Frak! BBC Micro

Frak! retro review for the BBC Micro

Frak! By Aardvark Software (1984)

Back before the word Frak! became a swear word on the most recent incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, or a controversial form of mining, it was a 1986 platform game on the BBC Micro. My friend had a BBC Model B and a Sony colour monitor, and we would play Frak! for hours, as well as the excellent Mr Ee! (a clone of the arcade game Mr Do!).  The game was written by Nick Pelling under the Aardvark Software brand, although he preferred to be known by the name Orlando M. Pilchard.

Frak! animated GIF

Playing Frak! on the BBC micro

In Frak! you control a caveman called Trogg, who had to traverse various platforms and defeat monsters armed with only a yo-yo. Timing had to be pixel perfect, and Trogg could only fall a short distance without dying – with no floor, falling from the edge of a platform often meant instant death. The game itself was not exactly Chuckie Egg in terms of speed, with progress more of a puzzle than a rush through the levels. Trial and error was often the way to progress, plodding your way through the various obstacles to collect the keys to the exit and complete each of Frak’s 3 basic levels.

Fraks Prehistoric Yo-Yos, Balloons and Lightbulbs

Along the way Trogg would meet one of three stationary monsters (Scrubbly, Hooter and Poglet), whose touch was deadly, so you had to work your way around them or destroy them your yo-yo. In addition to the monsters, balloons would rise from the bottom of the screen, and daggers would fall diagonally down the screen, and colliding with either would also end in death. Fortunately you could also destroy them with a well timed yo-yo strike.

Frak! Game Characters

To score extra points you could collect light bulbs and jewels that are dotted around the platforms, often in out of the way places that made your journey longer and more treacherous.

After completing 3 levels the game screen turned itself upside down and you would play again, a novel way of extending the life of the game by re-using graphics, important when you only have 32k of memory to play with. Most toasters these days have more than this.

Frak! BBC Micro
Frak! Screenshot for the BBC Micro

Most memorable for the fact that the caveman would cry “FRAK!” in a speech bubble whenever he died, clearly a way of swearing without swearing, ultimately influencing the writers of the latest Battlestar Galactica series (possibly). The back story for the game was never really clear to me though. Why was he a caveman? Where did he get a yo-yo? Balloons? Why generic monsters, if he was a caveman why not sabre-toothed tigers or mammoths? Perhaps we will never know.

Frak! Releases on other platforms

Frak! was also released on the Acorn Electron as well as the Commodore 64, but both had their flaws:

  • The Commodore 64 version of Frak! had oversized “wide” graphics that meant you couldn’t see much of the gameplay area at one time.
  • The Acorn Electron had identical gameplay, it just had to make do with monochrome graphics as it didn’t have the same screen resolutions as the BBC Micro
Screenshot of Frak on C64 and Electron compared
Frak! Graphics Comparison: Too chunky or too boring

There was also an inevitable hacked version of the game, with real swearing added and some schoolboy inspired smutty graphics, replacing the monsters with ladies and giving Trogg a permanent boner. I did see a version of this game back in the day, and it definitely added to the original game’s notoriety if not the gameplay.

Final thoughts on Frak!

With hindsight, Frak! wasn’t the last word in slick programming or stunning graphics, but it did have charm. The game was all about the strange characters and non-sensical plot, combined with the need to have “just one more go” to complete the tricky levels. While it looks pedestrian today, at the time it was one of those games that everyone talked about, even if few actually got to play it.

For and interview with the developer head on over to the BBC Games Archive.


Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *