Sony's original PlayStation is now twenty five freakin' years old, so hopefully it finds a decent job before getting kicked off its parents' insurance plan next year. Of course, its great-grandchildren are already boning in an effort to create the PS5, and now that I've filled your head with images of hot hardware action, let's talk about something important. The PS1 is a great system, but holy butts, did it kick our collective nuts into our lungs with some of its software!
What follows is part one of my personal list of the most sphincter-clenchingly difficult titles released for the system here in North America. Note that I said "personal" up there. As ridiculously huge as my PS1 collection is, I've not played every game for it, nor could any sane individual do so in a single lifetime. Now, "difficult" can mean different things to different people, but I'm not interested in games which are difficult because the developers are inept: unresponsive controls, unfair enemy placement, and idiotic level design can make anybody hurl a controller. I'm looking specifically with an eye towards games which were deliberately crafted to cause the maximum amount of pain and suffering to the wary and unwary alike.
Enough jibber-jabber. Let's talk about some flesh-blisteringly-tough discs like...
Deathtrap Dungeon
What Is It?
Lots of people around my age remember Choose Your Own Adventure books, but fewer remember the game-based spin-offs which were all the rage for a very brief window of time in the 80's here in the US. There were a plethora of options to choose from, but the biggest and longest-running franchise was a UK import known as Fighting Fantasy.
Every Fighting Fantasy book was a self-contained adventure, much like a Dungeons & Dragons module, only instead of gathering half a dozen of your closest friends around the table, the Fighting Fantasy books were meant to be played solo. This made them perfect for introverted nerds like me, who often had plenty of free time and no one to spend it with. Nowadays that lifestyle is seen as the pinnacle of geek-dom, but back in the 80's it just meant you spent the majority of your time playing with yourself.
That, uh, that came out wrong. Never mind, you know what I mean.
Fighting Fantasy books were published for a variety of settings, time periods, and technology levels, but the majority were set in a Euro-centric high fantasy milieu where you as the protagonist of the story took on the role of a fighter, a wizard, a rogue, or some other archetype to pit your wits against the writer. Such is the case with Deathtrap Dungeon, the sixth book in the series, which sees you join a contest to navigate the trap-filled underground labyrinth underneath the town of Fang. If you win, the vile Baron Sukumvit promises to release his hold over the town and deliver a sizable purse of gold into your greedy little hands. The contest has been held annually, attracts volunteers from all over the place, but to date no one has ever managed to walk through the exit gates and claim the prize.
Among Fighting Fantasy enthusiasts, Deathtrap Dungeon was especially revered for its story, traps, and monsters, all penned by Ian Livingstone, who went on to become the head of Eidos Interactive and a millionaire many times over thanks to Eidos publishing a certain series starring a young, buxom archaeologist named Lara Croft. Now flush with money, Livingstone decided to bring back the Fighting Fantasy brand by converting its most recognizable and popular work into a video game. It would look a little something like this:
What's So Hard About That?
The original game book gave absolutely zero shits when it came to messing with the player. There were a ridiculous number of ways to die (thirty-one separate instant-death events populate the text, and that doesn't even count the numerous creatures wandering the halls, any of which could potentially separate your spirit from your body), and Livingstone didn't want to spare screen-goers any of the abject misery and brutal randomness that came from the experience.
The PlayStation version of Deathtrap Dungeon is like that, only on steroids and played out in a full 3D environment like Tomb Raider with plenty of running, jumping, and climbing. Also like Tomb Raider, the game limits your opportunities to save to specific points within each level, and some of these save points require you to spend hard-earned money to activate them, which is especially sadistic given how easy it is to fall down a bottomless pit, immolate yourself in a fire trap, or get demolished by an invincible magical steamroller.
Stretch this out over 38 total levels spread through nine different areas, filled with an assortment of forty-three different types of monsters to kill, and you're looking at one hell of a slog. Be prepared to spend a lot of time reloading save games and yelling at your television. The PC version is even longer, more difficult, and features additional enemies if you can believe it -- it's available on GOG.com if tracking down the PS1 version is too hard, you want the full experience, you think it could be fun to deathmatch your friends, or you just want to see the game in a higher resolution.
Bring On The Extras!
Deathtrap Dungeon featured an enormous, extensive, multi-page ad campaign in magazines of the time period, for both the PlayStation and PC releases. Here are a few samples for your viewing pleasure, courtesy of the magazine scan archives at Retromags:
That one was relatively tame. This one, on the other hand, really got people's panties in a bunch:
Eventually, this version was cut down to a single two-page spread with reversed artwork and different screenshots, like so:
By 1998, Eidos toned down the ad campaign by bundling Deathtrap Dungeon ads with ads for other releases, like this two-page spread from PC Accelerator that postulated a cure for depression which somehow never made it into the DSM-IV and took a pot-shot and people seeking therapy at the same time:
The 90's, folks. If you felt your life spiraling out of control, it was obviously because you weren't playing enough Tomb Raider II.
The game also inspired some controversy on the way it depicted female protagonist Red Lotus. In early promotional materials, such as this image given to both GamePro and Electronic Gaming Monthly, her armor consisted of a pair of thigh-high boots, bikini briefs, some bracers for her wrist, and a "what in the name of Zeus's butthole were they thinking?!" chain clamped to her nipples:
Hardly suitable accouterments for delving through a dungeon filled with things just waiting to stab, chop, bash, burn, shock, and freeze now, is it? Fortunately for everyone, slightly saner heads prevailed, giving us the Red Lotus depicted in the opening FMV above and seen in this review from GamePro:
Still absurd, but vaguely less so than what could have been. Still, if any of you ladies have stuck around this far into the article (hi there, @peekbit!), no matter how tempting it may be, please do not go exploring deadly ruins and crumbling towers clad in stiletto heels. Trust me on this.
So, did you play Deathtrap Dungeon on either platform? What did you think? Let me know down below, and tune in next time when I talk about a nasty-as-hell platformer that spent so much time in development hell, it was announced as a title for no fewer than six different platforms before finally being released on the PlayStation (seventh time's a charm?) in 1998.
the camera angles on that game used to drive me crazy. It was pretty damn impressive considering the time period... the PS1 was truly a game-changer. I had never seen those adverts and am kind of surprised they were approved by whoever is in charge of acceptable adverts.
The 90's are full of ads that make one question the sanity of the various magazines' advertising departments. One of these days, I'm going to do a write-up on some of the weird, out-of-touch, and just plain gross ads of the era. :)
what about HEART OF DARKNESS <3 ^^ Check my blog please 🥰
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