Just when you thought it was safe to walk the streets as a stray… (cue ominous music) There’s nowhere to run! There’s nowhere to hide! Your enemies feel no pity, no remorse, no fear, and no desire to stop until you are dead. If you were alone, maybe you could escape. But ten innocent lives depend on your ability to skulk through the shadows, fight tooth and nail unto the brink of exhaustion, and drag them home to safety. So what’s it going to be, gamer? Are you man, or are you mouse? Trick question: you are neither. In Paws for the ZX Spectrum you can proudly declare, “I am kitty–hear me purr!”

The seizure-inducing title screen.

Poor Selwyn. All he wanted was to care for the litter. But while walking the streets, swiping milk and knocking over garbage cans like a boss, his flea-addled brood took matters into their own hands. Leaving the comforts of their nice warm Dustbin Sweet Dustbin, Selwyn’s ten kittens curiositied their way into every nook and cranny they could find. And because kittens don’t recognize the difference between “five feet from home” and “holy shit, where are we you guys?!”, now they can only lay about yowling for dad.

Selwyn explores the junkyard.

Unfortunately all this ruckus is causing a commotion in another breed of four-legged creatures known to be utterly irresponsible around kittens. Every dog in town with working ears has picked up on this siren’s call of ten free meals and now scour the streets on the hunt for tender, delicious flesh. They didn’t count on Selwyn being there to stop them. But can Selwyn count on you to help? It’s a question only you can answer by playing Artic Computing’s Paws.

Home sweet…trashcan?

Paws is a simple top-down action platformer that leads your feline avatar through a maze of streets, alleys, junkyards, forest, shopping plazas and other habitats in search of your kittens. Slogging across the map is hard work though, and just like Gauntlet you’ll watch your stamina drain with every step you take. You’ve also got a strength meter, which depletes each time you use your “catoplexic energy” (basically a fart that smells so bad even a dog wants nothing to do with it) or one of your limited fluff-balls to deal with roving Rovers. Canine hordes being what they are these days, you’ll find yourself doing both frequently. Should you get caught by a dog, a fight ensues–cats with enough stamina and strength to defend themselves live to see another day. Kitties who’ve done too much roaming and not enough eating, on the other hand, exhaust one of their nine lives.

Who knew British dogs were so allergic to yarn?

The best way to keep your feline in top-claw condition is by grabbing things cats absolutely adore: bottles of milk, bits of fish, tins of food, balls of yarn, and shiny new collars are among the pickups available. Each type adds to your stamina or strength score, and with the amount of walking and fighting you’ll be in for on Paws‘ absolutely enormous map, you’ll need every last one of them. Thankfully you can access an in-game map where your kitty sense shows you where each of your kittens can be found, but the size of the game requires you to carefully manage where and when you grab those goodies. Empty an area and you’ll be in trouble if a fight brews with no way to recharge. And while nine lives sounds like a lot, as the game wears on the pickups dwindle, and the dog packs increase in size and ferocity. It’s not uncommon to lose several consecutively as you just try to get from one area to the next. Paws starts off simple, then piles on the troubles.

Ah, here’s one.

Now, the burning question: why is Paws, a seemingly random game for the Speccy, making its appearance in a “Revenge of the License” column? Simple: it wasn’t always called Paws. In fact, the more Broadway-minded readers of this column may have already noticed the similarities between Paws’ title screen and the poster for a rather famous stage production. Not feeling it yet? Somebody go smack the guy who provides our visual aids.

The resemblance…

…is uncanny. (Image courtesy of knightarts.org)

Yup, while it fell through at the last minute, Paws was actually supposed to be an honest-to-goodness video game version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s junkyard opera based on the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Reasons this license failed to materialize probably range from “Sarah Brightman not allowed to perform on soundtrack” to “Oops! We forgot all about that ‘copyright’ thing!”. In all honesty, this failure to secure the license works in the game’s favor as it had precisely nothing to do with the musical. And while this has never stopped a company from trying to turn a dime on a computer game, in this situation it all worked out in the end.

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)