Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2011 February 25

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February 25

Name of old video game

I am looking for the name of an old video game. It was on a computer, though I don't recall if it was an apple or what. I played it around 1990 and it was a third person shooter style game where you were in a maze kind of thing and had to kill rats and sometimes mice. Googlemeister (talk) 20:44, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Are you sure it wasn't a first person shooter like Wolfenstein 3D? By third-person, do you mean that you viewed the levels from the side; or was it more like Tomb Raider? Comet Tuttle (talk) 04:27, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

• Perhaps the 1994 game Rats! --M@rēino 21:12, 27 February 2011 (UTC)

It could not be a game from 1994 because I played it in either 1990 or 1991 unless the 1994 game was a clone or variation on an earlier game. And it was definitely not 1st person, more along the lines of those old style arcade games where you move a figure around and basically have a top down view of part of the maze with your figure in the center. Googlemeister (talk) 14:21, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Gauntlet? NetHack? What kind of graphics was it, because your description is actually very broad. --Wirbelwindヴィルヴェルヴィント (talk) 23:17, 28 February 2011 (UTC)

Top down, thank you. Venture? (No screenshots there; here is a screenshot page.) Comet Tuttle (talk) 00:00, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Not turn based, the goal was to simply kill the rats and the squares things that rats and mice could come from. Very primitive graphics (think along the lines of frogger or space invaders). I don't think you had a life bar or anything, if a rat or mouse touched you, that was it. Googlemeister (talk) 17:17, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Rodent's Revenge, perhaps? --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 18:20, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

no, that's just the opposite... --jpgordon^{::==( o )} 18:21, 3 March 2011 (UTC)

Theme Tunes

Two questions for Brits, really. I thought that Jean Michel Jarre's Oxygene IV was the theme tune to "Science All Around" when I was growing up. But I've just checked and it wasn't. So my questions are:

• What was the theme tune to Science All Around?
• What was Oxygene IV the theme tune to?

Is driving me mad, now! AndyJones (talk) 22:39, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't answer you, but Oxygene IV was definitely what the future sounded like for me as a child in the Seventies! The other track that was also what the future sounded like is Magic Fly by Space. DuncanHill (talk) 22:45, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

This says Science All Around was composed by John Baker (Radiophonic musician). meltBanana 23:11, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

I believe it was the theme to "Where There's Life", which featured Dr Miriam Stoppard. --TammyMoet (talk) 09:19, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes indeed. It was the theme for that series. Incidentally "Where There's Life" was a weekly medical discussion programme from the early 1980s that aired on ITV in the slot before Coronation Street. They used to have debates about health related issues and show film of surgical procedures, etc, some of them quite gory I seem to recall. I'm guessing Oxygene IV was chosen as the theme because someone made a tenuous link with the subject. TheRetroGuy (talk) 17:05, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

I actually used to sing the phrase "Where there's life there's hope" to the Oxygene tune, which helped me remember what the show was called! --TammyMoet (talk) 22:53, 1 March 2011 (UTC)