Die, Live, and Die Again in this Weird Retro Video Game Rock Opera

These days, no game concept would surprise me. If, in 2015, there's a rock opera video game that looks pretty neat? Not surprising. If in 1984, there was a ZX Spectrum rock opera starring Ian Dury and Doctor Who? Wait, hold that fucking phone.

Deus Ex Machina (not to be confused with the popular game Deus Ex or the more recent movie Ex Machina) is a story loosely based on Shakespeare's Seven Ages of Man, though this time about a piece of mouse shit, as played by you. For its 30th anniversary, the game has been given a remastered audio track and some, uh, dramatic visual revisions. How a digital download can be called a "Collector's Edition" is anyone's guess.

After being pooped into a computer, you, the little speck, go on a journey through an artificial intelligence's birth, death, and the civilization in between. Serenading your adventure are new wave musician Ian Dury, comedian Frankie Howerd, writer E.P. Thompson and doctor Jon Pertwee. The voices mediate and tempt you with civilization's obsessions, how a life, even a digital one, can be pelted with lust and destruction—that even for the digital, kingdoms rise and fall.

"Imagine if this were nothing but an electronic game," muses Pertwee as your existence winds down. That entire segment, where you ring around your last heartbeats like one of those wire loop carnival games, is my favourite of the bunch. It's an exceptionally British affair—a Monty Python alum and claymated forest creature away from being dangerously British.

Because the ZX Spectrum home computer wasn't renowned for its services as a stereo, the music and narration of Deus Ex Machina were originally played on a separate synchronized cassette. This obviously means your agency had no impact or outcome on the sound or story, but your character does maintain a mysterious percentage statistic, which seems to be an abstract of your life, love and essence throughout the journey.

While it's easy to keep your percentage high and spry for the first half of the game, the second is a cruel barrage. By the time my avatar walked with a cane, I could barely keep my percentage above 20. It was hard to tell if this was a thematic gesture as I neared the grave, or just that the mission of keeping obstacles away with nothing but a clunky Pong bar were severely unbalanced.

If you're interested in this vintage computer experiment and nab the new release, I highly advise sticking with playing the original. The cleaned up music is great, but the new visual design is a hot mess. Floating jagged eyeballs graphics dumped on a background like an old Angelfire fanpage, binder doodles and knuckleheaded political culture mashing that seem more appropriate for a @therealbanksy tweet than a piece of gilded digital art.

Having some visual clarity is interesting, you can tell that they are grenades instead of squiggles, and a background of beer instead of just a flat pee-yellow wall. Obviously illustrations can be more vivid than the basic pixel work of the original, but it's also a lot less magical. It's more high school art wall than early computer surrealism.

You can argue that the kind of streamlined interaction makes Deus Ex Machina an interactive experience on par with a Tiger Electronics handheld, but no Tiger handheld I know of had Residents-style meditation on our pathetic humanity and war. Not even the Ed Grimley one! For fans of early computer software, vintage digital art or just unmistakably British science-fiction Deus Ex Machina is every kind of trip.