(Not) The Jeff Gerstmann Hall of Fame 018: Sorry, I Need to Talk About DRELBS (C64, 1984) (Patreon)

Do you have games that, for whatever reason, just pop into your head from time to time? Maybe the games aren't especially remarkable, but for whatever reason it's become part of... I don't know, part of your list of go-to games when you're idly thinking about games?

Wait, do you idly think about games at all, or am I just broken? OK, don't answer that.

DRELBS is a "maze game" in the sense that it came out in 1983, a time when anything with any sort of walls or Pac-Man-esque appearance just got lumped into this basic "genre" of games. It's perhaps a bit esoteric, though while digging around online a bit lately I discovered that someone ported the game to the 7800 pretty recently. Weird! For whatever reason, the version I'm playing in this video doesn't have any sound, but this morning I managed to grab another version and, sure enough, it's got audio. That's just how it goes sometimes with homebrew, I guess?

I suppose look at this as part of the evolution of what The Hall stands for, because if you asked me if Drelbs was a game worth celebrating, I might say no. But, again, it sticks with me to this day, a reminder of random floppy disks full of games, the joys of casual piracy, and all that good stuff.

Maybe it's just that "Drelbs" is fun to say out loud, I don't know.