Split Personalities (video game)

Last updated
Split Personalities
Split Personalities cover.jpg
Developer(s) Ernieware
Enigma Variations (Game Boy)
Publisher(s) Domark
Imagineer (Game Boy)
Composer(s) David Whittaker
Platform(s) ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, Commodore Plus/4, Game Boy
Release1986
Genre(s) Puzzle
Mode(s) Single-player

Split Personalities (first released as Splitting Images) is a sliding square puzzle game that involves piecing together the faces of famous personalities and politicians. The game was developed for the ZX Spectrum by Ernieware and published by Domark, who also ported the game to the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and Commodore Plus/4. The game was later released in 1993 for the Game Boy under the name Splitz.

Contents

Gameplay

The game presents the player with a blank grid to play with. The player controls a flashing cursor which can be moved at will over the canvas. Puzzle pieces are brought into play by pressing the fire button on a dispenser in the top corner of the grid. Pieces can then be slid around the screen. When a piece is moved, it can only be stopped moving by the walls of the play area or by another puzzle piece. A miniature preview of the completed image acts as a guide for the player and also highlights the piece of the puzzle that the player is currently controlling.

There are a total of ten puzzles in the game. The personalities featured (in order of appearance) are: Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Kinnock, Clive Sinclair, Alan Sugar, Humphrey Bogart, Charles and Diana, Fergie and Andrew, Mick Jagger and Marilyn Monroe. An updated version of the Commodore 64 game was included with Commodore's Night Moves/Mindbenders C64 bundle in 1990, with Reagan, Sinclair and Sugar replaced with Helmut Kohl, Nelson Mandela and Mikhail Gorbachev respectively.

In addition to the puzzle pieces, there are also special tiles which yield bonus points if combined correctly, which include tiles based on the personality of the puzzle, often with political or satirical themes. For example, on the Thatcher level, combining 'Dennis' [ sic ] and gin and tonic will yield bonus points. Other tiles included time bombs which need to either be ejected from the playing field by sliding them towards one of the holes in the sides of the playing area or combined with a water tap tile.

Reception

Spitting Image

Domark were forced to rename the game following legal proceedings from satirical TV puppet show Spitting Image who claimed that the original title, Splitting Images, was too close to the name of their show. Domark would later produce an unrelated, officially licensed Spitting Image game.

Splitz

In 1993, Imagineer released a Game Boy version of the game called Splitz, known in Japan as Splitz: Nigaoe 15 Game. The game was only released in Europe and Japan, and never saw release in North America.

While the mechanics of the game stayed the same, the puzzles and bonus blocks were changed. Like the original game, there are ten stages, with the addition of three bonus stages, which occur after every three levels are completed. In the bonus stages, the player arranges the tiles in a more traditional way of a sliding puzzle. Some of the caricature puzzles include Abraham Lincoln, Albert Einstein, and Elvis Presley. However, Ronald Reagan and Marilyn Monroe were kept in the game, but moved to other levels.

Related Research Articles

<i>Spitting Image</i> Satirical television puppet show

Spitting Image is a British satirical television puppet show, created by Peter Fluck, Roger Law and Martin Lambie-Nairn. First broadcast in 1984, the series was produced by 'Spitting Image Productions' for Central Independent Television over 18 series which aired on the ITV network. The series was nominated and won numerous awards, including ten BAFTA Television Awards, and two Emmy Awards in 1985 and 1986 in the Popular Arts Category. The series features puppet caricatures of contemporary celebrities and public figures, including British Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and John Major and the British royal family. The series was the first to caricature Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother.

<i>Ataxx</i> 1990 video game

Ataxx (アタックス) is a strategy video game published in arcades by Leland Corporation in 1990. Two players compete on a seven-by-seven square grid. The object of the game is for a player to have a majority of the pieces on the board at the end of the game, by converting as many of their opponent's pieces as possible. In a single-player game, the opponents are "bio-invaders from a different dimension."

<i>Impossible Mission</i> 1984 video game

Impossible Mission is a video game originally written for the Commodore 64 by Dennis Caswell and published by Epyx in 1984. The game features a variety of gameplay mechanics from platform and adventure games, and includes digitized speech. Impossible Mission, which casts the player in the role of a secret agent infiltrating an enemy stronghold, is widely considered one of the best games for several platforms.

<i>Tetrisphere</i> 1997 video game

Tetrisphere is a puzzle video game developed by H2O Entertainment and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo 64. It was released in North America on August 11, 1997, and in PAL regions in February 1998. The game, originally named Phear, was slated for release on the Atari Jaguar in early 1995, but was reworked into a Tetris game for the N64 after Nintendo obtained its publishing rights.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sliding puzzle</span> Puzzle game involving sliding pieces to achieve certain configurations

A sliding puzzle, sliding block puzzle, or sliding tile puzzle is a combination puzzle that challenges a player to slide pieces along certain routes to establish a certain end-configuration. The pieces to be moved may consist of simple shapes, or they may be imprinted with colours, patterns, sections of a larger picture, numbers, or letters.

<i>Impossible Mission II</i> 1988 video game

Impossible Mission II is a video game developed by Novotrade and published by Epyx in 1988. It was released for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Enterprise 128, Nintendo Entertainment System, DOS, Atari ST, Apple II with at least 128K, Apple IIGS, and Amiga.

<i>Hexic</i> 2003 video game

Hexic is a 2003 tile-matching puzzle video game developed by Carbonated Games for various platforms. In Hexic, the player tries to rotate hexagonal tiles to create certain patterns. The game is available on Windows, Xbox 360, Windows Phone and the web. Many clones are available for Android and iOS. The game was designed by Alexey Pajitnov, best known as the creator of Tetris. While most earlier releases of the game were developed by Carbonated Games, the most recent version released for Windows and Windows Phone is developed by Other Ocean. The name is a portmanteau of the words "hectic" and "hexagon".

<i>Pipe Mania</i> 1989 video game

Pipe Mania is a puzzle video game developed by The Assembly Line for the Amiga and published in 1989. It was ported to several other platforms by Lucasfilm Games as Pipe Dream; the company distributed the game in the US. The player must connect randomly appearing pieces of pipe on a grid to a given length within a limited time.

<i>Badlands</i> (1989 video game) 1989 arcade game

Badlands is a 1989 arcade video game published by Atari Games. It was ported by Domark under the Tengen label to the Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. The game is a re-themed version of Atari's previous racing games Super Sprint and Championship Sprint with the addition of vehicular combat. Badlands is set in the aftermath of a nuclear war and races around abandoned wastelands with many hazards. Three gun-equipped cars race around a track to win prizes.

Crystal Computing, later renamed Design Design, was a British video game developer founded in 1982 by Chris Clarke and Ian Stamp while students at the University of Manchester. Graham Stafford, Neil Mottershead, Simon Brattel and Martin Horsley, joined the company as it expanded. The company's first software release was a compilation of games for the Sinclair ZX81, though it was with the ZX Spectrum that Crystal found its greatest success. A deal with the machine's manufacturer Sinclair to distribute Crystal's Zeus Assembler gave the company sufficient funds for a major marketing campaign for their next product, Halls of the Things, an arcade adventure game that became their most successful title.

<i>Loco-Motion</i> (video game) 1982 video game

Loco-Motion, known as Guttang Gottong in Japan, is an arcade puzzle game developed by Konami in 1982 and released by Sega in Japan. The North American rights were licensed to Centuri. In Loco-Motion, the player builds a path for their unstoppable locomotive by moving tracks which will allow it to pick up passengers.

<i>Back to the Future Part II</i> (video game) 1990 video game

Back to the Future Part II is a 1990 action game based on the 1989 film of the same name. It was developed and published by Image Works for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, Master System, and ZX Spectrum. The game has five levels based on scenes from the film, and was criticized as a poor conversion of the film. It was followed by Back to the Future Part III.

<i>Pandoras Box</i> (1999 video game) 1999 video game

Pandora's Box is a 1999 video game created by Alexey Pajitnov for Microsoft.

<i>Welltris</i> 1989 video game

Welltris is a puzzle video game, developed by Doca and licensed to Bullet-Proof Software. It is an official game in the Tetris series. Adaptations were made by Sphere, Inc., for Spectrum HoloByte, and by Infogrames. It was released for MS-DOS compatible operating systems in 1989. Ports for Macintosh, Amiga, Amstrad CPC, and Atari ST followed 1990, then ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 1991.

<i>Timeball</i> 1990 video game

Timeball is a puzzle video game released by NEC for the TurboGrafx-16. The object of the game is to guide a ball along pieces of track by moving tiles like a sliding puzzle. The game's name in Japan is Blodia, an anagram of Diablo, the title of a computer game upon which Blodia is based. Versions of Blodia were released exclusively in Japan for the original Game Boy and the Sharp X68000. A spin-off titled Blodia Land: Puzzle Quest was released for the Famicom, replacing the ball with cartoon dinosaur-like characters. These versions were developed by Tonkin House and published by Broderbund.

<i>Spitting Image</i> (video game) Video game

Spitting Image is one-on-one fighting game released in 1989 featuring characters from the Spitting Image puppet show. Developed by Walking Circles and published by Domark, it was available for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Amiga.

<i>Threes</i> 2014 video game

Threes is a puzzle video game by Sirvo, an independent development team consisting of game designer Asher Vollmer, illustrator Greg Wohlwend, and composer Jimmy Hinson. The game was released on February 6, 2014, for iOS devices and later ported to Android, Xbox One, Windows Phone, and Windows. In Threes, the player slides numbered tiles on a grid to combine addends and multiples of three. The game ends when there are no moves left on the grid and the tiles are counted for a final score.

<i>Friday the 13th: The Computer Game</i> 1986 video game

Friday the 13th: The Computer Game is the first game adaptation based on the films of the same name. It was released in 1986 by Domark for the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum. The game was released on floppy diskette and cassette tape. The player's goal is to find and kill Jason, while making sure their friends or they themselves are not killed by Jason.

<i>Vid Grid</i> 1994 video game

Vid Grid is a tile-matching full motion video puzzle game originally developed by Geffen Records and published by Jasmine Multimedia Publishing for Windows on September 13, 1994. It was later ported to the Atari Jaguar CD by High Voltage Software in 1995, where it was included along with Blue Lightning as one of the pack-in games for the peripheral when it launched. It is the first entry in the series of the same name.

<i>Terminator 2</i> (computer game) 1991 video game

Terminator 2: Judgment Day is a 1991 action video game developed by Dementia and published by Ocean Software. It is based on the 1991 film of the same name, and was released in Europe for Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, DOS, and ZX Spectrum. It is a sequel to The Terminator, itself based on the 1984 film of the same name. The game features several gameplay styles such as driving, fighting, and puzzle-solving.