The Return of Bart Bear: A Stroll in the Bleak Forest
By John "The Rochdale Balrog" Wilson
Published by Zenobi Software
Release Year: 1989
Version Played: ZX Spectrum
I don't know who Bart Bear is and I don't know why he's returning because I wasn't a British lad growing up in the 80s spending every free hour on my Zed X Spectrum. He's probably one of those characters middle-aged British gaming nerds look back fondly on, the way middle-aged British comic nerds look back fondly on Hungry Horace. As you can see from the comic strip above, he was a besotted bear down on his luck (even though he just saved the world). The way the rest of the comic book pans out, I'm guessing Bart Bear accidentally saved the world and didn't actually deserve to be seen as a hero. Probably why he began drinking so much. But he wanted to improve his image so that everybody would think he was a hard bear. No, not a bear with an erection! British hard! As in tough! And it worked out so well that when the horrible Mega-Brain which had threatened the Earth turned out not to be dead, everybody expects Bart Bear to destroy it and save the world again! That's all in the comic which I read over at the Museum of Computer Game History. At the end of the comic book, there's some directions for how to play the game.
By John "The Rochdale Balrog" Wilson
Published by Zenobi Software
Release Year: 1989
Version Played: ZX Spectrum
I don't know who Bart Bear is and I don't know why he's returning because I wasn't a British lad growing up in the 80s spending every free hour on my Zed X Spectrum. He's probably one of those characters middle-aged British gaming nerds look back fondly on, the way middle-aged British comic nerds look back fondly on Hungry Horace. As you can see from the comic strip above, he was a besotted bear down on his luck (even though he just saved the world). The way the rest of the comic book pans out, I'm guessing Bart Bear accidentally saved the world and didn't actually deserve to be seen as a hero. Probably why he began drinking so much. But he wanted to improve his image so that everybody would think he was a hard bear. No, not a bear with an erection! British hard! As in tough! And it worked out so well that when the horrible Mega-Brain which had threatened the Earth turned out not to be dead, everybody expects Bart Bear to destroy it and save the world again! That's all in the comic which I read over at the Museum of Computer Game History. At the end of the comic book, there's some directions for how to play the game.
Wait a second. This sounds suspiciously like an arcade game! AAARGH!
As you can see from the "Controls" card which doesn't give a list of verbs and nouns that the game recognizes but instead gives joystick controls, I've stumbled onto another non-text adventure game. But you can hardly blame me! The game was by The Rochdale Balrog and published by his company, Zenobi! I thought all they did were text adventure games! Shows how much I know about the history of the ZX Spectrum and its myriad small publishers.
Speaking of The Rochdale Balrog, I've got some bad news.
The bad news is that he died last year. You're probably thinking, "Yeah, I guess that's bad news because death sucks but I didn't even know the guy." To which I'd say, "Have some fucking respect for his family, you twat!" But, no, the bad news is that if this game sucks, I'm going to feel extremely guilty trashing it. Although I've played it a little bit already and how can I trash a game with such a cute (I mean hard!) fucking bear?! It's practically the British version of Crystal Castles.
Get it? It's going to be easy! Like a stroll in the park!
As Americans, we're probably more apt to say, "A walk in the park." I wouldn't trust an American who used the word stroll! Although we call the thing we push babies in strollers while the British call them prams. Is that some kind of shortening of perambulate? Oh look at that. The Internet says that it is. Who's a genius? I'm a genius! I'm glad I wasn't just now typing, "Who's a brave man?" Because in the middle of "Who's a genius?", I felt something on my leg and freaked the fuck out. I don't know what it was but I haven't taken any anti-toxin pills so I'm probably going to die later.
Oh my god look at how adorable Bart is!
From all the various screen shots I've seen of ZX Spectrum games, isometric games have always looked high quality. This one doesn't disappoint. The only trouble I'm going to have is probably controlling this guy. Backwards to shoot?! At least the arrows are all clustered together unlike The Desecration's terrible controls. It also looks like I'm going to have to map! So that will satisfy some of my text adventure needs.
Bart the Bear travels around from square to square trying to avoid Spiders, Shooters, Standers, UFOs, and Bouncers. Movers and Dark Movers won't kill you but they get in your way (although you can ride on them if you can control your jumps. Hell, you can even ride the Spiders although I think that's a mistake that just us pro-jumpers can handle because it sends Bart way up the screen until he falls as if he were on the close side of the screen which he absolutely wasn't). You can also ride Bubbles but it's difficult. The good thing is you never actually have to ride Bubbles. There are also a variety of blocks which you sometimes need to move around and jump over. There are Blockers, Breakers, Melters, Conveyers, Risers, and Sliders. Yes, I did in fact name all of the objects in the game myself.
Bart the Bear travels around from square to square trying to avoid Spiders, Shooters, Standers, UFOs, and Bouncers. Movers and Dark Movers won't kill you but they get in your way (although you can ride on them if you can control your jumps. Hell, you can even ride the Spiders although I think that's a mistake that just us pro-jumpers can handle because it sends Bart way up the screen until he falls as if he were on the close side of the screen which he absolutely wasn't). You can also ride Bubbles but it's difficult. The good thing is you never actually have to ride Bubbles. There are also a variety of blocks which you sometimes need to move around and jump over. There are Blockers, Breakers, Melters, Conveyers, Risers, and Sliders. Yes, I did in fact name all of the objects in the game myself.
This is a good example of one of the challenges Bart faces. He can't touch the Standers sitting between the Blockers. So he must push the Breakers around (without breaking them!) so that he can jump on them and over the Standers.
The map is approximately 16 by 16 with a lot of empty squares. I didn't map the entire thing because there really wasn't any need. I just mapped enough until I discovered the Mega-Brain and killed him. At least I think that's what happened. I eventually wound up on a purple screen with eight Spiders and a bunch of Breakers and Bubbles blocking me from the Spiders. I couldn't move and the Spiders just kept self-destructing until they were all dead. Then the screen turned blue and this happened:
Thanks! I guess.
This is probably how the first Bart Bear game ended because it's ambiguous. Did I kill the Mega-Brain or did it flee so that there can be another sequel? I don't know! Probably time for Bart Bear to get fucking blitzed again.
SCORES
Game Title: It gets right to the point. Bart Bear has returned and he spends his time strolling through a bleak forest. That's the entire game! You don't even have a big boss battle at the end. You just end your stroll and game over. It could have been more exciting, maybe something like Bart Bear Versus the Evil Mega-Brain but then the final confrontation would have been anti-climactic. With this name, when the game ended without me doing anything but walking into the correct square, I felt completely satisfied. "Yeah, I strolled the fuck out of that bleak forest! Well done, me!"
Puzzles: This is basically a platform puzzler without the platforms. Except there are some platforms, sort of. So while there aren't puzzles in the same sense as puzzles in a text adventure, there were a few areas where you had to figure out how to get by. Mostly it consisted of pushing blocks around and jumping over them. A few puzzles felt like you should have jumped on bubbles which lift you way up in the air before popping. But you never really had to use the bubbles. The most difficult areas were the ones with a bunch of spiders. You can't kill the spiders so they just surround you and try to trap you in a corner. If that happens, you just have to restart. The toughest puzzles were trying to figure out how not to get trapped by those bastards.
Gameplay: This was a well-programmed and entertaining arcade game. Some screens did lag quite a bit when there were a lot of enemies on the screen but everything slowed down so it didn't really affect the player negatively. The movement was smooth and only rarely did you wind up walking onto a screen and getting killed immediately by something you couldn't have avoided. If you wound up in a situation where you had to restart, you simply hit the 'A' key and the game would immediately return to the start screen. I enjoyed discovering all the little secrets and ways you could interact with the creatures and the environment, especially when I finally managed to jump on a Bubble and realized you could ride it to the top of the screen.
Graphics: Fucking adorable. Bart Bear never looked hard at all. He was smiling and jovial and constantly had the cutest expression on his face. And he had a cute little tail that looked like a little penis sticking out of his butt. Just look at his cute little face in the blue screen above. And his little belly button! He was probably drunk the entire time.
Concept: Video game concepts in the 70s and 80s were all pretty ridiculous. We lived in a whimsical world where anything could wind up as a video game, like shooting teeth attacking you from space or swinging on vines through a jungle. So having a cute bear wandering around another planet riding bubbles while avoiding gangs of spiders to find an evil brain was just par for the course in 1989. Nowadays, video games need to be pretty serious or else the toxic masculine crowd who buys most of the games won't touch it. You can't call somebody derogatory names anonymously while romping about as a fucking teddy bear. Teabagging somebody you just killed doesn't have the same intimidating aggressiveness when you're fuzzy and cute.
Fun Time: I spent about two hours playing and mapping the game before finding the end. As the map got more complicated, I started to use emulator save states instead of starting over completely. Back in the day, you were probably loading this game from cassette tape after each death so by the time you did beat the game, you'd feel like you'd gotten your money's worth out of it.
SCORES
Game Title: It gets right to the point. Bart Bear has returned and he spends his time strolling through a bleak forest. That's the entire game! You don't even have a big boss battle at the end. You just end your stroll and game over. It could have been more exciting, maybe something like Bart Bear Versus the Evil Mega-Brain but then the final confrontation would have been anti-climactic. With this name, when the game ended without me doing anything but walking into the correct square, I felt completely satisfied. "Yeah, I strolled the fuck out of that bleak forest! Well done, me!"
Puzzles: This is basically a platform puzzler without the platforms. Except there are some platforms, sort of. So while there aren't puzzles in the same sense as puzzles in a text adventure, there were a few areas where you had to figure out how to get by. Mostly it consisted of pushing blocks around and jumping over them. A few puzzles felt like you should have jumped on bubbles which lift you way up in the air before popping. But you never really had to use the bubbles. The most difficult areas were the ones with a bunch of spiders. You can't kill the spiders so they just surround you and try to trap you in a corner. If that happens, you just have to restart. The toughest puzzles were trying to figure out how not to get trapped by those bastards.
Gameplay: This was a well-programmed and entertaining arcade game. Some screens did lag quite a bit when there were a lot of enemies on the screen but everything slowed down so it didn't really affect the player negatively. The movement was smooth and only rarely did you wind up walking onto a screen and getting killed immediately by something you couldn't have avoided. If you wound up in a situation where you had to restart, you simply hit the 'A' key and the game would immediately return to the start screen. I enjoyed discovering all the little secrets and ways you could interact with the creatures and the environment, especially when I finally managed to jump on a Bubble and realized you could ride it to the top of the screen.
Graphics: Fucking adorable. Bart Bear never looked hard at all. He was smiling and jovial and constantly had the cutest expression on his face. And he had a cute little tail that looked like a little penis sticking out of his butt. Just look at his cute little face in the blue screen above. And his little belly button! He was probably drunk the entire time.
Concept: Video game concepts in the 70s and 80s were all pretty ridiculous. We lived in a whimsical world where anything could wind up as a video game, like shooting teeth attacking you from space or swinging on vines through a jungle. So having a cute bear wandering around another planet riding bubbles while avoiding gangs of spiders to find an evil brain was just par for the course in 1989. Nowadays, video games need to be pretty serious or else the toxic masculine crowd who buys most of the games won't touch it. You can't call somebody derogatory names anonymously while romping about as a fucking teddy bear. Teabagging somebody you just killed doesn't have the same intimidating aggressiveness when you're fuzzy and cute.
Fun Time: I spent about two hours playing and mapping the game before finding the end. As the map got more complicated, I started to use emulator save states instead of starting over completely. Back in the day, you were probably loading this game from cassette tape after each death so by the time you did beat the game, you'd feel like you'd gotten your money's worth out of it.
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