Split Personalities - What A Cracker
Let me take you back dear reader to another Christmas memory, christmas crackers. Remember those amazing toys you would get inside? Someone would get a magnifying glass, someone would get a comb, someone else would get that red fortune telling fish that curled up in your hand? And someone one else would get this.
How I hated that thing. I would even willingly swap it for the fortune telling red fish. So when I came across a ZX Spectrum game in 1986 called Split Personalities (also known as Splitting Images) from Domark Ltd that was a picture based version of this, I was already convinced it would get played once and then handed back to it's rightful owner ( or the dustbin ).
But be prepared to be surprised, as I was. The idea is simple ( well simple ish) , on the playing screen you have to assemble a picture of a famous person , piece by piece from jumbled up pieces. There are bonus pieces that have to be matched correctly with other pictures to collect bonuses. To add to the difficulty , pieces of the wall will open and you can lose pieces of your puzzle that way. Bombs will come into the play area and explode (unless matched correctly) and add to that pieces of the wall cracking that will send your puzzle piece flying straight back at you. As you can see already this game is quite a handful , but wait there is more, there is a time limit as well!
One of the great bits of this game is that every puzzle piece that comes into the screen the player is then shown where that piece fits into the puzzle on the green screen on the side.
I think it took me one play of this to become hooked, perhaps it was that little bit of help from the green screen, perhaps it was the challenge of finding which objects matched ( the bottle of wine and Dennis Thatcher on the Margaret Thatcher screen made me laugh loudly .) But this game really appealed.
I think it took me one play of this to become hooked, perhaps it was that little bit of help from the green screen, perhaps it was the challenge of finding which objects matched ( the bottle of wine and Dennis Thatcher on the Margaret Thatcher screen made me laugh loudly .) But this game really appealed.
It's the type of game that the ZX Spectrum excels at, it has those little bits of subtle ( almost Spitting Image) type humour and the wonderful colour palette being used to full effect. There were other games of this type around at the time ( Jumbly from DKT'ronics to name one) , but they just didn't click with me I'm afraid . Plus this game had a first level that was just challenging enough to allow you to complete by the skin of your teeth, it felt like a real achievement. It was the victory at the end of a hard school day.
Looking back the other thing that appealed was not being able to see which puzzle piece came next, that element of risk , should you throw Ronnie's shoulder away or would that part you were waiting for turn up in the next piece.
But in my own personal case though, there was another reason I loved this game. It was quite simply my poor Dad could never get the hang of this one ! It became my game, one of the few games I became good at quickly. What I was in fact encountering, possibly for the first time was a type of brain training game. Possibly this was the start of the addiction that lead to Tetris, Columns, Lemmings, Duo Lingo and trying out just about every brain training app that I could find. I soon discovered the other levels Charles and Di , Marilyn Monroe and of course the legendary Sir Clive Sinclair to name a few ( always thought it was such a good idea to include Sir Clive as a level in this game, I often wondered if he ever played this game.)
But in my own personal case though, there was another reason I loved this game. It was quite simply my poor Dad could never get the hang of this one ! It became my game, one of the few games I became good at quickly. What I was in fact encountering, possibly for the first time was a type of brain training game. Possibly this was the start of the addiction that lead to Tetris, Columns, Lemmings, Duo Lingo and trying out just about every brain training app that I could find. I soon discovered the other levels Charles and Di , Marilyn Monroe and of course the legendary Sir Clive Sinclair to name a few ( always thought it was such a good idea to include Sir Clive as a level in this game, I often wondered if he ever played this game.)
Looking back at this game it is the sense of achievement that it gave me that makes me smile. It's a game that gives you victories and let's face it as a school kid facing their first sets of exams you needed those victories .
As an adult facing challenges whether it be at work, at home or with your health , you still need those victories.
Long live retrogaming , bringer of the small victories!
As an adult facing challenges whether it be at work, at home or with your health , you still need those victories.
Long live retrogaming , bringer of the small victories!