![]() At any rate, these gauges have to be filled before you can become a complete person and thus finish the game. In a normal RPG, these would probably be called magic, experience or the like, but because this is Frankie, they’re replaced by symbols representing things like sex, love and religion. In essence, these were triggers for a series of mini-games, the completion of which would fill a quartet of gauges at the bottom of the screen. On even equally unpredictable occasions, a portal would open up which, when walked into, would whisk you off to a place called the Pleasuredome. “Mr Average likes to sleep in till noon”. Occasionally, cryptic clues would flash up on the screen. This way, you’d gradually amass a variety of objects which may or may not help you complete your mission. You could reach up and open kitchen cupboards, or crouch down and fraternise with a dog bowl. One house has the murder victim lying awkwardly on the floor.įrankie introduced an unusual control scheme where your character could reach out and touch objects with one hand to pick them up for the time, it was refreshingly different. Guiding an anonymous yet smoothly animated humanoid figure – based on the band’s logo of a man clutching a star – around a network of almost identical-looking terraced houses, you search for clues among kitchens and living rooms full of kitsch wall ornaments. One is to discover the identity of a killer, and the other is to complete a series of mini-games and make yourself into “a 100% complete person worthy of escaping Mundanesville and entering the Pleasure Dome. The game’s a detective story of sorts, with two separate goals. Frankie was an arcade adventure, but not quite like any that had come before it. Then – as now, to a certain extent – it was fairly easy to predict what a game would be like from a look at the cover or even its title. It was the first time I’d been genuinely taken aback and surprised by a game’s design and atmosphere. Unsure of what to expect, but mildly intrigued by the marketing blurb on the back of the box (“…you will need the skills of arcade king, adventurer, super sleuth, mastermind and more!”), I loaded the game up. I had no particular interest in the band – I’d simply found a copy of the game in a box of second-hand tapes I’d acquired from the small ads in a local paper. ![]() I still remember the first time I played the Frankiegame. It came in a large cardboard box, handsomely illustrated with an airbrushed picture of the band (courtesy of game art supremo Bob Wakelin), and inside you’d find a separate audio tape of Relax – just in case you didn’t have a copy already. Ocean spared little expense on the game’s presentation. And with that, Denton Designs got to work. ![]() “David walked in and said he wanted a game with no Frankies walking about in it,” Cain said. We have to sell the game through WHSmith.” “Oh no,” someone from Ocean’s PR team told Personal Computer Games, “it won’t be rude. Some also wondered whether Frankie: the game would be as controversial as the band itself. “The impact of the name and the concept of Frankie Goes To Hollywood translates into a game – you could describe it as an animated strategy adventure played on several levels.” “The game interprets the Frankie Goes to Hollywood concept of life imitating art,” Ward told Sinclair User magazine. An Island Records boss said, in the early months of 1985, that it was still “in its embryonic stages.” Ocean boss David Ward was even more enigmatic: To the best of my knowledge, this was the first time anybody had thought of making a videogame based on a pop band Michael Jackson and The Spice Girls would have their own games years later, but it took Frankie Goes to Hollywood to blaze a trail.Īt the time, there was some curiosity as to what the game would be like. The deal would see all three parties take a share of the game’s profits. According to news stories published in games magazines from the time, the tie-in was a three-way venture between Frankie, the band’s label, Island Records, and its creative producers, ZTT (which stood for Zang Tumb Tuum). ![]() Follow-up singles “Two Tribes” and “Welcome To The Pleasure Dome” made a similar impact, and suddenly, everybody seemed to be wearing T-shirts with slogans like “Frankie Say War” on them.Īs Frankie-mania briefly set in, the group’s record label made a deal with Ocean Software (also based in Liverpool) to create a tie-in game for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. Predictably, sales of “Relax” went nuclear.
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