Day 57 - variety is the spice of life

I love having a trawl through the different GameBase directories, looking for something I might have forgotten about in my quest to document our Eighties gaming Gods.  Today, I was looking for something with a bit of variety, something that would tie in loosely with the number 57 (57 varieties - geddit?), when I came across possibly the ultimate 8-bit multi-mini-game extravaganza - Lazy Jones.


It's amazing what you find out when you're doing research.  All this time, from 1985 until now, I thought that David Whittaker was "merely" a musician/programmer of computer music.  Now I find out that he wrote some computer games, too... and that one of them was Lazy Jones.

If I want to get anywhere in this game, I'm going to need some elevator action...

Naturally, he wrote the music for the game, too... and there's a lot of it!  Twenty-one tunes in all, although they're more like jingles than tunes in a lot of cases (and some of them may sound a bit familiar...).  Still, they make for a good soundtrack, and in one case, a good hit single!  One of the tunes was remixed by an outfit called Kernkraft 400, and this tune, called Zombie Nation, is now globally renowned.  See, we always knew SID music was the best!

That Lazy Jones is such a H.E.R.O.

Lazy Jones was a novel little idea, which plonked you into the shoes of a lazy janitor who just couldn't be bothered to do his job.  Instead, he went into the different rooms of the hotel where he was caretaker, and frittered his day away playing video games.  Sounds like my kind of guy!


There were fourteen games to play, all based on other well-known games of the time.  Some of them were great fun, others... well, they went on a bit.  But as a package, it made for a pretty good time.  I wonder what I'd use for a screenshot if it ends up in the book?