I had fun writing this one! Bionic Granny was released for Commodore 64 by Mastertronic in or around 1984. It’s about an octogenarian who has finally lost it and is going postal at school kicking out time.
ROUGH VIDEO TRANSCRIPT: MAY INCLUDE OMMISIONS, AND ADDITIONS NOT IN VIDEO. EDITED FOR EASIER READING. LOVE YOU.
The early days of gaming were a trip. Anything went. The most bizarre premises for video games went ahead and got published…because who cares? The bar wasn’t quite set yet. Also, the bar for what makes a game total crap wasn’t set yet either, which means, oh boy, we got Bionic Granny.
Obviously, when I saw there was such a game as “Bionic Granny”, I was very excited. The way the world is going, I do not doubt that in the next couple of decades there will be cyborg-type pensioners going nuts in the streets. I welcome it, since I will be one of those pensioners.
I’m going to smack the bobbins out of those younguns. With my big gun arm.
Bionic Granny was published by Mastertronic in 1984 for the Commodore 64. It was very much panned at the time of release because it is fundamentally awful. Thankfully it was only released on Commodore 64, but I do feel bad for kids who thought they were gonna get something awesome and ended up with what they ended up with.
Look at the cover art. It is wonderful. I’m not even joking, this is one of the most distilled box arts ive ever seen, every time I look at it I see something else I love about it.
Two kids, one of whom dressed for school, are running away from this kindly-looking old lady. The girl appears to have edema judging by how her legs are drawn – nice to see that representation. Unless it’s just poorly drawn which it might be, look at said girl’s face. Her eyes being that far down in her skull suggests she has the biggest forehead ever seen on a human. That explains why she’s got a fringe.
Look, young lady, the world is a judgemental place, but you do not need to change how you are to express who you are. But yeah honestly, I’d have a haircut like that too if my face was literally half face half forehead.
This lad here has bizarrely sculpted arms, which suggests to me he is at least 17. What is he so scared of this sweet old lady for, he could clearly body her in a fight.
The sweet old lady looks kind, if a little worried – but she’s holding this weird gun thing that’s shooting a laser?
How did she get hold of that? I’m asking because I want to know if I will be able to cash in my pension to buy something that sends everyone running away scared. And I’m a self-employed millennial, so I don’t have a pension aside from the pisscoins the government might give me when I’m about 80 and by that point I can tell you, I’ll have already been hanging outside schools screaming at children for a good thirty years anyway. Give me the zappy stick, come on.
Yeah, I can’t work out what she’s holding, but she looks so kind and sweet it seems more like she’s picked it up not knowing what it is. until you notice that in the background is a huge, terrifying grinning face. Is that her demonic side? It’s…literally just her face but with a less kind expression.
How she is in the centre of the artwork looks like she’s about to ask you how school is going, while the big demon version of her looks like she’s just missed the final number at Bingo and frigging Bertha got the 20 quid jackpot. Bertha. She’s out of order.
You play as the bionic granny. And you are angry. At children. For reasons best known.
So, you hang around outside a school, because that’s not creepy at all, wait for kicking out time, and absolutely batter any small child that tries to get past you.
Granny is going nuts, smashing that walking stick back and forth. She can move very quickly for someone whose had a hip replacement. Left and right, that’s all she can do. She can’t go up the roads the kids are running down.
It’s amusing how the kids are happily walking along the main roads. Isn’t that the point of a pedestrian crossing there? Don’t teach kids to up and walk down the middle of roads, that’s for cars.
Even though it’s school picking up time there’s no cars. Or buses. I can only imagine parents found out there’s an octogenarian going nuts and thought nah screw that, the kids can make their own way home.
Your main enemy is a lollipop lady. She tries to defend the children by…lobbing lollipop signs at the raging old lady. So, she’s holding a lot of those lollipop signs. Must have been some sort of sale on at…ye olde lollipop sign shop.
You can’t hurt her because she never comes lower than one point in the screen, and granny can’t move up.
The animation of her falling down is actually very nice. the terrifying face that appears over her – not so nice. Is that her soul leaving her body? why is it a massive face? I don’t like that at all. Isn’t she supposed to be bionic? because now she just looks like she was possessed by some demon. a demon with a massive face.
I think I’ve worked it out. That face is her inner face, the one that is usually made invisible but follows us around all the time. You know, the expression you really want to pull but you can’t because social conditioning. I’ve got one.
You’ll only see one screen for the whole game – the scene just outside a school. This is…really it. Constantly try to beat up small children. You don’t even pause to go hold up the line in the post office, or go do a little bit of shopping with your pully bag thing.
The instructions say that she’s lurking outside the school to surprise unsuspecting kids. And she sometimes manages to zap said kids with her “laser-powered brolly”.
Oh! that thing she’s holding is an umbrella. A laser powered umbrella. Not a walking stick. Okay. again, where did she get that, I need one of them.
“Better run for your life before she gets you too!”
Holy crap, run for your life? she can kill kids with this thing? Is that what she’s doing? This is a massacre! Where are the police? are they too scared of her to show up? This is scenes.
I suppose it’s interesting that you get to play as the bad guy in this game. But that’s where the interesting stuff ends, aside from wondering what the heck is going on with that scary face thing.
It’s not a good game. But its functional. It works. It does what it’s supposed to. Is it really that bad? Well, yeah, it is. It’s mindless and repetitive and not fun – although it does get much more bearable when you mute the music. Which sounds like the inside of my brain whenever I try to understand bitcoin.
By the way, a lollipop lady is a gendered term for a crossing guard which we have in the UK. I’m only calling this one a lollipop lady because that’s what it’s says in the instructions.
Apparently, they’re most commonly called lollipop men or ladies in the Uk, Ireland or Australia which is way cuter than “a crossing guard”. in the Uk they hold big signs on sticks that look like a giant lollipop. I checked for the American version and its literally some dude holding a sign rather than a big stick.
America, I know you hear this a lot: but are you okay? I mean give the man a stick, do you know how much cooler it is to hold a traffic sign like a big staff? Our lollipop ladies and lollipop men look like magical car wizards with big striped staffs.
So now it’s time for me to feel a bit bad for taking the piss out of a game made by a literal child. Yes, like a lot of games in the early 80s that made it onto home computers, Bionic Granny was made by a couple of lads too young to legally drink.
Bionic Granny came from a company called galactic software – which consisted of two brothers. David Darling and Richard Darling. David was 16 when he formed that company.
In any case, Bionic Granny was not the only title they made between 1982 and 1986. They made a whole bunch which were published by Mastertronic. Some good, some bad. Bionic Granny is one of the shitty ones, a sort of budget game. One where you get what you paid for.
Then in 1986 the brothers, with the help of their dad, made a company so that they could publish their own games. Thus, Codemasters was born. David Darling was barely twenty years old and forming one of the most successful British video game companies ever. When I was twenty, I did not even know what a ledger book was.
So Bionic Granny is just an example of a shitty game from a successful company. A bit of a blip, if you will.
It’s easy to point and take the piss out of crap put out by successful companies. It makes us feel better, doesn’t it? What we are really doing is expressing our own lack of acceptance of our own inadequacies. “Oh, this company made this awesome game? lol well look at this shitty one they did. Hahaha, they made something rubbish.”
I get it if it’s a big AAA company with a huge budget. There’s no excuse for them to make something shit and demand money for it. But a sixteen-year-old making a shitty game that another company then asked £1.99 for? just a bump in the road to greatness.
Look at it this way – whatever goal you have; you’re going to make a Bionic Granny at some point along the road. People will point and laugh and tell you to give up.
Let them. That is what growth is about.
I want you to give yourself permission to make a few Bionic Grannies on the journey to your dream – those who take the piss out of you for your mistakes rather than encourage you to try again are expressing their own insecurities. One day you’ll be high above them looking down, and you’ll see they are still in that same cesspool they lived in the very first time they tried to bring you down.
Don’t give up, okay? Don’t ever give up.
