Total Recall

By: The J Man

This game is something of a classic for video game reviewal. As the story goes, Electronic Gaming Monthly gave the game such an awful score that Acclaim threatened to pull all advertisements from the magazine in a bitter rage and childish revenge. It's made a disgraceful number of "Worst Games Ever" lists. Its horrors are known to people who haven't even played the game. In fact, no one in the history of gaming ever actually seems to have enjoyed it, feeding the reputation that the game is so hideous that every time a baby cries it means that somewhere in the world, someone is playing Total Recall. Can a video game really live up to such incredible negative hype? Well, I wasn't disappointed...

I have to admit that Total Recall was one of my favorite films for a long time, I guess it still is, and if nothing else has provided most of the lines for my over-the-top Schwartzenegger impersonation. And if you have never seen the flick, you're missing out on a decent sci-fi yarn. You're also going to be at an extreme disadvantage throughout the playing of this game, since you are never told exactly who is chasing you, what you are doing, or why. There's a brief text crawl at the beginning, setting up that you are supposed to go to Mars, and a few cutscenes (with pretty good likenesses of Arnold and Michael Ironside) along the way, but they do little to explain your purpose. I suppose this nearly fits with the intentionally confusing plot of the film, but reduces you to attacking dogs, cops, bums, cats, soldiers, skeletons, guards, your wife, mutants, and hitmen for no reason other than that they are all attacking you.

You'll notice that's a lengthy list there, and it can't quite be chalked up to NES Logic because its not totally arbitary and psychotic, and at least there are no birds or kids with slingshots or men with panes of glass to contend with, though you do get a fair amount of generic flying robots from nowhere in the movie. Your enemies are all just strange, especially the cats and the glory hole wall on the first level. But the king of the Weirdness Parade is the game's legendary overuse of midgets. Actually it seems to be just one - a bearded guy in a pink jumpsuit who stands about cock-level to your character. But this little dude is EVERYWHERE, except the actual movie. Perhaps this is meant to make Arnold look all the more fearsome and buff, perhaps it's an in-joke since it sounds like these guys had shot their sanity at this point anyway, but no matter what the excuse is, it's incredibly odd. In the first level, if you do not jump past every single corner, the bearded midget will pull you into an alley and fight. In the same level, the same pink-wearing midget pops out of every trash can and shoots at you. In a later level you will come across some vagrants that will spring up and attack you with torches if you get too close. They're wearing trench coats when you approach, then fling them off to reveal... yes, you guessed it, it's the same bearded midget. He's a pretty damn good fighter too, or maybe Arnold's just worse than you'd expect.

In this game, Arnold can't even hold his own against four feet of fighting fury.

As for the gameplay, Total Recall is your standard side-scrolling fare. The game follows the movie's plot almost exactly, so if you've seen the movie then you will appreciate elements of the game much more. At the very least, you'll understand what the areas of the game are meant to represent. The movie's pretty out there as it is, so levels like the subway x-ray, or the Martian taxicab chase probably won't make sense without seeing the film. Simiarly, you won't know why shooting out windows sucks you to your death, or why you're constantly being chased by a man in black. I would think he was Johnny Cash if I hadn't seen the flick. In fact, fans of the movie may be the only ones that truly "get" this game. The rest are going to be left out, playing a rather bland side-scroller with references that go right over their heads.

Even if you know what scene every level is meant to replicate, you're still not going to be having much fun. Many sections are made "gamey" to appeal to the commonly-held standards of what a video game should involve. So guys will throw bombs down stairs at you, you'll have to dodge spiked balls on chains, platform jump around, and fight skeletons - all of which never featured in the film, and are in the game just because. The sections not completely invented are still a poor recreation of the action in the film. The game pretty much just applies the movie locations to a bloodless NES platformer. The film has some fucking harsh action scenes, but if you're expecting to grab the guy in front of you as a human shield during a gunfight on the escalator, you probably haven't played a terrible NES game before.

Oh yeah, I loved the part in the movie when Oddjob showed up.

Instead, you will spend every moment of the game running from someone, punching a bad guy, or trying to make a difficult jump or series of jumps. True, this is essentially what you do in every single side-scroller known to man, but this game manages to foul up the equation every chance it gets. For example, you'll find that nearly every enemy has a machine gun, but you usually have only your meaty fists. You can knock the gun from someone's hand after three hits, and force them into close combat, but it takes about ten punches to finish anyone off. And this is anyone. You'll still have to run to the next screen, and fight a whole new guy, often while cars attempt drive-bys, or pit bulls gnaw on your leg. Even the bullets when you do get a gun are pointlessly weak, and pack the same power as an Arnold punch. You can't pull off any kind of rapid fire when your enemies don't share this handicap, and by requiring ten bullets to kill a guy charging at you, you stand a pretty good chance of getting punched in the face before he falls. Your consolation prize will be an occasional health soda, that gives you less than a half-bar of life back for collecting it. Thanks a lot. And of course, if you do collect a gun then you will ditch it for the next level, apparently confident each time that its served its purpose and you'll never need it again. Wait, what's that? The cops have blocked off the subway? Goddamn it, I KNEW I should have kept that gun around.

Sometimes the game shakes up the stakes on you. There's the taxi level I mentioned where you must drive around and navigate through various Martian tunnels. There's a "secret" theater you can duck into and watch the game credits playing on the movie screen. Staying through them all (a daunting three screens) earns you an extra life. (And wait, is that Fallout's Brian Fargo I see up there? Damn, good thing he distanced himself from this game...) Beasts sometimes are sicced on you and must be punched away. Finally, there are a couple sections where the screen gets locked down and you have to fight masses of one-hit bad guys who literally leap onto the screen. With proper timing, you can punch them in midair and send them to their death. I mention it, because the moment I was knocking cops out of the sky by punching each one square in the ass, was the moment that I knew I was never going to be able to take this game seriously.

The game came out in 1990, which really doesn't explain why the graphics are so third-rate. Did Interplay really try? The locations do at least look close enough to their movie counterparts for someone to understand what they are meant to represent. Mars does at least look a little redder than Earth, with more steel and frames as in the film. Beyond that, the levels are basic platform style, so a lot of floors made of concrete with night as an excuse not to draw a background. The final level is the worst, consisting of a single platform with some random lighting strikes in the background. Arnold's character is almost totally devoid of detail, and wears a matching outfit fashioned entirely of out a single puke green color. Other enemies are rarely distinguishable, wearing some kind of uniform colored to denote skill level, or a single jumpsuit. Offhand guess, maybe six different enemies in all, eight if you count the dogs and cats. And what can I really say about the bearded midgets that I haven't already?

Control works well enough, with a button to jump and one to punch. Timing is responsive, and there don't appear to be any issues with registering a hit. Arnold runs pretty slowly, but then so does everyone else. The sound is pretty rotten. The main theme is Interplay's own creation, and it's pretty shrill. Some generic sci-fi sounding themes fill the rest of the requirements, with equally generic sound effects. Guns and punches all sound like archive material, and there's nothing unique to really support the futuristic settings.

Is there any redeeming feature of Total Recall? Well, if you've seen the movie you'll at least be able to follow what they were trying to accomplish. It was mildly entertaining to slap on a cheat code and beat the game in about 15 minutes, which is the maximum lifespan of this game's entertainment. Another reason to pick up the game is to see just how bad it really is. If this thing came with a commentary track by Joel and the Bots, it would be the greatest deal in history. Plus, the bearded midgets are almost funny enough to achieve cult status, and toward the end of the game angry cats will attack for no reason and dance on your head. There's probably a good lesson here in how to avoid making a bad game, or how to intentionally make one for the sheer cheese factor. It will certainly offer a blueprint of how to make little sense and offer little gameplay. I especially enjoyed how the continue and game over screens showed an impressive recreation of Arnold's likeness, with classic Arnold references like "I'll be back" and "Your game has been terminated." Except, that's the wrong movie fellas. I guess they're trying to appeal to pop culture? They couldn't have found something out of the movie that they licensed?

I recall this scene being way more awesome in the movie.

I guess the last way I can put it is with a simple story. When I was about nine years old, I forcefully suggested that a friend rent this game so we could play it, because I was convinced it was going to be "totally awesome." We don't speak anymore.

-reviewed 7/27/01 - game copyright 1990 Acclaim

So bad it's almost funny.

Someone at Acclaim took dumpies and this game appeared in the toilet.

	3
	2
	5
	1
	10%

Or one out of ten bearded midget heads:

Total Recall on MobyGames
Gameplay video at NESGuide

home  about  games  features  contact