that he makes for an entertaining experience all on his own.  He has a variety of odd mannerisms that he displays during gameplay that make him more than just an old-looking avatar and give him a very distinct personality.

A Grave Adventure is a side-scrolling arcade/puzzle style adventure game.  The storyline has Baldric facing one of his ancestries, the evil Baron Lazarus, whose lust for wealth and power let him to experiment with dark magic, ultimately transforming himself into a werewolf.  After kidnapping a village milkmaid named Rosie, however, people had enough and did him in.  Now his werewolf spirit haunts his castle, protecting his wealth and entrapping the soul of poor lil’ Rosie.

Enter Baron Baldric.  You take off through the maze-like castle levels, seeking riches and  avoiding the spirit of Lazarus who roams them as well.  Rosie’s spirit also flits about the levels as a stark-naked angel, perhaps providing Baldric with some extra incentive to defeat Lazarus and set her free.

Ultimately it’s a charming, humorous game, but it is the sequel where Baron Baldric really shines.  Providing much more spit and polish, the second game, Mystic Towers, was published by Apogee in 1994.  The game features beautiful VGA graphics that still hold up today, and an atmospheric soundtrack.  The gameplay went off in a radically different direction.  The game begins like an old Disney movie, with a shot of an old storybook opening up to reveal the plot.  Spread across Baldric’s land are several old towers associated with Baron’s ancestor Lazarus, and these are cursed and crawling with monsters.  The locals plead with our good baron to use his magic to neutralize them.  Baldric, not a man to shun adventure, takes up his staff and sets out to clean house.

The game takes place in an isometric perspective.  The various towers have multiple levels filled with traps, magic and monsters.  Genre-wise the game could be classified as an action-adventure, but exploring the towers often has more of an RPG feel.  The goal in each tower is to destroy all monsters living within it, along with a “monster generator”, a stone alter that will cause them to re-spawn until it has been destroyed.  The Baron has multiple spells at his disposal, attack spells for slaying monsters and more practical spells for surviving traps and solving puzzles.  The game has a slower, more deliberate pace and is both challenging and filled with adventure.

It really is a shame that more people aren’t aware of Baron Baldric, but for those interested in taking a look, I would highly recommend Mystic Towers.  The title stands on its own feet without a prior knowledge of A Grave Adventure and the gameplay is as compelling today as it was when it was first released.

Halloween Harry / Alien Carnage

A favorite title of mine that I was introduced to early in my PC gaming days, Alien Carnage (known at the time I first played it as Halloween Harry) is a story of a good game that met an untimely end.

Developed by Interactive Binary Illusions and SubZero Software and published by Apogee, the game had all the hallmarks of a great 90s action platformer: muscle-bound hero, lots of weapons and a crazy alien plot to take over the world.  It fit perfectly in line with other Apogee titles like Duke Nukem and Bio Menace, but with beautiful VGA graphics, a rocking soundtrack and a plot that involves aliens transforming people into zombies.

Originally released in October 1993 under the title Halloween Harry and then re-released in 1994 as Alien Carnage, the game has a somewhat colorful past.  After the initial release, Apogee grew concerned that the game’s title would lead people to believe it was a seasonal game connected to Halloween, when in fact the title was simply a fun reference to the protagonist saving humankind from enslavement as zombies.  To counter this, Apogee convinced the creators to change the title to the far-more generic “Alien Carnage”.  In addition, they also slightly adjusted the plot and level order.  In the original release, the story states that an alien ship burrows underneath the city, and the episode layout has you first infiltrating a high-rise office building, then gradually making your way into the city sewer system to the alien ship.  Perhaps to create a more natural progression, the Alien Carnage release changed the story so that the ship attached itself to the top of the same high-rise, and Harry begins by clearing aliens from the sewers and then ascending the building.

However, since Apogee’s shareware model makes the first episode of a game available for free, whereas in Halloween Harry you could download and play the high-rise segment, for Alien Carnage you could download and play the sewer segment.  This meant that fully half of the game was available for free.  Of course, Apogee did not broadcast this, and even including a note with the re-release that apart from minor plot adjustments and the name change the game was the same, so there was no need to download it again.  Of course, it didn’t take much effort to realize that the change meant the shareware episode being offered as Alien Carnage was completely different.

One of the elements that made Alien Carnage really stand out from a gameplay perspective is that, despite being a platform game, Harry cannot jump.  Instead, he has a jetback he can use to fly from platform to platform, or just sail around the level if you like.  Also, your primary weapon is a flame-thrower, which throws out a continuous, short-range stream of flame in from of your character that can pass through multiple enemies at a time.  The trade-off is that the flame thrower and your jet-pack share a fuel gauge.  The gauge is reasonably generous, but you won’t want it running down.  Fortunately, there are refueling stations throughout the levels you can return to if you run out.

In addition to your primary weapon, there are also vending machines that dispense additional firepower (money for them is acquired by slaying enemies), such as a photon gun that does about the same damage as the flame thrower, but fires the length of the screen, or a grenade launcher that tosses small explosive canisters.  In addition to the cool-factor of a game that makes your primary weapon a flame-thrower, this is also the only game of which I am aware wherein the grenade launcher is an indispensable weapon.  Harry can only toss the canisters about as far as his flame-thrower travels, but they do significantly more damage, and when paired with a jet-pack, it means you can fly above your foes and rain down death from above, and that never gets old.

Each episode ends with a confrontation with a large boss enemy.  During these confrontations you are limited to the use of your flame-thrower, but the game does away with fuel consumption making this less of a frustration and more of an interesting challenge.  Overall, the game just shines and really deserved to be the start of a franchise.

Unfortunately, the developers tried just that.  In 1996, a sequel was released, titled Zombie Wars (apparently picking up where Apogee’s generic title-change took off).  Although somewhat more ambitious, introducing NPC characters and allowing you to play as both Harry and Diane (present in Harry as your mission control officer), the game was not released by Apogee and lacked polish.  The developers had plans to further the series after Zombie Wars, intending to create a third title and even planning out a children’s cartoon series (which, by the way, would have been awesome) but the series never progressed beyond its frail sophomore offering.  However, Alien Carnage was released as freeware in 2007, so now everyone can enjoy the zombie-slaying goodness of the original title.