The Cynical Gamer
Episode 2 - The Evil Dead
Video Transcript:
Sam Raimi. Now what is the first thing you think of?
No! Not Spiderman!
Ah ha, the Evil Dead series. Correct!
This film starred "The Chin", Bruce Campbell and was directed by his childhood friend, Sam Raimi. The film was originally credited as a video nasty on release, much like many other gory horror films during the mid-80's. The term video nasty was used to describe the violence that these films portrayed and came about from various religious organisations and their galiant leader Mary Whitehouse. A Christian. Because we all know the endearing nature of Christianity, don't we?
The Crusades, the french wars of religion, the 30 years war and the Taiping revolution.
The film originally came about when Campbell and Raimi did a prototype short for financial investors called, Within The Woods. The Evil Dead then spent 1 and a half years in production before being released. A couple of years later a movie tie in game was produced for the commodore 64 and the zx spectrum.
The commodore version was released first and has a cut scene sequence if you don't press anything and leave the game to it's own devices, usually this is called attraction mode.
The cut scene explains that Ash must protect the residents of the cabin by shutting the windows, which gives you points, and attacking any of the mutated or possessed cabin members.
When you kill a possessed member you also have to kill it's dismembered torso, legs and arms.
The members of the cabin will be possessed by a cloud looking object, which represents the evil force from the film, if you touch it, however, you will loose a life.
The music on the commodore is quite good and the birds-eye view playfield is quite well done, but there is a GLARING gameplay problem. You tend to loose energy, whilst walking or doing anything - except standing still, but wikipedia mentions, since I can't find any instructions, that in order to keep your energy level up you must pick up new weapons.
Ok, look NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENS! Which means that this game is flawed from the word go and is near impossible to complete! The only way you could do it is if you go to the bed room area and keep shutting the two windows until you run out of lives and even then, there is a chance of being owned by the cloud of DOOM. However, that isn't the case. After more searching I have found that you can increase your energy, but I'm not sure whether it's to do with each disembodied part you destroy or if it is the whole creature. Another GLARING problem with this game is that you can get stuck on certain items when trying to pick them up or navigating around them in the hallway, which is just frustrating!
A year later the spectrum version was released, but unlike the commodore version, it wasn't a standalone release. In fact, it was featured on side-B of Cauldron. This was unusual at the time because most games would have the same game on both sides of the tape and was only useful in case one of the sides didn't work. The odd exceptions to this case was Ocean's Batman: The Caped Crusader, which had side-A for the first part of the game and side-B for the second part of the game and Mikro-Gen's Everyone's A Wally, which had a song about the game on side-B.
The differences between the versions is that the spectrum version doesn't have the cut-scene instructions, but will play a demo showing the rooms, it doesn't have any music - just sound effects, the sprites are a bit bigger oh and you can't get stuck on some items. Other than that it's the same, including the "more energy for picking up weapons" bollocks!
As a final assessment for this game I agree with Retro Gamer's standpoint, it IS fun to play. Just for 5 minutes. No more, no less.
