Andrew Newton revisits the best retro 2000 AD video games…
The weekly sci-fi magazine known as 2000 AD was a staple for young lads growing up in the late 70s and throughout the 80s and 90s (and perhaps still is?). Each issue (or prog as it is called) is filled with amazing and fantastical tales that stretch far into the future or simply stay in the everyday and mundane world yet are filled with thrills. The more popular characters to hail from the hallowed pages of 2000 AD include Strontium Dog, ABC Warriors, Slaine, Rogue Trooper, Dan Dare and, of course, Judge Dredd.
This success, along with the increasing popularity of what was once known as ‘computer games’ led to a number of games based on these famous characters. The 8-bit computers of the time all saw many names from 2000 AD arrive to various levels of success but it was 2000 AD’s flagship character Judge Dredd that has seen more games based on his adventures over the years. And, speaking of the great Judge himself…
Judge Dredd – Virgin Mastertronic, 1990
With his Lawmaster and Lawgiver, Dredd is a force to be reckoned with. Amiga
Virgin Mastertronic’s Judge Dredd is a side view scrolling shooter that takes players into the giant city of Mega-City One to walk in the boots of Judge Dredd himself. Using both his Lawgiver gun and Lawmaster motorbike, Dredd must bring his unique brand of justice to the multitude of criminals (perp’s) causing chaos in various locations.
Dredd has a moments reprieve from Fatties, mutants and other nasty creatures. Commodore 64.
The first set of perp’s that Dredd must defeat are the League of Fatties, a group of extremely overweight people obsessed with eating. These may sound easy to beat but they did have a habit of jumping off ledges in a bid to flatten the Judge. Despite the relative ease of defeating the Fatties, each level would get more difficult with nastier bosses until eventually fighting the biggest threat Dredd has ever faced, Judge Death (a being from a twisted parallel dimension where all life is considered a crime and death is the only sentence) and the Dark Judges Fear, Fire and Mortis. Failure to stop these crime waves quickly resulted in Dredd having to take ‘The Long Walk’ into the Cursed Earth.
Dredd is attacked by Fatties from all sides. Atari ST
This Judge Dredd game saw release on the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64 and the ZX Spectrum and scored above average in the majority of reviews. To date this is my favourite game based on Judge Dredd and is worth looking up on an emulator or a Youtube walkthrough.
Rogue Trooper – Piranha, 1987
Not much remained of Rogue’s house after the wild party. ZX Spectrum.
Another character from the pages of 2000 AD to have more than one game made after him is Rogue Trooper, a G.I. (Genetic Infantryman) on the planet of Nu-Earth. As the last of his squad, Rogue goes AWOL to hunt down the Souther general that betrayed them.
In this 1987 corker of a game, players must guide Rogue (accompanied by his equipment containing three uploaded minds of his former comrades) through the chemically and biologically poisoned landscape to retrieve 8 vidtapes that will identify the traitorous Souther General. On his mission to find these vidtapes, Rogue (along with Bagman, Gunnar and Helm) will search the ruins, shoot enemy Norts and even Southers, nobody can be trusted on Nu-Earth.
Poor Rogue has to deal with crazed Norts, landmines and gun mounted post boxes. Commodore 64.
Rogue Trooper paid a great detail of attention to the story from the character’s original run and proved popular on all systems, scoring in the 70%s in many magazines. Gamers wanting to look this up will find it on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and +4, and the lovely ZX Spectrum.
SEE ALSO: Duncan Jones’ Rogue Trooper movie to star Aneurin Barnard, Hayley Atwell and Jack Lowden
Strontium Dog: The Killing – Quicksilva 1984
In a distant future of Earth dreadful nuclear wars caused heavy strontium 90 radiation, which in turn caused many mutant children to be born. These children grew up to find the only jobs they were able to do (thanks to much discrimination) was bounty hunting for the Search/Destroy Agency. Strontium Dog followed a mutant bounty hunter called Johnny Alpha as he goes about various missions. Sometimes his adventures took him through time, in one he tried to capture Hitler, in another he allied with Judge Dredd during a zombie apocalypse (I kid you not).
The masters of the Killing look on while the Three Tenors perform.
In the game, players take the role of Johnny Alpha who arrives in an undisclosed location and is tasked to kill or be killed in a ruthless battle. As Johnny, players roam around a maze of very similar looking rooms while shooting the occasional enemies that crop up and immediately shoot at you. I’m not sure if completing the game is one requiring genius levels of skill or copious amounts of luck, either way I didn’t finish it.
A very empty room leaves Johnny wondering how to kill time.
Despite Strontium Dog: The Killing having too little action to keep you hooked I have to say it does have a very nice colourful (typical Speccy palette) look to it. Though this never scored highly (not that it deserved to) it is leaps and bounds better than Strontium Dog and the Death Gauntlet on the Commodore 64.
Sláine – Martech 1987
This Conan the Barbarian mixed with Celtic mytholgy inspired fantasy epic follows a barbarian warrior called Sláine as he travels through mythical lands (and sometimes time) defeating demons, aliens and anything else that would test him and his trusted axe ‘Brainbiter’ in combat. Accompanied by his untrustworthy dwarf friend Ukko, Sláine would do whatever it took to free his land from any threat while also enjoying some pleasures of the flesh. Readers of this story would be enthralled by the sheer amount of killing that took place when Sláine underwent his ‘Warp Spasms’, the suggestions of physical relationships he would embark on and the completely bizarre stories of aliens and time travel.
Where will the floaty hand get to before the option disappears?
The game, simply known as Sláine on Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, is a graphical adventure following Sláine as he embarks on a quest to help the Scots fight the Drune Lords, a powerful cult of dark god worshippers. The quest sounds simple enough until you realise Martech tried a new gaming technique called ‘Reflex’. What this essentially did was split the screen in two with the nice graphics on the right and Sláine’s random thoughts and actions in the box on the left that would scroll in, then scroll out as quickly as they appeared or change altogether.
In my opinion, ‘Reflex’ didn’t do the game justice and I can’t help feeling that without it the game would have done better than the mixed bag of scores it received on all formats. Still, for fans of the comic series, some of the game’s text is written by Sláine’s creator Pat Mills which is nice.
Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future – Virgin Games 1986
Dan Dare, or Biggles in Space as he is sometimes known, is a character who started his life gracing the pages of Eagle comic and then moved onto 2000 AD when Eagle comic finished. Dan Dare was a British colonel in the Interplanetary Space Fleet and his adventures alongside his friends Digby and Sir Hubert Guest took him throughout the Solar System.
Each hero has to have an adversary and Dan Dare’s is the Mekon, a genetically engineered being with vast intelligence and almost as big a cranium. The Mekon ruled the Treen army on Venus and was obsessed with the conquest of all other things, which obviously made him clash with Dan on many occasions.
Mekon tries his best to stop Dan in the Spectrum version
In the game, the Mekon has equipped a giant asteroid with a nuclear bomb and aimed it straight at Earth and it is up to Dan to infiltrate the asteroid, kill the Treens and stop the asteroid in its tracks. The game differed slightly depending on what platform it was on. In the Spectrum version players would need to collect pieces of a self-destruct mechanism scattered throughout the large map, shoot numerous Treens with his laser gun and destroy the Asteroid.
In the Commodore 64 version meanwhile, there were changes to the combat system with Dan ditching the laser gun to engage in a spot of fisticuffs and being followed around by a small creature. There also were no pieces of a self-destruct mechanism to collect, instead Dan just had to make it to the control room where he could rescue his friends, destroy the control computers AND kill the Mekon. There is a lot to do in the C64 version, but I still personally prefer the simplicity of the Spectrum version.
Dan practices Queensbury Rules against a Treen while his little white follower takes in the 70’s brown decor.
Aesthetically, the Amstrad CPC and C64 versions looked quite similar with their wider colour palette but the Spectrum’s more limited colours allowed the details and environments to be much clearer and less muddled together.
Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future scored very highly on all platforms and is still a very playable game today. It was followed by two sequels, both of which were still ok to play but neither catching the star quality of Dan’s first foray into computer games.
No fisticuffs for Dan when he gets his laser gun back in the Amstrad version.
So there we have it, five great games inspired by five of the greatest heroes ever to grace the pages of 2000 AD, though there have been more heroes (I missed out Nemesis the Warlock who also came with his own game). I’m sure that even Tharg the Mighty, the most zarjaz editor of them all (sorry Gary), recognised the high level of thrill power contained within every single game. Hopefully, we will be treated to many more thrills with more 2000 AD related games in the future.
What are your favourite classic 2000 AD video games? Let us know on our social channels @FlickeringMyth…
Andrew Newton
