{"id":22782,"date":"2023-02-08T00:01:19","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T00:01:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=22782"},"modified":"2022-12-16T13:31:05","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T13:31:05","slug":"buddy-simulator-1984-switch-pc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2023\/02\/08\/buddy-simulator-1984-switch-pc\/","title":{"rendered":"Buddy Simulator 1984 (Switch, PC)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When I was a kid back in the early 80s, our first computer was an Apple ][+.\u00a0 It was really my first gaming \u2018console\u2019 and I played a lot of games on it.\u00a0 Most were arcade titles like Pac-Man, Zaxxon, and Frogger, but there were also some original ones like Spare Change and Aquatron.\u00a0 But the way you started these games was totally different than how you do it now.\u00a0 Back then you had to enter a floppy disk in and type in some text like \u2018run\u2019 and then whatever game you wanted to play.\u00a0 Some of these games were just text only, too.\u00a0 And some of those text only games simulated you having a conversation with a person.\u00a0 I remember one called \u201cFreud\u201d where it was like you were talking to a psychiatrist.\u00a0 But the main thing I remember about that game was the blocky face of a bearded man.\u00a0 Another one I remember later was called \u201cAlice.\u201d\u00a0 Well Buddy Simulator 1984 aims to recreate the feel of those games, while adding in some unsettling AI horror elements as well.\u00a0 It\u2019s available on Switch and PC, but reviewed on Switch here.<\/p>\n

When you first start the game, you\u2019ll see a mock up DOS text screen with instructions to tell you to type \u2018help.\u2019\u00a0 This brings up a menu of other things you can type in.\u00a0 You\u2019ll want to run \u2018Buddy Simulator 1984\u2019 and when you do, the computer will act as your buddy and ask you some questions.\u00a0 Then you\u2019ll be able to play a few simple games with it.\u00a0 Paper, Rock, Scissors, a number guessing game, and a hangman game that I swear is just like one I had on our Apple ][+.\u00a0 The game is labelled as a horror game, but I think it\u2019s more of the unsettling kind of horror rather than jumpscares and such.\u00a0 Your \u2018buddy\u2019 just seems to get too attached to you and asks some odd questions sometimes.\u00a0 And then it\u2019ll open up more games after you play the first three, but one just opens up a spreadsheet like the AI is glitching out.\u00a0 After that you must restart the program again, but when I tried to do that, it wouldn\u2019t let me.\u00a0 So I stopped playing right there.\u00a0 Supposedly you can play more games with actual graphics and one of them is an RPG and there are four different \u2018endings\u2019 to the entire game.<\/p>\n

The main frustrating thing about this game is that on the Switch, you have to type in words with an on-screen keyboard and it makes gameplay slow and tedious.\u00a0 I imagine it would work much better on a PC.\u00a0 Also the text is way too small in handheld mode and even pretty tiny on the TV.\u00a0 As much as I like retro games, I\u2019m glad we don\u2019t have to play them like this anymore.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Buddy Simulator 1984 is rated T for Teen with ESRB descriptors of Blood and Violence.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t get far enough to see any blood or violence, but I imagine it\u2019s not too bad because of the lack of good graphics.\u00a0 Really the scariest thing about this game is the large amount of questions you have to answer that sound like datamining to me.\u00a0 I hope this game doesn\u2019t connect to the Internet!\u00a0 Because of the high level of reading required, I\u2019d say this one is best for older players only.\u00a0 It may be a learning experience for anyone not born before the mid 80s to see how you played games back then, but I imagine most would lose interest in this one because of the ancient and clunky interface.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I was a kid back in the early 80s, our first computer was an Apple ][+.\u00a0 It was really my first gaming \u2018console\u2019 and I played a lot of games on it.\u00a0 Most were arcade titles like Pac-Man, Zaxxon, and Frogger, but there were also some original ones like Spare Change and Aquatron.\u00a0 But […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":22775,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22782","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22782","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22782"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22782\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23000,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22782\/revisions\/23000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22782"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22782"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22782"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}