David Hayward dons his ill-fitting ninja suit and tries to do the splits
The 80s were a time of rubber keyboard computers, six BBC Micros in the entire school, amazing magazines and games with artistically drawn covers and ninjas. Ninjas were everywhere in the 80s, you couldn’t walk down the high street without some image of a ninja jumping out at you, brandishing a terrible weapon of sorts.
Saboteur, then, was perfectly pitched for the era. You played the role of a highly skilled mercenary, trained to the highest degree and the blackest of darkly coloured belts. Dressed as a ninja, you were employed to infiltrate a secure facility and steal a disk containing the names of all the rebel leaders before the information was transmitted to the enemy.
You worked against the clock and were up against an army of soldiers, guard dogs and remote cameras that could fire at you. You enter edvia the sea, in a blacked-out rubber dinghy and fought your way through the warehouse and underground tunnels, stealing the disk, engaging the guards with the weapons you found throughout the levels, before exiting via the roof to a waiting helicopter.
Although the game was made up of over 118 monochromatic coloured screens, the animation of the titular ninja was superb, as were the various guards, dogs and other elements that helped make up this wonderful release.
It may not have broken any new ground in terms of what the Spectrum was capable of, but Saboteur was one of the most played games of the decade. It was also one of the most copied, and many gamers of the time will no doubt recall the big anti-piracy campaign that came with the games that were released during that era.
It was an impressive game to map and spawned a couple of sequels (the third was never released), as well as many modern remakes for a variety of different systems (mostly Windows). It was the talk of the playground and resulted in a plenty of pages of hand-drawn maps, pokes and other tips being exchanged during class (usually when the young gamers should have been paying attention to the teacher).
Its History
Saboteur was the brainchild of Clive Townsend and was published by Durell Software Ltd in 1985.
Townsend was previously working on another Spectrum title called Death Pit, where a miner was set to explore an underground labyrinth in search of treasure while avoiding snakes of various colours, as well other denizens of the pit. The game, however, wasn’t up to scratch, as Durell bosses would have it, so the majority of the code instead found its way into another title that Clive was working on, Saboteur.
The game was a big hit and as a result a sequel was made, Saboteur 2: Avenging Angel, with the sister of the ninja in Saboteur taking on a role of revenge for the death of her brother. The map for Saboteur 2 was even bigger and a credit to the coding skills of Townsend.
The Good
An amazing game with large graphics and stealth mechanics. Ninjas!
The Bad
Entering a screen and ending up with a guard dog running alongside you, sapping your energy. Damn dogs!
Conclusion
A fantastic game from a more simple time of home computers. Hands up who played this with the map from Crash laid out on their knees? We certainly did, and we enjoyed every minute of it.
Thanks, Clive, for an ace game.
Did You Know?
• I met Clive Townsend at Retro Revival last year and bought a Saboteur T-shirt off him.
• It cost £8.95 when it was released.
• The Commodore and Amstrad CPC versions were good too, but it’s the Spectrum version that was the best seller.
• The third game in the series, Saboteur 3D, was never released, but Clive is working on a more modern version.