Space Is The Place – For Panic!

Back on the old Space Panic trail, I’ve discovered reports – disturbing reports – that make me question my very sanity.

There are many different genres of games in the world of retro, but by far the most common is the clone.

Making a game is hard. Making an original game is practically impossible. These days, you can at least start off by saying ‘it’s going to be Doom but with sprites of strippers’ or ‘it’ll be Theme Park only with Tycoon in the title’, and when you finally come to release your game, nobody will point at it and say “Hey, that’s just Doom with badly pixillated strippers in it.” They’ll say “Oh, it’s Duke Nukem 3D.”

You can get away with more, in other words. Not so in the dark days of 1980-1985! Then there were only two genres – the Shoot-Em-Up, in which you flew around in space shooting things, and the Don’t-Shoot-Em-Up, in which you wandered around the screen doing something else like collecting dots or crossing a busy road.

If you saw a successful game and wanted to rip it off – tough. Everyone would know. The best you could do would be to make a version that was exactly the same in just about all respects and brazenly shove it out there with a different name as some flimsy protection from the weight of the law. For example:

Here is Acornsoft’s Planetoid.

And here is Defender.

Here is Snapper by Acornsoft. (Before they had to put a hat on the main character to avoid getting sued.)

Aaaaand here’s Pac-Man, as if you needed to see it.

This is Meteors, by – you guessed it – Acornsoft.

And here’s a thumbnail to a screenshot of Asteroids. NOT IN COLOUR. That makes it VERY DIFFERENT.

Finally, we take a look at our old friend Monsters. Who is it by? Acornsoft? You shock me.

And here – finally – we get our first shot of SPACE PANIC!!

What does it look like, I wonder? This is like one of those IQ tests where you have to work out what the symbol is based on what’s come immediately before.

GAAAH!! It’s frigging Monsters, or rather, Monsters is frigging it. This is both a huge disappointment to anyone who’s been captivated by the ever-unfolding Mystery Of Space Panic (ha ha) and also a giant disappointment to me, as I thought Monsters was proof that Acornsoft could write a captivating original game. No such luck.

Well, there’s not much point in reviewing Space Panic, as I’ve done it already. I think I’ll review Acornsoft instead.

Actually, Acornsoft were great.

It’s worth pointing out that this practice of ‘cloning’ games wasn’t as clear-cut as outright stealing. Atari, Nintendo and the other fledgling arcade machine companies weren’t likely to devote themselves to converting their games to work on the British Broadcasting Corporation’s hardware any time soon, so quite frankly it was always going to be somebody’s job to rip them off convincingly. Acornsoft stepped up to the plate to give Beeb owners the chance to experience arcade glory, and if legal considerations meant Pac-Man had to wear a green hat and run around on stumpy little legs, then so be it.

The company’s games all had a solid, well-crafted feel. They did what they said on the tin. The boxes had clearly-printed screenshots on the front to tell you exactly what to expect, along with comprehensive guides to the scoring system on the inside front cover. The loading screens were uniform creations, with the company name recreated lego-style in different-coloured blocks. The tapes corrupted less than other games. They crashed less often during loading. They were better.

There was a sense of… how to put this… Britishness about Acornsoft. Solidly put together product, in no-nonsense packaging, at an affordable price. Arcade games brought to your home by dedicated master craftsmen.

Well, if you want to get technical, master forgers, but hey! That’s free enterprise for you.