The History Of Gaming, Part Five: The True Monster Is Man

Probably the next game which I remember with any kind of clarity is Monsters, by Acornsoft. Fortunately, ‘deanpook’ remembers it with some clarity as well.

You really wouldn’t think that was one of the scariest games ever created, would you?

And yet, it is, for reasons that aren’t adequately captured by Dean during his desperate attempt to survive - choke - seven Monsters at once! Oh, you get the sound, and sound is a big part of it. The high-pitched bleeping noise as you scamper helpless around the hideous gantry in which you are trapped like a flea adds a slick sheen of tension, and the digitised shriek, cut off all too soon, as the beasts absorb you into their mass is a nightmarish jolt of pure fear for a six-year-old child. And the fact that the oxygen bar is very likely to run out while you try to herd seven monsters into seven separate pits doesn’t help.

But eventually, you can beat seven monsters with your eyes closed. What happens then? There isn’t really enough room for nine.

That is when they unleash…

The GREEN MONSTER.

As you may have noticed, to kill a monster in Monsters, you have to dig a pit, wait for it to fall in, and then bash its head in so it drops to its death on the level below. All very simple and addictive, unlike the fool games of today.

But the Green Monster is twice as tough. So it has to fall twice as far.

Which means you need to dig two pits, with not a pixel’s difference between them, one on the floor below the other. And then you need to pray that your green monster falls in the top pit, and one of the red monsters that you’re also sharing the screen with doesn’t fall in either of the pits you’ve carefully dug.

What’s the problem? I hear you cry. Why can’t you leave a monster in a pit for a while? Why, it wouldn’t… kill you to perform such an act. Would it?

Oh, you fools. You poor fools. Dean Pook died before he could show the truth to your blind, unseeing eyes - but I know. I know that if you leave a Red Monster in a pit for too long, it starts to climb out. It makes a terrible noise like a hundred gnawing locusts biting their way through the chest of an adult man, only rendered on a BBC Micro sound chip, and it slowly climbs and climbs and there’s nothing you can do once it starts climbing. You jut have to watch. And then, when it comes out - IT IS A GREEN MONSTER.

So what happens… if you leave a GREEN MONSTER in a pit?

It…

It becomes…

A WHITE MONSTER AAAAEEEEIIIGHHH and they must fall THREE FLOORS before they die! That makes them nearly impossible to kill! Seriously, it was like goddamn Alien in that deserted digital gantry when you’d somehow birthed a white monster, because the bastards take a grim pleasure in tumbling into the lowermost of the three holes you’ve dug and then squatting there waiting for you to just hurl yourself into it in a suicidal despair! Which isn’t like Alien at all.

(And obviously if you drop through any of these holes, you’ll die. Falling one story is about manageable, falling two will smash you like a ripened tomato. And remember your oxygen is running out.)

So I think we can call Monsters the FIRST USE OF THE EMOTION CALLED FEAR IN A COMPUTER GAME.

More historic firsts in Gaming History starting tomorrow as we begin THE SEVEN DAYS OF ELITE! I’m Below Average, so watch out or I’ll spread your cargo across the inky blackness of space, me space hearties, a-harrr!