Curiosities of the Modern Age: S

It's all good in the Hood

This psychedelic Costner looks amazing, eh?

SHERWOOD

(Ultrasoft, 1992)

“Robin… Robin… The hooded man…/hooligan...” as Clannad once sang dreamily. Not sure there were any other parts to that song actually. The man in green was a popular fellow in the world of Spectralia. Let’s take a moment to appreciate his various outings for a second, since we’ve nothing better planned for the next few minutes.

The first one I could find was Adventure International’s pompously titled Robin of Sherwood: The Touchstones of Rhiannon, one of their adventures which looked beautiful but played painful, but it did get some great reviews on the back of the insipid TV series. Talking of adventures, Artic did one too, called simply Robin Hood (or Adventure H if you’re a bit strange) on their Assemblage compilation. It was Quilled with graphics, and yes, it had capital letters all the way in true Artic style.

Which do you prefer - Ultrasoft...

or Bumfun (cringe)?

1986 gave us another adventure, Silversoft’s Robin of Sherlock, an early Fergus McNeill title featuring a bizarre genre mash-up and that infamous BREAK WINDOW bug. Robin finally got an arcade game in Odin’s Robin Of The Wood next, a big hit for the Yesod crew, who hopefully managed to avoid being sued for breach of copyright into the bargain. I always thought it was called Robin O’ The Wood, but apparently they changed that. Bit o’ a shame, I think.

Mastertronic gave us The Curse of Sherwood in 1987, to no great acclaim. Then Code Masters must have snaffled up the rights to Mr. Hood thereafter, as they brought out Super Robin Hood, which wasn’t massively well received, probably because they missed the word ‘Simulator’ off the end of it. Then, in the extraordinarily late year of 1993, there was Robin Hood: Legend Quest, which got good reviews from everyone, except Crash who had gone kaput by that time. In modern times, we’ve had Loxley in 2022, a great game with a cracking intro and larvly digitised pen pics of the main players.

The main game screen sees Costner looking more constipated this time

Meanwhile in Slovakia… in 1992 Ultrasoft produced this game, Sherwood. I’m treating it as a modern game here, since not many of us knew what was going on in Slovakia in 1992, and it probably wasn’t even called Slovakia at that time. It got reviewed by all the big Slovak Speccy mags. BiT magazine gave it 84%, including 91% for ‘Grafika’ while Proxima Magazine reviewed it too later on and seemed to like it. Possibly. As far as I can tell. Those ‘cheeky’ chaps known as Bumfun brought it to our shores in 2016, subtitling it “Defender of the Realm”, hoping people might mistake it for Defender of the Crown.

We're droppin' eaves in the tavern, Mister Frodo. Shhh, act natural...

Aaaaaanyway, onto the game at length, and cue some amateur dramatics. ‘SBLOOD! The great nation of Albion (that’s England, not West Bromwich) is in turmoil! The big nobs of the land have all turned on each other and are squabbling for power like great big babies. You as Bob Hoodie must best them and claim the land for the one true king – Aragorn! You must kill off Alan Rickman, Abbott Hugo (who?) and Baron Fitz-Alwin (you’re just making these up now), free Lady Marian, find the silver arrow and give it to Herne. All within 60 days, earning 219 Nectar points along the way. HUSSAH!

Robin and teeny Much run this place for all of five seconds until those non-green areas engulf them

So it’s a strategy game eh, a bit of a change from Robin’s previous Spectral jaunts? Righto, let’s get strategising. Well first, maybe stop to appreciate that rather nice loading screen, plus a little tunelet on the intro screen – all very pleasant, and it’s not even Greensleeves, so bonus points there. The main screen in the game has a map in the background, with the various factions shown in different colours, like a big ol' game of Robin Hood Risk. You start off with your good mate Much (the miller’s son apparently) in tow and together you must repel the odious/odorous hordes. There’s a pen pic of ‘90s Man Kevin Costner too and an interesting-looking list of available options to choose from.

You can't beat a bit of Bully, and Tuck's well on his way to winning the speedboat

First you could use a decent arsenal, Bumfun insist on it. The corner shop sells swords, spears, shields and arrows, which all greatly help your chances of success, and you can divide them however you like between Robin and Much, though you can guarantee Robin will want the best stuff for himself, the shameless glory-seeker. As so often in real life though, being able to afford said weaponry can be the main obstacle to survival. You start with a mere tenner in thy purse so you have to ponder how to increase thy funds. You haven’t really got time to wait for that ISA from your parents to mature.

At least Robin can enjoy this pretty scene before he goes to Thief Heaven

So two options immediately present themselves. The first is to gamble what little you have and hope for the best. This means a trip to the local tavern, which is always welcome, though in times of yore usually resulted in an inevitable fist fight. Options at the pub are sadly a bit limited, you can't even get leathered. First you can ‘listen’, which might get you thrown out if you don’t accompany it with buying a pint normally. This tells you briefly where the plot is up to, and how much of a bounty is on your head (gulp, keep that hood down low there). And the other choice is to 'play dice', but this can’t exactly be described as a sub-game as three dice appear for you and three for your opponent, and the highest wins. Not quite Yahtzee but you might just get lucky for a few extra groats.

Ooh, someone's wooden sword is gonna snap here

The more profitable way of gaining riches is the ‘go stealing’ option. This can yield quick, relatively painless profits, but you’ll find that before long a certain Friar Tuck will come and threaten to sit on you unless you beat him in an archery competition. Oh goody, a proper sub-game! The view changes to show a target, you mash the relevant button, then try to aim the drunken cross-hairs in the right direction. I couldn’t get the power bit to work properly annoyingly, so none of my goes registered, while the big-boned Man of God’s aim was pretty darn good. So he went and sat on me, squishing me to a gory pulp and ending the game horrifically.

It's Game Over in Sherwood. "Robin... Robin... the dead man"

Not really, but once you’ve got some dosh and an arrow or two, you can begin to move your two characters around the Risk board, either together or separately. When you move into an area, it tells you how many enemy soldiers are there, and your weapons get used up accordingly depending on the numbers involved. Don’t go near enemy bases as you’ll come up against about 355 in one go. You’ll probably win your first few battles, but then find things harder going, if you’re anything like me, and pretty soon “Brave Sir Robin will be bravely running away”. The enemy forces seem to spread faster than a Chaos gooey blob, which gave me the impression that you don’t really seem to stand much of a chance overall. Such is life as a rag-tag revolutionary I suppose.

"Yahtzee! Pontoon! Gin rummy!" Robin's not very good at gambling

But aside from failing horribly in the main game, you can visit some friends for light relief, which is nice. If you fancy paying Herne the horny hunter a visit before you’ve got the silver arrow (his Mercedes), you get told “Robin went into Herne’s cave and waited the whole day. Herne did not come.” No Rich Tea and sympathy there then. If you fancy parlying with one of your enemies, you can call on Abbot Hugo – “Robin knocked on the monastery gate disguised as a beggar. Monks warded him off with bludgeons.” Not very Christian. Or worse, pop round to Baron Fitz-Alwin’s crib – “The Baron throws a knife and kills Robin with a well-aimed throw.” Oh.

Surely this game is "Prince of Thieves" on the Speccy

So how about going completely mad and visit the Sheriff Of Rottingham himself? He’s a reasonable guy, what could possibly go wrong? Well if you pop round at the wrong moment you get this message – “Robin entered into Nottingham disguised as a Potter. He messed around the whole day returning to the forest in the evening.” Messed around indeed! However if you time it right (no idea how as such) you’ll get another sub-game, this time a quick round of Barbarian, going mano-a-mano with Rickman, both armed with pointy swords. This bit should be great, but no matter what I did, he thwacked me more than I could thwack him, and a swift death ensued. I didn’t get my head lopped off at least, but neither did I get the chance to ogle Princess Mariana’s assets.

This demo by Ariel Ruiz ultimately grew into the modern epic Loxley

It has to be said that I’m in no way an aficionado of strategy games on the Speccy. With the exception of all of Julian Gollop’s amazing canon, I can’t think of any I’ve really taken to. This one has its plusses though – some brilliant graphics for a few of the scenes, a good bit of music and a nice user interface generally. But it doesn’t play quite as well as it looks I thought, and although you’re presented with a nice list of actions throughout, in reality only a couple are of any use most of the time. As a ‘Curiosity of the Modern Age’ though, it’s certainly worth a look if Slovakian interpretations of olde English legends is your thang. Altogether now, you know you all love this one, “Look into my eyes, and you will seeeeeeeee….” (bang, smash, splinter, justified extreme violence noises)