Pssst - Get up and Grow
"Of course this game is educational Dad, it's all about gardening" , well that was my excuse for having this game and it seemed to work!
Meet Robbie the Robot , all he wants in life is to see his Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil bloom, it's not much to ask really is it? Unfortunately Robbie's garden is infested with all sorts of horrible critters that just want to eat his Thyrgodian Megga Chrisanthodil, poor Robbie, welcome to the very real world of gardening sonny! Fortunately Robbie has quite a few spray cans of lethal bug killer that can kill certain bugs but will leave others untouched, his job is having to juggle the spray cans so that he can kill all the bugs and watch his...I'm not typing the name of that thing again... bloom (any gardeners feeling sympathy for this little metal chap yet?)
This was one of the early games on the ZX Spectrum released in 1983 and for me it was a few years later before I discovered this game. But it's still yet another brilliant game from Ultimate.
This was one of the early games on the ZX Spectrum released in 1983 and for me it was a few years later before I discovered this game. But it's still yet another brilliant game from Ultimate.
The attraction for me to this game is obvious, I am a gardener, and Robbie, I share your pain. Like you I have also had to deal with Interstellar Space Slugs, Scuttling Leeches and Menacing Midges (alright , perhaps not those types of critters but certainly the more terrestrial cousins of those.) As all good games do, this game builds slowly, but soon you are thrown into a maelstrom of sap sucking bugs and cans of bug spray. It can be quite soul destroying watching your newly sprouted plant get devoured right in front of your eyes, while you zoom round the screen trying to remember which spray kills which bug.
But for me this game wasn't about the bugs, it was about the robot. Yet another endearing little Spectrum character like Pogo, Horace or Sabreman. Plus I love robots, (I blame this entirely on Twiki in the Buck Rogers TV Series). Very much like the Pogo game, it seemed such a simple thing to do , you just felt you had to help the wee little metal guy. It was a familiar topic , this may be a robot on a strange world , but the battle he fought was one my family fought every day during the growing season. In fact one of my pocket money jobs was to pick caterpillars off cabbages and at times I did mentally escape into the game to preserve my sanity !
Certainly in my family , some computer games were also played at a particular time of year and this became my winter game, it reminded me of the more colourful months to come (and the thought of more caterpillars which would equal more pocket money, which would equal more spectrum games!) Fast forward many many years, I am now a gardener. I think it is only now I can fully empathise with poor Robbie and the battles he faced. I do also have to wonder if this game may have been responsible for my love of magenta flowers of which I possibly have far too many in my garden.
"Of course this game is educational Dad, it's all about gardening" . Looking back on it , it wasn't a lie, not really.
Certainly in my family , some computer games were also played at a particular time of year and this became my winter game, it reminded me of the more colourful months to come (and the thought of more caterpillars which would equal more pocket money, which would equal more spectrum games!) Fast forward many many years, I am now a gardener. I think it is only now I can fully empathise with poor Robbie and the battles he faced. I do also have to wonder if this game may have been responsible for my love of magenta flowers of which I possibly have far too many in my garden.
"Of course this game is educational Dad, it's all about gardening" . Looking back on it , it wasn't a lie, not really.