Pete Cooke‘s graphical text adventure, Urban Upstart, was first published by Richard Shepherd Software in 1983. It’s a first-person game, where you use a text parser to move around and issue commands, and is set in the fictional English town of “Scarthorpe” – a rough place to live, by all accounts. So rough, in fact, that the aim of the game is to escape the place by any means possible.

Looking at Urban Upstart now, you’d probably laugh that games like this ever existed, never mind were popular, but I do remember the game vividly from my childhood. I remember playing the game; thinking it was all a bit hokey; and not getting very far in it. I certainly didn’t manage to escape Scarthorpe. But the graphics and the mood of the game certainly did make an impression on me.

Like most text adventures: completing Urban Upstart isn’t easy. It’s got its fair share of instant death and dead ends. Plus, if you go inside the local fish and chip shop you’ll even find a red herring… Thankfully, there are walkthroughs, guides and replay files to help, if you do fancy playing this uniquely-British game to its conclusion.

More: Urban Upstart on World of Spectrum