Curiosities of the Modern Age: M-N

in which Al drags the waters of his collection of recent Spectrum titles and has a nosey at the oddest he can find...

Here's an idea. How about NOT running headlong into the pile of intestines?

THE MALIGNANT GORE

(Sanctum Games, 2021)

Clearly I picked this one purely for its cyclopean title, dripping in Lovecraftian singularity. At first one might think this would be a horrifying 18-rated adventure in the mould of Dracula, Jack The Ripper and all those CRL video nasties, or maybe that other recent Cthulhu-tastic adventure, Colour Beyond Time. But no, it’s actually a puzzler, just with icky stuff in it. It was birthed a few years ago by Tom Dentith, masquerading as Sanctum Games, and appears to be his very own Spectrum one-hit wonder.

Shoot the signs so Magentaman avoids anything red and hopefully collects the key on his way

The plot she goes as follows. All was not well in the shadowy Omicron Facility X, but it wasn’t the Hadron Collider blowing us all to bits, it was a containment breach of codename MG101, a.k.a. The Malignant Gore. And it sounds so harmless too… A huge load of red intestine has splurged out unpleasantly and killed every boffin, geek and scientist in the facility, spreading lab coats and coloured pens everywhere.

My advice for this one is "stay left"

However one scientist survived somehow (must have been secretly drinking vials of radioactive waste in his lunch breaks) and for a change it’s not you! Somehow you are also there (maybe you started the whole thing off, you evil swine) watching this poor sap running around flapping like crazy, and you have to shoot the blobs of gore and stop them eating him. But you also have to shoot the direction signs around the place to show the panicked poindexter which way to go. And you’ve only got 6 bullets, oh my god I’m getting stressed just writing this, arrrrgghhh… Gulp. So keeping a cool head is paramount. If you’re lucky you’ll have just enough bullets to blast the baddies and point Mr. Scientist in the right direction to escape each level and run to the self-destruct button (great, we’re all dying anyway) to avoid the intestines eating everyone on Earth. Does this mean intestines also have intestines?

You'll have to think darn fast, the boffin has lost all sense and panics constantly

This is a fun and unusual game. You’ve got to move quickly as the scientist just won’t stand still, so bad is his case of the jitters – he needs to go to the loo as well, on top of everything else. When you mess up, you can use a temporal sphere to reset things, so they’re effectively lives. I’ve done alright so far, completing quite a few levels, but the trick is to do each one so well that you don’t have to use any spheres at all for a while. Otherwise things soon catch up with you. The graphics are colourful and fun, sound is pretty average, but the game scores big on originality and playability, and deserves some praise for this. Be warned though, it might put you off sausages for life.

I had plans to race around America with my mates once in beasts like this

NUMB CARS

(Triumph Games Lab, 2001)

What do you call 5 Russian chaps in a car? No, that’s not a good way to start this. And I can’t think of anything funny to say about the cars being numb, it’s just so strange. I presume a lot got lost in translation, as I’ve never had to take my car to the garage because it’s gone numb. What do you do in those circumstances? Shake it around a bit maybe, or drive around until it gets a bit of feeling back. Anyway, 5 dudes from Russia made this game back in 2001 as Triumph Games Lab, which may or may not mean that the car in question is the ultimate plastic ‘80s sporty number, the TR7.

Rockin' the casbah in the desert wastes of level 2

I can find no instructions anywhere but there really isn’t that much need for any in all honesty. Once you’ve negotiated the initial menu which looks like DOS or something scarily technical, you find that you have to score points by knocking other vehicles off the road, as if you were a Hunter Of Spies. The shame is there are no pedestrians around, as cult movie Death Race 2000 proved that mowing them down was nothing less than a whole heap of fun. Wonder if I can lose my licence merely by saying that? I didn’t mean it, fine gentlemen of the DVLA (I totally did).

On the first level, country roads take us home to the place we belong

The only problem is that you seem to be terrible at controlling the behaviour of your car. When you hit anyone, you career off crazily in the opposite direction, and if you leave the road, you lose a life, probably literally. Some vehicles bounce you more than others. Bike riders are usually the best ones to smash into, just like real life (seriously, stop it). And as your murderous journey goes on, you’ll find plenty of Audi and BMW drivers who like to use the full width of the road and can send you spinning into the dust. The trick is to reach the end without dying, and there are a few different landscapes to burn through.

Level 3 finds us on the beach, with Chris Rea up front driving like a maniac

I enjoyed Spy Hunter at the time, a simple game but with some nice touches, like when you swap to drive a boat for a bit. And this starts off similarly, albeit with teeny sprites. But once you’ve sussed the patterns of the other cars, your road trip can get a bit repetitive. The best method is to aim right for them, and they usually move away from you. There’s some decent music which is nice, and it’s good to see a traditional arcade-style retro racer these days. A sequel appears to have been started but not finished, which is a shame. Maybe give this a go and see if you too have become comfortably numb.