All Hail the Hand!
The [Creatures 2] Chronicles of Quezovercoatl
Although I like to cultivate a "ruthless psychotic world conqueror" image as Quezovercoatl the
Feathered Boa and Aurora Minui the Megalomaniac, I'm actually a rather kind and nurturing
psychotic world conqueror out of the office, as can be evidenced by my small army of virtual
pets and now, my cabal of Creatures(tm).
"Creatures" is an "artificial life" program in which you are essentially handed a tiny world,
complete with an ecosystem and several species of life, and told to do what you like with it.
You can interact with the creatures of "Albia", as this world is called, by "tickling" them,
"slapping" them for misbehaviour, and (here's the innovative part) talking to them, teaching
them verbs, noun categories (eg, "food" as opposed to "badplant" as opposed to "computer"), and
adjectival emotions.
This innovative part is also the most aggravating part, as the various creatures become senile
and forget words, or are taught the wrong words by yourself, or by other creatures.
For example, early on in the game I made the mistake of downloading the Santa Norn (98) from
the
Official Creatures 2 website. It immediately taught all the norns in my world that
"hohoho" was the proper term for a fellow norn. Every subsequent generation has used the word
"hohoho" instead of "norn", despite my best efforts.
"Norns" are the official "Good Guys" of the game. In my not-so-humble opinion, the hideous CG
images on the packaging don't do these darlings justice. (In fact, those CG images, coupled
with a marketing campaign that started by mocking and insulting Tamagotchi, were a major reason
I *didn't* buy into the Creatures Craze until Late 1998.)
As you can see here, Norns have big, puppy-like eyes, appealing anthropomorphized facial
expressions, and a horrifyingly high-pitched voice that says all sorts of nonsense syllables.
(You have to depend on the toony little speech bubbles in order to properly communicate with
the little buggers.)
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They come in many varieties, with such exciting names as:
- Type A (for some reason, fans choose to call it the "Banana" norn
- Type B (Fox norn or Buffy norn)
- Type C (Horse norn)
- Type D (Purple Mountain Norn, not included in the original game)
- Type E (Forest Norn, not included in the original game)
- Type F (Ron Norn, looks uncannily like a dog, not included in original game)
- (Desert Norns)
- (Emerald Norns)
- (White-haired or Pixie Norns, aka the Evil Grin Norns)
- Golden Desert Norns (not included in original game)
Since I only have the "sequel" game, Creatures 2, I really don't give a fig about norns type A
to G. I don't find them as attractive and well-animated as the later, Creatures 2 norns, and
more importantly a lot of those norns look too much like the Evil Santa Norn from Heck.
As for the games themselves... well, the chief difference appears to be that the game makers
decide to add an "action"/quest element to the thing by having magical "implements" that your
creature must "push" to activate, thus allowing you to have access to an additional "kit",
such as the Neuroscience Kit, the Infinite Scroll Kit (allowing you to go anywhere in
Albia at the click of a mouse, rather than being limited to "a couple inches to the right or
left of your norn"), and probably the most prized of all, the Select Ettin or Grendel kit,
which allows you to interact more fully with the Ettins and Grendels (more on them later).
As far as I can tell, this was a fairly moronic thing to do to the poor game. I myself spent
days getting my norns to the general vicinity of the cursed Neuroscience Kit, only to
have the game crash right after little Delmont finally decided to "push implement", thus
taking me back to the last time the game auto-saved... with Delmont nowhere near the
NeuroScience Implement. I eventually gave up, and decided to go without.
Others have been more innovative, and have found hacks or created programs that give you access
to all kits. Even the official game makers later created a cob, or Creatures OBject, that
permitted users to activate one or all of the "kits".... thus defeating at least one of
the purposes of the game.
COBs, incidentally, are one of the aspects that makes Creatures so popular/cool... its
Customizability. There are pretty-much officially sanctioned programs that allow you to
create your own COBs, of varying effects (ranging from "decreases a Creatures' hunger drive"
to "teaches the Creature the entire vocabulary for the game"), as well as even more complex
programs that allow you to edit the genetics of your Creature, even creating new breeds.
The other neat thing is the fact that your norns (and, once you get the Ettin and Grendel
Selector Kit, your ettins and grendels) can be "exported" out of your world, and preserved
as a file. This file can then be e-mailed to a friend as an attachment, or copied and
"cloned" for experimentation or closer study. In my case, I quickly "exported" the Evil
Santa Norn when it became apparent that he was not only ignoring my attempts to teach him
language, but was inciting my other norns to rebellion against the Hand and its autocratic
attempts to control their Norny Rights to Free Speech.
I then spent several merry hours tossing copies of his export file into the Deadly Gene Splicer,
creating various horrible and amusing mutant splice-children. Hell hath no fury like a world
conqueror scorned.
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Take THAT, Santa Norn!
