When I was a kid back in the early 80s, our first computer was an Apple ][+.  It was really my first gaming ‘console’ and I played a lot of games on it.  Most were arcade titles like Pac-Man, Zaxxon, and Frogger, but there were also some original ones like Spare Change and Aquatron.  But the way you started these games was totally different than how you do it now.  Back then you had to enter a floppy disk in and type in some text like ‘run’ and then whatever game you wanted to play.  Some of these games were just text only, too.  And some of those text only games simulated you having a conversation with a person.  I remember one called “Freud” where it was like you were talking to a psychiatrist.  But the main thing I remember about that game was the blocky face of a bearded man.  Another one I remember later was called “Alice.”  Well Buddy Simulator 1984 aims to recreate the feel of those games, while adding in some unsettling AI horror elements as well.  It’s available on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.

When you first start the game, you’ll see a mock up DOS text screen with instructions to tell you to type ‘help.’  This brings up a menu of other things you can type in.  You’ll want to run ‘Buddy Simulator 1984’ and when you do, the computer will act as your buddy and ask you some questions.  Then you’ll be able to play a few simple games with it.  Paper, Rock, Scissors, a number guessing game, and a hangman game that I swear is just like one I had on our Apple ][+.  The game is labelled as a horror game, but I think it’s more of the unsettling kind of horror rather than jumpscares and such.  Your ‘buddy’ just seems to get too attached to you and asks some odd questions sometimes.  And then it’ll open up more games after you play the first three, but one just opens up a spreadsheet like the AI is glitching out.  After that you must restart the program again, but when I tried to do that, it wouldn’t let me.  So I stopped playing right there.  Supposedly you can play more games with actual graphics and one of them is an RPG and there are four different ‘endings’ to the entire game.

The main frustrating thing about this game is that on the Switch, you have to type in words with an on-screen keyboard and it makes gameplay slow and tedious.  I imagine it would work much better on a PC.  Also the text is way too small in handheld mode and even pretty tiny on the TV.  As much as I like retro games, I’m glad we don’t have to play them like this anymore.

Kid Factor:

Buddy Simulator 1984 is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Violence.  I didn’t get far enough to see any blood or violence, but I imagine it’s not too bad because of the lack of good graphics.  Really the scariest thing about this game is the large amount of questions you have to answer that sound like datamining to me.  I hope this game doesn’t connect to the Internet!  Because of the high level of reading required, I’d say this one is best for older players only.  It may be a learning experience for anyone not born before the mid 80s to see how you played games back then, but I imagine most would lose interest in this one because of the ancient and clunky interface.

Tags: Game Reviews