Why I love Skool Daze and Back To Skool

[Darran@Retro Gamer]

Did you enjoy playing Dave Reidy's excellent Spectrum games? If so please let me know here. It's for a feature/cover I'm planning.

Darran

[HalcyonDaze00]

brilliant games and two of the first games I can remember where you could have loads of fun by just messing about and not doing what you were supposed to (just like real school !! )

[The Laird]

Skooldaze was actually the one of the very first Spectrum games I ever played, right after Manic Miner I seem to remember, and I instantly fell in love with it. It was much more involved than the arcade games I was used to playing at that time. It's uniquely British sense of humour was also a winner as well as being a game you could really relate to as a school kid at the time. This was the one game that sold me on getting Spectrum for myself, especially when I saw its even better sequel . . . .

[Morkin]

I got to live an alternate life in those games. By day, a mild mannered school boy. By night (after tea & Grange Hill, Scooby Doo, or another show that I've forgotten), a rebel with an eye for mischief & armed with a catapult. Classic teacher names as well.

[RichL]

I used to love it when there were too many kids in a class and not enough seats and there would be a domino effect when each kid would get knocked out of a chair.

That or twatting Einstein when he was going to grass you for writing on the blackboard and the bell would go before he got chance to get all his speech out because you kept pea-shooting him from the back of the class.

[Fightersmegamix]

Despite owning a spectrum for years i never played it Don't remember anyone at school talking about it either, maybe the drink has dulled my memory, or my school was unusual.

[killbot]

Played it a few times but I never got the hang of the controls, or of what I'm supposed to be doing. That said, it seems like fun and is certainly very open-ended and non-linear by the standards of the time. It was obviously a big influence on Bully, which is a complement because I love that game.

[mlucifersam]

Me and my school mates used to play both games quite alot though when they had just come out. I have more recollection of playing the 1st one, probably because it was so unlike anything that had come out before. Like everyone who was at school and played either of these games I had great fun renaming all the characters to teachers and mates from the school I was attending at the time which for me was the Northampton School for Boys. So, for me, Eric, the hero,was renamed as Mark. Mr Withit, the Geography teacher was renamed Mr Arnold and so on.I didn't even really play it properly, I'd go to a few lessons, then try causing a bit of trouble and see how long it would take for me to get some lines.

It was the first game I think that I'd ever played that made going to school seem fun! When you're a kid you take school for granted and don't really enjoy it as much as you should, probably because you're MADE to go to school, it's not through choice. Anything you do under duress is always not as fun as it should be if you'd chosen to go. 'Skool Daze' made me think a little about what I was doing between Monday to Friday and maybe it wasn't all that bad after all!

It was quite clever too, David Reidy had made a game that would appeal to virtually everyone who had a Spectrum, almost everyone who had a Spectrum was going to school. I was 14 in 1984, I could have been IN 'Skool Daze'. Who wouldn't want a game that made going to school fun?

It got 93% in 'Crash' magazine and was awarded a 'Crash Smash'. I think every review it got was a good one. It looked fantastic, and still does, those graphics still look brilliant today. And there's not really been a game like it to surpass it. One of the last TRULY original games to be released for the Spectrum IMO.

[IronMaidenRule]

Skool Daze was brilliant, remember having a Speccy emulator for the Amiga and playing Skool Daze the most, was a stroke of genius how you could rename the character to reflect your own school!!

[the_hawk]

I remember having this stuck in the middle of a c90 one of my mates did for me & I absolutely loved it, I can't remember which one I had though .

It was the one with the girl's school, so I assume it was the 2nd one.

Had so much fun playing around with it, but like killbot I could never figure out what the heck I was actually supposed to be doing!

[greenberet79]

What great games. So much fun. I never really knew what I was doing to be honest (I WAS only about 8!) but whatever I was doing was a great laugh - the catapult, writing on the blackboard, pushing other kids out of their chairs, sneaking into the girls' school and the staff room, getting shouted at by the teachers.

Those things seems really twee now, but both games encapsulate the era - it was such a great time to be young and be a gamer. And a Speccy owner!

[Chentzilla]

When Rockstar announced Bully, I remembered that I already played that game... My first acquaintance with the "Skool" series was Back To Skool, and it was mind-blowing for a Spectrum user – it looked kinda like a platformer, but actually had much more verbs than "jump" and "shoot"; the "level" was not big, but the diversity was gained through temporal changes: "safe zones" were becoming "hunting grounds" as soon as the bell rang. The level structure also made sense: not just a set of platforms, but a school (two schools, actually) with different classrooms for different disciplines, teachers' room, mess hall and so on. Not everything that moved was a monster, and people could be used for personal gain without even a dialog interface. It was small-scale real-time open-world long before GTA, Outcast and Shenmue. And, yes, many things they had in Bully, like riding bikes or kissing girls, were already there in Back to Skool.

I hope you will also mention a nice remake named "Klass of 99" by Richard Jordan, which I actually finished by mass poisoning the students while they were dining (I had to poison one to alert his aunt, but had no clue which one). It also had a computer class added with topics like "How to pirate games", there was also a "Space Invaders"-like mini-game there which could help you to lose some lines. Alas, no girls.

[Mire Mare]

I'd load Skool Daze and then either mess around, ignoring all the rules, whilst trying not to get caught or I'd attempt to recover my report card also by trying not to get caught. That the game allows the player this freedom to do what they choose, within the confines of the school, is brilliant and very appealing. And, changing the names of all the characters to real teachers and friends from school was priceless. The odds are favourable that there will have been some teachers that had fun with Skool Daze too!

[sirclive1]

Theres a reason Skool Daze won the " full price game world cup " over on world of spectrum - because its a timeless classic .

It plays just as well now as it did in 1984 , its not nostalgia speaking either , my 11 year old lad always requests " skool daze or bak to skool " when we have a speccy session as he loves to mess about on it.

[fgasking]

I played the C64 conversion myself, and spent ages putting in teachers and friends names in the game to make it a bit more "authentic". I don't think I played the game properly and just caused as much havoc as possible and avoid getting lines. Punching loads of kids onto the floor was good fun too! Even recently my 9yr old daughter has taken a shine to the game and pretty much replicates what I did all them years ago