A much overlooked classic from the Commodore 64 days is Alter Ego, a game which even in it’s day would not have been played by many due to the fact it was only available on floppy disc. Whilst there was an icon based front end, all of the game play was related through pages of text, a bit like one of the old classic text adventures from Infocom.

The games premise was to simulate a virtual life, which it did by taking the player from birth, through childhood, adolescence, middle age and into their twilight years by presenting the player with various different reactions to different situations, the kind of normal everyday things most people will have experienced.

As an example, you start the game unborn and still inside your mother, with your first choices being to stay in a bit longer, come out peacefully, or come out kicking and screaming. The game progresses through the different stages of life by offering a number of icons which represent different kinds of events in a typical life. How you react to these situations gradually forms the kind of person you will end up being. If you’ve ever wondered what might have happened in your life were you to have done something different at a particular point in your life, then perhaps now you can find out!

As your virtual life progresses you get to attend school, have relationships, get married and have children, whilst also experiencing those other things which build a persons character such as dealing with a dead pet, losing a favourite toy, becoming unemployed and so on.

The game was originally created by Dr. Peter Favaro, who has since gone on to write successful books on anger management and appears regularly on US TV, so the situations and their outcomes are generally pretty accurate to how similar events would play out in real life.

Whilst you can still play the original C64 version by downloading it for an emulator, the good news is that a version is now available on the web to play via a browser. Give it a whirl here, and you may even learn something about yourself!

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