Spelunking into the Past

June 5, 2010

by Eric-Jon Rössel Tairne

The last few days I’ve been fussing over Derek Yu’s Spelunky. I know that it’s been around for a while; it’s just one of those things I never got around to. I downloaded it, and then got distracted. Time moved on, and there was always something else to pay attention to. As often happens, I’m rather disappointed that I didn’t jump in sooner — and also glad it’s new to me now, with all the endorphin rush you get from that kind of new relationship.

I’m sure the game has been discussed to death, so I don’t intend to labor the point. For context, the game is a Roguelike platformer released for PC about a year and a half ago. By Roguelike, I mean it randomly generates its levels and fills them with both traps and treasure. Until you know the game inside out and can make an effort to beat it, the point of playing is to see how deep you can go, and how much you can achieve, before dying. The random level layout means the game is infinitely replayable. The easy death means that you’ll be restarting often.

The game is basically an attempt to rehabilitate, or reenvision, Tim Martin’s Spelunker, an early PC game mostly known for its NES port. Although on the face of it the game seems really neat — a tale of exploration and adventure and treasure hunting in the deep places of the Earth — Spelunker is nearly impossible to play, in that the controls are a bit awkward and nearly everything that you can do will kill you. Even falling from slightly over the height of your character spells death. It’s ridiculous, and has gained the game a sort of cult reputation for its perceived sadism.

You can see the thought processes; Roguelikes are difficult and arbitrary, yet within an addictive framework. Spelunker is difficult and arbitrary, and no fun at all. Why not combine the discipline of the one and the premise of the other, and create the game that Spelunker might have been? Good thinking, too, as Spelunky is rather marvelous and instantly claimed a place amongst the most respected of indie games.

The Arcane and the Arcade

So that’s all there. What strikes me, though, in playing the game, is the memories and circumstances that the game evokes. The first thought is a sort of lateral jump to Konami’s The Goonies arcade game. The game ran on NES hardware, though for some reason never got a home port outside of Japan. I think part of my affection for The Goonies II, Konami’s much-expanded though again rather arbitrary NES sequel, is channeled from my enthusiasm for the arcade game. I couldn’t play the original, so the sequel had to do.

I was nine or ten years old when the game first appeared; I only saw arcades on those rare occasions when the travel patterns of my parents coincided with the proper malls or facilities. And then assuming I had any change at all, I would only have so many quarters, that I had to judge and use well. This was also the era of creativity in arcade games. Nearly every game seemed to offer a new concept, a new way of interaction that sparked the synapses. Rolling Thunder let you flip and skulk over banisters and hide inside stacks of tires. Double Dragon let you pick up the enemies’ weapons and climb fences. Most games still had custom hardware, built to the needs of the software, so every game looked and sounded and felt just a little different, and unlike anything else that had ever existed. Into that stew, Konami released a fairly modest licensed game based on familiar home hardware. And somehow, something about it was miraculous.

Your character was small. Your only basic attack and defense was a short-range kick. And there was treasure everywhere — in the air, in the walls, behind doors. Drop bombs to break open barriers, save the kids to get extra lives, and clamber your way deeper into the Earth. The game was a matter of survival and discovery. How deep could you make it this time, and what wonders would you see? What treasures might you find? Most of the treasures would just up your score, but some would be legitimately helpful — new weapons, protective items. Even those were transitory, though. So you had to conserve your treasures much as I had to conserve my quarters and pick my games well.

I think there was something in the game that I saw in myself — it was all about delving deeper, avoiding confrontation or else dealing it with a brief, well-aimed snipe to get it out of your way, exploring all the corners for something new and wonderful that you didn’t see the last time through. The game was addictive, and it was hard, and I only had so many quarters — and not many arcades carried it. Those that did tended to get rid of it quickly. So my hunt for the game to an extent mirrored the game’s premise itself, which in turn mirrored something with me. It was this strange cycle. If I happened into an amusement park, and there was a Goonies machine against a wall, then to hell with the rides; I knew where I’d be spending my afternoon. I could ride the coasters some other time; who knew when I’d have a chance to play the game again.

Mine Carts

Spelunky captures much of the same appeal, and runs it through a sort of Lode Runner filter. In the US, the NES version of Lode Runner was published by the same company as Spelunker. They had similar box art, and the same template. Thematically they’re pretty much the same also: journey into the Earth, avoid enemies, find treasure, and survive. One difference is that Lode Runner, though also difficult, both is fair and gives the player more to do. In Lode Runner you can climb up and down ladders, go hand-over-hand across monkey bars, and drill holes in the floors either to explore or to trap enemies. So there’s a lot more interaction with the environment.

The other big difference is in the game’s makeup. Whereas Spelunker (and indeed The Goonies) is fairly intricate, with set levels and carefully drawn, contextual visuals, Lode Runner is assembled out of a palette of generic yet precise tiles. Every level is the same; it’s just that the tiles are in different places, leading to different strategy. This interchangeability extends to allowing the player a level editor — a supreme novelty in 1987, and for many current developers their first taste of design. I certainly spent months with that game mode, drawing out my designs on notepads and blackboards to record them for later. In its randomized structure, Spelunky draws a bit from the Lode Runner school: every level consists of those few stock elements, in different places. And every level is new. Play, therefore, is not so much a matter of learning the layout as it is of learning the rules and the logic of the game, and learning how to apply all of that.

All that Glistens

So Spelunky is inviting and logical, as Lode Runner is, and offers a similar amount of world interaction. It’s evocative and mesmeric in the way of The Goonies, and draws on many of the same themes and even specific mechanics. And it embodies Spelunker and everything that Spelunker might have been, seemed like it would have been from a glance at the box art.

Before game magazines, before the Web, before games were commonly available at video stores, all you had to go on was the packaging. And publishers put so much effort into that packaging — the custom templates, the original paintings, the romantic copy on the back, the choice of screen shots. I’d guess most of my NES games and about half of my Genesis games I bought on the virtue of the packaging; I had no other basis of information. In retrospect, maybe this explains why I bought so few Master System games.

Buying home games — it was a similar, though somewhat more abstract, adventure to my arcade visits. You never knew what games you’d see, you never knew what was inside those packages, and it was a big deal to commit and say, yes, I’ll take that one. Choosing one game meant missing everything else that might have been just as magical, if not more so. Thus, gazing at box art, trying to piece together the game in one’s head, projecting how the game would look and feel, became something of a sport. Games became intensely personalized before they ever slipped out of the box and into the console. If one could convince one’s parents of the game’s immediate and supreme value, the whole trip home was devoted to poring over the instructions, memorizing the controls and the enemy names and any maps or supplementary material.

Every store had its own rules and system for browsing game boxes. At Kay Bee, you had to lurk around the front desk and ask the cashier for one game after the next. Every time, the cashier grew more impatient, pressing you to buy something. At Toys “R” Us and Service Merchandise, you had long rows of plastic flip-cards. On the front was the art; flip the card up, and printed upside-down (so that you’d see it right side up) was the back, with the copy and the screenshots. You could spend as much time as you liked, soaking in all the potential, flipping from one game to another, willing them to be wonderful. I used to dream of being left alone in Toys “R” Us, just so I could wander up and down and soak in the games that might be. Never mind what the games were actually like; I’d only ever get to play a handful of them, and most of them would be too hard for me. It was almost more exciting to know what could possibly be out there.

Spelunker is a game I never owned, yet I probably stared at that box more than any other NES game. Someday, I always thought, it would be my turn to get another NES game, and there wouldn’t be anything more pressing, and finally I’d get to play it — and see how it matched the game that I had been building in my head all this time.

Spelunky pretty much is that game. I’m not sure if I know what to do with that thought.