We live in the age of the FPS. The biggest selling games are your standard first-person shooters that are designed to pit you, the sane kind of chap or chapess who reads Gaming Lives, against the kind of uber-fuckwits that make up the majority of ranked match players on Xbox Live. Well, maybe they aren’t the majority but they have the loudest voices. Usually the squeaky timbre of a bionic fucking thumb that happens to have a twelve-year old American kid attached to it.

Occasionally though, my life as a person who sometimes reviews games, forces me to dip my toe back in the water and it’s usually within a minute that some arsewank has taken me apart three times while singing, annoyingly, down their mic. Eventually, with a lot of luck and a little skill, I might get them back. Usually in a panic of unaimed fire of the sort last seen in Pulp Fiction. The pay off? “You killed xX>I-Sm0k3-w3eD

I’ve been gaming ever since the days where death meant Pac-Man being caught by a brightly-coloured spectral bastard or taking a dozen pixels in the mush from a Space Invader and you know what, dying just isn’t the giggle it used to be.

Back in the day (fixes pipe, fluffs up slippers) it wasn’t all about clinical headshots of today’s generic modern warfare soldiers and faceless space marines. Nor was it about the hyper-realistic gore of the supposedly adult games that seem to be specifically targeted towards fuckwitted teenagers.

In days gone by you barely had enough memory for a title screen, an options page and the rest of your game. In fact some games never even got endings but once in a while, a coder with a sadistic sense of humour, would reserve a couple of kilobytes for a death animation and, given that games back then were harder than Chuck Liddell – in a minefield, with an exoskeleton, and a baseball bat, with nails in it, and maybe some rusty syringes, covered in bricks and mortar – you’d be seeing your death animation often. So it made sense for them to make a bit of an effort when you virtually shuffled off of this mortal coil. Of course, most developers didn’t make that effort and all too often death meant your sprite flashed on and off for a couple of frames and then you reappeared elsewhere on the screen but occasionally the death would be glorious, cold or just a little funny.

It was a better time. A simpler time. A time when crashing Bomb Jack into a flying saucer didn’t result in you being told that you suck.

Jet Set Willy
ZX Spectrum

You think Tomb Raider is a fussy platform game? Back in 1984, Jet Set Willy’s coding legend, Matthew Smith, devised a game so unforgivingly difficult it made Tomb Raider look like Lego Fucking Tiddlywinks. Your task was to take the nimble-but-hungover Willy through his mansion so that he could tidy up after his latest drinky session and go to bed.

This involved pixel-perfect leaps (literally down to the very last pixel) while the assorted denizens of the mansion (ballet-dancing rabbits, angry telephones, deadly eggs… you know, the usual) swept through the various screens with the express purpose of fucking up your day.

The seven lives you got were frankly a drop in an ocean of BLOOD, especially as a badly-judged leap into a new screen would often result in a game-ending deathloop. Yep, Jet Set Willy was as sadistic to the young ‘uns of the 80s as the average Austrian handyman.

Once you lost your seven lives, Matthew Smith’s final ‘fuck you’ was a Monty Python-esque foot that came down from the top of the screen and squished Master Willy’s sixteen-pixel tall body. Harsh but probably the reason why most of us gamers are now counter-culture slackers who can’t be bothered trying very hard.

Ghosts and Goblins
Arcade

Ghost and Goblins, or to give it it’s Japanese name, Makaimura (translated: “You Will Never Complete This Game, Fucker”) is a classic run and.. er… sword, platformy/actiony/combat game from Capcom and, frankly speaking, is designed by absolutely hateful sadists. This is Capcom at their most Japanese. For you, the war is over GI. I shall not kill you, I will let Ghosts and Goblins finish you off.

If Jet Set Willy was hard, this is T-800 hard. T-800 with hammers for eyes hard. T-800 with Doctor Martin boots, face tattoos that say ‘All Coppers Are Bastards’ and honourary title of ‘World’s Biggest, Hardest Bastard’ hard. As hard as Danny Dyer thinks he is in his own head levels of hard. I’ve no idea what level three is like because before I even get near it I’m sobbing into a pillow.

The game itself pits you (an armour-clad knight) against the hordes of the Demon Village (Govan). This means grim reapers, possessed animals, headless giant knights and a mecha-Kerry Katona’s face as well as a few tricky platform challenges. The short version is, unless you are basically good autistic (you know, autistic with super-abilities) then you’re not completing shit.

The inevitable first hit from an undead beasty robs Sir Arthur of his clothes, leaving him to fight in his underpants like an unlucky kid with a creepy PE teacher. The next hit crumbles Sir Arthur down to a pile of bones. A stark warning to the player that this game is ready to fuck with you even at a skeletal level.

Barbarian
Speccy/C64/various

Barbarian by Palace Software is one of those iconic games that all retro gamers remember but never particular feel the need to play again. Y’see, Barbarian was a bit blaverage. It wasn’t a bad game at all – there were better one-on-one fighting games around but there were also much worse ones – but it just wasn’t that varied.

Sure, it had a dozen or so combat moves in its repetoir but nobody remembers them. That is, apart from one. The Flying Neck Chop. This move, a throat-height, spinning horizontal slash, was tricky to land, especially against the savvy AI, but when you did the pay-off was immense. Firstly, it was an outright winner. The game had energy bars (sort of) but you’re not running this injury off. Secondly, it took your opponent’s head clean off his shoulders. Yep, land one of these babies and your opponent would drop, sans-noggin, to his knees and a small gargoyle-esque creature would kick his head off of the screen. A comedic touch to one of the first actual fatality moves in the genre.

Later on games such as Moonstone, Mortal Kombat and Soldier Of Fortune would take the idea and run with it, but Barbarian did it first and, arguably, best.

Renegade
Speccy/C64/Arcade/various

While Double Dragon won all the plaudits amongst the puffa jacketed arcade-dwellers in the 80s, your best bet for home mass-brawling was Renegade, a coin-op conversion of the westernised version of Nekketsu Koha Kunio-kun (roughly “Kick To The Gonads – Superb!”). Unlike the clumsily-controlled arcade version, the home versions – well, okay, the Speccy version – were a much safer bet.

The game had the then-mandatory plot of ‘girl gets kidnapped by Mr Big, boyfriend takes out a bunch of henchmen to get her back’. In this particular version of that story the boyfriend, let’s call him Rene, uses his considerable brawling talents to traverse five bastard-packed levels. However, this wasn’t some traditional karate sim. Rene’s moves were for the street and from the street.

He had kicks, punches, throws and could even mount a stunned opponent and pummel his face into the ground. A risky manouevre that could see you kicked to death like a parent on a council estate, but if you had a mean streak in you, this was the most brutal way to dispatch an opponent. However, it wasn’t the best. Renegade’s best death used the game’s most original feature – interactive scenery (well, sort of).

After all, what better way is there to dispatch someone than to stun them with a flying kick to the mush, grab their shoulders, knee them firmly in the nuts and then throw them to their death off of a subway platform? That’s right. There is no better way. There will never be a better way. Do you understand? DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

Chaos
ZX Spectrum

Sometimes the cruelest deaths are the ones where you see them coming from a mile off and when a rival wizard casted the ‘Gooey Blob’ spell in Julian Gollop’s turn-based wizard-them-up Chaos, it was like Jason Voorhees was doing his slow, Terminator strides towards you and you were the daft, teenage girl running away from the inevitable machete in the gut.

Chaos’ spells were mainly minion spawns and short-range fireballs. The usual dragons, zombies, mummies, elves and giants as well as the less terrifying lions, crocodiles and, bizarrely, small birds (oh my). You’d cast them and then, when it was your turn, send them off to go and hunt your rivals. Look at those snappers, Ralph!

By comparison, the gooey blob was nothing. You placed it in a location and it would randomly spread out in directions of its own choosing. The blob was easily killed but in a few turns it’d spread out like a chav family living in your street. Before long you wouldn’t be able to get near it. So it’d become the big, green elephant in the room while you continued to hunt your enemies.

Eventually though you’d lose allies to it, all the time getting yourself backed into a corner. That bastard fourth wizard who wasted all his spells on trees and walls and wouldn’t have a chance against your small army, was suddenly sitting pretty while you died a peasant’s death before exploding in eight directions in a cheap and nasty graphical effect.

Last five articles by Richie

• The Richie Report: Et Velum Ultimum
• Sky Force Anniversary - Review
• Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 - Review
• The Final Station - Review
• Ninja Pizza Girl - Review