Friday, February 19, 2010

The Rocky Horror game you never saw

Computer games, the couple that have been made on the subject, haven't been particularly kind to Rocky Horror. What version of Rocky the "Rocky Interactive Horror Show" was supposed to be based on, I have no idea. (The characters, and the castle, are VERY vague resemblances to those of the movie - and this was a game made with Richard O'Brien's involvement. I assume it was based on a stage version?) But, in 2000, I tried to make the situation even worse.

At the time, folks were still making variations of "ZZT", an INCREDIBLY cheap-looking DOS game that used ASCII characters for graphics - the protagonist being an ASCII smiley face. The game had a built-in 'world editor' that allowed you to design your own ZZT environments. I decided to create "The Rocky Horror ZZT Show". And God, was it terrible. (I could use the excuse that I was only thirteen and dumb, but I won't waste my time.)

Here are a few screen captures - you can click to enlarge them.

"Crappy" was a pretty decent description.
The foyer.... check out the size of that elevator. Walking into the grandfather clock took you into a couple pages of misinformation-filled text about the movie.
The ballroom. The "green door" text was a desperate attempt to get people to check out locations in the proper order of the movie - but honestly, I'm so thankful I didn't let other people see this back when I actually thought it was *good*. :-P
This drawing. The biggest insult to Frank ever made by a fan, ever.
The lab, accessed (of course) through the elevator. As you might've guessed, all the little smiley faces represent Transylvanians...
With complete disregard for proper chronology, viewing the monitor in the lab during what was meant to be Rocky's creation shows you wonderful artistic interpretations of the bedroom scenes.
Frank and Rocky's bedroom. Frank (the dark blue smiley) tells you to get out.
Skipping forward a little bit (everything takes about five minutes total to go through, as it really isn't much of a game), this is the Rocky/Janet reveal.
Dinner scene. To progress, you have to go visit Columbia. I apologize to Nell for what's coming.
Not only is THIS meant to be Columbia (yes, I considered putting a red dot in her shirt rip), but she talks like a cross between Nurse Ansalong (who appears elsewhere in the game, for no reason) and a four year old. Want me to make this even more painful? I was gonna have a mini game that you played on Columbia's Nintendo. It was called "Destroyer 2: The Destruction of Denton!" I couldn't get it to work properly.
Hell with "Planet Schmanet Janet" - here's "Walk Like An Egyptian"!
Statues. Obviously, Brad was hideously mangled before being Medusa'd. This is as far as I got.
There's a little bit more to see, but honestly.... you don't want to. You really, really don't want to. I mean, if I had the ability, I'd make a first person Rocky game where you could navigate a sweet 3D castle, but I can't. For now at least.