Skool Daze

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Skool Daze

Developer(s)	David Reidy
Publisher(s)	Microsphere (1985)
Designer(s)	David Reidy
Release date(s)	1985
Genre(s)
Mode(s)	Single player
Platform(s)	ZX Spectrum Commodore 64
Media	Cassette
Input	Keyboard, Joystick

Skool Daze is a computer game created by David Reidy for the ZX Spectrum and released by Microsphere in 1985. A Commodore 64 port was subsequently made. It is one of the Spectrum's best-loved games. The game was hailed for breaking many of the gaming moulds by pursuing a creative route of a childhood experience at school.

1 Instructions
2 Characters
3 Rooms
4 Shameless self promotion
5 Compilation appearances
6 Sequels
7 Trivia
8 References
9 External links

[edit] Instructions

From the original instructions:

You are Eric, a troublesome schoolboy, and your task is to steal your report card out of the school safe in the staff room so that you don't get into trouble! To do this, you must collect the combination letters for the safe and write them on a blackboard - not such an easy task seeing as one letter of the four letter combination is held by each of the teachers in the school. In order to get them to tell you their letter, you must make all of the shield scattered around the school flash by hitting them or firing your catapult at them. Once all the shields are flashing, knocking the teachers over with your catapult will cause them to tell you their letter of the combination. All except old Mr Creak, that is, who is so old he cannot be trusted to remember his letter. It has been hypnotically implanted in his mind and he will only remember it when he sees the number of the year that he was born!

To make things even harder, the school is teeming with kids and teachers and you are expected to attend lessons! Einstein is a swot and will tell on you if you do anything naughty, Angelface is a bully and will try and get you into trouble, and Boy Wander is a tearaway who loves to write on blackboards and fire his catapult at the teachers and the other boys. Do anything wrong - or just get caught in the wrong place at the wrong time - and you will be given lines. Collect over 10000 lines and you will be expelled from school.

Some shields are easy to reach, but others will require you to invent more ingenious methods of making them flash. Once you have your report, the chase isn't over as the flashing shields attract the attention of the teachers to your crime! This means that you must then turn them all off again in order to complete the year! And then there's next year...

[edit] Characters

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Boys

Eric, the Hero
Angelface, the Bully
Boy Wander, the Tearaway
Einstein, the Swot

There are eleven other boys who have no name and are identical in appearance. Occasionally one will communicate with the player to warn him of impending dangers during breaktime, such as a hidden peashooter, measles or the swot telling tales to the Headmaster. They serve no other real purpose. It is possible to hit them and to stand on them, which is useful for being able to jump higher to reach targets, but they are too short to be able to knock out with a catapult. The boys sometimes travel as a mob (usually after lunchtime) knocking down anything in their path - this can lead to lots of lines if a master happens to be nearby (either for the player lying on the floor or being accused of knocking the master over when the mob passes them too).

Masters

Mr Creak, the History Master
Mr Rockitt, the Science Master
Mr Wacker, the Headmaster
Mr Withit, the Geography Master

Each master has his own idiosyncratic banter with the boys. Mr Rockitt and Mr Withit refer to their pupils as 'cherubs' and 'chaps' respectively. Messieurs Creak and Wacker hate boys. Perhaps it is Mr Withit's ease in the company of the boys that means he is always on dinner duty.

It is possible to attack masters with a catapult but any attempt to punch them is futile.

All masters use the same punishment if they witness any form of misbehaviour: the giving of lines (a seemingly random number in multiples of a hundred, between 100 and 800). If the miscreant commits the transgression behind the master's back he may well escape punishment. It is possible to strike a master using one's catapult and get another boy into trouble if he is closer at the time of the punishment, which is worth the same number of points as the number of lines given, as well as being mildly entertaining in itself for the player.

The offences for which the player could be punished, together with the messages used by the masters when punishing, were as follows:

GET TO WHERE YOU SHOULD BE: being in a room other than the one the timetable currently indicates you should be in.

CATAPULTS ARE FORBIDDEN: using a catapult (at all) in a teacher's sight.

NOW DON'T DO IT AGAIN: knocking down a teacher with a catapult. (Actually given at the point when the teacher stands up)

DON'T TOUCH BLACKBOARDS: writing on the blackboard in any classroom.

DON'T HIT YOUR MATES: hitting another pupil (or in fact using the Hit command anywhere, even if it missed)

YOU ARE NOT A KANGAROO: jumping in sight of teacher.

GET OFF THE FLOOR: sitting or lying on the floor. It's even possible to receive this punishment if Eric has been knocked down by another pupil!

DON'T SIT ON THE STAIRS: obvious.

THE ROOM IS PRIVATE: entering the headmaster's office or staffroom.

COME ALONG WITH ME BOY / DON'T TRY MY PATIENCE BOY / HURRY UP YOU HORROR: given in the case where a teacher has decided to lead Eric to the location they're supposed to be in. In this case, if Eric moves too far from the teacher these punishments are generated continuously, always alternating.

DON'T TELL TALES: uniquely this was the only punishment that Eric could not receive. In some lessons, Einstein tries to get Eric in trouble by claiming that Eric wrote on the blackboard (if Eric did indeed do so) or that Eric hit him (otherwise, even if Eric has not actually hit Einstein). This generates a punishment under DON'T TOUCH BLACKBOARDS or DON'T HIT YOUR MATES unless the player has ensured that Eric is seated behind at least one other major character in the classroom: in that case, DON'T TELL TALES is generated against Einstein, scoring points for the player.

When the player reaches 10000 lines, Mr Wacker begins moving rapidly towards Eric; if he reaches Eric, he delivers the game over message in a speech bubble ("YOU HAVE OVER 10000 LINES TO WRITE YOUNG ERIC. DON'T COME BACK TO SCHOOL UNTIL YOU HAVE DONE THEM ALL. PRESS 'T' TO TRY AGAIN"). It's possible for the player to knock down Mr Wacker whenever he gets close and thus continue playing for a theoretically infinite amount of time after reaching 10000 lines, although it would be nearly impossible to achieve any game objectives in this condition. It's also possible for Mr Wacker to be knocked down or stunned by another character while delivering the Game Over message, in which case the message pauses until he recovers; this could potentially lead to a loop, but this is exceptionally rare.

No other characters apart from Eric are ever disciplined for being out of their seat or on the floor, which enables the player to empathise with the principal character who is interminably picked upon by the staff.

The boys with no name are never punished, as if they are invisible to the masters.

You can however edit the names of all the masters and boys to your liking to perhaps customise the game to the players own school.

[edit] Rooms

Each master is associated with a particular room (Mr Withit teaches in the Map Room, Mr Creak in the Reading Room, Mr Wacker in the Exam Room and Mr Rockitt in the White Room) although occasionally masters teach in other masters' classrooms.

Other areas of the school include the Headmaster's study, the Revision Library. Frustratingly for the boys, there are no toilets - players would have to wait until the sequel Back 2 Skool for those.

There is a dinner area where boys are expected to congregate during dinner although it is impossible to sit down and there is no sign of any food. The throng of characters occupying the same small area of the screen during dinner make this period particularly fruitful when it comes to collecting points for hitting other boys using one's fists and one's catapult.

Curiously, Mr Withit is always the teacher on duty during dinner.

There are plenty of seats in the Exam Room and the White Room but an insufficient number in the Reading Room and Map Room. This is a source of frustration to the player as Eric is constantly shoved out of his seat and punished with lines for lying on the floor. In the sequel, Back To Skool, this behaviour was altered so that boys smaller than Eric were unable to push him out of his chair.

[edit] Shameless self promotion

The character of Boy Wander would run around writing on blackboards about Microsphere games like Wheelie and Sky Ranger. In Back 2 Skool, Boy Wander writes about Contact Sam Cruise.

[edit] Compilation appearances

Skool Daze appeared on the Spectrum compilation 4-Most Big Hits by Alternative Software, which also included Yeti by Destiny Software, Flunky by Piranha Games and Hysteria by Software Projects. It also appeared on the compilation 10 Computer Hits 1 by Beau-Jolly.

[edit] Sequels

The game was followed by Back To Skool in 1986, which expanded the gameplay to include a neighbouring girls' school and a love interest (with the benefit of being able to reduce one's lines), along with stink bombs, water pistols, frogs, sherry and a long-suffering caretaker. An unofficial remake is Klass Of '99, a PC edition of Skool Daze with updated graphics. The PC game Skool's Out was linked to Skool Daze by its authors, but in fact is radically different and was disliked by many fans of the previous games.

[edit] Trivia

The author wrote the game without use of an assembler and the associated mnemonics, instead writing the game using machine code numbers alone.^[1]
The wife of the author, Helen Reidy, was herself a school teacher during the time the program was written.^[2]