It's Only Rock 'N' Roll: K-tel's pop star game lets you live your dreams...for a while
The fun is short-lived here, and that's probably on purpose. Behind the primitive cosmetics, It's Only Rock 'N' Roll is a brutally real take on life in an '80s band
You probably remember K-tel for their infomercials, compilation albums and stubborn refusal to capitalise that T, but they had a go at computer games for a while too. Their Spectrum Doublesiders – two games for the price of one on a flippy tape – were especially popular in early ‘80s Britain.
It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll popped up on the 48K in Spring ’84 with maze adventure Tomb of Dracula on side two, but it also appeared a bit later on the Colecovision and Commodore in its own right. I’ve been playing the Canadian release of the C64 version, which comes in a very plush box. It doesn’t scream “BASIC game” at first sight. Which it is. It uses the beige box’s system font. Uh-oh.
The first thing you’ve got to do is give your band a name. Once you’ve smirked at your cock joke, you can select one of the three skill levels and begin. You’ve got 60 months to become a millionaire, obtain 1000 popularity points and buy three status symbols (a yacht, a castle, or whatever it takes to look the part).
The main screen’s got 8 options:
STATUS REPORT
This is where you keep tabs on how stuff’s going. There are indicators for happiness, the time elapsed, how popular you are and blah. This page also calculates your energy points, which are easier to understand as “fucks given”. You start with 1000, but you’ve only got so many to give on each performance. Throw them all at one tour and you’ll be too tired for what comes next. Pace yourself!
WRITE SONG
The computer throws up randomly generated lyrics on this screen, and it’s clear that this is where coder Kevin Smith had the most fun (“don’t do that, it’s rude” seems to end up in most of the songs). You can accept a song or reject it based on a score out of ten, but you’ll need to accept a few duffers ‘cos original tunes are needed to make an album later on. Here’s a song that worked well for me and, yes, they’re all like this:
LOVIN’ YOU IS LIKE A WIMP
WHY SHOULD I LOOK AT IT
DON’T DO THAT IT’S RUDE
LAY IT ON ME
—
KISSING IS LIKE JIVING
CAN YOU CUT YOUR HAIR
IT MAKES YOUR HEART THROB
SING IT BABY
—
WHY DO I LIKE JIVING
WHY SHOULD I LOOK AT IT
IT MAKES YOUR HEART THROB
LAY IT ON ME
TOUR
Each trek of Britain, Europe, the USA or Japan costs money and energy points. In return, you get profit and popularity. A show can go well, but bad stuff happens too. Your drummer might be too pissed to play, or the local oiks could ransack your gear. It all affects your precious status report.
At the end of a tour you can watch an “animated highlights” package. It looks like one of those fake things that Netflix would commission for an ‘80s drama:
CONCERT
You can busk on the street for free straight away (you might get arrested and fined) and work your way up through pubs and clubs to Madison Square Gardens. It all affects your well-being, wallet and popularity. Sometimes shows get cancelled because of the weather or a bomb scare, which loses you cash.
MANAGER
Choose your gaffer wisely. Some of them are crooks and steal from you. On this screen you can also negotiate a recording contract, mindlessly take a bank loan and boost your popularity by starting a fan club.
GET A STATUS SYMBOL
You need three of these to finish the game, and they cost a ton: anyways, you have to buy aspirational bollocks like a Scottish castle, a Ferrari or a painting because that’s what rock stars do, apparently.
MAKE RECORD
Once you’ve got a recording contract and enough popularity you can put out an album, which the label will promote.
REST
If you do go too far on a tour, you can reclaim 250 energy points by sacrificing a month of your time.
It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll has the feel of an early football management sim’: you have to make the right selections at the right time to satisfy an algorithm. To succeed you must make a record, so I worked backwards from there. What do I need to make a record? A publishing deal. I get a deal by becoming popular. I become popular by playing gigs. So that’s what I did. I started with a lot of gigs.
Once I’d hit enough popularity points, I went back to the “make a record” screen and the game took me by the hand: it told me that I needed a manager to make the best deal, which opens up the rest of the game. I won’t spoil what unfolds, but once you’ve waded through how each step fits together this game is on very straight rails.
But wait! There are pitfalls even when you’ve planned your path. Accept too many 2/10 songs and your album won’t chart. Tour too hard and you’ll wipe yourself out for months on end and be forgotten by a fickle public. Trust the wrong manager and he’ll probably steal from you (sacking one without a payoff is instant bankruptcy in court, too).
It’ll take you a few plays to get your head ‘round this, but it’s worth the squeeze. There is something deeply satisfying about building a career in It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll. I turned my nose up at the BASIC code when it first loaded, but you will quickly forget its simple aesthetics. Thanks to some wicked humour and name-dropping (Tony Blackburn, Haircut 100, Melody Maker) you’re quickly swept off to a time not that long ago but also so very far away: a place where getting famous was harder than a few uploads on TikTok and staying sane on the journey was even tougher.
Being transported back to the seedy, realistic grind of the Before Times is what is so appealing here. Like those football games that spend forever wallowing in injuries and transfers, there is something relaxing about this game’s brutal realism and its focus on the granular. You will be utterly engaged in keeping every part of the simulation ticking along. It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll only spoils itself with the 60-month time limit. I’d like to have gone on forever with some of my bands, loitering around local nightclubs and earning pennies instead of giving in to a manager and the mainstream, man. But it’s shit or bust here - usually bust - ‘cos that’s how life in a band is. Yet even the disappointment of having to start a new game will quickly turn to excitement. These moments cleverly mimic a bunch of guys giving it just one last shot at the big time. This time, you’ll definitely be millionaires.
Once you really have had enough of dodgy managers, shitty nightclubs and the indignity of fan clubs, the game breaks back to BASIC and you can LIST the whole thing. The code’s sitting there for you to vandalise as you please. You could even take out the 60-month rule if you wanted to. Metal! 🤘
Play the C64 version in a browser here. The US instruction book is here and it’s got some really useful tips. Regional versions of It’s Only Rock ‘N’ Roll vary a little bit (dollars instead of sterling, for example).
It's Only Rock 'N' Roll: K-tel's pop star game lets you live your dreams...for a while
Wait, so is this an early version of Rock Star Ate My Hamster, or did Codemasters just rip it off?