Thoughts by Mr Creosote (08 00 2023) – C64
Children and school, it has always been a special relationship. My own schooldays were, in retrospect, actually rather nice. I liked all the schools I went to overall. Sure, there were always some trifles. Annoying subjects which were just no fun. Some fighting with other pupils. Sure, also a few nasty teachers. Though I never seriously wished anyone dead. I like to think it was the same for my friends at the time.
Nevertheless Teacher Busters was the hottest shit on the schoolyard for a short time. In low whispers, kids exchanged how amazing this all was. After all, so the story went, this game was about nothing less than murdering all the school teachers. Not just any school teachers, but the names of those men and women could be entered freely!
Admitting not to be intimately familiar with this game, not liking it or – even worse – not having heard of it at all, would have been social suicide. Sharing and copying games was common practice, but the dilemma was the inability to admit not having it already. Meaning there was no way to get it. Unless it just happened to be on a disk or a tape which one would borrow for other reasons.
Many legends flourished around it, about what could be possible, what would happen, which did not have any link to the actual game anymore. Though who would contradict? Almost 40 years later, this is my late admission: until two weeks ago, I never played this game and I never even saw it live. In spite of carrying hugely nostalgic feelings around it with me for all these years.
As expected, the first hand encounter turned out to be rather disillusioning. Yes, I was allowed to enter a list of teacher names and choose my own player identity. Then, I took control of a tank (!) in order to ambush the teachers on their way home from school. I had the choice of a handful of different weapons to kill. Or I could just run over the defenseless victims.
“Difficulty”, in the broadest sense of the word, is established through randomly placed trees which make a sort of maze. The tank is unable to run over even small bushes. So you need to look for a collision free path. Or, alternatively, burn down the trees. In gameplay terms, there is no real challenge, in spite of the player being executed (!) immediately upon a single failure. Graphics and sound are on the expected amateurish level. That’s it. What is actually in the game isn’t just bad, it is also unbelievably thin.
Against all odds, this sorry excuse for a game somehow captured the imagination of prepubescent minds. The phenomenon around it became significant enough for the administrative body for the protection of minors to step in. Until 2012, the game was on their index. To which effect? It meant it could only be sold “under the counter” and there could be no advertising for it. Though it had never been sold or advertised anyway. If you weren’t there back then, it may be hard to comprehend now what went on in the minds of those in the know.
