Character Advent Calendar

Of all the falling blocks in Tetris, the Four-Block-Long-Tetris Piece is probably the one that brings both the most joy and the most heartache to players. It is the double decker bus of Tetris pieces. You wait for one for ages, then three come along all at once.

It really is the odd piece out, and is the piece which causes the most arguments between Tetris players. Many’s the time a Tetris player has been berated by an over the shoulder player who has a difference in opinion of the use of this piece. Cries of “There’s a gap on the right” or “No! You shouldn’t have put it there” tend to accompany the Four Block Long Tetris Piece more than any other.

Some players like to lay it horizontally, to fill a line more quickly, whilst others prefer to slot it in vertically, in the hope that they may be able to remove four lines in one go. Indeed, removing four lines in one go is only possible using this piece, making it an event only slightly less rare than completely clearing the play area of blocks completely.

If the Tetris blocks were people, then the closest friend of the Four-Block-Long-Tetris-Piece would probably be the Square-Tetris-Piece. Indeed, you could consider them as the Laurel and Hardy of Tetris. The Square-Tetris-Piece, like Oliver Hardy, is the one that tries to fit in with all the other blocks around it, but sometimes is just at odds with the little lumps and bumps created by the other pieces. The Four-Block-Long-Tetris-Piece is the Stan Laurel, quiet and berated by the other pieces, often generating “another fine mess” as players wait for it to appear, but yet also capable of saving the day at the last minute.

Solid Snake, the hero of Metal Gear Solid, may not actually be as recent a character as you think. His first game was actually on the MSX series of computers. These machines were a common standard of home computer, which were manufactured by several well known companies such as Sony, Pioneer and Yamaha.

Anyway, Metal Gear, release in 1987, was the first game to feature Solid Snake, and was the first real stealth game too. You had to infiltrate a facility called “Outer Heaven” somewhere in Africa, by avoiding the guards and finding codes to unlock doors and rescue Prisoners of War. The now familiar system of stealth was fully implemented even at this early stage. If discovered you would have to find a place to hide until the guards lost interest.
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Surely nobody can have failed to have heard of Pacman? Even if they’ve never played the game, they must know what Pacman looks like or at least know the name? Pacman must be the single game that has spawned the most imitators over the years. Just about anyone who has ever programmed a game will probably have written a Pacman game at some point in their life, that’s how simple the game idea is. That said, despite its inherent simplicity, you’d be surprised how many versions of Pacman truly suck… But I digress.

Pacman first hit the arcades in 1980, although Namco originally intended him to be called Puckman. This was changed to Pacman simply because it was too easy for the name on the top of the arcade cabinet to be altered to something much ruder. Do I really need to describe the game? For completeness sake I will. You wander around a maze eating dots whilst avoiding ghosts. There, that’s that done.
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Before LucasArts became as entrenched in Star Wars games as they currently seem to be, they were called Lucasfilm Games. Back in the days of the Commodore 64 and Amiga they released a large number of point and click adventure games, and the titles which most people will probably instantly recognise are The Secret of Monkey Island games.

The Secret of Monkey Island was the tale of a young man named Guybrush Threepwood, who wanted to become a mighty pirate, as he delighted in telling just about everybody he met during his quest. OK, not really the kind of piratey name that would strike fear into the heart of decent men, which was basically what everybody he met during his quest told him, if that is they could get his name right! Guybrush wasn’t really cut out to be a pirate though. Other characters he came across were forever belittling him, yet Guybrush generally never seemed to notice.
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One of the best known characters from the 8-bit ZX Spectrum days is Miner Willy, who first appeared in the platform game Manic Miner written by Matthew Smith. The game was crazily popular at the time, the simple gameplay involving collecting a number of flashing objects and then making it to the exit point before your air ran out. The 20 levels required a balance of quick reflexes and pixel perfect jumps to complete, and once you had died, it was back to the beginning for you, after being crushed by a Monty Python style foot that is.
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An odd feature of the 16-bit days was the idea that every console needed a mascot, some game character that was solely tied to that brand. Nintendo’s mascot Mario was long established by the time the Sega Genesis (MegaDrive in Europe) was released, so it wasn’t long before the teams at Sega had to come up with an answer. Their response came in 1991 with the release of Sonic the Hedgehog.

Now, Sonic isn’t your everyday kind of hedgehog. Quite the reverse in fact, being bright blue in colour, and amazingly fast. At the time, Genesis was becoming the cool console to have, and so Sonic fit the bill perfectly. The speed of the game was like nothing before seen, and the trademark loop the loop section has become a staple of the Sonic games to follow. The beauty of the game came in its level layout. Starting at the top of a hill, you could run down, rolling into a ball to build up the speed required to then soar round a loop the loop, bounce off a spring high into the air and land on another hill to continue the sequence. Fast reactions were a must!
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December is almost upon us, so what better way to count down to Christmas than with our very own advent calendar!

Each day during December we’ll be featuring a different gaming character. Some you’ll definitely have heard of, but there might be one or too there which are a bit more obscure that only those with a long memory or who are truly Game Addicts will know. Either way, we hope you’ll enjoy our little stroll down memory lane.

Be sure to call back each day to see who’s next. We’d love to hear your comments on the characters we present, your first memory of that character, your favourite game in which they feature, that kind of thing! Happy Advent!