In the days when the nearest thing to a console was the ZX Spectrum,
and RPG’s were all in black and white because the very concept of full colour
was something that only people with more money than sense could consider. There
was still a need for games that pitted one player against the other in single
combat, and there were a few games that catered for this particular need. Today we’re taking a look at two of them, the
first of which is Lost Worlds.
In lost worlds, you needed two books, one for each of the fighters that
was going to be doing the battling, each book had a moves card in it that you
kept, the book you gave to your opponent.
The rationale on it was simple, no dice, you picked the move that you
wanted to and your opponent picked the move they wanted to. You both announced and you cross referenced
your move with your opponents on the table at the bottom, turning to the
relevant page to see what happened.
The joy of this was that each of the pages was accompanied by an image
that showed you what your opponent was doing (usually with an expression of
pain as you smacked them somewhere). The larger, more powerful creatures had a
larger damage modifier, so it was possible to do damage even when the damage
scored was in the negative figures, but with these larger damage modifiers came
a reduced number of moves that they could do as they usually relied on a few
moves to do the hitting.
Sometimes a move results in restricted moves for your opponent or
yourself, these were listed as colour coded moves, so do only green or yellow
meant that you were restricted to jumping and avoiding moves for the next round
till you got back on your feet. It was
possible to disarm people, move to extended range so that you could bring larger
weapons (or breath weapons and spells) into play, and there were rules for
improving characters after a number of fights, you could increase the modifiers
on particular attacks, improve your hits points and so on.
There were a number of different books, ranging from the Fighter
wearing chainmail to the Hill Troll with Club and all different types. Learning the game took less than a minute and
playing it took less than five, the variance in the different opponents was the
primary problem, as it wasn’t widely released for the most part and while it
was since re-released, the short nature of the game and the rise of games like
street fighter took away a lot of interest for people.
However, for those who knew it, it was an interesting game and remains
a firm favourite for bringing out at conventions and having impromptu
throwdowns...
