Stumbling through Geordie Racer

[davidn]

Frankly I'm not sure how I forgot about this for so long, but here's a video of Geordie Racer, a game that we used to have in school that was full of pigeons. It was based on a television series, also called Geordie Racer, that was also full of pigeons. To the best of my memory, it was about a family of runners who kept pigeons, and they (either the family or the pigeons) foiled a smuggling plot somehow.

What happens in the game naturally bears very little resemblance to this - BBC Micro games were invariably collections of minigames strung together into an adventure and they always took a bit of a condescending attitude towards the player, punishing them severely or chastising them for their stupidity even when the only way to progress through the game was essentially to just pick random numbers and hope you weren’t eaten by a cat or struck by lightning. So here is an opportunity to watch me being confounded by a game intended for eight year olds.

Retrospectively, of course, I can only see this game as an omen of what was to come.

http://youtu.be/BGUSrfVSRZ0

Comments

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

i want to comment. I do. But I'm speechless. I don't think there's anything to say. That was just... amazing and terrible all at once. And just what was Baz doing while you were fiddling with ropes and ladders instead of, I don't know, flying? I don't think I want to think about it.
Actually, although the game wasn't very clear about it, I have to assume you were controlling... well... yourself for most of the game, and the pigeon was only for the first part. It's so badly-written, though, who can tell!
What a terrible adventure.

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

*wants to brag about running without shoes, but Teo does it intentionally, so I feel unworthy*

That pigeon has a human foot! Or. . . were you not playing as a pigeon in that part? This would explain why the bank did not discriminate against you. . or the shoe store. I was having a lot of fun imagining it, tho. . .

[davidn]

The game definitely gets a lot better when you just imagine it all as pigeons :) I thought that myself and wondered why a pigeon was taking part in a 13-mile race on foot...

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

Argh, memories I never wanted. :P We never had this game at school - we had the so-much-more-player-friendly Granny's Garden instead, along with Dread Dragon Droom (my favourite :P) - but I remember being made to watch Geordie Racer, and thinking that Spuggy was a bit of an odd name, and thinking it was a bit of a crap series all in all, even if his dad was famous from Inspector Morse.

And for those of you who thought that Wordy is kind of creepy in this 2d-sprite form, his puppet incarnation is exponentially worse.

D.F.

[davidn]

I haven't played Dread Dragon Droom, but perhaps I should! We had all the others that seemed to be in the standard BBC Micro kit that all schools received - Granny's Garden, Little Red Riding Hood, Flowers of Crystal, Dragon World, and something that I swear was called The Magic Telephone (and that accursed adventure game that I have never found again...)

I've never gone back to look at the old Look and Read series - I fear that they may be significantly worse than I remember! Although Sky Hunter had Mr Trimm in it, who was a replacement Doctor Who.

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

We'll find that adventure game yet; if nothing else, we still have plenty of time to search for it. :P

And, I'd love to see Dread Dragon Droom again! It's mostly minigames of a similar nature (sliding square puzzles, Tower of Hanoi (a.k.a. Professor Layton's pancakes), etc.), but I vaguely remember it being a slightly higher quality than the others around, as in, the story made vague sense (note the use of the word 'vague' here), and it didn't kill you immediately.

It had a space-themed sequel, called DUST (capitalisation is mandatory, apparently), but some of the games in that were nigh-impossible, or just pointless. Guess the right 4-digit passcode combination, with no clues at all? Okay, I'll just start going through all 10,000 possibilities, then... ¬_¬

D.F.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, good old Look and Read. 'Draw what you think happened to Blue Flash' and despite your best imagination, they destroy it by the fact they just did not let him out of the cage.

Out of the four from my years at school, it was the least exciting. Badger Girl was all about stealing horses and whether the father was in on it. Dark towers was a firm favourite with spooky goings on and the last was Through the Dragon's eye, which was rather brutal with the villain turning the purple character into goo, and the green one into a caterpillar before squashing it. Or I might be remembering wrong, but I am sure the villain had clacky fingers and they were looking for bright yellow blocks whilst the Dragon tried to read the 'Thin Ice' sign.

[davidn]

I've never seen Dark Towers but I've heard it was one of the best ones... I had Badger Girl, Geordie Racer, Through the Dragon's Eye, Sky Hunter (which was one from the 70s that they repackaged, though I didn't know it at the time) and I can't remember any of the others.

Charn from Through the Dragon's Eyes was definitely the stuff of nightmares - usually people's young minds exaggerate them, but he was seriously an undead bird-skull thing with bare intestines spilling out of his ribcage and scissor-fingers which he used to melt people. What a way to grow up.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

I think this has to be shared.
Prime candidate for the next video, right, everybirdie?

[crassadon.livejournal.com]

I want to see it now!

[davidn]

Here he is! He appeared in the television series, I can't remember if he was in the game...



(This picture found by doing a search for "charn through the dragon's eye", finding one on a forum, and discovering that the image I'd found was a hotlink to my own site.)

[lupineangel.livejournal.com]

That thing is terrifying.Part of me is glad I missed out on that series; the other part wishes I'd had something as cool as that instead of slightly dodgy loosely-pigeon-related antics with people with Newcastle accents.

Spellcasting: A-V-A-U-N-T

D.F.

[rakarr.livejournal.com]

In the interest of giving a slightly fuller answer, I do have to say that, despite the unfair absurdity of it, I can see how it would have been appealing to kids at the time - how it would have been appealing to me, even. Although I mercifully cannot claim to have seen the show, the references to it do seem somewhat arbitrary and thrown in - although the pigeons are amusing.

It's less condescending than Granny's Garden, but somehow worse in the way it'll just gleefully kill you. STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Okay, maybe you can try something el- STRUCK BY LIGHTNING. Okay, the house seems like a better- EATEN BY CAT. And then MOLESTED BY BAZ. And that's only the first couple of screens! Anyway, as you said, I can't imagine there being any real difference between the fast, strong and brave pigeons - except maybe for the trivia questions.

And the fact that you initially typed "pained" instead of "painting" is very telling, by the way.

Anyway - for all its faults, it's a hilarious game to watch - which is why I don't have a whole lot to say; I'd just be quoting all the funny bits.

[davidn]

Yes, all BBC Micro games seemed to do that... and weren't as generous as this one, usually sending you right back to the start for the slightest wrong move! I suppose it was the way to add longevity, punish the slightest wrong guess...

Baz in the programme looked like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFDd4dOO_F8#t=42s - rather different from the moustachioed Joker that he was translated to in the game! (And even now I can barely understand a word he's saying - the merit of teaching English with a story set in Newcastle is debatable).

(Charn is posted above, don't say I didn't warn you)

[tamakun.livejournal.com]

So I just looked up the Wiki article on this game (/show) and found that it makes no sense to those who have never seen the show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geordie_Racer).

Spuggy Hilton? They're just making things up, now...