Nerding Day: Highlander for the ZX Spectrum🌭 (Patreon)

There can be only one! That is, there can only be one shitty game based on a movie that was, I’m gonna be real honest with you folks, not that good to begin with. This column isn’t about the movie but let’s stop trying to bring back Highlander, okay? Every few years, “We’re gonna do more Highlander!” No, you’re not. Nobody cares. I still confuse Highlander with Braveheart and that movie sucks, too. Maybe put all that “we need to revive an IP rather than buy new ideas” energy into returning Street Sharks to the nation’s children.

Anyway, I’ve probably mentioned this elsewhere because I’m a deep blackhole of need and self-loathing, but I run a comedy show called Shit Arcade in which comedians play bad video games for a live audience and make fun of them, all jokey-like. You get it, so let’s move on.

Because I’m a man who loves losing money as much as I love crying in the shower thinking about the girl who got away, I recently brought my show to Edinburgh Fringe. What’s Edinburgh Fringe? It’s a place where entertainers try to pass out flyers to people who are themselves passing out flyers to other people passing out flyers. You can also see fascinating one-person shows there like, “My Dad Was Mean To Me Once” and “Dating! A Thing I’ve Done!”

Don’t worry, this isn’t a promo for my show. You’re too late, fuckers! This is going up in some distant future. But since I was doing the show in the UK, I kept getting asked why I didn’t have ZX Spectrum games. Or as the red coats call it, the “ZED”X Spectrum. Ugh.

And there were two reasons. One, I don’t take fucking requests from peasants who, until five years ago, still executed women who floated wrong after being thrown into a river. Two, the ZX Spectrum is a weird fucking computer-y thing that sucks to emulate and requires a keyboard to work right and a lot of the games need a ton of work to even run properly. Making comedians hold a keyboard as you enter the right shit to get a bad game started is death, and not the kind I yearn for.

Which brings me back to Highlander. It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a shitty gaming machine is in need of an even shittier game. A lot of websites I found on Google (let’s not act like we’re fancy here) cite it as the worst commercially-released ZX Spectrum game of all time. So, of course, I wanted to emulate it and show it off to a Scottish crowd. Scottish story, Scottish crowd, everyone’s happy.

I failed at that, but I finally did at least get it working on my laptop with a keyboard and a tall glass of whiskey with a splash of ginger ale.

Highlander is ostensibly a fighting game released in 1986 by a company called Ocean, which you probably recognize from old video games your dad left behind after he went out for a pack of cigarettes. I’m telling you all this because I’d love to hit a word count that doesn’t disappoint the people who pay me to write for this site. I mean, I’m sure they don’t care, but you gotta fluff some of these pieces out. I’m tap dancing for money here, folks.

Usually I can find some charm in a bad game. I can find a kernel of love or a bonkers choice I enjoy, like in Back To The Future for the NES, where you have to collect clocks to keep your siblings from disappearing from history. Because, of course - time travel equals clocks, so if you’ve got clocks, you can protect the past. That’s why when you’re going back in time you see an hour glass and shit.

But there is nothing that saves Highlander for the ZX Spectrum. There is nothing in this game that is redeeming. I am worse off as a person for having played through it. It’s a game that you can beat in ten minutes but, in that ten minutes, you’ll consider ending your own life at least five times. It looks like Nidhogg, which is a great game, and plays like watching your grandfather pass away in the hospital, which I have done. That’s real. It’s slow, painful, and by the end you’re just happy that everyone can be at peace now. The only thing this game is missing is my Aunt freaking out and trying to open windows because she saw a commercial for a nurses’ union in which the actor does that to “let the souls out.” That’s also real. Don’t worry, I don’t think she’s read any words in the last twenty years that haven’t been on a phone organizing the sale of low-grade cocaine.

If you remember the story of Highlander, there’s a bunch of people called Immortals who are actually pretty easy to kill if you cut off their heads, so, you know, bad name. Anyway, Raiden from the original Mortal Kombat movie kills a bunch of these guys while falling in love with a bunch of ladies he gets to watch die and then, when he wins, he’s no longer immortal and everyone thinks this is good for some reason or other.

Here’s what that has to do with the game Highlander: absolutely fucking nothing. Knowing the movie’s lore does not make this game more interesting or fun in any way. Smashing together action figures from other movies and shouting about holy ground would be a better take on the film than this. Having a simple-minded child describe the plot back to you after reading him a Wikipedia summary would catch the feel of it better. Am I making myself clear on this? Are you not entertained? Because you’re not. You’re really, really not.

The most exciting part of this Highlander adaptation is the opening screen. Looks pretty good! No notes there! We’ve got a face. We’ve got a title card. What else can you ask for, right?

The least exciting part is everything else. I know the screen saying, “STOP TAPE” is for the purposes of playing on the ZX Spectrum itself, but it really does feel more like a warning to anyone who thought this was a good idea. These games came on cassette tapes which, unfortunately, do not kill you seven days after you play them.

Here’s how the game works: You use the keys on the keyboard AROUND the letter S to move forward MacLeod and then press S while doing that to strike. Or something. I think. That’s what the manual says, but fuck if it didn’t feel like blind luck any time I actually hit the other asshole. According to the manual, this is supposed to be “realistic” sword combat. And, in a way, I guess it is because it’s realistic that I’d pick up a sword, think I was cool for thirty seconds, and then get my stomach sliced open.

Speaking of which, while fighting you can occasionally knock down the other character and then - don’t ask me how because, again, none of the controls work as advertised - cut off his head, which sends his soul into your body. And then - HUZZAH! - he’s whole again for the next round. And then you’ve got to kill him and chop off his head. Eventually, the game moves you to the next level where you fight a nearly identical looking stack of white pixels on a slightly different stage. If I could give the game any points, I guess the three stages are nice?

That’s right! Three whole stages. Or, really, three whole backgrounds. If you’re curious, those backgrounds are, “Blue & Yellow,” “Blue,” and “Yellow & Blue.” Lord almighty in Heaven above us, I know that the ZX Spectrum wasn’t a machine that could produce incredible graphics, but at least try your hand at the old razzle dazzle!

If you know what you’re doing, you can finish the game in under ten minutes, which is approximately one hour and fifty minutes less than the amount of time you can play a game on Steam before returning it. There are only three fights with a few rounds each like the hit arcade game Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. That’s it. And they’re all the same. Move forward a little, block somehow, attack somehow, and cut off the Immortal’s head to kill him, thereby proving he was never Immortal to begin with but, rather, just very, very old.

One part of the game I’d like to praise is the music. Oh, I’d sure like to! But there’s no music at all. None. No music. No theme. Not even a little starting ditty. It’s just… nothing but tiny blips every time your sword hits another sword. Remember that old video game? What was it called? Shit, it’s on the tip of my tongue, fuck - PONG! That’s the one. Pong. It sounds like when the square ball hits a paddle in Pong, but slightly muddier and with less of that old, college OOMF! On a scale of one to ten, I’d rate the sound an F.

I’d say you could load the soundtrack to Highlander while you play this game but are any of you - literally any of you - ever going to do that? No! I tried it and I felt stupid. And I felt sad. And I felt mad at myself. I looked into the mirror and asked what was wrong with me while slapping my own face. And you want to know something? That combat alone was more satisfying than the entire game of Highlander on the ZX Spectrum. At least I felt something. At least for a moment I knew there was life in me.

Now, you might be wondering, “Mike, what happens when you beat the game?” Nothing. And I mean nothing. The game just ends. Everyone fears what comes after death. Is there a Heaven? Will we see our loved ones again? Can we be forgiven for our trespasses just as we forgive those who trespass against us? Or do we simply stop existing, a vast blackness descending upon our minds until everything that made us us is gone? Probably the latter and that’s how Highlander for the ZX Spectrum ends. Blank. Bye bye.

There are no end credits (those come at the beginning of the game so you know who ruined some British chimney sweep’s Christmas of 1986). There is no congratulations screen. There is no final tally or bullshit wrap-up of a story we never saw. It just stops. The game ceases to be, which is probably more merciful than making you sit through anything further.

At this point you realize, “This is who I’ve become. I’m a man who plays bad games for money. I went to college. I have a Master’s degree, goddamnit. I was married once. I’ve loved people so much and I’ve lost their love through my own negligence. Yet, here I am, in a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland, writing about a game featuring Scottish things and I feel nothing but hate in my heart and a profound pain in my stomach from eating meat pies for twenty straight days.”

Whoever made Highlander for the ZX Spectrum was either on a deadline or in a sex cult that derived pleasure from fostering disappointment. Watching a Mortal Kombat II machine play itself in attract mode is better. Simply looking up at the sky imaging the clouds are fighting is better. Texting an ex, “Hey, this video I saw reminded me of that movie you were writing. Hope you’re doing well!” and the word bubble goes green and you receive no response is better.

So, in conclusion, to sum up, I give Highlander for the ZX Spectrum a 7.8 out of 10.

This article was brought to you by our fine sponsor and Hot Dog Supreme: Greg Cunningham, who played Highlander for the ZX Spectrum and finally understood why the Immortals were so eager to have their heads cut off.

You can read this article and every other one on the much better in every way 1900HOTDOG.COM