How To Be A Complete Bastard: that time the Your Sinclair covertape made a Tory MP furious
“I am pursuing this matter and should be grateful for your comments.”
It’s May 1991. The Conservative MP for Darlington, Michael Fallon, is worried.
He’s right to be. Unemployment is at its highest since 1988. Economists have warned that the UK is still in an “exceptionally steep” recession. The country is in physical danger from the Provisional IRA, who months earlier launched a mortar attack on Downing Street and blew out the windows of the cabinet room. It isn’t a great time.
Yet on May 8th, at least for a while, Michael’s thoughts are somewhere else. Won’t somebody think of the children and stop Your Sinclair magazine?
“Constituents have complained to me about the contents of the May 1991 edition of your magazine and of the free tape attached to it”
he thunders in a letter to Future Publishing’s managing director.
“I can only agree with them. It is bad enough that such offensive and tasteless material is put on sale. As Schools Minister, however, I am particularly concerned that there is no warning provided on the cover to alert parents who may want to protect their very young children.”
“No” is underscored in pen, like a Victorian schoolmaster emphasising his displeasure.
“I am pursuing this matter and should be grateful for your comments.”
Michael forgets to mention in his letter exactly what the problem is. It’s a game called How To Be A Complete Bastard and it isn’t very good.
HTBACB is based on comedian Adrian Edmondson’s 1986 book and was originally a Virgin full-pricer for the 8-bits in 1987. Your task, as Ade, is to make the guests of a yuppy house party leave by behaving as obnoxiously as possible. It’s the “weeiest, fartiest, smelliest and most drunken computer game in the world”:
But what’s it really like when you load it up?
At first it looks like Spy Versus Spy. The screen’s split in two (“Bastavision”), but unlike Spy you’re actually seeing the same scene from different angles. You use the top screen to move around as normal and the bottom one to get your bearings. It’s weird at first and it isn’t helped by some sluggish response, but it does make sense when you need to open a cupboard or go through a door.
Once you’ve got your head around the camera, you can go for a wander. The freedom you’ve got is pretty nice for a 35-year-old game. It’s not exactly an open world, but you don’t have to do stuff in any order either. You pick things up, see what awfulness you can do with your inventory and then move on to the next act of twattery. In the kitchen, for example, you’ll find ice cubes. If you’re carrying them and approach a guest, you’ll get the option to “PUT THE CUBES DOWN HER UNDIES”. Do so, and one of the letters in COMPLETE BASTARD will light up. Illuminate them all and you “win”, somehow.
There’s more. The game has four scales which vary according to your actions. The Drunkometer increases the more plastered you get, and some tasks require you to be pissed to carry them out. The Weeometer is affected by how much booze you’ve sunk, and once it’s time to go you better find a plant pot. The Fartometer is affected by what you eat (let rip to clear a room) and the Smellometer needs to be kept high too (the more you reek, the higher the distress you’ll cause to other guests).
The meat of the game is in annoying the partygoers, but you can act like a dick for extra “bastard points” by melting vinyl, trashing the BBQ and tearing up the homeowner’s beloved jazz mags. It’s in these moments you’ll find some nice pop culture nods to the time, like Fireman Sam on the telly and the house’s Blue Peter ashtrays.
Unfortunately, a game which appears true to the book on paper hasn’t been executed very well. Edmondson’s whole thing is slapstick violence: think of how he repeatedly smashes a fridge door closed on Rik Mayall’s head in Bottom. What he’s actually doing is horrendous, but it goes on for so long that it stops being shocking and starts being funny. Compare that to the violence in this game. At one stage, you need to nail somebody to the floor. It’s the exact sort of thing Ade would do in character, but there isn’t a comedy payoff in How To Be A Complete Bastard. No animations, no on-screen event. There’s just dry text: “THE GUEST SCREAMS IN AGONY”. It makes you look like a psychopath, not a comic creation. It just doesn’t work, and it makes the game feel like something that it isn’t.
There’s a single exception to this. Make a wrong move upstairs and you become an oven. Your sprite is an oven for the rest of the game. It’s unexpected and the first time ‘round it’s funny. More visual rewards like this would’ve made for a much better – and authentic – Bastard experience.
When the game was released commercially for the Speccy, CPC and C64 in 1987, most of the press shrugged at it. Your Sinclair called it a “routine arcade adventure” (7/10), noting cute touches like the screen spinning when you’re drunk. “A witty romp while it lasts”, said issue 2 of Ace (792/1000). CVG played it on all formats, scoring a 7 in most departments (“difficult to get the hang of”), while two C64 magazines panned the game. “A complete disappointment” (4/10) said Commodore User, while Zzap! rightly bemoaned the C64 version’s pathetic pace. “The £10 price tag has to be the funniest thing of all” (33%).
On budget re-release in 1989 most magazines merely downgraded their scores, noting how it’d aged. It wasn’t until How To Be A Complete Bastard rocked up on the covertapes of Your Sinclair and Amstrad Action in 1991 that parents opened fire. The anger was tied to a misconception that computer games were modern toys aimed exclusively at children. Rod Lawton, editor of Amstrad Action, addressed this directly:
“Amstrad Action is not, and never has been, a magazine devoted to children…the perception of the machine itself is changing…but AA is for all ages. If we produced a magazine for ten-year-olds, nobody over twelve would read it. I’m sorry if people found the game offensive, and from the reaction of those people who have phoned up to complain I will think very seriously about the content of future covertapes.”
He then recalled a call he’d had from one particular parent:
“She professed to be otherwise happy with the covertape, including the Predator II demo. This game consists of killing everything you see. This was apparently a fine occupation for [her] ten-year-old! It’s worrying to think that children are thought to be more at risk by lampooning bodily functions than the ritualised slaughter of human beings”.
Your Sinclair just took the piss. It printed Michael Fallon’s correspondence in full, awarding him letter of the month and three free Spectrum games. The editor embraced Fallon’s idea of an “offensive!” warning on the magazine’s cover. It would attract more readers, he said, and make the YS crew their fortune. He also, in fairness, expressed regret that some readers wouldn’t be able to buy YS again after their parents discovered what they were playing.
And that naughty element - Mum will bollock us if she sees this! - is probably why How To Be A Complete Bastard is still remembered today. The idea of the game was illicit, even if all you ultimately saw were some choice words. Putting out a game with “bastard” in the title was as smart as the old Channel 4 “triangle warning” trick, really: without it, it’s doubtful whether an audience – and certainly Tory MPs – would’ve noticed this so-so game at all.
Future Publishing stood by its editors. Your Sinclair and Amstrad Action served an enthusiastic audience until 1993 and 1995 respectively, only shuttering when the machines reached the end of their commercial lives. Michael Fallon had a long career in politics, eventually becoming Secretary of State for Defence. He resigned from the post after being implicated in the 2017 Westminster sexual misconduct allegations. It’s unclear whether or not he ever received his three free Spectrum games. 🚽