The Re:Retro Top 100 Games Of All Time, No. 100: You’ve Already Caused A Scandal, A Disturbance Like A Vandal

Or: Why in God’s holy face did Repton have to be on a Thursday, I’ve got loads to say about that and I’m really drunk

So, er, anyway, Repton. A game about a lizard in a polo neck. NOW READ ON.

I have literally no idea what this involved. Nobody in this poorly-done Electron loading screen looked anything like they did in the game, as you can see below.

Oh, Jesus Christ, Acorn Electron. What… what the hell is that? Is that supposed to be Repton? Spectrum, what’s your take in this situation?

You take no guff when you strut your stuff, ZX Spectrum. I like that in a platform. Let’s see that loading screen.

Damn, ZX Spectrum. Just… damn. That is some ice-cold shizzle.

Right, now that I’ve filled up some space, let’s sup the delicious gravy that is Repton One. Basically, you were a lizard in a polo neck, and you ran around beneath the earth collecting diamonds, trying not to get crushed or blocked in by various strategically-placed boulders, trying not to get eaten by any monsters (who would hatch from eggs that you happened to let fall during your travels) and generally creating wealth in a Thatcherite manner… oh, hell, let’s fill up some more space and let you see for yourselves.

That’s Repton in its purest form. After that, the story of Repton takes a few bizarre turns, starting with Repton 2, in which you had to get all the diamonds, collect all the earth, use all the transporters and collect all of the jigsaw puzzle pieces scattered around (which eventually spelled ‘Repton 2 Is Ended’). Getting the completion piece meant traversing the ‘roof’ of the maze, which was bombarded endlessly by random meteorites. So, Repton 2 was pretty much impossible to finish.

Or rather, it was actually impossible to finish, since there was a glitch that meant the computer thought there was one more diamond in the game than there actually was. So, no matter how many diamonds you collected, you’d always be one short. Sorry, little diamond-enjoying lizard man. You must die unfulfilled.

Repton 3 was much better, being a truer successor to Repton The First, with extras that made sense – an end point that you had to get to at the end of every level, and a growing fungus that would submerge a whole level if left for long enough. (Sometimes you unleashed this menace, but more often it served as a miniature time limit for completing a certain section.) So far, so good. Unfortunately, the formula was so perfect that Superior Software didn’t know when to stop, releasing endless expansion sets, including Repton Through Time, where the levels were based on historical periods, The Life Of Repton, which was all about Shakespeare’s ‘Ages Of Man’, and… Around The World In 40 Screens.

AKA Reptonazi Goes Stereotype Mental.

The game is divided up into five areas of the world – one of which is the oceans, the other three are America, the Arctic, the Orient, and Africa. In order to complete a level, you have to kill all of the monsters on that level.

In this game, the monsters are the people of other races. For example, in the America levels, Repton dresses as a cowboy and has to kill all the Native Americans, who are bright magenta with feathers in their hair. In the Orient, he has to slay all of the angry chinamen. In the Africa levels, it’s some sort of witch doctor who must be crushed to death beneath a boulder.

Don’t believe me? All of the Reptons are here, waiting for you. Apart from Repton 2, which was impossible. And Repton Infinity, which overcomplicated matters by including photocopiers, ghosts and a build-your-own-Repton game creator, with which I tried manfully to create a working version of Pacman, but failed, suggesting that it wasn’t capable of that much.

I judge Repton the best of all Reptons, as it remains pure and unsullied either by screamingly hard difficulty or hideous racial insensitivity. Huzzah, Repton, for thou be-est the 100th Best Game Of All Time!

(P.S. Apparently there was something called Boulder Dash which was vaguely similar, but I don’t believe a word of it.)