The Classic PC Gaming Era (1977-1989) - Rock Star Ate My Hamster
That title's a headline from the entertainment news in this brief and humorous management game from 1988 that pokes fun at both the simulation genre and the music industry in one fell swoop.
RELEASE DATE: 1988
DEVELOPER / PUBLISHER: Colin Bradshaw-Jones / Codemasters
PLAYABILITY TODAY: Highly playable
BEST VERSIONS: Amiga, Atari ST
While many children of the 1980s grew up wanting to be rock stars, only a pragmatic few looked at the music industry and said, “I’d rather be a manager.” After all, the decidedly unglamorous job of negotiating deals, getting stars from point A to point B, dealing with prima donna attitudes and cleaning up messes before they hit the press hardly sounded like the sort of thing a kid ought to aspire to do. But for those who want to live a day in a music manager’s life, Codemasters’ Rock Star Ate My Hamster offers a twisted look into that world, complete with celebrity caricatures and a crushing sense of the universe being out to keep young musicians from truly succeeding.
The game begins with the manager and his assistant Clive building a band, giving it a name (which can be provided by the game from a randomized list) and buying some equipment. You then are faced with some limited choices, including making your band practice or playing some gigs. While practice may sound like a good idea, it’s important to start making money as soon as possible before the funds from an inheritance you’ve received runs out from paying the weekly wages you owe your staff. This helps to establish an easily understandable balancing act between your band’s ability, the price you charge for tickets and the venues you select. Musicians also tend to get into trouble or to request crazy things like inflatable hamsters or vouchers for plastic surgery, so it’s important to have cash on hand to take care of the smaller needs before you move on to the next step: heading into the studio and recording some tracks for a single or an album.
Once you release your first single (which may or may not be accompanied by a music video for which you’ll also foot the bill), you begin seeing the sales charts for the national market. Initially, it’s very hard to even get on the chart, and the only real fun is in reading the ridiculous band names and songs who are ahead of you. As you play more gigs, earn more publicity and put out better quality videos, however, you can begin working your singles onto the list. But the public is fickle, and how and why your song is doing well is difficult to understand (much like real life), so all you can really do is ride the wave while you try to boost your band’s public image and play more gigs until you can release another track, which drops your previous single off the chart. You can also release an album when you’re ready, but it seems to be much harder to chart an album than a single. Keeping an album on the charts is directly related to how well your latest single is doing.
Your assistant Clive provides a lot of advice in the game, and a game guide published in Amstrad Action in 1988 suggests that Clive’s advice is usually right, but the player who wrote the guide also recommends going against him from time to time. One area where Clive isn’t of much help is in public relations – while he suggests any publicity is better than none, the game only rewards publicity where your rock star makes the front page. Occasionally, you’ll be asked to play a charity gig, and while there may be a pattern to whether or not the charity gig is real, it’s impossible to tell from the game’s clues. Refusing a good charity gig or accepting a bad one will both net you negative publicity, so it’s important to save your game regularly and roll things back if you get the answer wrong.
What I like best about Rock Star Ate My Hamster was how accessible and amusing it can be. This was a budget release from a developer mostly known for shovelware and isn’t a game you’ll play for a long time, but it’s fun to load up every now and then and play for a little while. The celebrity caricatures of the musicians are great, and the names of some of the bands and songs are so bizarre that they’re sure to elicit a smile; I particularly enjoyed the band names “Totally Alien Quiz Show Host” and “Metagalactic Heat Death,” particularly when they were paired with song names like “Kiss My Armpits” or “My Baby’s Got a Brand New Fetish” or the very simple “Eek!”.
There isn’t really a best version for this game; since it’s a management sim that’s menu-driven, they all play similarly. I prefer the Atari ST and Amiga versions, however, because they have the best graphics and sound, and thus I’d recommend them for a modern player.
As Our Series Continues…
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about 3D games, arcade action games, wargames, grand strategy games, RPGs, sports games, gameroom games, puzzle 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.
This series will continue to cover games written by unique personalities like Chris Crawford, Roberta Williams and Danielle Bunten Berry, by great writers like Steve Meretzky, Michael Bywater, Robert Pinsky and Brian Moriarty, and based on the work of famous authors like Michael Crichton, Ray Bradbury, Agatha Christie, William Gibson and Douglas Adams.
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!