Day 51 - Area 51

I'm playing a lot of games in the course of writing this book... for research purposes, naturally... and as a result of this gamesplaying, I have calculated that if you took all the aliens and UFOs from all the games on the Spectrum and Commodore 64, then Area 51 would need to be the size of the whole of North America, not just that *censored - classified* in Nevada.


Right from the days of Space Invaders in the arcades, we humans have been fascinated by the idea of aliens and have celebrated them in video games... by blowing them all to smithereens.  That's pretty much how it goes every time. How many games can you think of where we join forces with aliens for the good of the universe?

Hey, this has got UFOs in it, I could write about this!

There are games that foster interstellar relations, though.  Psi-5 Trading Company, for instance,  saw you pick from a multitude of races and species when making up the crew of your ship.  Or it was meant to... I'm sure many games ended up like this comic strip from the rather splendid Blow the Cartridge.  You really should check out that site in its entirety, by the way.


For no particular reason, then, I started looking for my favourite games with aliens in them, to see if I might pick up some more names of people to go bothering with questions.  A lot of them, though, seem to have been written by Americans and are therefore ineligible.  Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders... Project Firestart... Moonwalker... all games featuring aliens that I can't really include.


But there are plenty that originated on these shores, and I'll be hunting out some of the finest of them for inclusion in this book.  What were your favourite alien-related games?

Day 11 - Great Odin's raven!

It was a late day at work for me today, meaning I didn't have a lot of time for this project.  And as my efforts to turn up more contact details actually turned up no details at all, I thought I'd just delve through the back catalogues for a blast on an old favourite.  I picked one of my all-time favourite games on both Spectrum and Commodore 64... Nodes of Yesod.


The moon-bound adventures of Charlemagne Fotheringham-Grunes have long held a place in my heart.  From the moment the Spectrum version loaded and shouted "NODES OF YESOD BY ODIN COMPUTER GRAPHICS", I had a feeling the game would be special.

I say, what a splendid little trinket. One may have to add that to one's collection.

It was.  Charlie's quest to collect alchiems and find the Monolith was addictive, playable and full of charm.  Nodes of Yesod was a relatively standard platform game by-and-large, enhanced with cute touches such as your mole sidekick who could eat through walls to create shortcuts, and the evil red spaceman who stalked your every move and stole your precious alchiems.


In fact, Odin went on a run where they released the highest quality games, all gorgeous-looking and filled with cute touches.  Robin of the Wood, The Arc of Yesod, Heartland... lovely games that kept me playing for ages, even if I did occasionally get frustrated with tramping around the same damn bits of Sherwood Forest!


The run couldn't, and didn't last, and later titles lacked a little of the spark of the early days.  But for a while, Odin Computer Graphics shone as brightly as anyone.  If any of the chaps involved is out there now, I'd love to ask a few questions...