A last minute change to this 1986 entry sees me choose a little known and slightly controversial game. Zoids were a range of toys that were (and, in fact, still are) popular in Japan and surfaced for a couple of years in Europe too. In essence they were mecha dinosaurs that came in little construction kits and the smaller ones were powered by a rather ineffectual wind-up motor. Larger models, such as the Zoidzilla and Redhorn the terrible models, were battery powered and had flashing lights and everything. You won’t be surprised to learn that I thought they were great.

In 1986, a tie-in game was released. I’d just been given my first home computer which was an Amstrad 464 - not one of the cool toys like a Commodore 64 or even a Spectrum but some poxy system with an integrated cassette deck. Eventually I came to love the Amstrad even though it was generally sneered at. One of the first games I bought was Zoids: The Battle Begins and it was brilliant.

The idea was that you roamed about a vector graphic wasteland looking for parts of the mighty - but destroyed - Zoidzilla. These parts were in the domed cities of the enemy red zoids. You had to scout the terrain to find and then destroy these cities to locate and collect all the parts of your fallen comrades. If I recall, every time you found a piece, the zoid you were riding in was upgraded to the next model although I don’t remember if that made much difference.

The game interface was dominated by a load of icons and it was never really made clear how these were supposed to work, so part of the challenge was working out what did what. Combat was either by guns or missiles. Launching a missile took you into a mini-game where you took control of the weapon as it flew towards it’s target, navigating through the terrain and around obstacles. This was probably the most fun part of it. Like a lot of games of this era, there was no save feature so once you died, you had to start again. Fortunately (as I’ve now discovered) there was a save feature so you didn’t have to try to complete it all in one sitting - which is obviously how I must have done it.

Zoids was one of the first games I ever managed to complete. Despite the very minimal graphics and the obscure interface, it felt a little like a simulation and the sub games made it more interesting. It certainly captivated me enough to play it through to the end, which I did one weekend when I went with my father to visit my aunt. I took the machine with me and then sat there all afternoon playing it until I was done. I do remember an immense feeling of satisfaction despite the fact that the reward for finishing was probably a measly “Well done!”. That seemed to be another facet of the games of that era - game completion was relatively dull and unsatisfying. It’s like saving the world and all of humanity from an invading alien race, finding a cure for cancer and calculating a single unified theory of the universe and receive nothing but a limp handshake, a mumbled congratulations followed by “Right, back to work then!”

I said at the start that this game was controversial and I bet you’ve either forgotten or are wondering how, given the nature of this game that’s inspired by a range of Japanese mecha toys, there could possibly be even the tinsiest, weeniest smattering of controversy about this title. The answer lies in the reviews of the game at the time of its release. Zoids: The Battle Begins was given pretty high ratings across the board, across all the popular formats, by most of the contemporary gaming magazines of the time, including Amtix!, Amstrad Action, Crash, Zzap 64 and so on. But later on, people looked back on the game and decided that it was shit (although maybe the speccy version was rubbish). A lot of comments I do see around on the retro gaming forums these days are about how difficult it was which I find hard to believe because I don’t normally perservere at difficult games. Fortunately it seems that I’m not the only person who enjoyed it.

I remember a lot of Amstrad games with a fondness that in all likelihood they don’t deserve.¹ They all seemed remarkably hard in retrospect and I only ever finished two that I can think of (the other being Bard’s Tale 1). Perhaps I should dig out an emulator and have a crack at some of them again although, having said that, it’s highly likely that both the Amstrad and my old Zoids are gathering dust in my parents attic.

¹And then there are those games that I still have total contempt for - like the movie tie-in game for Predator which was impossible, the conversion of Ghosts ‘n Goblins which was unplayable and all the old Amsoft games which were fucking piles of steaming turd.