The Classic PC Gaming Era (1977-1989) - CHOLO
Don't miss this unique Tron-style wireframe graphics game that’s often compared to Paradroid, but which has a greater focus on three-dimensional puzzle-solving.
RELEASE DATE: 1986
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Solid Image Ltd / Firebird
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Fairly playable
BEST VERSIONS: Commodore 64 (1980s), Cholo Remake for Windows by Ovine by Design (modern)
First-person perspective games have long had a tendency to focus on shooting things, whether it’s TIE Fighters in Star Wars: The Arcade Game, tanks in Battlezone, enemy aircraft in Skyfox or aliens in Starglider. But rarely has that shooting served a purpose beyond obliteration. That’s one reason I’ve long had a soft spot for CHOLO, a strange little game that involves driving a little rat-sized robot through a ruined city and shooting other robots long enough to paralyze and possess them. The backdrop is admittedly pretty bleak – a group of humans is trapped inside a nuclear bunker, and robots with corrupted circuits are patrolling the irradiated surface and preventing the humans from escaping. But the gameplay offers such a unique mix of stealth, exploration and puzzle-solving that I still fire it up and play it today from time to time (thanks to an excellent freeware Windows remake by the developer Ovine by Design).
CHOLO starts you off in control of a RAT droid named Rizzo that starts off inside the Central Computer Building of Cholo City. Since the conceit of the game is that you’re controlling Rizzo through a remote terminal, you can only see what it sees through its sensors, rendering the world in a wireframe form. Your first task is to find a computer called CYBER I and establish a connection so you can swap programs. Your RAT droid has space for four programs in its rampak memory and programs give you different abilities, like being able to access the master password database (crucial for hacking other bots) or being able to scan the area. Once you’ve acquired some programs, your next task is to take control of a Hacker robot by paralyzing it with your ion cannon, breaking into it with a password and then programming it to fall under your control. This gives you the ability to swap between robots while exploring, but it also allows you to utilize the Hacker to access computer terminals your RAT can’t deal with. The Hacker can also help you gain rampacks that give you additional abilities for both robots, and you’ll find there’s a lot of trial and error involved in optimizing which mixture of software to carry around.
As you progress through the game, you’re eventually able to take control of various robots including the Flying Eye, which allows you to explore the area from the air, or the Leadcoat, which can move into the areas with the strongest radiation. The map of the area included in the game manual is (in line with the story) outdated and incomplete and the world you’ll explore is surprisingly large. You also have to be careful because there are both Guard robots and tank-line Grundons that will shoot at you if they become suspicious. Eventually, it becomes necessary to take over the hostile robots around the bunker, and that’s a tricky task because they move in a group and have failsafes that activate in the event that one is taken over.
CHOLO is very much the sort of game where you need to keep the manual handy, as it not only provides a solid walkthrough of the initial area, but also includes a novella about your character, Jared, that offers some important background information about your mission. The story is sort of a mixture of Fallout and The Last Starfighter, where Jared and his fellow nuclear vault dwellers are living blissfully unaware of the world beyond their limited space, but Jared is selected to be their salvation through his mastery of a video game he finds on the Central Computer which is quite similar to the actual interface for steering the RAT droid.
The original version of CHOLO was written for the BBC Micro and is a fairly slow and plodding game due to its three-dimensional perspective and monochrome color palette, and even the later ports on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 suffer from limited abilities to display the onscreen action. But much like Elite or other wireframe games of the era, it was gameplay, not graphics, that kept players coming back. CHOLO’s Windows remake smartly preserves the wireframe style but adds in a Tron-like veneer which makes Cholo City much more fun to explore and enhances the feeling of controlling robots through a limited interface. Given that the remake is freeware and has the blessing of the original development team, there’s absolutely no reason not to try it today.
As Our Series Continues…
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about 3D games, flight simulators, sports games, gameroom games, puzzle games, unusual games and so much more.
And while you’ll definitely see some titles from prominent North American publishers like Sierra On-Line, Infocom, Activision, Electronic Arts, Brøderbund, SSI, MicroProse, Lucasfilm Games, Epyx and Sir-Tech in the mix, you’ll also see references to games from the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Spain and Japan.
If you’ve missed the earlier entries in the series, which cover ASCII games, adventure games, wargames, strategy games and role-playing games, you can find the entire archive at https://greatestgames.substack.com.
Anything I don’t share here will be in my upcoming book, tentatively titled The Greatest Games You (Probably) Never Played Vol. 1. Subscribe to this newsletter so you won’t miss it!
NOTE: This post went out a little early by mistake. It was intended for May 28, 2024. Enjoy!