Skool Daze

Skool Daze was really the pioneer of the now-familiar genre of 'sandbox' games. That's right, long before the likes of the Sims, we had the misadventures of Eric, a permanently disgraced schoolboy whose report card is so bad he's afraid to show it to his parents - so he has to get the combination for the school safe, swipe his report card, change his grades and put it back before anyone's any the wiser. How does he intend to do this? Well, this is a computer game aimed at teenage boys, so Eric has to use a fair amount of brute force - punching swots, firing missiles from his trusty catapult, knocking smaller children onto the floor so he can use them as human stepladders to get at things that would usually be out of his reach, knocking his teachers flat on their bums and generally making a right old nuisance of himself. Then, in order to complete his task, he has to do it all again. As well as the school bully, Angelface, a tearaway called Boy Wander and the insufferable tell- tale school boffin Einstein, Eric has to avoid getting lines from his teachers, who include the implacable Mr Wacker, the senile Mr Creak, the easy-going Mr Rockitt and the laid-back Mr Withit. You also have to avoid catching mumps! Should you manage to pull it off, there's little in the way of a reward - you simply move up to the next school year and the game starts again, only this time it's slightly harder. (Remember, this was the mid- eighties!)

Skool Daze was an unusual and imaginative game that was sufficiently ahead of its time to cause quite a few ripples in the industry - even spawning a sequel, Back to Skool, which was decent enough but made the mistake of going down the 'bigger is better' route by adding new playing areas and expanding Eric's tasks, making the game almost impossible to complete. I actually played Back to Skool first and liked it just fine, but when I discovered the original, I was well and truly hooked. It's still around, courtesy of numerous ZX Spectrum simulator websites, and it's still entertaining - although time hasn't been kind to the screechy tunes that play at various points during the proceedings!