Total Recall

You’d have to live under a rock not to know that games based off of movies just plain suck, and if you doubt me one bit then you can look no further than Total Recall. Let's look at it in contrast; you're a movie producer with an R-rated Sci-Fi thriller about to hit theaters. You want to merchandise it, but you can't make toys and action figures for the kids. Who do you turn to? Video games of course! You give the developers a strict deadline to coincide with the movie's release, and four months later you have an extra revenue stream from a lackluster product that somewhat resembles the events in your movie. Job well done, now you just sit back and wait for the royalties to come in. While this was the norm in the early days of gaming, there seems to be a sort of movie game renaissance happening with the release of Chronicles of Riddick in 2004 and Warner Brothers saying that they’ll punish companies by taking more royalties for lackluster games will hopefully end the trend of the “movie cash-in” soon. While the trend seems to continue on, I’ll attempt to hold out hope. On to the game!

Total Recall follows the standard blueprint for just about every thrown together NES cash-in used. It was a generic, ugly platformer that attempted to loosely follow the events off the movie….sans the chick with the three boobs. You know you can’t do an article about Total Recall without mentioning that classic image - consider my quota filled. For those who have sheltered themselves from the plot, the movie, the boobs, and the creepy looking bug-eyed asphyxiation scenes at the end of the movie, allow me to give you a brief synopsis. You're Douglas Quaid, a man on the run from mysterious people who are trying to kill him (including his wife) after getting a memory implant. It's up to you to get to the bottom of all of this and find out the truth…IN SPAAAAAAACE! Actually, just Mars.

Total Recall has to be one of the worst movie-based games ever, falling into the same category as ET for the Atari in some respects, just not with an interesting back story involving buried cartridges, four weeks of development, and the Bruce Lee curse. It’s more along the lines that the game is almost impossible to play rather than ET’s seven-minute cakewalk. Impossible in the sense that the sluggish, clunky controls make it extremely difficult to get anywhere. Combine that with the lack of any kind of battery backup or password feature to continue from certain points and makes Total Recall much less a game as it's a nice way to encourage male pattern baldness, because you'll be pulling your hair out by level two.

You'll be battling and jumping through cities, apartments, subways, and ultimately, a city on Mars on your quest for the truth, that being how long you can suppress the bile building up in the back of your throat. Along the way you'll have to deal with midgets dressed in pink, glass-jawed soldiers in riot gear, dogs anxious to have relations with your leg, and what game would be complete without ingenious traps devised of people punching you through holes in fences. Wait a minute…did I just write that??

Well I’ll be damned! Screw the spiked pit, the conveyor belt, or the breakaway platform. This is the worst trap in the history of video games. There have been some bumbling villains over the years, but that has to be the worst idea for an obstacle ever. What kind of evil genius are we dealing with here, anyways? A clever and dastardly one, that's what. One that is guaranteed to show Quaid a bitter end by any means, thus making an obstacle such as punching through a hole in a fence the ultimate element of surprise. Kudos to you, Vilos Cohaagen.

Now we know why the old Gamescrap logo was as ugly as it was don’t we? You can even make some pretty creative screenshots with it. Moving on…
 

Vilos doesn't stop at mere glory holes in fences as he's spared no expense in training his minions the dark arts beyond any comprehension from the feeble minds of you and I. Every enemy encountered will run at you, attack, jump over your head when you're close, then run away only to repeat steps 1-3 again and again. This simple strategy works in conjunction with the game's poor hit detection where you'll punch right through enemies if they're too close. They have to be at the right distance to register a hit; this way, even the lowliest midget decked out in his best pink suit can make short work of the hulking Governator in little to no time with the smallest amount of effort. See what I did there?

In addition to punches, you'll also pick up guns here and there, though these don't make the game any easier, or enjoyable for that matter, since enemies will jump around randomly to dodge your bullets. They're also harder to take down since you'll have to pump about seven rounds into them before they'll go down – much like a well seasoned porn star. In the meantime, it only takes a couple of punches to get the same effect. I could go with a domestic violence is funny joke, but that’s too easy.

For a game sporting the Total Recall name, it's apparent the developers really wanted to do a game based off of the Terminator. This game boasts more Terminator references than the Terminator games themselves. When you lose a life, Arnold says “I'll be back”. Instead of game over, you'll get “Your game has been terminated”. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sharon Stone representation in the game was actually Linda Hamilton.

Total Recall was released in 1990, which was pretty much the coda of the NES. We had already seen some games that had pushed the envelope of what the NES was capable of, and by that period in time, games should have been technically superior to anything before 1986. Total Recall seems to debunk the theory all together. First of all, Quaid looks like he has the upper torso of a woman and moves like he has a stick in his ass, resulting in posture that only Marines and uptight guys who collect tiffany lamps can imagine.

There isn’t much to say for the game’s sound aside from the overly nostalgic sound effects that sound like they were emulated from an Atari 2600. The game also has the same song playing throughout the game from main menu to god knows when, since the only people who would enjoy this game enough to try to beat it are the type that probably attach car batteries to their nipples while they play. Long story short, you'll be sick of the loop by the end of level 1.

I sincerely have pity for anyone who paid full price for this game eighteen years ago. It's bad enough that you have to try to play through it over and over, and while you'll initially assume its lack of skill, you'll quickly learn that the game is at fault. You'll want to give up after three attempts at passing level 4. Hopefully you’ll be grateful that there are shlubs like me out there that’ll take a bullet like this to warn you about games like this. I didn’t start this site for the glamour after all.

Vids

All the Total Recall gameplay you'll ever care to see.
Dim lights Download

Images