The NeverEnding Story holds a special place in my heart. I came to the story, much like most of us in the UK, via the 1984 Miramax Movie of the same name which was a screenplay adaptation of the original 1979 German book release by Michael Ende and was translated into English by Ralph Manheim in 1983 for consumption by Western English-speaking audiences.
I say that the story holds a special place in my heart due to the amount of boxes it ticks for me personally – from a movie perspective anyway such as, it’s heroic fantasy; it’s a young boy performing heroic things (like I could only imagine myself doing); it’s rescuing the Princess, and in this story that would be “the Childlike Princess of Fantasia”. The music for the movie had an amazing score by the legendary synth pioneer Giorgio Moroder and Jazz composer Klaus Doldinger with a main theme song full of Synth arpeggios and wonderful vocals by Limahl and backing vocals from Beth Andersen to die for (and being very much a synthy nerd, this was like catnip for me). Add to that, the great premise – being based around a young boy who runs into a vintage book shop to escape bullies and who then finds an escape into another world through one of the books he finds there. In 1984 I wished I was that young boy, escaping my own challenges and that meant it really struck a chord with me.
In later life, I would read the book and I would love that just as much. The story and the film is a rousing whimsical fantasy adventure combined with moments of heartbreaking agony (anyone of a certain vintage who watched this film or read the book as a young person will know exactly what I am referring to). It is a fantastic story of good versus evil and the sacrifices that are made to overcome that Evil. And Evil in the context of this story is ‘the Nothing’, a malevolent force that will consume all in the Fantasia universe as soon as dreams cease to provide enough energy to sustain it.
When my daughter was old enough, we watched this as a family now and again, and it has become a firm favourite of hers too (much like a lot of the great 80’s films I’ve shared with her over the years).
Of course, the success of the film meant that there were many video game adaptations of it, and that’s what I want to talk about here.
Released in 1985 by Ocean Software for the Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the Amstrad CPC , with the Apple II and Atari 8 bit versions following a year later, the game was a text based graphical adventure game (the graphics coming in the form of stills depending on your current location).
You play as the main protagonist of the story – the young hero Atreyu as he adventures through the land in search of the saviour of Fantasia. This is a large adventure, spread over three sequential parts, covering approx.. 100KB of Data. The story begins with the young Empress within her Ivory Tower, weakened by the impending Nothing and Cairon the Physician explaining the need for a great hero to save them from ‘the Nothing’ which is destroying their land. In parallel, Atreyu who is walking in the Great Forest, enters the story. It is here Atreyu will encounter characters such as Rockbiter and Teenyweeny, who explain to him what is happening and they then head off towards the Ivory Tower to alert the Princess to the impending doom, leaving Atreyu to his quest, but first he has to find the Auryn, a magical medallion which contains the strength of Fantasia, then find the saviour and return the Auryn to the Princess. From here, there are many items to collect along the way (as with any adventure game worth its salt), including an important horn which allows Atreyu to call upon Falkor the Luck Dragon. Atreyu will encounter a variety of locations and characters along the way who will aid, or try and delay our hero in his quest. Thankfully, the questline in the game avoids some of the darker moments of the movie.
The game is detailed and the text descriptions and overall narrative for the adventure is excellent, as are the graphics which are displayed in the top third of the screen, representing your current location in the world, superimposed with box-outs displaying items you are carrying or portraits of inhabitants that you are engaging with at the time. I originally played this game on my ZX Spectrum , which was and remains my favourite version. Later in life (but still a long time ago) I replayed it on the Commodore 64 which to be fair is more colourful and graphically impressive (and yeah it has the Martin Galway version of the theme coming from the superb SID chip). I haven’t played the other versions but from researching them, all versions seem to suffer from the fairly poor parser I experienced on the Spectrum and C64, which is capped at 40 words and is missing the important ‘examine’ command (which is almost adventure game heresy). All versions of the game seem to have had a fairly decent reception from the various magazines of the time with ZZap64! rating the game at 65% (harsh!) and Sinclair User providing the highest score 4 out of 5 (80%) overall, which edges the Amtix! score of 79%, which I would like to think was due to the wonderful Spectrum 128 version of the game, that included the excellent looping theme tune from the movie, making great use of the 128’s AY-3-8912 sound chip and of course Fred Grey’s interpretation of it.
In summary, the game was enjoyable and a good adaptation of the movie (although, like the movie, it was only half of the story!), especially the Spectrum version and I do believe that anyone wishing to try it nowadays won’t be disappointed, irrespective of which version you choose (but you should choose the Spectrum 128 version!).
There were two subsequent games, based on the movie, namely the Neverending Story II: the Arcade Game, a dreadful side scrolling platform affair made up of 7 sub games which was released in 1990 by Linel for the C64, Amiga, Spectrum and MSDOS between 1990 and 1991 and the Neverending Story, Auryn Quest which was based on the book rather than the movie and was released in 2002 by Octagon Entertainment for Windows. This version was mainly a 3D first person puzzle adventure game with elements of run and jump added for good measure. Both of these games were drastically different to the original text adventure, and both were universally panned by the gaming magazines of the time.