- by Owen Morton
Okay, well, here's a new article for you. I'm writing about it chiefly because it's the first thing that came into my head when I was scouring my brain for things to write about, not because I actually expect anyone to remember it. But you can read it anyway. It may occur that you do remember it, in which case you are either one of my friends or family who has been forced to play it, or you are the game's creator. In the latter case, I apologise in advance for the criticisms I am about to level on your masterpiece.
I perhaps should point out at this point that I'm now going through a stage where I have very little time for computer games anyway, which may be influencing some of my comments, but on the other hand, it has to be mentioned that much of what I'm about to say is genuinely because Marsquake isn't a very good game. Neither is the later edition of it, Marsquake Boom! Deluxe, despite the substantially more interesting title. On the other hand, Marsquake is quite good for an Archimedes game, and it is far superior to some BBC games I have had the misfortune to encounter (ready examples that spring to mind are Scarecrow - which was a primitive version of Hangman - and The Magic Telephone, which invited you to press the space bar, and when you did so, it emitted a high-pitched beep and caused the BBC to shut down permanently. I get the impression I've mentioned this already on this website, so if so, I'm sorry).
I'll start by explaining Marsquake to you in as impartial a voice as I can without going completely insane. Marsquake was set on a certain planet in our solar system (guess which) where there had been a lot of rock falls. You played the part of a silly little robot which ran around in the maze and cleared all the roof falls by blowing them up, only to find at the end that your hard labour was for the benefit of repairing the coffee machine (which is pretty damn amusing, even if I don't say so myself). Lots of opportunities to blow yourself up in the process would also arise. You began with, I believe, three lives, and once you'd used them up, the game ended. If you could clear all the rock falls over the thirty-two levels, you completed the game. Sounds easy? Not quite.
Well, okay, it was. But there were added complications. First off, there were the baddies which also, for some reason, were swarming all over the Martian base. These baddies consisted of, as far as I can remember, green robots which ate your bombs, walking bombs, ghosts, red robots which ate your bombs and killed you, and sprites, which, contrary to expectation, were not fizzy drinks, rather some weird form of electricity. All these baddies were fatal on contact, except the green robot. I believe there may also have been another type of baddy involved, but, not being sad, I can't remember what it was. There was only one way to kill them: blow them up. Indeed, as you may have gathered, blowing things up was the primary solution for pretty much everything in this game. Actually, I seem to recall that the sprites couldn't be killed by blowing them up, but I can't for the life of me remember how you did kill them, but I'm sure you'll agree it doesn't really matter all that much.
That was basically it for the Marsquake single-player. And from that, I'm sure you can deduce that there was another aspect to this wonderful game. Oh, yes, my friends, there was also a multi-player option. This was actually the more fun bit, because it meant you had someone else who was probably enjoying the experience even less than you were. Basically, in this option, you and up to three other players were dumped in an arena where you would then work to blow the living daylights out of one another. Sheer genius! And terribly original as well! The only problem here was that you all had to use the same keyboard, and while this was manageable (after a fashion) if there were only two of you, it became downright impossible if there were four of you. The game itself acknowledged this rather unfortunate drawback in the instructions, where it said something to the effect of, "Up to four players can play on the same keyboard, though we only recommend this if you've lost your Twister mat" which is terribly funny, as I'm sure you'll all agree.
Fortunately, however, for those who saw this as something obstructing the happy progress of their lives, the fault was corrected to an extent with the next version, the excitingly named Marsquake Boom! Deluxe, wherein you could either play against computer-controlled robots (which was pointless, since a) you might as well just play the single-player bit and b) the computer was, shall we say, not particularly adept at behaving intelligently, tending to blow itself up ten times within the first minute) or, and this is the good bit, link up your Archimedes with a network cable to another Archimedes which also had Marsquake Boom! Deluxe installed, and play over the network! Wow! The guy who invented the game must have really thought people actually wanted to play the game if he went to all the time and effort of creating networking software. He was wrong. The chief problem is that, if a household owns an Archimedes (which is pretty unlikely), it tends to only own one, so linking your two Archimedes' up was not an option. Moreover, if you actually found another person who owned an Archimedes, and by a further stretching of likelihood, expressed a desire to play Marsquake, to link them up, you would actually have to own an Archimedes network cable. I would guess that these went off the general market (if indeed they were ever on it) about ten years ago. Marsquake Boom! Deluxe, conversely, is, I believe, four or five years old. Thus, if you wanted to play networked Marsquake, you would have to acquire a network cable about five or six years after they became generally unavailable. This will probably involve lots and lots of time, as well as, no doubt, copious amounts of money. And, of course, the end product is probably not worth it. Would you want to go to all the trouble of acquiring an Archimedes network cable just for the privilege of playing networked Marsquake? No, I didn't think so.
Another of the 'benefits' which owning Marsquake Boom! Deluxe would bring you is the aptly-named MBoom!LevelEditor. Try and guess what that did. Yes, it allowed you to create your own levels to play either single-player or multi-player on. And okay, it was an impressive piece of software, in that it did actually work, after a fashion. The levels you made could be run. Thus it was a success. On the other hand, the amount of effort the guy must have put into creating this cannot have been worth it. And, just because I'm the kind of person to criticise pretty much anything I come into contact with, I'm going to point out the one really big flaw in the software which I can remember, despite not having used it for some considerable time. This flaw was that you were perfectly capable of walking off the edge of the screen if you didn't surround it with blocks. Okay, it means maybe you should just be careful when playing it, but it's the principle that's the annoying thing. I'm not going to go on about this in detail because I've just made the attempt twice and deleted it all again because it was sounding dangerously sad. But just take it from me, I was not pleased to discover this fundamental error.
The last thing I want to mention, as far as I can think of right now, on the subject of Marsquake and Marsquake Boom! Deluxe is that the former was shareware i.e. free to anyone who copied it off anyone else. This is how I obtained my copy of it. Fair enough. It's not good enough to actually pay for, as you have perhaps gathered from the general gist of this article. Marsquake Boom! Deluxe, on the other hand, was marketed as something you had to pay for. (Don't get me wrong, I didn't pay for it - I was just supposed to.) But since you can't buy Archimedes games in shops anymore, as far as I know (and if anyone knows where I can, let me know, since it would no doubt provide a great deal more entertaining articles insulting them) the guy who created it decided to distribute it over the internet. A normal person would advertise it and offer to send it to you on receipt of money. Not this fellow. He uploaded it to his website and invited all and sundry to download it, with the caption at the top "Please send five British pounds (£5) to my address" (the address was printed there), which is downright stupid. No one is going to do that. Basically, he just stuck his product up for people to steal and couldn't possibly trace who nicked it. And okay, I'm a thief. But I don't care. I'd willingly give the thing back if I could.
So there you have it. My first article for ten days is a pointless missive on the subject of a game that no one else will have ever heard of. Such is life. Don't expect too many articles in the near future: I'm having a bit of a brain cramp as regards writing things.