Soft & Cuddly

Boss Fight Books #15

by Jarett Kobek

A computer game so nauseatingly gory that it came with a barf bag. Bright druggy graphics that sickened scores of proper English parents. Gameplay so violent that it inspired one of Britain's most infamous killing sprees. Soft & Cuddly, released for the ZX Spectrum in 1987, wasn't quite any of these things. But in an age of manufactured moral panics, John George Jones's fluorescent punk manifesto sure pissed off a lot of people.

Featuring new interviews with the the game's creator, Jarett Kobek's book dives deep into the gritty world of British yellow journalism, snarky computer fanzines, DIY home programming, and Soviet bootleg mixtapes. If Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party was right that "video nasties" like Soft & Cuddly were the epitome of 80s depravity, then this book is headed straight to Hell.

Genres: Nonfiction, Video Games, Gaming, Games

52 pages, Paperback

First published January 24, 2017

Reviews

[Peter Derk · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have a Kindle, and one of the features I use a lot is the % finished.

This book doesn't really get into the titular game, Soft & Cuddly, until you're 75% through. Which also includes research notes, so it's really like 80-85% through the book.

There was some interesting insight into the world of gaming in the Great Britain and the ZX Spectrum. But I don't think I was quite there when it came to tying in the Falklands and all that to the Spectrum and then to this game.

I was pretty excited by this title. I'd never heard of Soft & Cuddly before, and just looking at screenshots made me very curious about its creation and about the game itself. I felt like I didn't hear as much about the game or its creator as I wanted to.

That said, writers write the books they want to write. In this case, I think the writer did.

Where does that leave us? I guess with me saying it's not a bad book, but it wasn't the book I was looking for.

Also, titular. I said it once, but I wanted to say it again. Titular.

Ha!

[Caleb Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

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Soft & Cuddly by Jarett Kobek reminds me that there’s so much video game history I don’t yet know. In North America, when the video game crash of the early 1980s was scaring away any would-be players in the game industry, over in the United Kingdom video games on micro computers, specifically the Sinclair line of computers, were quite popular. Soft & Cuddly was released in September 1987 for the ZX Spectrum, or the Zed X Spectrum which I feel it should be called even by American’s given that the system was almost exclusively popular in Europe. So that’s how I will pronounce it. Plus Zed X is fun to say. Zed X. Zed X. Zed X. Try it. See, it’s fun.

All I knew of the ZX Spectrum prior to reading this book was that people who grew up with it admit to its flaws but love it nonetheless and that there were thousands of games for it, many, if not most of which, were homebrew games. In North America, Nintendo took a lesson from the video game crash and decided to control the production of games for their Nintendo Entertainment System, thereby all but eliminating homebrew games, but the ZX Spectrum went full in on an open platform, basically doing exactly what Atari did to cause the North American crash in the first place. But the ZX Spectrum didn’t care. Did it work out for them? Well, the company behind the ZX Spectrum, Sinclair Research, doesn’t really exist anymore, but they also arguably prevented Europe from experiencing the video game crash, so all-in-all, I’d say the ZX Spectrum is a win for gamers despite the questionable quality of its output.

Now, I’ve spent a lot of time so far talking about the game system rather than the game, Soft & Cuddly. This is actually appropriate, as the author, Jarett Kobek, does the very same thing. It’s not until page 135 of 164 that the author actually describes the game. And I think I know why he chose to ignore this description for so many pages. The game sounds incredibly boring and based on the gameplay I watched in preparation for this review, it is quite boring. It's just a poorly designed platformer that’s more concerned with shock than anything substantive. I don’t blame the game for this at all. It’s creator was a teenager at the time and video games then weren’t burdened with the potential for high-art like they are now. This was a kid who loved Alice Cooper and had the tools at his disposal to make something offensive. I would have done the same thing.

But is the journey to page 135 worth it? Overall, yes. But at times the author’s approach is a bit aggressive. Kobek writes with the angst and vitriol of an 80s punk zinster, and as that ethos would imply, Kobek comes across as not really being for anything. He’s opinionated, but those opinions are hollow because they are aimless and often contradictory.

Most of the time these hollow opinions are entertainingly colorful and inoffensive. I like passion even if I don't agree with the lean of that passion. But sometimes Kobek doesn't makes sense. In one passage he dismisses the importance of plot and character in games by challenging anyone to know what the words character and plot mean.

“The strength of video games has never been in their ability to convey character and plot (And who knows, really, asks the professional writer, what either word means?)” (pg 86)

But just 30 pages later, Kobek ridicules World of Warcraft for not being able to "express meaningful, substantial doubts about the capitalist underpinning of the experience" (pg 117). Of course that's not the point of that game, but if it was, you know what would allow the game to express meaningful, substantial doubts about the capitalist underpinning of the experience? Character and plot, those things you just dismissed, which by the way are actually quite easy to define.

But despite the hollow tone, Soft & Cuddly by Jarett Kobek is worth reading. It’s worth reading for the abbreviated history of the ZX Spectrum. It’s worth reading for a peek into the world of a 1980s teenage punk. It’s worth reading because even if Kobek’s evisceration is aimless, it’s entertaining and it does add the necessary spice to a story that might otherwise be pretty boring. At the end of the day, Soft & Cuddly is just a game created by a kid who used the tools at his disposal to shock some adults. The same thing could be said for many video games from the 3rd, 4th, and 5th generations.

[Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had a lot of what was probably difficult research to do and the author has a lot of personality and humor. However, I was very excited to read more about the mysterious creator of this game and there was precious little about him. I've found more fun tidbits about him in random comment sections around the internet. I guess he wants to be private, but I was disappointed there wasn't more directly relevant information about him, or the creation of the game. The game seems to be only an example in a book about the whole scene in general. For example, what about that game magazine contest where someone could win a trip to visit the London Dungeon with the game's creator? I'd die to know how that went.

I feel it could have used a lot more personal anecdotes rather than an extended political overview of the time period. I would have loved to hear more stories from people who played the game at the time, and more than anything-- an actual interview with the man himself. There were a few anecdotes right at the start about someone playing bootleg games & finding this strange game in the stack. Those were the most interesting parts of the book by far, in my opinion.

Overall, it was an entertaining enough read if you aren't looking for directly relevant information like I was. I'd probably give it a 3.5 but round it up because I love the topic so much.

[Logan · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author wants us to think that a game made by a teenage boy wanting to gross people out and shock them is somehow incredible art. But maybe it's just a terrible game made by a teenage boy. The book took a long, long, wide detour through British politics and some bootleg games to end with only a few paragraphs regarding the one it was supposedly about. That's fine as background I suppose, and I did find the history regarding Sinclair computers and other technologies to be the most interesting part of the book.

But overall, just not enjoyable. The author seems to hate everyone and everything.

[Jill Flanagan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m something of a self-hating liberal, and nothing triggers of self-hating tendencies when other liberals start demanding that all art be morally redemptive. A game like soft and cuddly shows what we would lose if we gave into these kind of demands.
This book is a very sharp and trenchant history of thatcher era of Britain and the history of the ZX spectrum . The only odd thing is that the author, apparently interviewed the creator of soft and cuddly, but we see very little of him in the text for unknown reasons other than that I absolutely loved this.

[David Macpherson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very spirited discussion of a forgotten British computer game that despite its name is an eighties horror game. The author goes all the place to discuss the creation and reception of the book. Some of these discussions felt like a little bit of padding, but still an interesting book of a time when teenagers were the creators of thousands of games.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome review of this game and a bonus review of the spectrum system

[Craig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I learned so much about places I’ll likely never visit and about subcultures I’ve never been part of from this short book.

[Bob Makin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Crazy subject, has more of the era and platform to compliment it. A solid boss fight book,

[Hugo Gomez · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's so interesting to read how the UK developed in the video game industry. A fascinating and absorbing account.

[Lucy Kwiatek · Rating 4 out of 5]

I devour Kobek works like Pringles at this point, and I am unashamed in doing so.

[BookieWookie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a book supposedly about the once controversial, now forgotten game Soft & Cuddly for the Spectrum, though really only about half the book is dedicated to the game; possibly because there really isn't that much to say about it in the long run, as the game is quite boring once you get past the gruesome visuals.

Instead, the game largely focuses on the state of England that led to the creation of this title, and has a good bit of history about the Thatcher government, and the creation and release of the ZX Spectrum microcomputer.

Unfortunately, it's let down by the author's writing voice. It feels like they were trying to be as punk as this game, which makes it harder to recommend to people who are interested in the topics it covers. While I understand their anger over a lot of things discussed (I would be too), it's expressed quite poorly and comes off as either cringey or tedious (or both) and I ended up forcing myself through the whole book. It's a shame, because otherwise it's a pretty good read.

[Snakes · Rating 4 out of 5]

The last of the books about video games I thought looked interesting from the Boss Fight Series. Yet again I selected a book about a game I’d never heard of. So this book covered two games, Soft & Cuddly and Go to Hell, and their creator, John George Jones. It also covers the computer they were both created for, the ZX Spectrum, and the Video Nasties age of movies and games in Britain in the 80s and 90s. Very interesting stuff and nothing I had any introduction to otherwise. Quick and enjoyable read.