Now I may have spent too much time gazing through
the rose tinted glasses of nostalgia, but I think I’m fairly safe in saying
that as a young lad summer was a far better time then than it is today. As an
adult about all we do in summer, is work the same amount, maybe enjoy a beer
garden or 2 and occasionally, if the saving has gone well, take a well earned
holiday. While it’s not exactly horrifying (well the work side is), it’s not
quite as much fun as a kids summer.
Think about it, when you were growing up, still at
school, summertime was something to genuinely look forward, it was almost as
anticipated as Christmas. The following are just a few of the reasons why:
You had 6 weeks off school. 6 whole weeks with absolutely nothing to do, other than play daft games with your friends and be rarely seen in the house.
Every day seemed to be hot. It probably wasn't scorching every day, but I'll bet you probably spent most days in shorts and t-shirt, or whatever young girls liked to wear and you had a tan created by a sunbed or painted on.
Ice cream tasted better. Now this may not sound important, but summer is ice cream season and the better the ice cream the better the day! These days there's just too many varieties of ice cream and sometimes too much choice is a bad thing.
Trips to the seaside. Seaside trips were one of the great delights of being a kid, even though you saw the place at least a couple of times a year, the seaside town you visited always seemed a bit more exotic than your hometown. I was a Blackpool kid and of course Blackpool had the Pleasure Beach, but I'm guessing those who went to Brighton, Skegness and Yarmouth had just as much fun as I did.
No school. I know I mentioned it in the first point, but for a different reason. No school meant no lessons, no sitting in a stuffy classroom filling your growing mind with information you'll likely never need (oh and how we learned the error of that type of thinking). For 6 weeks you didn't have to be structured, you lived almost by instinct.
How would a typical day go? I’ll have an attempt at
recreating one:
8:00am ~ Wake up,
realise you’re not in school, and actually get up without being dragged kicking
and screaming from bed.
8:00am to 9:00am
~ Wash, brush your teeth, use Dads aftershave and try to scream at the shock of
it on your face. Spend a while choosing your clothes, you’d want a pair of
shorts that showed off the scars on your knees, war wounds were cool. Head off
downstairs eat breakfast and watch cartoons.
9:00am to 12:00pm
~ Go knock on for friends, make sure a football is brought along at all times. You
could play many games, and frequently did, but with a football you could either
A) make those games more interesting or B) invent new games. A game of
knockout* wall-y** was to be played before lunch.
*knockout was basically a kids simpler version of a
knockout competition. A goalkeeper was selected and each person had to score a
goal to proceed to the next round, one person was knocked out each round. The
last round, the final, involved the last 2 kids and the winner was the first to
score 3 goals.
**Wall-y involved finding a big wall and blasting a
ball against it. You were only allowed to touch the ball once and that was to
hit it against the wall. You had to hit the ball from where it stopped, or was
rolling toward, and if you missed the target you were out.
12:00pm to 12:30pm ~ Dinnertime. You all congregated
at someones house were their parents would make you all sandwiches and attempt
to boost your sugar levels to insane amounts by filling you up with fizzy pop.
12:30pm to 5:00pm ~ More playtime, a whole
afternoons worth of fun, games and lots of skinned knees. These were the best
times of summer holidays, when you could have that whole afternoon to do
whatever you wished without much fear of parental intrusion, that truly was
heaven then. We had a little wooded area near our estate that we called “The
Forest”, a lot of times we could be found in there, building dens, playing army
and pretending we were outlaws after watching Robin of Sherwood.
5:00pm to 6:00pm ~ Teatime. One of only 2 times
during a day when we were expected to follow a routine. Teatime was rigid, you
were in at 5, washed and sat at the table ready to be served your evening meal.
Either ketchup or brown sauce had to be at the table for tea.
6:00pm to 9:00pm ~ Back out for the final few hours
of the day. This was the time for relaxing and serious debate; football, girls,
who’d win in a battle between He-Man and Lion-O?
9:00pm ~ Time to go home. We had curfews back then
and on pain of death we stuck to them! You didn’t want to be grounded for the
summer for coming in late.
The following day would be more of the same, with
few variations. Unless of course it was the day of the Blackpool trip, then it
was a day for memories.
Those were the days; before responsibility, getting
a job, earning a wage and having to be (almost) sensible. Wouldn’t you like to
go back, if only for a day and see if the memories live up to the reality?
In this continuing series dedicated to the games of
childhood we now enter the cut-throat world of musical chairs.
Now this is a game that has damn near everything, in
fact as far as games go it’s pretty close to perfection. It’s competitive, has
a degree of risk and tension and is performed to corny party music, what more
could you ask? I dare say that with the exception of pass the parcel, musical chairs is the ultimate
party game.
To play the game is simple, to win it requires
speed, anticipation and the ability to correctly use underhanded tactics. I
never even got close to winning a game as a child, probably because I wasn’t
ruthless enough and still am not, I bet I’d get beaten at a game today.
All you need to play, is a large room, plenty of
chairs, an adult to control the music (and halt any potential kiddie riots),
and a large group of over-sugared children. The chairs are set up in a circle
(you could use a square but circles look better), making sure that there is one
less chair than there is children. Once everything is set up just so, the music
can begin.
So the music begins and all the kids start to walk
sedately around the chairs, there may be some jostling of the slower kids but
otherwise all is quite calm. Then the adult DJ hits the pause button, and
pandemonium breaks out. The chairs become a great treasure that must be
attained at all cost, friendship goes out of the window and even family ties are
forgotten as each child strives to be the one who’s not standing at the end.
Ruthless Musical Chairs players forcing the weakest away from that precious last chair.
When the dust clears and peace is restored, one poor
soul will be discovered, teary eyed and snotty nosed, defeated. With one child
now eliminated a chair is removed, thus keeping the number of chairs lower than
the number of kids, and it begins again. The game continues in this way until
all but one of the children are removed. Sometimes this can last as long as
three cheesy pop songs.
With the possibility of prizes awaiting the winner,
is it any wonder that sneaky tactics become the norm? A sly elbow to the person
behind, a little trip to the one in front, anything that can create a few
precious seconds to gain the chair. Children are more ruthless than adults when
they really want to win.
A lesson to be learned, winning at musical chairs
increases the chances of a successful future (obviously this is scientifically
unproven, but still it’s a good theory).
We come now in this series to what is perhaps one of
the simpler childhood games (and considering the lack of complexity of most of
the games we played, that truly is an outstanding/crap achievement). We’re here
to take a look at the game of tag, sometimes known as tig, depending on where
you are from. We actually called it tig, and thought tag was a silly name for
the game.
As mentioned in the first sentence it’s a simple
game, you simply run after someone and hit them. Hey presto, just like that, they are “it”.
But for all its simpleness it’s a game that has many
variations, all dependent on where you choose to play. There was basic tig,
ball tig, off ground tig, sit down tig, statue tig, team tig and many others as
ridiculous as those mentioned. Whichever of the variations you played had its
own rules; ball tig you could only tig someone by hitting them with a ball, sit
down tig you couldn’t be tigged if you were sat down and so on. The one basic
rule common to all games, after you had tigged someone they couldn’t turn
around and tig you straight back, that rule was inviolate and when it was
broken war was declared and the UN were called.
Just took a quick break here and had a look at
Wikipedia, and fuck me there’s more varieties than even I thought.
Because we used to have a half decent park near
where I lived (the council have since pulled it down, bastards), our favourite
version of the game was off ground tig. The kid who was “it” would chase
everyone else around, obviously, the game wouldn’t be quite as much fun if the
chaser didn’t do any actual chasing. “It” was not allowed on any of the parks
equipment, however those who were not “it” could climb on the swing, slide or
roundabout for anything up to 30 seconds at a time. Once they were off the
ground as it were they were safe until their 30 seconds was up.
What it felt like when "It" was after you!
Theoretically a simple game of tig could last for
years, because the game could not ever be fucking won. Thankfully most of us
aren’t stupid enough to run around a small area yelling “tig, you’re it” and
giggling like asylum inmates for years at a time.
I guess though that some of
us still love the game and wish to play it, the popularity of the Facebook
poke-wars attests to this. I’ve even been told that there’s a sexual variation
on the game of tig, though as of yet I haven’t had the chance to experience it
and so prove it exists.
Here we are continuing our nostalgic look back at
the games we used to play as wee little children. This article is about the
extremely popular game known as hide-and-seek or hide-and-go-seek. The extra
word made no difference to the game by the way.
Everyone who is anyone has played hide-and-seek,
it’s virtually a staple of childhood; like watching cartoons, rolling in the
mud and dreaming of being allowed to go to McDonalds on your own. You can even
play hide-and-seek with imaginary friends, though I can pretty much guarantee
that that’s one game you won’t ever fucking win. Have you ever tried finding
the hiding place of someone who doesn’t even exist? It’s a bitch I tell you.
You need quite a large area with lots of stuff
around to have a really good game, playing hide-and-seek in an empty meadow is
just a bit silly.
So what is hide-and-seek? Well obviously it’s a game
in which you hide and someone else seeks, duh! Just as a random thought, it’s
also a great way of training up future special forces soldiers.
What happens is this; a place is selected to be home
or base, or whatever you want to call it, someone is chosen to be “The Seeker”,
usually the least popular or youngest kid there, the chosen one is then
instructed to close their eyes and count to a pre-determined number. The count
starts and everyone scatters, trying to find the perfect place of concealment.
If the chosen play area has enough, houses, gardens, walls or trees, then the
possibilities of finding a decent hiding place are nearly endless.
Once the seeker has concluded his count he’ll then
start to hunt, using formerly unknown tracking abilities and thinking outside
the box (under that car looks promising). Once he discovers one of the hiders,
he then has to race his prey back to home/base/big fucking tree. Whoever is
back first has to touch base and utter the phrase “Ollie, Ollie, oxen free” in
a loud voice, the hand must be on base when they it. If the seeker is back
first then the one he found becomes seeker for the next game.
Hiding from a seeker in a typical game of hide and seek.
However if he doesn't catch anyone the poor little bastard to do it all over again next round!
While he has ensured, probably, that the next time
around he’ll be among the hiders, there are still others to be found. Not much
of a fun game if you only have to catch one person is it? As in most games, the
winner is the last to be caught, or last to get to base and declare themselves
safe.
With the exception of choosing a dangerous hiding
place, hide-and-seek is one of the safer childhood games, the emphasis of the
game is on being really quiet and also really fast, rather than being able to
pancake whoever you’re trying to catch.
Six fingered men, chatty duellists, scheming Sicilians, rodents of unusual size and oodles and oodles of revenge!
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, humans and aliens, allow me to introduce to you a true cinematic epic, a timeless classic of the silver screen, a modern masterpiece...
Hmm, maybe the above was a bit over-exaggerated? Alright, we'll scrub the cinematic epic and silver screen classic bit, I'm sticking by masterpiece though, because it bloody well is!
What is? I hear you ask breathlessly ..... Oi! Stop laughing over there!
It's The Princess Bride of course. The single greatest over the top fantasy/revenge/comedy/romance movie ever to delight my formerly innocent eyes. They're jaded and cynical eyes now by the way! The movie that made revenge look cool and edgy, that made Sicilians look slimy, that made marriage look scary and pirates look dashing. The Princess Bride!
*Looks at all the blank, confused faces*
Sheesh! Bloody hell!!
You know it's shocked me on more than one occasion the amount of people I know who've never seen, or even heard of this film. Another shock is those who dismiss it as crap without having seen it, purely because it's a fantasy tale.
Can I call people morons in a kind way?
Ah fuck it, if you dismiss a film 'cause you ain't seen it then you're a moron! Ha it's my blog I'll say what I wish, deal with it MoFo's! ... I'm smiling and saying that friendly like!
Anyhoo back on topic. The Princess Bride! I'm not going to do a review here, those rare souls who've read previous entry's will know I don't do reviews, well I don't think they're reviews, I prefer to call it an overview.
Anyhow our story starts off, kind of, with young Stablehand Westley (our hero). Stablehand Westley like any young man his age dreams of chopping people up in to bacon sized chunks and wooing beautiful, rich women (the chopping people up dream may not be strictly true).
As luck would have it (and a convenient plot), young Westley becomes the infatuation of the beautiful and rich Buttercup. Awwwww! See, you can always achieve your dreams if you live in a fairytale land.
If memory serves aright (to my shame I've been a few years without seeing the film), Buttercup is a bit of a dominatrix at first, constantly ordering poor Westley about. Bloody privileged people huh? However, eventually, true love develops between them ... it is fantasy after all.
Buttercup and Westley enjoy an unspecified amount of time getting to know each other and doing all the things that loved up couples do. Fortunately we're spared from watching those antics! For reasons I can't quite remember, Westley then decides that he must make his fortune and promptly heads off for sea. Doesn't that strike you as odd? He's getting all hot and heavy with a stunning bank account and then decides to run off to be a sailor? Kinda screams commitmentphobe to me, hmm! No wonder us men are so stereotyped when that's happening on the big screen! Westley I had high hopes for you, now you've left me sad...
The abandoned Buttercup lives on in hope that her wayward beau will return to her, we all cling to something I suppose, then she receives dire news. Westley has been cruelly murdered by the Dread Pirate Roberts!
Dread Pirate Roberts? Doesn't quite have the same menacing ring to it as Blackbeard, does it?
Poor abandoned Buttercup isn't destined to spend her life alone though. Riding in to her life comes the brave (cowardly) and dashing (idiotic) Prince Humperdinck.
The Pratty Prince is on the hunt for a woman who can see past his title and hate him for who he really is. That's not hard trust me, watch the film and you'll agree. What Humperdinck lacks in personality and wit he more than makes up for with complete buffoonery.
So Prince Buffoon meets Abandoned Buttercup and they fall in apathy and agree to marry.
Prince Humperdinck is a bit of an evil twit as well and he wants to start a war, as any true politician always does! So he employs his evil henchman, Count Rugen to come up with a nefarious scheme.
Count Rugen, a man blessed (or cursed) with an extra digit upon his hands (six fingered men now has an explanation), comes up with a brilliant (ha), evil and dastardly scheme to have the soon to be Princess Buttercup kidnapped and a neighbouring nation blamed for it. Scandalous! Never trust anyone with a title, they're all evil, underhanded bastards!
Little note here; I'm not precisely sure that The Six Fingered Man hatched the Buttercup kidnapping plot, but for the purposes of this blog he did, so nit picking from the informed please.
Count Rugen hires a crack (snorts) team of mercenaries to abduct and flee with the poor, young lady. I bet she was thrilled actually. I mean if your future involved spending the rest of your life with someone who has less personality than a store mannequin wouldn't you want a change of scenery pretty quickly? Thought so! So late one night the future Princess Buttercup is stolen away from her comfortable and boring existence.
The professional kidnapping mercenaries flee across the sea with their prize, guided by their leader, the brilliant, scheming Sicilian, Vizzini. For them to be led by anyone else would be inconceivable.....
Ah Vizzini, a man who's intellect is so vast he can call Aristotle, Plato and Socrates morons and utterly believe his own words. Would anyone ever willingly challenge him? After all it's well known that you never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
The man is actually an idiot!
Without his giant, musclebound henchman Fezzik to watch his back, Vizzini would be nothing more than an annoying mouth.
Loyal, brave, strong and utterly dumb Fezzik. I guess every mercenary gang in history needed a big brute to do all the donkey work for them, you know; throwing boulders, crushing heads and moving small countries, that kind of grunt work. Step up Fezzik, you may not be much in the brains department, but you don't need to be, you have a sneaky, bald Sicilian to do your thinking for you. You poor bastard you!
Despite their brains and brawn, neither Fezzik nor Vizzini would be able to pull off a daring kidnapping without the blade of a master swordsman to protect them. In a medieval fairytale land the sword is boss and everyone pays attention to it. To be sure of success in a daring raid you need to have a better swordsman than your adversaries do, you need a man so driven by vengeance that he wills himself to be the best! Here he is.
Meet Inigo Montoya, swordsman extraorinaire, driven by extreme vengeance to kill people with more than the required number of fingers on their hands. Well when you're seeking vengeance for something, having such a distinguishable feature does tend to narrow down the number of people you have to skewer!
Mr Montoya is searching for a man with six fingers, believed to be culpable in the murder of his father. Have you seen any six fingered men yet? He intends to recite him something (I'm guessing it ain't poetry), before entering a sharp bit of metal in to his body. Nice!
So there we have it, a princess to be has been kidnapped, the kidnappers have been revealed and for some reason they're being pursued across the sea by the totally non-scarily named Dread Pirate Roberts. Why has he even got involved? Maybe he just wants a wench he can put across his knee and spank every so often, hmm...
What follows on is the main meat of the film, which I shall not reveal to you, save to say there will be death, duels, swamps full of fire, dangerous rodents of a quite unusual size, witty one liners, sneakiness, more death, some part death and the oh so joyous revenge! As well as pure badassery like in the only clip I shall show you:
Be amazed at the awesomeness there!
So there you have a brief, totally non-review like look at The Princess Bride. I implore you to watch it, to enjoy it and to quote the hell out of it like lots of us knowledgeable folk do online!
“There’s
somebody at the door, there’s somebody at the door”
Can I ask, has anyone ever been so excited by
someone knocking on their door that they’ve all but had an orgasm at the
thought of having a visitor? Nope? I thought as much. So it’s just the freaks and
window-lickers then!
But I suppose you can’t really blame Rod Hull for
getting a tad enthusiastic about the possibility of adult conversation, all he
had to talk to really was a bunch of waster kids and a psychotic puppet that
resembled an emu. Any conversation that didn’t make him feel like a paedophile
must have been a welcome relief. And seeing as his house was called “the pink
windmill” adult visitors must have been few and far between.
In curiosity, what kind of visitor could a man who
lives in a pink fucking windmill, and constantly has his hand up Emu’s arse
expect? Certainly no one rational, no one he can talk politics or any of the
major issues of the day with. Would you want to travel to a bright pink
windmill and run the risk of getting pecked to death by a glorified
hand-puppet?
So really it’s no surprise that poor old Rod looked
like he’s made an excited mess in his pants every time there was a rap at the
door. Even if it could have been the police, coming to arrest him for “doing a
Michael Jackson” with all those kids.
And now we’ve brought him up, what the fuck was
Emu’s problem? This was a puppet who’d made it, he was the celebrity of
celebrity’s in the puppet world, eclipsing anything that squeaky voiced idiot
Orville could do. He’s had a successful showbiz career spanning a few decades
and some fairly successful TV shows and he’s rumoured to be up for the lead
role in the new version of Animal Farm. Yet he’s a dick! All he wants to do is
attack people, peck at them until they accept his mastery. Did you know poor
Michael Parkinson is still in therapy, years after Emu’s vicious and unprovoked
attack upon him? Only Rod’s little friends seemed to be safe from Emu’s
attentions.
So why do we love this uncontrollable and rage
filled puppet? Is it because we are an inherently violent species trying to be
civilised, and thus we have to live vicariously through Emu to indulge those
violent tendencies? Or is that far too complex an answer? If anyone has a theory
I’m open to hearing it!
Emu did have someone other than Rod who wanted him
around, though I’m sure Grotbags had a completely different reason for it.
Ah Grotbags, has there ever been another witch quite
like her? Assisted by her two helpers; Robert Redford, a gay robot and C3PO
wannabe and Croc, a huge idiotic crocodile who’d leave even Steve Irwin feeling
unimpressed, Grotbags manages to fuck up just about every plan she hatches. Since
most of her plans involve kidnapping Emu we can only be sorry that she fails
all the time.
Instead of being like any normal and respectable
witch and carrying a wand, the green faced old trout carried along a freaky
looking thing called a “bazazzer”. Looking like a cross between an arm and an
umbrella it was hardly likely induce fear in even the most abject coward, and
the most use she put it to was to beat her incompetent assistants around the
head while shouting “bazazz” to activate the thing.
And there readers is a brief description about a
trio of the freakiest characters ever to disturb young minds. Don’t exactly
sound like role models do they?
Back in the mid-1980s American TV finally achieved
something it had been threatening to do for years, it reached the upper peaks
of cheesiness. Television viewers the world over thought that peak had been
reached with both the A-Team and Airwolf, but those shows while being
inherently cheesy had a few qualities that lifted them into the lower echelons
of comedy drama. But with Street Hawk the TV executives had struck the golden
cheese!
It was bad, so terribly bad, yet I loved it. I suppose
back in the 80s I loved anything to do with speed (still do I guess), and I was
fascinated by the idea of detective work, whether that be by the police or a
genius P.I. TV shows like TJ Hooker, CHiPs, Magnum P.I and The Fall Guy were
all favourites of mine. Street Hawk combined the 2 and thus was instant success
in my juvenile mind.
Basically Street Hawk was about a police officer and
his pet, top secret government motorbike. This was a bike designed to go fast,
now you may say that all bikes are designed for that, however Street Hawk was
so fast that it could fucking outrace the Starship Enterprise! At warp 10! And with
the guy riding it looking in no danger of ever falling off. In fact our hero
looked so relaxed while riding the bike he could have been chilling in his
favourite armchair with his morning newspaper instead of travelling at
ridiculous speeds and enduring insane amounts of G force.
This is Jesse
Mach, an ex-motorcycle cop, injured in the line of duty. Now a police
troubleshooter, he's been recruited for a top secret government mission to ride
Street Hawk--an all-terrain attack motorcycle designed to fight urban crime,
capable of incredible speeds up to three hundred miles an hour...and immense
firepower. Only one man, federal agent Norman Tuttle, knows Jesse Mach's true
identity. The man...the machine...Street Hawk.
There we have the introduction to our hero,
all around American nice guy Mr Jesse Mach. This introduction always followed
on from the opening theme music:
If you’ve read any of my earlier blog posts,
you’ll know just how much I enjoyed the theme music.
What isn’t said above is that while Jesse Mach
is a police officer by day, at night when out breaking light speed records he’s
a friggin’ vigilante, and his own daytime boss wants to arrest him. Said boss
doesn’t know that one of his underlings is the ruthless vigilante motorcycle
warrior. Well obviously otherwise he’d just slap the cuffs on him when he
arrived for work in the morning and bitch slap him a few times just for the
trouble he’s caused.
You have to wonder though, if he’s pulling a
full shift during the day and riding around like a one man army at night, when
does he find the time to sleep? Is Jesse Mach actually A) a robot, B) possessed
by his own bike or C) a shit police officer who sleeps on the job? Due to
America cancelling the show we’ll never know the answer. I like option B
personally, so I’ll let myself stick with that explanation.
So there we have Street Hawk, a man possessed
by a bike to hunt down criminals, while evading the law and acting like a
criminal.
How many of you have read a book and imagined
yourself in the role as the main protagonist? I’m guessing everyone, well
everyone with an imagination at least. Imagine my delight back in my early
years of reading when I first discovered the joys of the “choose your own
adventure” books, it was probably similar to how a hormonal teenager feels when
first discovering free porn online. They were a revelation, a chance for you to
really be a hero, without ever leaving the comfort of your own room.
There were quite a few series’ of choose your own
adventure, but me being the fantasy geek naturally gravitated towards the
fighting fantasy stories written by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone (the
founders of Games Workshop). I had a lot of fun with those books back in the
day, and they are one of the reasons I took an interest in writing. So if I
ever get published you’ll know who to vent your anger at.
The basic premise of choose your own adventure was
simple. You start the book as you normally would and read a couple of pages.
Then it would get interesting. A scene would end and you’d be presented with a
list of choices. Usually it would go something like this:
The evil goblins have decapitated your best friend. Do you...
Hunt the goblins down? ~ Turn to page 56.
Try to stitch his head back on? ~ Turn to page 100.
Shrug and go for a pint? ~ Turn to page 20.
Each choice you made had varying consequences, you
could end the story rather quickly and boringly, come to a grisly end by being
eaten by something nasty or save the day and become a true hero (in your mind
of course). I have to admit, every time I met a grisly end I would skip back a
few choices and try again, guess I didn’t like dying, even if it was on paper.
It’s a shame you don’t see these books around
anymore, there is still definitely a niche in the market for them. I could
quite easily imagine a Twilight choose your own adventure, where you had the
opportunity to behead Edward Cullen (fake apologies to all Twilight fans here…).
Anyways there’s my little piece of nostalgia about a
once big thing in my life. Look out for these books, then maybe you too can
choose your own adventure and have some unforeseen fun.
And so it began, with those two simple words. They
were an invite to great adventure, to undertake quests of world shaking import
and to finally learn the difference between left and right.
The speaker of those words of invitation was
Treguard of Dunshelm, a man with the beard of a super-villain and a shit taste
in clothes. He was the dungeon master, the quest giver and he preferred the
company of kids. Hmm not sure about you lot but that seems a bit dodgy to me.
So what was Knightmare? Well besides being about a
creepy bearded guy who liked luring youngsters to his lonely castle, it was
about sending those youngsters on quests in his maze and forcing them to solve
stupidly fucking difficult puzzles. I’m pretty sure that Treguards’ maze was a
major breach of health and safety regulations; it had crumbling walls,
collapsing floors, falling ceilings and the place was infested with vermin, and
he bloody well sent kids down there. The man was a bloody sadist!
“Oooh nasty”, said with a chuckle, was his way of
greeting some poor kids death.
What would happen is 4 youngsters would be lured to
Knightmare castle by the promise of riches, fame and the possibility of sex
with an elf (or was it only me who felt that last?). Treguard the beard would
“welcome” them and tell them what he wanted them to do. Only one hopeful
adventurer could enter the maze, the other three were made to sit in a room and
watch his progress with a weirdo stood behind them. You may ask why they were
even there at all if all they were going to do is sit around and eat sweets,
but they were very useful/useless indeed as you will find out. The youngster
chosen to be the teams hero (from now on called the dungeoneer), would have a
great big fucking helmet, with horns and no eye slots on it, called the Helmet
of Justice.
Did it really bring justice though? I mean I’ve
never heard of it being worn in a court of law, though given the state of our
justice system these days, I’m sure it couldn’t harm anything to wear the damn
thing in court.
So the helmet rendered the dungeoneer blind, poor
little shit. But at least it gave the 3 remaining kids something to do, they
became seeing-eye dogs (in most cases they had less intelligence than a dog).
They would guide the dungeoneer through the deadly quest, using such complex
instructions as, “sidestep left/right”, “walk forward”, “halt” and “oh fuck,
run you’re going to die”. As these were children, and their knowledge of things
such as left and right was a bit lacking, this could lead to some catastrophic
fuck ups.
“Dungeoneer sidestep right”, meaning left.
Dungeoneer falls into a lava pit and frys quicker than an egg.
Anyhow, with the helmet on and the trusty companions
to give advice, the dungeoneer enters the maze known as the dungeons of deceit.
I never knew of a dungeon that was deceitful before, I thought they were all
quite open and honest about their overall purpose.
Let’s get one thing straight, this dungeon was
fucking dangerous. Not only did it contravene health and safety regulations as
I mentioned above, but it was full of nasty shit that wanted to kill people,
quite of while gloating evilly. There were dragons, goblins, horribly monsters
trapped in walls and there was even a giant spider. And what did the dungeoneer
have to help him in his quest? Not a hell of a lot, some wimpy elves and
dwarves and a group of friends generally possessing all the intelligence of a
brick wall. I told you Treguard was a sadist!
The dungeon was all about the puzzles though, and
they were hard, Stephen Hawking would probably have struggled with them.
Usually if a puzzle was failed the dungeoneer would die, just another thing for
the poor little bastard to worry about. Many a time watching I felt sorry for a
dungeoneer, not only did they have morons guiding them, but also every goblin
and his dragon was out to get them.
Perhaps unsurprisingly there were only a few teams
to ever beat the game. And what became of these mighty heroes? What glorious prize
did they walk away with? Where are they now? The answer to all three questions
is ….. I have no bloody idea. Which goes to prove that fame and fortune were
just lies offered by a pervy old man who got a kick out seeing kids struggle.
So back in the day when I was just getting in to
the world of PC gaming (about the turn of the millennium), my friend Allan
and I discovered the game which would turn into our version of crack cocaine.
Seriously the game was that addictive we'd even forget to drink coffee for
hours at a time. Yeah it was that bad!
The game was Baldur's Gate, a CRPG (computer role playing game) of sheer
and utter amazingness! Its sequel which was rather ingeniously titled Baldur's
Gate 2 I shall talk about at a later date.
So where do we begin? Well we opened the box (as you obviously do),
removed all 600 million discs (was about 5 but it felt like a lot more at
times), and proceeded to read through an instruction manual so large it could
probably have brought whole planets into its orbit. Next was the game
installation, always fun on the old computers, you'd generally wait a week just
for the chance to install disc 2.
With the game now installed (and us having gone through sleep and
shaving deprivation waiting for it) we could now play. Little did we realise
that those first few notes of the intro music would haunt our dreams forever
after.
After a few minutes spent imagining swinging swords at charging orcs we
click off the music and move on to the first and arguably most important part
of the game. The creation of The Main Character!
This is serious business now, what happens here will echo through
eternity! Yeah that's bullshit, but I can't resist a dramatic line, so sue me.
First you have sex, by that I mean choosing whether your computerised
avatar will be male or female, so all minds out of the gutter please!
Second there is choosing your race (not the 100 metre's by the way), so
here you can choose to be a pointy eared, bitchy elf, a psychotic looking
dwarf, or any of the other various races on offer for your selection delights.
Third, choose your class (maths and science are not options here). Do
you want to run around with a six foot length of sharpened metal, chopping your
enemies up into little bloody chunks? Or would you rather mutter shitloads of
mumbo jumbo and end up throwing random fireballs around the scenery? The choice
is up to you.
Now we get to the fun bit, the selecting of the stats. This is a process
that could easily keep the most dedicated gamers busy for the rest of their
natural lives! Seriously, I think we spent more time trying to get the perfect
stats than we did actually playing the game.
Finally we can think up a name, preferably something appropriate to the
in-game universe like Chugga the Chunker.
Now that Chugga is created (we never actually called either of our
characters Chugga by the way, but for the purposes of narrating through the
games storyline that's the name I'm going to use), we can jump in to the
action. After a brief intro scene Chugga is deposited in the courtyard of a big
castle called Candlekeep, it's supposedly a library but we'll get there later.
Before I carry on with the business of enthralling story telling I must
make one important point. There is nothing in the entire Baldur's Gate universe
more important than the spacebar on the computer. The spacebar pauses the game,
this is useful because near enough every single fucking enemy on the game can
squish you like a bug for the first few hours of gameplay! So during every
battle the game is paused, a lot, sometimes for long periods of time while you
assess the best routes for running away screaming. Eventually you'll end up
going through the entire game with one finger poised nervously above the
spacebar, thus giving you the ailment now commonly known as spacebar finger. It
is possibly the worst form of RSI known to man.
Anyways back to our story...
Chugga is wandering around Candlekeep waiting for his step daddy Gorion
to finish packing up his dentures so they can go on a long journey never to
return. Because he's basically a nice but dim lad, and because he's been raised
pretty well he's doing some nice little chores for some seriously ungrateful
bastards. From finding books lost in haystacks (obviously), to curing sick cows
(he wanted to go to university to become a vet) and beating the shit out of
some giant rats, he does the lot with a vacant smile on his face and receives
no thanks apart from a few measly gold coins. You need a union to join Chugga,
they'll fight the battles so your simple mind can rest easy.
Finally Gorion is ready, his spare dentures packed away with his
nighttime pipe. And they're off. Off to have adventures and rescue damsels in
distress and what-not, or maybe just to find a pub and get pissed up on cheap
booze.
Tension time is approaching, our storyline's antagonist awaits!
When this guy steps out of the shadows you know he's not there to invite
you to sit round his campfire, toast marshmallows and sing camping songs.
After watching Gorion get cut down and bravely deciding to run away
rather than offer his help, Chugga realises that he's now alone in the world,
well nearly, here comes his best and only friend Imoen. She was seriously pissed
off that she wasn't invited on the damsel rescuing, cheap booze swilling
journey, but she's followed along and there ain't no chance an armoured moron
like Chugga will be ordering her back!
I think it's fair to imagine that all of Chugga's wet dreams and
perverted fantasy's have been about little Imoen. Jus' saying you know...
Anyways our merry twosome are now happily gamboling around the
woods, feeling free to pick up any companions they like, and there's quite the
motley crew of people standing around just waiting to be asked to join up and
head off towards certain death. The characters have a nice range, from an
insane necromancer with a hard-on for dragon rabbits, a megalomaniac sorcerer
with persecution issues and the largest man ever in computer game
history who takes life advice from a hamster, and all manner of crazy in
between.
Ah Minsc and Boo, a handsome pair, just a pity they're batshit insane!
After lots of pissing around in various woods and towns, our hero
decides that it's high time he became a brave warrior and made a significant
impact in the world. Doing his best to protect life, liberty and the Baldur's
Gate way. So he heads off to some poxy little iron mine to clear out some kind
of infestation. Now despite Chugga not following any health and safety
regulations and having no experience of the mining industry, the foreman hires
him on the spot without even asking for any references. How the fuck did this
guy make it into management?
With lots of swings of his brand new, yet trusty sword (and lots of help
from his far more experienced companions), Chugga clears the mine in record
time, and as he contemptuously defeats the end of level boss he learns of a
dastardly plot! Apparently some shady organisation is sabotaging all the iron
mines in the area and attempting to start off a mining rights war (possibly
it's more serious than a war over some holes in the ground, but it sounded
good). This is serious business now, if iron prices go up then swinging a sword
at anything and everything like a moronic imbecile is not going to be a wise
move. Especially when the risk of the sword breaking is a very real
possibility.
It's obvious now that Chugga has to save the day, well none of the other
lazy bastards in the world will, they'll just bitch and moan and drink cheap
booze!
First off in his new quest to bring justice and cheap iron to the free
world is a bandit problem. Well wouldn't you know it, there just has to be
bandits! Apparently these lawless scum are attacking caravans bringing in iron
from outside the region (I think all merchants must be gypsies in the Baldur's
Gate world, why travel in caravans otherwise). This is the kind of problem Chugga
can easily deal with, if he can just figure out how to read the conveniently
found map with directions to the bandit camp on it. Chugga struggles a tad with
directions.
It's a fine morning for bandit smiting, the sun is shining, the birds
are singing, the flowers are all smelling pretty and Chugga has the hangover
from hell! Shouldn't have drunk all that mead at The Burning Wizard last
night Chugga.
Our surly, hungover hero and his merry band finally stumble upon the
bandit camp and proceed to slaughter anything that moves, including some poor
prisoner who was only trying to escape. Life sucks then some big moron
decapitates you. The discovery of yet more convenient letters and maps leads to
a bit more of the plot being revealed and another mine, this one guarded by
giant spiders. Giant fucking spiders! I guess arachnophobes won't be going iron
mining out that way any time soon.
Oh well it's more walking, no one should complain though, it's good
cardio-vascular exercise, perfect for the growing warrior.
Now Chugga is about to become a hero to women everywhere, he's going to
destroy an entire spider population, swoon before him ladies, swoon before him.
With this comforting image in his mind, Chugga and friends happily settle into
their new career in pest control, ah bless their rusty iron socks. Spiders,
wytherns and the occasional pacifist druid are all met bravely and exterminated
(cue visions of me seeing all 6 party members as medieval daleks).
Here goes Chugga again, completely disregarding health and safety rules
to plunge in to yet another mine (the bureaucrats are going to be tearing their
hair out). This mine is just a little bit more difficult than the first, as at
the very bottom is a rather nasty magician with a very annoying habit of
throwing electricity at people. Doesn't he realise that power company's are
raising their prices thanks to clowns like him?
Finally he's dead and British Gas and EON can stop sending him red
letter bills.
There's a big hurray moment here as Chugga finally learns the name
of his spiky assailant from the beginning. His name is Sarevok and apparently
he's a bit creepy. No shit!
Finally the Scooby Gang ... erm party of brave warriors can hit the big
city; bars, brothels and fashion boutiques baby! Apparently the city of
Baldur's Gate is the place to be if you want to mingle with the rich and
famous.
But all is not well, there's sinister things afoot, and weird things
happening to normal people. Once again with no asking for references Chugga and
friends are hired in to jobs they've never done before, they are now Baldur's
Gate's version of the F.B.I.! If nothing else they're going to have quite the
CV when everything is settled.
As they are now fully fledged hero's and can't get squished by simple
monsters anymore, cleansing the city proves to be little more than a light
afternoons work As a reward, and because the head honcho's of the bad
organisation are there, Chugga is allowed to return back to Candlekeep, where
he spent many fruitful years learning not to read books and being treated like
a general fucking dogsbody. And with a snap of fingers the gates of Candlekeep
appear. See that's what it's like if you're a high level RPG sorcerer, instant
travel, no more travelling bullshit map areas and taking months to get
anywhere.
And Chugga is home. He's greeted and welcomed by suspicious looks and
questions about why he looted the body of his step father and left him for the
carrion to eat. There's also an oddly suspicious chap by the name of Koveras on
the look out for information (you wouldn't believe how long it took us to click
on to the name Koveras).
Finally, after what seems a lifetime (and probably was), entry is
granted to the grand library of Candlekeep, the repository of all the knowledge
in the known universe. Apparently though there's not many authors, great or
otherwise, in the Baldur's Gate universe, as on each bookcase in the grand
library is precisely one fucking book, and they are damn history books at that!
Where's the boys own adventure story's? The great philosophical musings? The
erotic literature? This library actually really sucks!
But wait, Chugga is told that upstairs in his old rooms there is great
information awaiting him. And there is, really this time. It's a letter. A
letter from a dead man. A letter from Gorion. Why the hell he would leave the
boy a letter in his vacated rooms when he was taking him along to get drunk and
wench rescued damsels is anyone's guess. Maybe he could see the future? But if
so how come he didn't see his own grisly end at the hands of a lunatic wearing
spiky armour? Such questions have no answers, so all Chugga can do is read his
letter (give him time it may take quite a while).
It's fucking momentous! Chugga, simple warrior and all around dogsbody
is the son of a god. A friggin' god!! He's a dead, evil god mind, but still.
The last will and testament should be fairly interesting to read.
That's Dad, he's not much in the looks department...
Weird things are happening now, it turns out that the head bad guys who
Chugga came here to kill have been killed, and Chugga is being framed for the
murder. Well isn't this interesting.
Chugga is now behind bars, not only that he's squeezed in a one person
cell with all five of his friends, and they haven't had a bath for weeks. Still
things could be worse, he could have been transported deep underground into a
maze filled with evil beasties ... oh he has been, all in the name of helping
him escape of course. Well at least old Tethtoril didn't believe that Chugga is
a murdering lunatic with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, maybe he does but
at least he had the decency not to give voice to his opinions. Let that be a
lesson Ulraunt, oh lord and mighty ruler of Candlekeep, opinions are like
arseholes, everyone has them and they usually stink. Especially yours you
bitter old toad!
Once again Chugga is leaving Candlekeep, this time via the not-so-scenic
route. He's getting to do his heroic thing again though, as yet another nation
of giant spiders is living under the library. Maybe they have a copy of Lord
of the Flies to read?
This running around trying to follow a simple plot is really starting to
stress Chugga out, and he throws a massive strop and refuses to go any further
until he's had a cup off coffee (well actually I did this when I got fed up of
being constantly turned to stone by a pair of basilisk's blocking my escape
route). As it's since been revealed that he is the spawn of a evil, dead god
with a love of blood, Chugga's friends are extra careful when trying to pacify
him, there's no telling when he could develop some godly powers and beat them
all to death with their own torn off limbs.
The aim of the game now is proving Chugga innocent of the murders he
actually went back home to commit. And maybe find out why Sarevok wears armour
with spikes sticking out of it.
To Baldur's gate he must go to clear his name, but there is a bounty on
his head and he'll be instantly arrested once he enters the city. To guard
against this Chugga and friends cunningly disguise themselves as a party of
mercenaries. The simple plans are always the best ones.
There follows a fraught investigation whereby Sarevok is found to be
guilty of near enough all the crimes ever committed (the British police want to
question him on where he was when Shergar disappeared). By collecting evidence
(his abandoned diary), and questioning witnesses (his seriously pissed off
other half), Chugga learns the shocking conclusion to all Sarevok's plans. And
an even bigger revelation!
Firstly the plan. Sarevok is plotting to have the ruler's of Baldur's
Gate assassinated, thereby becoming, after a few dodgy deals and whatnot, the
ruler of the city. Once he crowns himself he plans to turn the world into a
slaughterhouse, killing enough people to achieve his ultimate ambition.
Now the revelation. Sarevok is actually the spawn of a dead god. He's
the spawn of the same dead god who spawned Chugga. He literally is Chugga's
brother-from-another-mother!
Combining the plan and the revelation together it becomes very easy to
see what Sarevok's ultimate ambition is. He wants to become a god. There's a
throne up there just waiting for him.
Naturally Chugga can't let this happen, it wouldn't be very heroic of
him after all. In a daring move he manages to gain access to Baldur's Gate's
Ducal palace, expose Sarevok's plans, stop an assassination and prove his own
innocence. Not a bad days work all things considered. As a reward for saving
their lives the duke and duchess decide to offer Chugga no help at all in
finally killing off Sarevok. Well that's a bit of a lie, they do use magic to
track down his location, but that's it. More ungrateful bastards who want to
use poor Chugga as a dogsbody. He definitely needs a union to sign up to.
There it is, the undercity, Sarevok's final location. Not much of a
tourist destination.
So the final battle is upon them Sarevok and his minions vs Chugga and
the need a bath gang. It's a titanic battle, with blood and traps and the
squeaking of an enraged hamster. But finally and inevitably it's over, goodness
and benign lunacy has won the day. There will be no new god in the heavens.
Well not unless the sequel follows a different path anyhow!
And Sarevok never did give an explanation for that freaky armour of his!
*****
There we have it, a quick run through of Baldur's Gate explaining only
the basics of the plot and probably confusing the hell out of anyone who hasn't
played the game.
