Baby’s first dictatorship

It’s been a weird week when it comes to entertainment. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert got cancelled for “financial reasons,” which is a weird way of spelling “fear of retribution from a petty tyrant.” But then, mere days later, the same company renewed South Park for several seasons, and the first thing the creators did was spend an entire episode mercilessly mocking the toddler-king. It’s good to see Trey Parker and Matt Stone haven’t lost their edge, but it did make me nostalgic for simpler times when the show could just be silly jokes about anal probes and World of Warcraft; or even further back, to when I didn’t even know what fascism was. Which brings us to today’s word.

nazi, noun – a member of Germany’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party

Learned from: Into the Eagle’s Nest (Apple II, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Pandora

Published by Pandora, Mindscape, Atari Corporation (1987)

A note to kick things off: I know that the word is supposed to be capitalized, but I’m taking a page from the excellent tabletop RPG about vampires sent to kill Hitler, Eat the Reich, and refusing to give it that dignity.

With that out of the way, I was probably too young to really appreciate Into the Eagle’s Nest, when 7- or 8-year-old me plucked it off the shelf. I’d heard of WWII, at some point I’m sure, but that had been like, 40 years ago by that point, practically ancient history. Certainly something that was over and done with, and that couldn’t possibly end up being relevant in contemporary society. No, instead I saw screenshots on the back of the box that looked kinda like Gauntlet–but the guy on the front had a gun! And he was about to storm a castle, of all things! I didn’t really know what nazis were, but from the art, I went in expecting a weird fantasy/modern mashup, where a lone soldier had to save his squadmates from a Medieval castle crawling with enemy soldiers, sure–but also maybe monsters? It was a castle, after all.

Needless to say, young me was disappointed when, instead of the action-packed combat of Gauntlet, I instead found myself with my first introduction to the stealth genre. This was a slower, more methodical rescue mission that I…really didn’t know what to make of at the time. It didn’t help that the graphics on the Apple II left a lot of ambiguity as to just what it was you were looking at sometimes. Sure, long tables and crates of guns are pretty straightforward, but what about the featureless squares? Looking back after all these years, they might’ve been sandbags, but who knows. Or the green circles? Barrels, maybe? But while I seem to remember you could break them, I don’t think they exploded in classic video game fashion, so, who can say?

Suffice it to say, the presentation, and the gameplay style combined to make a frustrating and underwhelming experience that I never really went back to after I was old enough to possibly appreciate it. These days, I don’t even think it’s available on GoG, so it would be hard to revisit, even if I wanted to. And honestly? I think there’s enough wannabe-nazi bullshit going on in real life to make the prospect seem depressingly relevant.

I mean, look at this cover–dude looks like he’s about to kick down a drawbridge and shoot Dracula in the face or something!

Actions need to have consequences.

I’m not sure how funny this post is going to be, but I’m writing it for several reasons. First, because of the reprehensible and sadly unsurprising siege that was laid to the Capitol Building in Washington D.C., today. I’ve been unable to concentrate on anything else, as democracy in my country nearly came apart entirely at the seams. I need to focus on something else, but I also need to vent some of the maelstrom of emotions I’m feeling right now. Which brings us to tonight’s word.

imprison, verb – to confine or jail

Learned from: Archon II: Adept (Apple II, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1984)

I know that you might be thinking this word seems unlikely, as it’s a simple derivation from “prison.” But I was maybe five years old when I first played Archon II; I knew what a prison was, but I’d never heard “imprison” until seeing the spell here, that immobilized an enemy unit.

That’s about all I can muster for backstory right now, because current events are so much more pressing. Thousands of rioters descended upon one of the most iconic government buildings in my country this afternoon. And by and large, the police just let them. I can understand this at the onset, to some extent: While it’s absurd that there wasn’t a larger security presence, the fact is that the police who were there, were vastly outnumbered. It’s the fact that they more or less just…let these criminals just walk out and go wherever, rather than making any concerted effort to make arrests–that is what has me angriest.

There need to be consequences for this, for as many people involved as possible. If authorities aren’t going through the abundant footage of this, seeking to identify and prosecute as many rioters as they can, then this situation is even worse than it seems. Because it implies a tacit approval for actions like this, and I don’t know how things can move forward, if that’s really how things are.

What’s in a name?

If you’re like me, the current state of things has you pretty frustrated. I considered a bunch of words that would reflect different aspects of the aggravation I’m feeling about how poorly people (in my country at least) are responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, when I realized I could sum it all up in one. It’s not so much the word itself, but rather the game it’s from.

halitosis, noun – bad breath

Learned from: Aaargh! (Apple IIGS, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Arcade, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Binary Design, Sculpted Software

Published by Arcadia Systems, Melbourne House (1988)

Aaargh! is an early attempt at portraying giant monster battles in a game. But in the absence of licensed properties like Godzilla, Ultraman, or King Kong, the developers had to make do with a generic giant lizard, and an “ogre” (which, for some reason, they actually drew as a cyclops). The two monsters were basically sprite swaps, since they each had the same moves, though the ogre certainly got the short end of the stick, thematically. Instead of the lizard’s actual fire breath, he was described as having “halitosis, which is so bad it sets things on fire.” And yes, I dug up the manual to find the exact wording, after twenty-odd years. I’m dedicated. 😉

The game itself was technically less about beating up the other monster, and more about finding the eggs of a giant bird, hidden in a primitive village before your opponent did. (The actual type of bird is another word I learned from this game, but that’s a post for another time.) It was…okay for what it was trying to do, but there are reasons it was overshadowed by Rampage, which came out a few years earlier and offered more robust gameplay. Plus, there’s that title…

aaargh

Aaargh! indeed.

Bodies at rest

I’m sure most of you are under some level of quarantine at this point. Even I, who falls under the “essential worker” category in my state, am currently in the middle of what amounts to a four-day weekend. I’m reading more, whittling down my to-read/watch/play piles, and heck, I’ve even started painting again. By no means do I intend to make light of the COVID-19 situation, but I could get used to this. Which brings us to today’s word.

inertia, noun – the tendency for a body at rest or in motion to remain so, unless acted upon by an outside source

Learned from: Star Control (Genesis, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, PC, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Toys for Bob

Published by Accolade (1990)

Part of me wishes I’d been a bit older when I first played Star Control, because there were a lot of bits of parody that I didn’t get way back in the early ‘90s. From androids having letter designations of tax forms, to the ships of the all-female race of Syreen being shaped like marital aids, most of it sailed right over my naïve, innocent head. What stuck with and captivated me however, was the incredibly addictive combat.

Each of the 15 different races had their own style of ship, with its own unique set of primary and secondary weapons. Everything from cloaking devices, to automated fighter drones, to acidic bubbles made an appearance in this game, and some of the matchups were incredibly fun. The battle between a lightly-armored, inertia-less Arilou fighter, against a hulking Ur-Quan Dreadnought remains one of my favorite in the game, in an Ajax vs. Achilles sort of way: speed vs. raw destructive power and all that good stuff.

Again, they don’t make covers like this anymore, and that’s a shame.

So, about the Archon series…

I realize with my last post, I jumped into the sequel without talking much about the game that came first, though I have learned words from both of them. In an odd, meta-narrative way, this is actually fitting, since I did play Archon II before I ever gave the first one a shot. Since they’re both pretty fun games, with different things to offer, I felt I should give the original some attention. Which brings us to today’s word.

manticore, noun – a mythical creature with the head of a man, the body of a lion, and the tail of a scorpion, also (sometimes) the wings of a bat

Learned from: Archon: The Light and the Dark (Apple II, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, Amiga, PC, Macintosh, NES, Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, PC-88)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1983)

In many ways, the first Archon is a much more straightforward game than its sequel. It has the same system where if two units land on the same square, the screen shifts to an abstract representation of the battlefield, where you fight in real-time, but there’s less environment variety. Instead of elemental planes, you’ve got what amounts to a chessboard with white and black squares. The gimmick comes in the fact that the board undergoes a constant day/night cycle, where the Light side is stronger during the day (and on white squares), while the Dark side is stronger at night (and on black spaces). There are also in-between squares that shift colors along with the time of day. This injects a bit of strategy, where your most mobile units can get to the enemy leader faster, but taking them to their max range in a turn might leave them on the wrong-colored square as day/night is approaching.

And oh, are there a lot of unit types. From basic soldiers, to trolls, to shapeshifters, to the manticore. The description of it above comes from Arabian mythology, and I have to admit, it’s pretty cool…but at the time, I had no idea what I was supposed to be looking at. The thing was just a vaguely quadrupedal mass of blue pixels, with something that looked as much like a satellite dish as a tail. Not exactly frightening. Thankfully, my parents had an encyclopedia with a better illustration, and from that point on, my imagination filled in the blanks better than any graphics of the time could have (cheesy as that probably sounds).

archon

If this looks like an old album cover, you’re not entirely wrong. Some games from this era came in what were essentially record sleeves.

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Or at least that’s what it seems like. Schools, libraries, restaurants, sports venues, and more are all going into quarantine in my area, despite there being no confirmed cases of COVID-19 in our neck of the woods. I’m not downplaying the danger–a 3.7% mortality rate doesn’t sound bad until you extrapolate it out to a country of some 330 million people. If even a third of us catch the coronavirus before the pandemic ends, that’s still over 4 million dead Americans. So while the panic might seem out of proportion at first dint, I can understand the measures being taken. Which brings us to today’s word.

apocalypse, noun – the end of the world; a great and wide-spread disaster

Learned from: Archon II: Adept (Apple II, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari 8-bit, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Free Fall Associates

Published by Electronic Arts (1984)

Less chess-like than its predecessor, Archon II abandoned the checkerboard playing field in favor of a board with four tracks, each aligned with one of the four elements. And instead of just trying to kill the enemy leader, the aim was to summon various creatures (each with their own elemental preferences), to take control of four power points that moved around the field.

That, or just end the world.

Archon II is one of the only competitive games I can think of where, if the match wasn’t going your way (and you had enough mana saved up), you could just flip the digital table and say “If I can’t win, no one can!” Apocalypse was an expensive spell to cast–possibly the most expensive spell in the game–but the option was always there if you really wanted it.

And really, it always struck me as kind of weird that this one spell was available to both players. See, Archon II was less about Good vs. Evil, and more about Order vs. Chaos. Taking your proverbial toys and going home doesn’t really seem to fit the Order M.O., but maybe after putting in different sets of creatures for each faction, there wasn’t enough space left on the disk to give each side a tailored list of spells. Considering that a 5.25-inch floppy only held around 180kb of data, it wouldn’t surprise me.

Still, despite its limitations and odd tactical choices, Archon II was a great game with a lot of replayability.

Archon2adeptcover

Plus, it had some awesome box art–they don’t do covers like this anymore.

Even a cold can be good for something

As the title suggests, I’m sick right now. Have been, for about half a week or so, with a very irritating head cold. It started with my throat hurting, and my voice dropping an octave, then only coming out as a croaky whisper, like a mummy that just woke up after a millennium-long nap in the desert sun. It’s since migrated (somewhat) from my throat to my nose, and if you compressed all the tissues I’ve used back into solid wood, you could probably build, if not a house, then at least a garden shed. All of which brings us to today’s word.

phlegm, noun – The buildup of thick mucous in the respiratory passages.

Learned from: Xenophobe (Atari 7800, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Arcade, Atari 2600, Atari ST, Commodore 64, Lynx, NES, ZX Spectrum)

Developed by Bally Midway

Published by Bally Midway (1987)

Xenophobe was, at its heart, a ripoff of Aliens. It’s a side-scrolling action game, where you have to travel from space station to space station, clearing each one of an alien infestation before the self-destruct sequence counts down. All in all, it’s a decently fun game, with a good variety of weapons and monsters–from little ones that just crawl along, to ones that roll into balls, to the big ones that spit phlegm at you from a distance.

I know it was phlegm and not acid, because the instruction manual (remember those?) said so. As a kid of about seven or eight, I of course knew the term “snot,” but I knew “mucous” as well; phlegm was new to me, though. So much so, that I thought this weird amalgamation of letters was a typo (which weren’t really uncommon in manuals at the time). So, I asked my father–pronouncing the word wrong, I’m sure–and boom, I had a new entry in my burgeoning vocabulary. As well as a hilarious mental image of a hulking alien beast killing your character by covering them in snot. (Hilarious to seven-year-old me, at least.)

Fun fact: Xenophobe also taught me a bit of the Greek alphabet, as each station was Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. I won’t be including those as entries here, since they’re just letters, not full-fledged words, but I think it’s neat that this simple run & gun shooter taught me so many varied things.

xenophobe

Hideous alien hellbeasts–you know, for kids!