So far we’ve seen plenty of examples of computer games trying to live up to things outside of computer games – sports, movies, board games. Barbarian is the first where the aim is to live up to its own publicity photos.
Without its box art/adverts/posters picturing a loincloth-clad man and bikini-clad woman, and the attendant fuss, it’s unlikely Barbarian would have been such a success (the people photographed are a pre-Gladiators Wolf from Gladiators, and Maria Whittaker, who had modelled for the Sun’s page three, and who the following year continued her computer game career by starring in Maria’s Christmas Box, a strip poker game which won’t be troubling Super Chart Island). Vague implications of sex sell, and so does a magazine-friendly controversy about its association with a medium largely seen as for children. If the pictures didn’t do the job, Palace Software backed them up with some in-game blood and beheadings to further court outrage. “Barbarian a ‘threat to youth’ decides German government”. Ah, the ‘80s, a quaint time when a gritty medieval fantasy story could become a success powered by a bit of bare skin and barbarity, and you could get through it without encountering Ed Sheeran.
The game really does treat the photos, or at least their principle, with importance. Half of the levels in which the player’s muscly man carries out a series of one-on-one fights against fellow loincloth-wearers have Princess Mariana, in a bikini overlooking their fighting. The reward for successfully beating every opponent, up to and including the evil wizard keeping the princess captive, is a pixel recreation of the cover photo; the player character looms proprietarily while some surging music plays. The cringeworthy aesthetic is Barbarian’s raison d’etre.
What is less expected is that Barbarian also turns out to be one of the most enjoyable fighting experiences so far. It’s fast and smooth, the sword-swinging has a real heft to it, and there is a good array of moves and ways to connect, especially rolling into your opponent to knock them down to the ground. Palace Software suffuse the fighting with both some sense of strategy and a palpable last-ditch desperation, getting across cruelty without the game being cruel to the player. On the Spectrum, the bright red starbursts when you connect with a blow stand out against the monochrome in a particularly satisfying way. The goblin that shuffles across the screen to drag off the lifeless body of the loser, kicking their severed head as it goes, is the point where the commitment to grottiness goes far enough to swing back to amusing. Playing it remains a bit “I read Playboy for the articles”, but Barbarian does do more than merely living up to the challenge of its photos.
