Super Hamster: Curse of the Kooky Cult

Super Hamster: Curse of the Kooky Cult

Release type: Shareware
Release date: 1993
Levels: 12
Author: James W. Morris
Website: JamesWMorris.com
Related games: ?

Not to be mistaken for Alan Caudel's Hamsterman.

A basic principle that even experienced game designers tend to overlook is that any creative work is a conversation. In the case of a videogame, the conversation is more active than usual. Unlike a painting, you can't look at a videogame as an objective thing that exists in its own right, in absence of your interpretation.

In the case of a painting that would still be a mistake, as without an observer the only fact of the thing is that it consists of pigment on a stretched canvas; in our presence and our ability to interpret the world before us, we're the ones who bring meaning, and translate the pigments into a story. Yet, the pigment is arranged in a static and objective orientation, which remains the same regardless of our insight or otherwise as to the substance of its communication. Even if you don't internalize what's going on with the picture, you can point at it, describe what's going on, and skim off a basic idea of its literal content.

A videogame doesn't exhibit that kind of factuality. The substance of its conversation exists in the "game"; in a system of rules which can only be read through their active employment. The game exists neither in the canvas of the code and art resources nor entirely in the player's mind, but rather in the limbo between these two systems. To entertain a videogame is to engage in an active conversation with a set of variables that define a causal reality. To overly weight either side of the conversation -- whether to insist on the game's creative vision in isolation of the player's presence and input, or to insist on the player's unfettered liberty in isolation of meaningful context -- is to on some level fail in the act of communication.

Most games do fail. Whether it's an author who removes from the player's role a reasonable agency out of fear they'll do "the wrong thing" or a designer who out of a libertarian epiphany decides to let the player do "anything they want", it is rare to find a game that just wants to sit down, propose a scenario, and hold a reasonable conversation about its ideas.

Depending on a the development culture, games will tend to fail more to the left or the right of the line. In the Japanese discipline, you get the more authoritarian (or should we say "authorly") approach. A game's world tends to be finite, discrete, built up from individual expressive elements that the player is expected to navigate and appreciate out of an inherent interest in seeing what comes next. The Western model tends to be more of the Walmart school: a big box full of stuff, focused with a thematic mission statement; do whatever. Ideally what you'd have here is a basic system that you can explore to its logical extremes. What you're more likely to see is a bunch of emptiness, into which the player is expected to project her -- well, let's not kid ourselves; it's expected to be his -- meaning. Both are empty and frustrating experiences; one for failing to take the player's agency into account and presuming an interest in the game's objective content, the other for failing to guide the player's agency with a sense of consequence or purpose. In both cases the conversation falls apart. One or the other party is just there for the ride, unable or unwilling to build on the provided epistemological foundation.

This is the arcade part of the disco level. You might ask why there is a large arcade in the disco. And further, why is the tiny headed woman dancing on the games? There are answers to these questions, and many others.

Super Hamster is an ambitious project that sits understandably to the left of the scale. It is a charismatic game, with its own well-defined style and tone, that it employs consistently through its many variations in design and its many interesting setpieces. For all of its many ideas -- more ideas than it seems to know what do with -- the game can be frustrating to play. It's frustrating, because the game has so much good to it -- and yet it seems more interested in chasing its own creative process than in ensuring that the player is still there to experience it.

The levels are big and distinctive, and all of them make excellent use to the map. They are also all quite linear. As a consequence, whenever the player dies there is an extraordinary amount of retracing to do. The monsters in the game tend to be small and static, so in principle they should be easy to avoid -- but in the event that you touch one, the character will freeze, and the monster isn't going anywhere, so one injury animation will segue into another, until the character's life is drained. One mistake, and you're as good as dead. Consider that even the best Game-Maker games tend to allow limited nuance in their controls, and we have a recipe for some swift disenchantment.

The game lulls the player into a false sense of security, as from moment to moment it genuinely does not seem very difficult -- and yet the consequences to just one misstep mean that just finishing the first level can be a test of patience. Chances are if you make an error it will be toward the end, as navigating the monsters only gets more troublesome as the level goes on. If you spend fifteen minutes navigating a level, you don't want to be sent all the way back to the start to try again, with only a dwindling confidence in your agency over whether or not you succeed.

This is from the TV Station level where our hero confronts a Bob Ross impersonator and must flip his blinking beacon from red to green. Why? I don't remember exactly.

Still, Game-Maker does provide us save states to abuse. And the game is so very charming. So, there is motivation to push on. As we do so, we are inundated with wacky cultural references -- from monsters to background details to the character's move set. And then the game makes such effort to employ Game-Maker's systemic properties -- its counters, its gravity and solidity, its animation -- in ways that enhance the game's variety, adding to or breaking up the game's basic mechanics just as they start to feel familiar.

And then there's the game's sense of a narrative. Although Super Hamster is more of a linear action game, it uses its structure to build on the storytelling in the more adventure-based Crystal Mania 4. As with many Game-Maker games, Morris based Super Hamster on an ongoing series of comics -- yet almost uniquely he chose to employ Game-Maker as a medium for continuing the comics' narrative. Between levels the player is fed into an illustrated scroll of expository text, that helps to weight previous actions and to set up the game's next scenario.

This is all clever, fairly well-executed stuff that shows an ambition to push the tools beyond their surface value and create something larger than the materials at hand. By the virtue of the game's substance, Super Hamster should be one of the best and most notable Game-Maker games of all. And yet, it feels like for all the game's ingenuity it feels like the player's involvement kind of fell by the wayside. If you can't get past the first level, you're not going to experience the game's many virtues -- and the sum of your impression will be based on a seemingly endless death maze littered with Elvis impersonators and lava lamps. Which is interesting, but it doesn't quite fill the player with a drive to persevere.

On the merits of its ambition and content, Super Hamster is good, solid stuff. It just needs an equally solid run-through from the player's perspective, if it expects the player to stick around to see how good it is.

Story

This is from the arcade portion of the disco level. It looks like everyone is having a good time.

Super Hamster: Curse of the Kooky Cult

It was a dark and stormy night. There was a 60% chance of heavy thundershowers just north of the city. The city would be Redwood, CA. The year is 2039 ad. Deep in the heart of the anemic metropolis was the mecca for freaky refugees of a bygone era. It was Don's Disco Inferno. And this seemingly innocent establishment is where we set our scene.

Don's had been a site of much trouble over the years. From the day that Big Daddy Don broke ground on its construction until this very day it had been plagued by an omnipresent Phantom of the Disco. This deformed disco dancer donned a dainty disguise in the form of a porcelain mask covering the disfigured portion of his face. During construction of the dance hall he snuck into the sewers and fashioned a secret lair for himself. From there he would make demands of the disco manager and smote him with the punjab lasso if the demands were not met. (the punjab being a lasso that smote people who used puns too frequently hence the name Pun-Jab)

The phantom was content while the family that owned the disco suffered. Soon they had so little money they had to send the youngest of the kids to be the new manager. When they no longer could afford to supply the phantom with his every whim he got ticked off. He then threatened to smote Don the epileptic bartender/manager. Don fearing for his life called the Pentagram in Washington D.C. (okay he over reacted just a little) George Bush, secretary of defense and petroleum jelly immortal, found that there was someone on the pentagram payroll in the city of Redwood. It was of course Super Hamster, defender of the um, well, er, we'll just leave it at defender.

This is the part of the disco level where you pass the giant lava lamp only to be confronted by an enormous laughing head connected to the wall by a pipe. The head doesn't actually do anything. It just laughs. In many ways it is a testament to our humanity.

When Super Hamster's girlfriend Mindy heard that he was going to the inferno she had to go and try out her latest disco steps. Since S.H. didn't expect much trouble he figured they could have some fun at a human club and get paid for it to boot. So with that they were off.

Meanwhile somewhere in Redwood

A tall insect like creature scowled at a blurred image on the wall. He was relatively sure that it was the daughter of King Nestor he was seeing but it was so many years since he last saw her and she had taken so many forms he just couldn't be sure. She was a fat old gypsy woman sitting on a park bench talking to herself. That in itself was not uncommon. What was uncommon was when she would argue with herself, no, with her crystal ball, and it would argue back with words printed across its surface.

Now there could be no doubt. Madame Roseallini was in fact the long lost princess of Plankton therefore her father must be in the crystal ball. (Okay, maybe it's a little of a stretch). Convinced that his quarry had been found he called together the kooky cult to assemble tonight at the secret meeting place. He also summoned Darko the kooky sage who was the head honcho of the cult. He needed him to do a little favor.

With everything in place, the giant bug prepared the visions and broadcast them over time\space into the murky sky above.

Back to the original plot

This motley crew was the NPC cast that populated the disco level. Here you see the disco chicken, the debutante, the douche bag, the slut, the woman with a tiny head, and the African-American Elvis impersonator. All the usual sorts you'd expect to find at a night club.

Upon arriving at the disco Mindy and S.H. didn't see anything out of the ordinary so Mindy began to dance while S.H. laughed at her. But unbeknownst to them, the phantom saw the dance and became infatuated with our hoofing heroine. When Mindy was through making a fool of herself with disco gyrations she and S.H. sat on the catwalk. Surveying the situation Mindy commented.

MINDY- The French would hate this.

SH- Mindy!

MINDY- You know it's true. they'd say, "look at zeez zilly americanz doing zere zilly danze hough hough hough pazz me zome wine."

SH- Thank you for alienating an entire ethnic group of our audience.

MINDY- We have an audience?

SH- I certainly hope so.

MINDY- Wow, what a nifty development. Mayhaps I should woo them back with a gratuitous display of female stuff.

SH- We're talking about the French Minderelli, try a subdued waif like androgynous display

MINDY- S.H., I don't want no more of the crying game.

SH- You and me both my little gelatin mold.

Suddenly Mindy begins to vocalize strangely as the plot gets more and more extravagant

This is near the end of the Disco level. You have to jump on the heads of the women to reach the guy up above. And then kill him. This is much like the events that transpire in a real disco.

MINDY- At night

he was on TV

I saw him

and was not the same

that leisure suit

still calls to me

though devoid of brand name

But will

he dance again?

Would he be kind?

The Phantom of the Disco

is there-

in my orange rind

SH- Okay, Mindy. That's one too many orangy squeezy zima umbrella drinks for you. By the way, why were you singing about John Travolta?

PHANTOM- Dance once

again with me

my fluffy

pet...

your grace

in platform shoes

gets better

yet...

and while

you still deny

that I am real

The Phantom of the Disco

is there-

inside your orange peel.

This is the epic confrontation with an inter-dimensional diety. You climb up his body, and as you approach his head, he spits jellyfish type things at you. You can fight him if you want, or you can just walk by him. Now that's some open-ended, gameplay, just like GTA!

SH- Whoa. This is getting really weird.

In the light of a hundred lava lamps at chernobyl the phantom appears and beckons to Mindy. She rises and moves slowly toward him in a trance-like state. She glances back at S.H. to say.

MINDY- Disco is dead snookums. where did you think I learned all those moves.

PHANTOM- Come, my angel of disco.

MINDY- I'm coming, I'm coming don't get your cape in a knot.

SH- Did I miss something?

MINDY- Yeah you never did find out who killed Laura Palmer did you? See ya later honey bunches of oats.

With that the phantom wrapped his cape around her and they both disappeared. S.H. considered what a nifty trick that was. But soon he got to the matter at hand, was his girlfriend just kidnapped? And if so does this mean that in his first video game he's already stuck in the least imaginative video game plot device ever devised. After a few therapy sessions he came to terms that this was a mundane rescue the princess type plot and he set off to find the entrance to the phantom's lair.

Somewhere in Redwood

Yes we've returned to the big bug guy. He readies the list of the 7 artifacts of the facilitator. Then sends it to the daughter of Nestor in a psychic vision. Promising her the defeat of her nemesis on delivery of the totems. She is told that they are an integral part of a ritual to destroy Zealos (pronounced zEElowZ). Immediately she begins trying to find the hamster to whisk him to her caravan. They have much to talk about indeedy.

The Phantom's Lair

Deep in the sewers the phantom makes his home. He takes Mindy through the sludgy rivers to a chamber full of lava lamps on sticks. He leads her onto the hard wood floor and gazes into her eyes.

PHANTOM- Are we having fun yet?

MINDY- Ack! you've pluralized me!

PHANTOM- No no no I meant are you and I having fun yet.

MINDY- Then you should have said that, I don't feel comfortable enough in this relationship to make a pronoun with you.

In this part of the mountain level you leap over one of the ubiquitous pits full of spikes, only to be confronted by a deadly mountain lion on the other side. Fortunately, I could never get the mountain lion to move correctly. So he just stands there and growls. But if you walk directly into him, he'll kill you alright!

PHANTOM- Stop the insanity!

MINDY- tee hee

PHANTOM- what?

MINDY- You sound just like that bald chick on TV. Only you have a higher voice.

PHANTOM- Blah Blah! I suppose I have to get all hypnotic again.

Slowly, Gently, Night unfurls its splendor.

Grasp it, sense it, tremulous and tender.

Turn your face away from the garish light of day.

Turn your thoughts away from the cold unfeeling light,

and listen to the music of the...

Night Fever Night Fever

As the chamber erupts with disco medleys, the phantom extends his hand to Mindy

Here our hero confronts a hooligan from another world. Who will be the victor? Building the 3 tile tall bad guys proved to be a ginormous headache, but in the end it worked out alright.

PHANTOM- Come on, babe. Let's boogie

MINDY- It's a stupid plot, so sue us.

Meanwhile in the Disco

S.H. approaches the bar and takes a seat, which he deftly falls out of, landing on his face.

BARTENDER- Those stools are ergonomically self correcting, molded with a thousand wave table samples of the human buttocks. Your stumpy tail must have thrown it off, or made it throw you off as the case may be.

SH- yeah that's funny stuff. But enough of this banter, how is it you know so much about samples of the human buttock?

BARTENDER- I'm Don the epileptic bartender, I manage the place.

SH- ah so your Don, well, the name's Hamster Super Hamster My friends call me Friskey You can call me Ray or you can call me Jay. Why do they call you Don the epiletic bartender

DON- Because my name is Donald and I tend bar and I have conditional epilepsy.

SH- conditional?

DON- yeah I only have a seizure when I hear the name C-H-A-R-L-E-S-R-I-C-H-T-E-R.

This is part of the mountain level where you get an extra life from Santa Claus and cross the collapsing rope bridge. Thanks Santa!

SH- You realize of course that I now must say it.

DON- of course

SH- No offense intended

DON- None taken

SH- Charles Richter

After a spectacular seizure Don regains composure

DON- I seem to have wet myself.

SH- Get back into life with depends. But enough of this fun and fits. Do you know anything about the hidden lair of the Phantom of the disco? I think he kidnapped my significant other.

DON- Yeah it's in the sewer right beneath here.

SH- thanx, one more thing, is that the village people I hear

DON- Yeah, why?

In this scene our hero escapes from two patriotic eagles as the sun looks on, stoic and eternal.

SH- Oh nothing, I used to have nightmares that the Indian was coming to eat me.

DON- He likes to be called the native American now.

SH- geez but I hate political correctness.

DON- who doesn't?

SH- Barney, but I digress.

DON- I guess that's all the exposition I can help with.

SH- I think not, I need to borrow you for a second.

With that our fearless furball carried Don over to a weak spot in the illuminated floor and, holding him by the ankles in jackhammer position, said

SH- Charles Richter With that Don began gyrating wildly and tearing through the floor while S.H. guided him. Eventually he penetrated the stone walls of the sewer and made a spiffy entrance to the Phantom's lair.

SH- Thanks for all the help Donny

DON- don't mention it

SH- I'm gonna scoot back up to the catwalk now.

DON- The catwalk, but why? Shouldn't you go to the lair, especially after using my head as an entrenching device.

SH- I would but after this excruciatingly long opening I think the good people want a couple of stages before they have to read again so I'll just come back down through the disco again.

DON- Okay, and thank you for all your help.

SH- your welcome, um, what help?

DON- I don't know, I guess I got one to many whacks on the strobe light if you know what I mean.

SH- I'm sure I don't but I'm sure it's something special. And remember your a special person! Have an extra special day, from your friend

S U P E R H A M S T E R

Instructions

One of the levels of the game had you switch characters and play on a hoverboard. I was actually pretty happy with the mechanics, but the level itself wasn't put together very well. Here our hoverboarding hero scoots up through a sewer pipe toward some gleaming cubes.

Use the numeric keypad (keep num lock on) to control the various characters that appear in the game. You can use a joystick if you have one by calibrating with F9 and then toggling it on with F8. I'll just include the keyboard instructions here, refer to the complete instruction guide for Joystick commands.

S.H.

Right Arrow (6)= Walk Right

Left Arrow (4)= Walk Left

Up Arrow (8)= Jump Up

Down Arrow (2)= Crouch

(7)= Jump left

(9)= Jump right

(1)= Crawl left

(3)= Crawl right

(space bar)= shoot (high)

(s)= shoot (low)

(h)= release Hillary Clinton

(q)= Do a little dance

(t)= a useless but fun button

Chad (easy)

This is the entrance to the TV station level. There is a horrifying phantasm in the upper left corner.

Right arrow (6)= Skate Right

Left arrow (7)= Skate Left

Up arrow (8)= hover up

Down arrow (2)= crouch

(7)= Hover left

(9)= Hover right

(1)= Slide left

(3)= Slide Right

(J)= Jump up

Chad (hard)

Right arrow (6)= Kick Right

Left arrow (7)= Kick Left

Up arrow (8)= hover up

(7)= Hop left

(9)= Hop right

(1)= Slide left

(3)= Slide right

(J)= Jump up

Stages

In the TV station level you confront "Blarney" the drunken Irish dinosaur. Do you see what I did there with "Barney" and "the Irish"? Funny stuff.

Now that you know how to control yourself I think we should move right along to the stages... shall we? lets.

Stage 1: Don's Disco Inferno

The object of this stage is to get from the catwalk down to the convenient opening to the sewer at the ground floor. Very few enemies actually attack you in this stage so shoot them for target practice this stage builds your skills controlling S.H. Power ups are in mood rings.

Stage 2: The Phantom's lair

Now that your in the phantom's lair it's just a matter of finding Mindy and escaping with her. Hey There she is! But there's a wall between you so you'd better find another route to the phantom's inner sanctum. The bad guys are faster and smaller but aren't very dangerous. Power ups are in crystal balls

Stage 3: The Mountains of Redwood

These hills are alive with giant insects wearing togas. Your objective is to get the necrotic tissue for Madame Roseallini. Unfortunately it's at the top and your at the bottom, so start climbing buster. The enemies are a little bigger and meaner here. Watch out for the invisible buffalo. Power ups are in snowballs

Stage 4: Chad's sewer adventure.

Chad (in either easy or hard mode) must navigate through the sewers on his hoverboard in search of the lost disco ball. Don't worry so much about bad guys.. because there aren't any. But beware the waste treatment grinders that will tear you to shreds in a second. Powerups are in gleaming cubes

Stage 5: Channel 10

This is a three part level. First your in the sound stage, you have to visit each show to get it's security code (touch the pole with the green light so it turns green) and then, and only then, can you pass through the security gate that leads to the executive lounge. Be alert, some of the sets are hidden, so be on the look out for 5 different shows. Once in the executive lounge you have to find the key card that disarms the force field guarding mogul Aaron Mispelling's office. Once you have it, take the elevator up and be prepared to face aaron and his droid in a fight for the shroud of Dick Clark. Power ups are in TV's

Power Ups

The Super Hamster Logo:

It will increase your score.

Hearts:

These increase your hit points

Pictures of the character:

An extra life!

Purple hearts:

3-5 Extra Lives!!!

Any money like thing:

MONEY!

Note

In this level you have to run along a "scaffold" with a bunch of painted lanterns and jump over some jets of exploding gas. The background is... distracting.

Um, hello there person. Just a few things you should know before you get started... The voice files won't work on a few computers. If you get music and no voice yours may be one of them. I'll see if it can't be fixed in the next version. If you get no music but voices or neither it may be your driver so try that in config.

This game will work suckily on a 486sx with 4 megs

Okay on a 486sx with 8 megs

Better on anything higher a Pentium with 32 megs is nice Anyway if the animations break up occasionally its a memory thing, all I can say is get a faster computer.

Or make a boot disk, that will Help. All you need is a clean boot with your soundcard and you have all you need for the game. If you want a joystick and it has to be loaded go ahead.

I wouldn't recommend going below a 486 with 8 megs because the game will run slow. Even with 8 megs it might jam up at one part and go into slow motion and sorta freeze for a minute or so. Wait it out, after it happens once it won't happen again. (at least it shouldn't) If you notice any other bugs let me know so I can try and address them.

Credits

Here our hero runs through a sewer full of bombs on skateboards. This is a plausible threat. Is that a kitten on the right side of the screen?

Um, I did this...

yeah...

Oh yeah this isn't the really real version of the game. You may notice money doesn't do anything. The game is kinda short. And you can't play as Mindy. (I'm sure all these missing things have haunted you since you first loaded this game.)

Anyhoo for the final level of episode 1 and episode 2 when it comes out all you have to do is register with Hamsterware. to do that just send five measly dollars along with your names and address and any comments you may have.

As soon as the final levels are complete (they may be now) you will get the registered version of Super Hamster. In the meantime you will get a copy of Crystal Mania 4 (Another fine Hamsterware game) and a disk full of goodies. If you like the game please register. If not I beg you to tear it from your hard drive bodily and burn it with some handy kerosene. If you like it and don't register then I will frown on you and the pants goblins under your bed will steal all your pants and you will be embarrassed. Plus I'll make sure you never get the registered version, Crystal Mania 4, or goodies. And I'll use your unnicities to see to it that you never become President.

Thank you and have a nice day

Hugs N' Kisses

Background

This is a rare example of a "boss fight" from the game. You had to defeat the TV executive, who is protected by a "force field" (The line in front of him). His desk is really really huge.

James W. Morris:

The game was based on a series of comics I'd been writing. The idea was to complete one of the storylines in a game rather than in comic book format. As a result, the Super Hamster game is pretty sloppy and unfocused. I was more concerned with continuing a story than actually making a good game. There are some really bad decisions in Crystal Mania, but on the whole I think it made better use of the tools and is more playable.

I had almost completed a level for the game where you played as Mindy, but somehow the data got lost. I can't remember if a disk got overwritten or what the deal was, but it was really discouraging. So I didn't go back and finish it. I never got around to the two episodes that were supposed to follow. I ended up doing them as comics instead.

One of [my] little side projects made it into the Super Hamster game as the hoverboard level. I had two different versions of the hoverboard movement mechanic, and couldn't decide which I liked, so I through both in calling one "easy" and the other "hard", though they're both kind of broken in their own ways.

I don't think I had the presence of mind to kill ideas that weren't working. I shoehorned them in as best I could. One example I can think of was the fifth level of Super Hamster where you need to find five beacons before you can pass through a barrier to the next level. But, if you collected some beacons then died, the count didn't reset. So I had to make a single tile high tunnel at the start of the level that removed the beacon count as you crawled through. It makes a weird sound, but it's totally unclear why. I probably should have come up with some other format for the level entirely since there was no ready solution for what I was trying to do.

The whole game is pretty confusing, but the fifth level is particularly so. I'm not sure if anyone would be able to get through it without exploiting the engine to pop through blocks or forcing the character the wrong way through one-way backgrounds.

Availability

During the early 1990s the game was available for download from various online bulletin boards. Also apparently available on one or more shovelware CD-ROM compilations. More details TBA...

Archive history

In early December 2010, pictures from James Morris' Flickr channel began to turn up in Google Image Search results for "Recreational Software Designs"; a brief search turned up his website, and thereby his contact information. On December 7th a correspondence began; on December 11th Morris provided a link to Crystal Mania 4, with Super Hamster provided the following day.

Independently, Mike Perrucci provided a copy of Super Hamster on July 13, 2010, discovered on shovelware CD-ROM archive -- though for some reason the game slipped through the cracks until that later communication with Morris.

Images and captions used in this article are duplicated from Morris' Flickr channel.

Links

Interviews / Articles

• Learning to Game, Gaming to Learn (Gamasutra)

Misc. Links

• Vidja Games (Flickr)
• Play Super Hamster online

Downloads

• Super Hamster (506.3kB)
• Stage 1 (Don's Disco Inferno) Map (109.7 kB)
• Stage 2 (The Phantom's Lair) Map (178.0 kB)
  • Story 1 Map (130.2 kB)
• Stage 3 (The Mountains of Redwood) Map (143.6 kB)
  • Story 2 Map (86.7 kB)
• Stage 4 (Chad's Sewer Adventure) Map (120.0 kB)
  • Story 3 Map (59.9 kB)
• Stage 5-1 (Channel 10) Map (111.6 kB)
  • Trans Map (5.0 kB)
  • Level 5-2 Map (123.9 kB)
  • Level 5-3 Map (7.2 kB)