[Starlight intensifies]
Sonic the Hedgehog came bursting onto the scene in 1991, and was quickly adopted as
the mascot for not only the Mega Drive, but Sega itself.
A blue little critter thought up by Naoto Ohshima, Hirokazu Yasuhara and of course Yuji
Naka, Sonic's task was to speed through level after level, collecting rings in order to
free a bunch of less supernatural animals from the clutches of Dr. Robotnik.
At the time, we all thought this was crazy stuff.
A hedgehog for a protagonist?!
A FAST Hedgehog?!
With red trainers?
This guy have enough attitude to beat Mario back down one of his pipes with a rusty wrench
and still pick up a hotdog for lunch.
*pathetic Tails voice* "Hope you like this?"
*pathetic Sonic voice* "Like it??? I LOVE IT.... I don't even question, why as an athletic hedgehog I'm eating such detritus"
But, he wasn't the first hedgehog to have a video game.
He wasn't even the first hedgehog to feature in a platformer, filled with stingy wasps,
snappy fish and menacing spikes.
He wasn't even the first to find himself in green pastures, dangerous underground dwellings,
twisty pipe lands, or even underwater zones.
Oh noooo, that crown belongs to someone a little more understated.
[Appropriate quirky music]
Meet Harold, or Spiky Harold as he likes to be known.
Devised by Andrew Rogers and Simon Jay back in 1986 and published by Firebird Software
for their pocket money grabbing, Silver 199 Range.
Released on various systems, including the Commodore 64, Atari 8 Bit, Commodore Plus/4
and Amstrad CPC....
Gahhhh, what the hell is that?!
It's like a Rat stuck in a log.
Jesus.
Thankfully we're going to concentrate on the most endearingly quaint of those machines,
Sir Clive's Sinclair ZX Spectrum, although once you get into it, each version is very
similar.
[Countryside music swaggers into existence]
Look at this cover art.
We've got Harold there, licking his lips next to a juicy apple and a petrified worm.
For the time, this is a rather nice picture.
Much better than some of the cover-art of the time
[Psychedelic music arrives, like a goat arriving at a mountain of salt]
but it's clear this is likely to be a more sedate affair than Sega's little blue wonder.
In fact, Harold is winding down, the blurb on the back tells us;
"Spiky Harold the hedgehog has to hibernate for winter - help him find his food"
And that's it.
We need to get Harold to bed.
A goal that's so much more relatable than Sonic's gallivanting quests.
Just get some food, and get some rest.
I like Harold.
*seductive computery sounds*
Thank god the loading screen is better than the Amstrad.
Well, let's see what this game is like.
*game like sounds of interest*
*exasperated* This game is INSANELY difficult, from the go!
you have to be so precise with your movements, otherwise... you're dead (honey)!
*bumble bee music from the Spectrum's superlative sound abilities*
Harold starts his journey next to a wall, surrounded by linear critters, all waiting
to suck out one of your lives.
Seriously, you'd think that a hedgehog would fair well against a moth, or even a small
chick, but get hit by one and you lose a life and return to the start of the screen.
Thankfully collision detection is spot on, removing that element of frustration.
In fact, you can get alarmingly close to your foes, and you'll need to, on a regular basis.
One slightly mistimed jump and it's all over.
*DEATH SOUND*
And these aren't jumps you can manipulate in mid air, once you're air borne, your flight
arc landing point is fixed and unchangeable.
Our mission then, is to collect a food item from each of the 57 screens, which Harold
seems to gobble up straight away, rather than saving for hibernation.
But it's a herculean task.
What's worse, some of the items are wine glasses, which naturally make you drunk, reversing
the game's controls...
Even worse than that though, is the impending sharp frost, that will wipe out all life within
24 hours.
Quite pleasingly though, time passes in real time.
Each of those minutes IS an actual minute, or near enough, given the lack of real time
clock.
Spiky Harold clearly caters to the gamer who would start a session in the morning, go out
and play footie, come back for some afternoon gaming, have dinner, and play some more in
the evening.
There's even time to get up a few hours earlier than the day before and finish proceedings
in the morning if you really need to.
This is what save games in the 80s looked like folks.
But even with that extra time, you need to be point perfect.
Seriously, this game is nothing like Sonic the hedgehog.
*Sonic sounds*
Sonic was easy.
This is disgustingly difficult.
[appopriate silence]
To help along the way, we can eat coins which replenish one life, but they're really too
few and far between to make a significant impact.
Especially when you have ghosts which require more precise timing than a ZX-VGA-JOY does
in sending the Spectrum's video signal to a VGA monitor... that's how I'm getting this
crisp, sharp display on a Dell monitor by the way.
Nice isn't it...?
But it's not a bad game.
It's really nicely put together, and executed.
It's the reason that it scored to well in the gaming press in the mid 80s, but we, myself
especially, have lost that incredible ability to play catastophically hard games like there's
no tomorrow.
Now it's fast, forgiving action and sloppy button pressing.
*DISCO SOUND FROM NOWHERE*
So thank heavens, for POKES!
Like this one, which gives you 128 much needed lives!
Hooray!
Harold then, is a symbol of the past, a symbol of platforming games before Harold's obnoxious
cousin Sonic came along and levelled the playing field for us all.
Damn him and his fast fun ways.
But there's no denying the platforming world of Harold, shares some traits with Sonic.
We can easily put it down to the fact that hedgehogs naturally live in a world of deadly
wasps, critters, spikes, water, underground layers, life giving circular golden objects,
clouds and PIPES.
But I like to think that *the sonic team* once had an encounter with Harold, a secret
encounter which gave them the hedgehog idea, and which created this wonderful world of
peril in their minds.
Of course, this is wild and unfounded speculation, which is almost certainly false, but still,
there's something in it I think.
Now, if I can only get to the end and see if there's a perilous encounter with a mad
scientist, we'll know I'm right.
*humming some crap tune*
*mumbles* "Spiky Harold Longplay"
*satisfied sound of air from mouth*
"There we go!"
[Spiky Harold bumble bee sounds re-emerge from the pit of unfettered depair]
Oh, no, no there's not.
But then creative licence is a wonderful thing.
As are hedgehogs.
Fast forward a few years and there was even a remake of Spiky Harold, which gives us a
view into what life would have been if Harold had emerged in our 16 bit world, rather than
Sonic.
It's not that dissimilar.
*HORRIFIC SOUND of DYING HAROLD*
Alight, maybe it is quite a bit, but it's interesting to know that Sonic wasn't the
first hedgehog adventurer who we could navigate through perilous lands.
[Montage music]
[Burst of Sonic music]
Now, if you don't mind, after all this relentless platforming, I'm going to hibernate, like
Harold.
Thanks for watching, have a great evening.
I'll see you in the winter because I'm going to hibernate all summer. Damn this heat.
So in a strange freak of synchronicity, and this seems to happen a lot among Youtubers.
When I was searching for the Spiky Harold longplay footage
I found Tamaracade has made a video which is basically the same as the one I'm doing now!
*undefinable sounds of surprise and awe*
So I'm putting this message at the end to inform you that you should go and check out that video as well.
I've met Tamara, she is awesome. I've met her at a few Play Expos, and I'm gonna watch her video now...
So, I suggest you do to. Why not get the full Spiky Harold experience
Ahhhhh, come on!