Retrospective: Skool Daze and Back to Skool

By Dan Whitehead Published 31 October, 2010

Chalk and cheese.

ERIC! 200 LINES! GET TO WHERE YOU SHOULD BE!

It still makes my blood run cold. It's not just the words, though their stark all-caps authoritarian tone is unmistakably that of an imperious teacher, immovable in his quest for corridor justice.

No, it was the sound that accompanied them, the sort of screeching strident electronic squawk that only the ZX Spectrum could produce. It set your teeth on edge, forced you to recoil from the keyboard, cursing the fact that you'd been found out, again.

Add in the fact that the admonishment came cloaked in an angry spiked speech bubble, its 8-bit colour palette leaking lurid red over the scenery, and you've got an in-game punishment that assaulted the senses on every front, perfectly recalling the stomach-sinking dread of classroom guilt.

1

Remake fans should check out the rather wonderful Klass of '99 project.

We're talking Skool Daze, of course, a 1985 game that still stands as one of the crowning achievements of the British software industry's golden age. You played as Eric, the troublesome schoolboy who must somehow retrieve a bad school report from the staffroom safe before it gets sent home to your soon-to-be-disappointed parents. The combination to the safe must be coaxed out of the teachers, by making all the school shields flash at the same time - one of those arbitrary "just because" bits of game design that you really don't see any more.

What makes Skool Daze endure, and still elicit sighs of nostalgia from Spectrum owners, is the depth of the game world, small and rudimentary though it may be. For one thing, it was customisable and you could change the names of all the characters, including various teachers, the school bully, the local tearaway and the oily swot. For a game driven by adolescent wish fulfilment, the ability to drag your actual teachers into the fantasy was a stroke of genius, years before its time.

Even more than that, it had a life and personality of its own. The school routine carried on regardless of what you were doing, and the small troupe of truculent sprites would trudge to lessons or to the canteen at the sound of the bell. The bully would go around punching people. The swot would grass you up.

2

HAWT.

If you were smart, you could get one of the other NPCs to take the blame for your misdeeds, by ensuring the teachers saw them first. You could even vandalise the blackboards, typing rude messages on rubber keys that the teacher would wearily erase before starting their droning speech bubble lectures.

It's worth taking time to appreciate just how beautifully drawn the characters were as well. Each one really is a miniature masterpiece of economic design, using a handful of pixels to create distinctive and recognisable school stereotypes, all the better to populate its cheeky Bash Street meets Grange Hill milieu. The bully's crew-cut. The swot's chinless gawkiness. Mr Wacker's officious stride. All memorable, brilliant little details that reveal genuine passion and care in their construction.

Skool Daze was also notoriously difficult, with draconian punishments dished out repeatedly for harmless offences. Get 10,000 lines in one school day and it's Game Over, and since the teachers would continually dish out lines in random multiples of 100 until you got to where you were supposed to be, it took superhuman luck (and some skill) to make it through the school day, let alone hit all those bloody shields.

That's assuming you weren't stuck in one of the classrooms with not enough seats forcing you into a game of musical chairs, with lines dished out every time you unavoidably got knocked on your arse. It's funny, but at the time we didn't even think of it as cruel, punitive design, more an accurate reflection of school being so unfair.

That imbalance was corrected in the sequel, aptly titled Back to Skool and released the same year. It's rather revealing that the biggest changes were stuff around the edges, more ways to muck about rather than a drastic evolution of the core gameplay.

Stink bombs and water pistols were overdue additions to Eric's arsenal, while sherry could be added to the teacher's tea to get them drunk and pissed-up on booze. More importantly, we were introduced to the girl's school next door, and Hayley, Eric's girlfriend. A couple of playtime smooches were enough to convince her to do some of your lines, reversing the inexorable trudge towards expulsion from the first game.

3

Look! User generated content!

With the expanded map came more ambitious challenges, not least the daring bike jump over the school gate that allowed you to sneak into the girl's school and release a mouse, causing a near riot. It's moments like that, more than any item-hunting gameplay objective, that live on in the memory.

And that's the real genius of Skool Daze, and one of the reasons why I still think of it as one of the precursors to the openworld template that so many games utilise today. The school itself is anything but open, but the game wisely stepped back and let the player dictate their fate by allowing you to do pretty much whatever you wanted within the narrow confines of its tiny world.

It's perhaps no surprise that it was Rockstar who finally brought the spirit of Skool Daze back to gaming with its 2006 educational opus, Bully. The game paid tribute to the pioneering nature of its predecessor with multiple distractions and ways to cause mischief, but the soul was missing. The move to an American public school was part of it, losing the innocent, ramshackle charm of a very British location, but it was also missing a sense of innocence.

4

We never did get to find out why Eric's report was so bad. Maybe he's a murderer.

The protagonist of Bully was cynical and cool, an anti-hero who could grow up to star in a blistering action game with guns and explosions. But Skool Daze was never about the cool kids. It was about the survival of Eric the everyman (or boy), a game steeped in the comic strips of Leo Baxendale, a self-contained alternate world where dinner ladies were ogres, plates were piled high with bangers and mash, and cheeky kids yelled "Ooyah!" as they received a final panel slippering for their errant behaviour.

That world has long gone, swept away by the Americanisation of British school life and the stifling regimentation of Ofsted reports and nationwide educational initiatives. Nobody does lines any more. Scrawling graffiti on an interactive whiteboard just isn't the same. Yet Skool Daze lives on as an echo, a quaint combination of post-war schooling and post-punk anarchy that flourished, briefly and brilliantly, in the parochial backwash of pop culture that was the 1980s.

That, perhaps, makes it a perfect nostalgia piece. It's less about how school really was, more about how we imagined it to be and for all its gameplay innovations, the culture that made it unique, that gave it personality, simply no longer exists.

Picture of Dan.

About Dan Whitehead

Dan has been writing for Eurogamer since 2006 and specialises in RPGs, shooters and games for children. His bestest game ever is Julian Gollop's Chaos.

Read more articles from Dan by visiting the Dan Whitehead archive page.

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Comments (77) Latest comment 2 years ago

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  • Bradach #1 2 years ago

    Great article about a great game. i played it quite a lot, it was one of my favorite speccy games but i never knew (or cared?) what the actual objective was, i just ran around having a laugh!

  • Pantburster #2 2 years ago

    I loved this games when i was a nipper! with those graphics i still somehow felt like i was there. I wonder if it is perception or just a younger mind that does that?
    Edited by Pantburster at 31/10/10 @ 07:29

  • swisstony #3 2 years ago

    Just...thank you :)

  • hilts #4 2 years ago

    This what I call retrospective ! Great reading and fond memories !

  • Pantburster #5 2 years ago

    My fave speccy game was Pjamarama :-) anyone remember this one?

  • Progguitarist #6 2 years ago

    One of my favorite games ever.

  • rottingbadger #7 2 years ago

    By far and away my absolutely favourite games on the spectrum.

    Relive the catapult-twanging, bully-punching, swot-grassing moments here and here
    Edited by rottingbadger at 31/10/10 @ 07:45

  • hilts #8 2 years ago

    More C64 / Speccy retrospectives please! I had pyjamarama on C64 - remember it being pretty cool / weird - you were inside a dream / nightmare ?!

  • jumpdeveraux #9 2 years ago

    What a coincidence I happen to be at my parents house this week with my C64 and Skool Daze cassette a few metres away in the attic ... must ... resist .....

  • TriggerHippie #10 2 years ago

    One of the quintessential Spectrum games and one that was as utterly British as Grange Hill (minus that apparently horrifying sausage).

    I sank endless hours into this as a young 'un. Giving my classmates the names of my mates from school. Making the swot late for class by catapulting his head repeatedly. So good. I can still hear the screech the old Speccy made when a teacher caught some miscreant and shouted at them. And the blackboards, ah the hilarity that ensued from writing "Mr Wacker is a twat" on them at every opportunity. Then turning around and punching the swot flat off his chair when he grassed :p

    Cheers Dan, this is as nostalgic as it gets for us older gamers.

    Edit: Thanks for that awsome link Rottingbadger! Real men Q, A, O, P and M lol.

    Edited by TriggerHippie at 31/10/10 @ 08:20

  • YenooR #11 2 years ago

    I loved these games and I remember I completed Back 2 Skool on my speccy. Great games,great days.

  • SteveB #12 2 years ago

    Loved this game and thanks to this article I now know what I was actually supposed to do to complete it !

  • suicida #13 2 years ago

    My two favourite Spectrum games, this article brought a tear to my eye

  • DanWhitehead #14 2 years ago

    Loved this game and thanks to this article I now know what I was actually supposed to do to complete it !

    If you look at the inlay card at World of Spectrum, it basically explains absolutely everything in detail - but, like you, I clearly never bothered to read that, and eventually worked out it was something to do with the shields, but the idea that you had to then get the code from the teachers was a mystery to me. I think you then had to deactivate all the shields as well before you actually "won".

    What's interesting is that it was still one of my absolute favourite games, despite me clearly having no idea what I was supposed to be doing. That's kind of brilliant, really. To create a gameworld that is so immersive and entertaining that the actual gameplay objective is literally irrelevant. And all in less memory than you'd need for a JPEG of the loading screen.

  • SirClive #15 2 years ago

    Great article.

  • technicianTed #16 2 years ago

    I used to love this game in the 80's and it's still a game i fire up in the spectrum emulator from time to time.

    I used to bunk off school a lot to play this game, in my mind i was doing nothing wrong, i was still at school after-all(admittedly a virtual school).
    That excuse never worked though when i got caught.

    I never really got into the sequel as much(not sure why), but Skool daze is one of my most nostalgic oldie titles.

  • onyxbox #17 2 years ago

    What a fantastic and nostalgic read :D

  • skuzzbag #18 2 years ago

    Brilliant retro review!

    Me and a mate spent hours just messing about and only got one or two shields spinning.

  • TaniumZX #19 2 years ago

    For once an article that actually justifies the word 'retrospective'. Paradroid next, please.

  • brigadier #20 2 years ago

    I like the sneaking in of 'Tom Bramwell is well fit' into one of the screen shots :D

  • Vyper68 #21 2 years ago

    I used to hate fizziks as well
    Hard game but fun....
    Now we need a retrospective on Trashman

  • CatWeazle #22 2 years ago

    Fantastic! I loved these games so much, they were works of genius.. They were a welcome parody of my own school at which, even in the mid 80's, geting 'the slipper' from the headmaster was still regular occurance.

    I also used to spend hours playing "Contact Sam Cruise", another game by the same people & also released by Microsphere. You played a hard-boiled private detective. Anyone else remember that?

  • I\'mListening #23 2 years ago

    These games were truly brilliant as was the next game from these guys - Contact Sam Cruise. By the way, if anyone is interested, there is a remake of skool daze here http://retrospec.sgn.net/ called Klass of '99 which I was playing only last month. Brilliant stuff

  • MrWonderstuff #24 2 years ago

    Great retrospective of a game I loved. Indeed times have changed and that innonence is long gone...but not in ones memory. Thanks Dan.

  • dynarama10 #25 2 years ago

    Please Sir, I cannot tell a lie....

  • L1nc3 #26 2 years ago

    Aaah the memories..
    Awesome article!!

  • Jonny5Alive7 #27 2 years ago

    Great article about a great game, the last 2 paragraphs are a bit daft complaing that the schools aren't how they used to be, it sounds a bit old fuddy duddy to me.

  • Golgo #28 2 years ago

    Great article. I loved these games. I was even ready to set aside my playground pro-C64 fanboyism in order to play it on my mate's - obviously inferior - squishboard 48K.

  • DarthKebab #29 2 years ago

    Fantastic, used to love the complete mad rush to class so you could reach a chair first before the teacher got to class, then the utter dismay at being punched out of that seat and recevieving the neeeerrrrrrneeeeeeeerrrrrrr lines sound from the teacher, the headmaster was like Darth Vader roaming the halls, scary man!

  • kevv #30 2 years ago

    I think I spent more time on this than actually at school. It was great renaming everybody then getting them into trouble for revenge for doing it to me in real life. Never did complete it myself, always got sidetracked by the mischief element.

  • SG #31 2 years ago

    "That world has long gone, swept away by the Americanisation of British school life..."

    *splutters*

    "...a self-contained alternate world..." - the correct, non-Americanised BRITISH term is 'alternative'.
    Edited by SG at 31/10/10 @ 11:10

  • Merefield #32 2 years ago

    This so needs a 59 pence (pocket money friendly!) remake on the iPhone!

    WONDERFUL game!

  • Milkman1 #33 2 years ago

    Never played the original, but klass of 99 is great.

  • Mushi-master #34 2 years ago

    Definitely one of the best games of it's era.

    I might be 25 years too late to be dishing out tips for it, but in reference to the comments about getting lines for getting pushed out of your seat in classrooms with too few seats- you can actually generally avoid this by ensuring the teacher never reaches the class (continually zapping him with the catapult then running away before he sees you)- repeat this until the bell sounds for the next lesson.

  • AlvySinger #35 2 years ago

    The first speccy game I ever played and still by far the best.

    Now I've graduated from pupil to teacher, I'm happy to report that lines are still very much the defacto punishment of choice for teachers. For serious offences, I've been known to make students copy out the minute references in weighty tomes with every tiny punctuation mark and letter expected to be 100% accurate.

    It's draconian but effective, as they rarely come back for a second offence.

    /has a cruel streak

  • mrmonkey1980 #36 2 years ago

    I never completed it. It was far too hard. But I loved this game so much. It was just fun doing whatever you could do and playing around... and when one of the other kids had the measles it was like Death himself was stalking you. I crapped my pants trying to run from that kid.

    My greatest moment has to come from trying to escape that guy by leaping out of the headmasters window, only to crash to the ground, and while frozen there, have the headmaster waltz up to me and say "500 LINES ERIC! YOU ARE NOT A BIRD!" Genius.

  • Billy_Sastard #37 2 years ago

    Now we're talking :)

  • tursachan #38 2 years ago

    I remember Back to Skool had a strange quirk - if you retreated to the back of the toilets and held down 'K' the screen would flick along until you were looking at the girls school. It wasn't a show stopper, you could make your way offscreen back to the girls school at break and continue with the game. I was never sure if it was intentional, maybe if you were daydreaming about kissing your thoughts wandered over to Hayley.

    I'm not ready to examine the reasons why I was repeatedly pressing kiss in the boys toilets.

  • George-Roper #39 2 years ago

    Back in the day, no other games gave quite the same sense of 'being there'. Contact Sam Cruise was pretty good too.

    I guess the only other game where I had a similar sensation was The Great Escape by Ocean. With its day and night gameplay and an overwhelming desire to get through the locked doors.

    Superb games from a superb era.

  • DanWhitehead #40 2 years ago

    My greatest moment has to come from trying to escape that guy by leaping out of the headmasters window, only to crash to the ground, and while frozen there, have the headmaster waltz up to me and say "500 LINES ERIC! YOU ARE NOT A BIRD!" Genius.

    My favourite was when a teacher saw you jumping for one of the shields.

    500 LINES ERIC! YOU ARE NOT A KANGAROO!

  • Eraserhead #41 2 years ago

    BTW, Skool Daze really did have some "educational" content in it... when a teacher would ask for the date of an ancient battle and you had to reply with the right year. I actually looked up some of those at the time... (in an encyclopedia, no internet obviously)

    Oh, and the author Dave Reidy also wrote Wheelie! What a bloody genius.
    Edited by Eraserhead at 31/10/10 @ 13:50

  • thesonglessbird #42 2 years ago

    Crikey, that's a blast from the past!

  • jonsaan #43 2 years ago

    My copy of Back to Skool went missing. I'm still gutted about it now!

    Very nicely written Dan. The section on a school age that has now passed into history bought a little tear to the eye. I want to go back. Take me baaack.

    /collapses
    Edited by jonsaan at 31/10/10 @ 14:33

  • Thunderbolt #44 2 years ago

    Great article. I liked the idea of this game as I was the right age in similar circumstances as the main character. Cant say I ever enjoyed this game, too hard and no idea what to do. It was a familiar theme of many games back then. As good as games were back then I believe modern developers better understand the pleasure/frustration threshold much better now.

  • Tyronne #45 2 years ago

    I Remember picking up skool up daze on my 12th birthday from menzies in Waltham Cross, the mecca at the time for games.Brings back many many happy memories of not only playing it but how things were at the time.

    Great stuff.

  • Doctor_What #46 2 years ago

    Come EG, we need more Speccy coverage. I bet someone's still releasing games for it. It's a blatant Sony/MS/Ninty bias around here. Give us more Sinclair news!

  • Bagpuss #47 2 years ago

    "Skool Daze is out now on Spectrum. "


    Lol...is that some kind of joke....

    Shouldnt it be...

    "Skool Daze is out now on Spectrum via PC"

    :)

  • andromeda #48 2 years ago

    lovely read!

    not my most played game of the era,but clearly a classic.

    i spent those years in the grips of Nodes of Yesod, Dynamite Dan, and Turbo Esprit by Durell..good times

    to think of the patience i had back then!

  • Ziggy_badMonkey #49 2 years ago

    Aww man....Loved Skool Daze
    Hitting those little spinny shields !

  • rommy667 #50 2 years ago

    Loved these games so much and also highway/alien encounter they just dont make em like this anymore............

  • fluff_the_tiger #51 2 years ago

    Good article!

    Although Bully was a great game too.

  • scartbat #52 2 years ago

    This needs to come to the apps store.I loved skool daze :)

  • swede #53 2 years ago

    You had to make all the shield flash. Ones on one floor (top?) you could just just for. Some had to be reached by bouncing catapult bullets off teachers heads after they were knocked over, and some you had to hit other boys and jump on top of them to reach them.

    Once they were all flashing, you had to knock a teacher over, who would get confused and reveal his part of the school's safe (where you end of year report was) password.... apart from the history teacher, who had to be knocked over in a classroom with his year of birth written on the blackboard... you got clues about his birth year in his classes...

    Once you have all the password numbers, you have to try different combinations until you got it right. I remember that being frustrating (I can't remember how you entered the combinations though)

    As somebody else said, I think you had to switch all the shields off again to 'win'.... very tough game!

    Some of this might not be quite right, but as far as I remember, it's pretty accurate. :)

    Loved the article, I can clearly see the link now between this and GTA style sandbox games. Even though it was technically a better game, I never enjoyed Back to School as much as Skooldaze.

  • thedaveeyres #54 2 years ago

    Please sir, I cannot tell a lie... that was an absolutely fantastic piece.

  • CrumpetBoy #55 2 years ago

    59 comments? I feel less old now. Thanks guys :)

  • penguin_overlord #56 2 years ago

    Highway Encounter was my fav Speccy game.

  • local_celebrity #57 2 years ago

    Lovely stuff.

    Particularly liked the nod to Leo Baxendale. That guy was a genius. I remember being given one of his Willy the Kid annuals as a kid. I spent hours and hours poring over that thing, reading it over and over. Every page, every frame was chock full of weird and wonderful details. Every time you picked it up, you'd always discover something new.
    Edited by local_celebrity at 01/11/10 @ 21:01

  • interceptor #58 2 years ago

    Best article ever :) Thanks Dan. Brought a tear of joy to my aging eye...

  • Johnsters #59 2 years ago

    I never got into Skool daze. I was more a Rebel Star Raiders man myself.
    Then my mate removed my light pen from the spectrum and it never was the same again.

    So Santa bought me a C64 the next xams - best xmas ever!!!! (and that was 25 yrs ago!!!!!)
    Rambo, Sanxion, California Games ---- Sigh.
    TBH, I was more into the game music than the games themselves. Rob Hubard, Maniacs of Noise and Ben (last ninja) Daglish.


    (so much so, i had a SID player for my Amiga - Now, in the last 5 mins - I just downloaded a SiD player for he Ipod)

    Edited by Johnsters at 31/10/10 @ 23:53

  • Kaminari #60 2 years ago

    By far my favorite Speccy game ever is Head Over Heels.

    But I enjoyed Skool Daze very much. As a young French gamer though, I had to put it in the 'what the heck am I supposed to do' game category, like Pyjamarama and A View to a Kill.

  • Nephirion #61 2 years ago

    For me it had to be way of the exploding fist by melbourne house :)

  • INTVGene #62 2 years ago

    Awesome article on an awesome game!

  • drxym #63 2 years ago

    These two games were awesome for the atmosphere and complexity they invoked. Basically they were Bully in 2D on a 48K Spectrum. I dimly recall actually finishing the second one (with the assistance of a walkthru). Both games were mind buggeringly difficult though which is why diversions like punching / shooting people and were welcome and amusing pasttimes.
    Edited by drxym at 01/11/10 @ 09:11

  • Daikon #64 2 years ago

    Yet Skool Daze lives on as an echo, a quaint combination of post-war schooling and post-punk anarchy that flourished, briefly and brilliantly, in the parochial backwash of pop culture that was the 1980s.

    Best line I've read in an article about a video game this year.
    Edited by Daikon at 01/11/10 @ 10:15

  • Ant1975 #65 2 years ago

    Oh for the days.

    Theres something really cosy about this game. You'd come home from school, watch Trap Door/Jimbo, watch Grange Hill then sit and play this for a few hours. A genius game that still stands up even today.

    Great Article.

  • gallow #66 2 years ago

    I used to love both of these games. So much humour in them. You know a game is good when the default key for punch H for hit. There was nothing better than beating up the school swat or starting a ripple of musical chairs during lesson time. I never got anywhere near completing either game as I just messed around. Which thinking about it is just like school.

    In Back to Skool you could use the water pistol to hit the shields.
    Edited by gallow at 01/11/10 @ 10:37

  • sonmi451 #67 2 years ago

    Great article about my two favourite games on the Spectrum.

    Remember the gorgeous red cassette boxes they came in?

  • FourQ #68 2 years ago

    Incredible game! Like a lot of other posters here I too did not know the objective of the game but spent hours and hours scrawling on the black boards and catapulting teachers!

    Great stuff! More please!

  • sickpuppysoftware #69 2 years ago

    Loved both games and completed both which took some doing. The genius touch was the ability to name the characters after your own school teachers and friends.

  • sonmi451 #70 2 years ago

    thanks to the posters on here, i've just completed Skool Daze on that World of Spectrum emulator thing (just, with 9700 lines and 24k score). First time I've played it in nearly 25 years. Also thanks for mention of Klass of 99 which I've now downloaded. Looks ace.
    Now I really must get back to work....

  • Bremenacht #71 2 years ago

    Huh. I see the Sinclair Defence Force is at work again.

  • Bremenacht #72 2 years ago

    At ease, Karma Nazis - it's a pun.

  • Ptarmigandalf #73 2 years ago

    The don't make them like they used to anymore...

  • TriggerHippie #74 2 years ago

    @Bremenacht

    It really isn't.

  • infoxicated #75 2 years ago

    I wonder if the fact that so many folk didn't know what the point of the game was is a direct result of the playground piracy on the Spectrum?

    I remember having a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy of the anti-piracy codes for Jet Set Willy, and I think my copy of Skool Daze was a tape of a tape of a tape!

    When Back to Skool came out I bought it, though. I remember reading the instructions on the way home in the car from the shopping centre and my anticipation being at fever pitch by the time I had the cassette in the tape deck! :)

  • redneon Verified Programmer, SUMO Digital #76 2 years ago

    Uncle Clive did a great comic strip based on Skool Daze: [link url=http://www.uncleclive.co.uk/skooldaze200.html
    ]http://www.uncleclive.co.uk/skooldaze200...[/link]

    It's a shame that blog's not going anymore.
    Edited by redneon at 02/11/10 @ 16:28

  • SkoolKid #77 2 years ago

    800 LINES for not mentioning Pyskool, the designed-to-be-totally-configurable remake of Skool Daze and Back to Skool!