Genesis of the Charleks

Well I was sat on the train this morning with my new smartphone, tapping my feet to the sweet sounds of Cerys Matthews and Catatonia and wondering what to do to pass the time. Since I got the phone for xmas, iv'e been busily adding new apps on a daily basis, for everything from satellite tracking to photoshopping to blogging. Then I remembered that i'd downloaded a ZX Spectrum emulator, that would pretend to be a Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer - all 48 k of it - on my phone. Straightaway, I was transported back to the world of 8 bit computing and the simple graphics and basic gameplay. I'd preloaded a couple of favourites, Tir Na Nog, a celtic adventure game that occupied many long hours back ion the eighties and an isometric puzzle game called Head Over Heels. This involved a simple scenario of two cartoon dogs trapped separately in a castle environment and the object is to reunite them and escape. On the way, you have to negotiate trap filled rooms, monsters, robots and electrified floors. It was about ten minutes in, that I started laughing to myself as I entered a room and suddenly remembered on of its key denizens - the Charlek!

Programmer Jon Ritman was clearly a Dr Who fan and possibly an anti royalist as he had taken a Dalek body and placed a jug-eared bust of Prince Charles atop it to make the remote controlled Charlek. Even better, when I got to the internet to create the blog item, I discovered that the game itself has been remade for current platforms too, such as iPad and PC, with new full colour graphics.

Ritman had previously revolutionised the ZX Spectrum game by creating the isometric 3d view with a game based on Batman. Robin has been kidnapped by the Joker and in the process, broken the batmobile into several pieces, scattering them around the Batcave. Batman had to wander from room to room to recover the parts, avoid the villains and traps etc, before he can rescue Robin. Ritman adapted the base game engine and wowed the gameplaying industry by adding two playable characters.

The original game has been updated too for Windows platform, with the addition of new coloured graphics and is available free of charge from: http://retrospec.sgn.net/game/batman

Its a long way removed from C.O.D and Halo 4, but the chief difference is the simple and extremely addictive gameplay!