REVIEW: Stack-Up

"Game": Stack-Up
Original Launch: October 1985
Relaunch: November 2010
Rating: 1 star, awarded for the jumping animation, and only because we nixed the 1/2 star system.

Stack Up isn't a game; it's a jumping simulator. Although the animation of the scientist jumping is very nice, that's not enough to carry this title beyond 1 star, in my oh-so humble-opinion. It would have been better served if the commands were entered via text. Ahh, good ol' text adventures...

I remember the first time I played a text adventure. My mind was entranced by the concept that I could tell the game what to do, and it might work! GO EAST. OPEN BOX. SEX GIRL. Well, some of them worked. Text adventures mixed the joy of reading with grand adventure, creating a truly interactive crossover experience. I was really blown away by the idea as a kid. I was sucked in.

I own this game today, box and all. Thanks, eBay.

My favorite was Adventure Land on the Commodore VIC-20. I think it was my favorite becuase I actually completed the game. A text-based game. Beaten. By me! I was so proud of myself. I can remember trying over and over again to work out the situations that I was confronted with. I remember giving a bear honey, catching mother fucking chiggers from climbing a tree (oh, the nightmares I had...) and finally figuring out to how to kill them: USE MUD, ON ARM. I remember seeing the sleeping dragon, and stealing a treasure from its lair. All of this, as if it were a book being played out by interrogative conjecture.

I played The Count, another text adventure for the VIC-20, but I never beat that one. I remember getting stumped on a bridge leading to his castle early on and deciding that watching TV would be more fun. I also recall playing a Rambo-based text adventure on the PC, inspired by memories of Adventure Land. I never got beyond going to a beach and looking at a river.

Try this thought on for size: the VIC-20 used cartridges for text-based games. That's 16,000 bytes of data on a chip, surrounded by plastic, with a label. Logistically speaking, the same amount of physical space nowadays can hold around 256,000,000,000 bytes. That's a lot of text. It would make for quite the advantageous text adventure.

It's a cartridge. It's a text adventure. They cared enough to make a text-adventure cartridge. Thank you, those that cared.

Wait. This is supposed to Stack-Up review. Fuck. OK, here goes nothing.

In Stack-Up, you jump from one tile to the next... and that's it. I'm guessing that R.O.B. would move pieces around its little plastic platform in conjuction with your on-screen actions (at least the ones that either the dog or I didn't swallow.) From what I've read, the game requires you to keep score for yourself, which screams of hax and cheatzors. If Stack-Up were a text adventure, the only keywords would be JUMP and a direction, and you'd never make progress, because fucking infinity.

At its best, Stack-Up could be considered a "tech demo" for R.O.B. If I where a 12-year-old and had received Stack-Up, I would have given up on video games altogether. Perhaps I would injure the gift giver, or more than likely just mutter under my breath (I was a scrawny little boy, rather incapable of damage-dealing.) I probably would have used the light-gun with Stack-Up just to try to make it interesting. There is a two-player mode, but no I refuse you can't make me I won't do it fuck you Dan you slave-driving fuck.

So, in closing, and if you ever get the chance, download the original Scott Adams Adventure Land and enjoy the graphics of your mind.



Review in a Haiku
Stack-Up is such shit;
It isn't a game at all.
Stupid tech demo.