[typing]
What is best in life?
To play computer games,
cut up their virtual people,
and hear the lamentation of their women!
And few games let you do this in a more awesome manner than Life & Death.
Developed and published by The Software Toolworks in 1988 for DOS PCs
and ported to a slew of other machines in the few years following.
YOU are the surgeon in Life & Death.
The abdominal surgeon, to be specific.
Presumably with the ability to make life and death calls
as well as disconnect your head from your body
to look down at patients with three of your decapitated staff members.
"Warning! Do not buy or play this program if you are faint-of-heart!"
Frick, don't even look at the back of the box if you're faint-of-heart.
Geez, dude!
Though, oddly enough, you'll never come to touching a brain in this game.
You'll have to play Life & Death 2 for any cranial manipulation.
Inside the box, you get a respectable amount of goodies,
starting with the game on either 5¼-inch
or 3½-inch floppies, depending on the version,
a manual covering the various procedures
and medical things you'll be encountering,
an Operating Procedures Manual
providing information specific to the port of the game you have,
a letter from Dr. David Lindstrom,
the fictional chief of surgery of the fictional Toolworks General Hospital,
which simply covers the contents of the game box and a summary of the gameplay,
and a small book titled "The History of Surgery,"
which, oddly enough, covers the history of surgery
in real life.
Although, it's interesting to note that throughout this
and the rest of the documentation,
it's made abundantly clear that Life & Death is a game
meant only for fun, not for education.
In other words, Software Toolworks had a legal team
that wanted to be sure their bases were covered,
in case some idiot tried to actually perform surgery
on someone because they played this videogame.
Ugh, sad times we live in.
It also comes with a code wheel
that's cleverly shaped like a pager,
which acts as the game's copy protection.
And yes, it even comes with a freaking mask and latex gloves,
so you can cosplay while you tear open virtual people's bodies.
[snap]
Beard not required, but totally recommended.
I'll be showing the Apple IIGS version of the game
because it's the best overall port of the game that I've played,
and the IIGS is just made of win.
Life & Death starts off with the image of a dead person's feet.
Mmm, appetizing stuff.
You're then greeted by the admissions nurse,
who forces you to sign in before getting your malpractice on.
You can continue a previous game or start a new one,
and after this, you're told to report to medical school.
But it's a good idea to visit the staff room first.
Yes, the S-T-A-F room.
Freaking spelling error is on every version of the game I've played, too,
which is just unfortunate.
But hey, you're a doctor, not an English professor!
In here, you can *not* put the moves on the nurse,
but you can click the clipboard on the filing cabinet
to change the game settings.
There are options to adjust the difficulty,
enable Nightmare Mode,
patient speech options, remove a saved game,
and even make your own custom initials.
Yes, you can draw anything you want in this little box,
which will be your official doctor's signature in-game.
Make sure it's fabulous.
You can also interact with a few other things in the room,
like this computer offering a decent deal on an Apple IIC,
assuming it's complete and in nice working order from a non-smoking, non-pet household,
as well as the option on analyze and swap hospital staff members.
You'll want a different team depending on the type of surgery you're performing,
so coming back here is a good idea,
at least if you want a lower body count at the end of the day.
Then it's off to med school,
which is just a simple presentation
on an anachronistically high-tech interactive blackboard.
Just click through and read whatever it says,
or don't, and suffer the consequences.
That's it. You're a doctor!
Man, people always make it seem like it takes years of schooling
and tons of hard work to become a doctor, but not here.
Just click a chalkboard and you're ready to hand out drugs and cut people up.
Eh, well, you'll have to solve the in-game copy protection first
by answering a page when it arrives.
Use that little code wheel in the game box
to decipher and enter the correct phone number,
and you're good to go from that point onward.
You're then given your first patient,
so click on their door and enter their room.
They'll be lying on the bed,
often eyeing you seductively,
and you're free to do with them as you please.
While you can go ahead and do pretty much anything you want,
ideally you'll want to have them show some skin
so you can poke at them repeatedly,
palpate their parts over and over,
until you get an idea of where the pain is,
if there is any.
If you've studied the documentation that came with the game box,
you'll be able to get a good idea of what is the correct course of action.
Make your choice, sign your name,
and then see what happens.
If you were incorrect and it wasn't a terminal illness,
Peter Graves lookalike here will let you know.
If it was terminal,
then you'll get this image of the corpse you've just created lying in the morgue.
In either case, you're sent back to medical school,
told what you did wrong,
and let loose back into the hospital corridors
to wreak havoc once more.
The goal is to *not* be a complete quack
and correctly diagnose and treat a bunch of patients
without killing everyone.
But then, that's only if you want to play by the rules.
And you know what? Screw rules!
Some dude comes in with slight discomfort?
Put him under the UltraScan and see what his insides look like.
Some chick comes in with nausea?
Whip out the x-ray and radiate that poor person.
Some unfortunate soul comes in with abdominal pain
and most likely just needs to fart really badly?
Sign off on an operation and cut your name in his flesh
and inject him with every lethal drug you can find.
That'll teach him to eat beans!
In Life & Death, your name may as well be Gregory House
because as many times as you break the rules,
you're back in the hospital the next day
"practicing" medicine.
Alright, so it's not all fun and games
as you don't actually progress at all
if you just dick around with scalpels and injections all day.
You really do want to use your logic and knowledge
to make correct diagnoses,
or else it's just going to be the same exact
flood of kidney stones, bacterial infections and farts.
Eventually, you'll get something more serious that will require surgery,
like appendicitis or aneurisms.
You'll want to mark these patients for surgery,
grab the proper staff members,
and head into the operating room.
This is where the "meat" of the game is, so to speak,
and also where it's easiest to screw up
and get yourself sent back to school.
For each procedure, there is a specific routine you'll want to go through.
For instance, you'll always want to make sure to wash your hands,
put on gloves, apply enough antiseptic,
drape the operation site and leave yourself enough room to work,
anesthetize the patient, etc.
Then it's a matter of knowing the tools to use,
the incisions to make, the correct way to cut,
the correct speed to cut,
what to do if the patient experiences bradycardia
or premature ventricular contraction,
and much more.
Honestly, I love this section of the game.
Sure, it's crazy stressful and often brutally difficult,
but it's incredibly rewarding when you gather yourself,
steady your nerves and pull off a successful surgery.
Conversely, it's also sadistically rewarding
to inject a patient with a combination of lidocaine and atropine
when you've botched things beyond repair anyway.
And that's Life & Death for ya.
Diseases get more complex and the increased difficulty modes
provide an even greater challenge,
but it's really the same basic gameplay throughout the entire rest of the game.
It's not only good for a laugh when you're just going around
killing more people than Josef Mengele,
but it's also genuinely fun and challenging
to properly diagnose and treat patients.
Although the Apple IIGS is probably the best version,
it isn't the only one.
The Amiga port isn't too bad, either,
with some similarly colorful graphics and realistic sound.
But it's missing some content, too,
like various room illustrations
and being able to customize your signature.
The original DOS PC release is also pretty good,
although it's easily the worst as far as graphics and sound go.
But it has all the silly stuff that I enjoy
like the custom signatures,
and even the ability to go absolutely crazy with cutting tools during surgery,
allowing you to cut in any design you want.
Whatever version you choose, though,
I'd recommend it entirely,
as you'll be in for some awesome professional negligence
and invasive medical treatment.