#58: Creatures 2: Torture Trouble (Thalamus, Commodore 64, 1992) 

Five levels in, Creatures 2 flipped the script on me. After making heroic rescues of the Fuzzy Wuzzies held hostage in the first few levels, you reach a boss fight, in which Clyde must defeat a series of increasingly large and hostile demons. All sounds like fairly standard fare, no? Except that in these levels, there are no Fuzzy Wuzzies to be rescued. There is another fairly elaborate death machine, but it’s one used by you, the player, to exterminate those filthy savages. The first demon offers very little in the way of threat, and after dispatching it, the second greets you with the message “You’ve killed my brother, so I’m going to kill you”, which is followed up by the third saying “My kids are dead because of you… Prepare to die!”. It is, to say the least, difficult to come out of these encounters feeling like you are the hero of the story. And this is exactly the undercutting of the narrative of righteous and justified war that was so sorely needed.

Taking a sharp turn away from that train of thought now; cheat codes have existed nearly as long as games have existed. Creatures 2 was undoubtedly made with the expectation that many people would be using an infinite lives code. Even calling it ‘cheating’ seems rather facile. It’s just making a small tweak to the game in order to make it possible for me to enjoy it, akin to turning subtitles on to watch a film in a language I don’t speak. Playing it in this way does not give me an inaccurate understanding of what the game actually is, any more than using a couple of throwaway lines as the basis of a reading that was clearly never intended by the game’s creators does. It is a refusal to allow anyone else to dictate the terms of how I consume media, which goes hand in hand with a refusal to allow anyone to dictate the terms of how I understand the world, a refusal to unquestioningly accept to word of the government, of news media, of any self-proclaimed authority.

And, as a closing statement for the Commodore 64, that seems fairly apt. These games were, by and large, the work of one or two individuals as opposed to big corporations, and while most of them may not be able to stand up with the likes of Mario or Sonic, they are a vital part of my gaming history, of my country’s gaming history. All of them, and so many more besides, they all happened, and they mattered, and they should not be forgotten.