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Welcome all to the Retro Review, the column that likes to take the past by the balls, pin it up against a British Rail lavatory door and give it a bloody good buggering. Today (or whatever day this was written), we’re looking at Geordie Racer, a BBC Look and See (educational programming) series, which involved Geordie’s (people from Newcastle-upon-Tyne), Pigeons, and strange noises, in no particular order.

The first thing to note about the TV series of Geordie Racer, is that it’s almost impossible to understand what any of the characters are bloody saying. Trying to decypher the random dialect of Geordie people is nearly impossible, so to save the embarassment of trying, we’ll just assume for the rest of this review that the programme is filmed in a forigen language, and subtitles are required to fully appreciate the plot.

Oh, and what a plot it is. Setting the scene of Geordie Racer, the townspeople are currently 50/50 split obsessed with one of two things, either, the Great North Run, or the Great Pigeon Race. Now the reason for this, I can only assume, is that half of Newcastle is stupid enough to run through the North of England, and the other half are stupid enough to try and get a pigeon to do it for them.

The main protagonist is named Spuggy Hilton, a name that has all sorts of dodgy connotations throughout the series, the many references to “Spuggy in his bird, like” – which is Geordie for “Kevin is with his pigeon” – well, the sexual inuendos speak for themselves really. Anyway, Spuggy is the only person in his family who takes an interest in the Pigeon race. The rest of his family are nutters obsessed with long distance marathon running, and the thought of “The Great North Run” is making them “spuggy” in their pants.

As a keen Pigeon fancier, Spuggy (or the Spugmiester as I shall now call him), manages to aquire a pigeon all of his own, named “Blue Flash” – one of the best birds in Newcastle. Then some random bitch called Janie turns up, and along with the Spugmiester witness a spate of local art robberies, (I know, it’s hard to figure out what the fuck is going on at this point). Just how Bonnie and Clyde here managed to witness several acts of people stealing paintings, and what that has to do with racing people OR pigeons, ugh, I don’t know anymore.

The fact they had to witness these people stealing paintings on THREE seperate occasions to cotton on to the fact they were stealing them speaks volumes.

So rather than call the police, like most sane people, they decide to go and spy on the crooks themselves, using their pigeon and other stupendously dangerous methods. This is such a good message to give out to kids, isn’t it? I really gave up trying to decypher the plot at this point so you’re just going to have to make up how this thing ends in your own head.

BUT WAIT, there was more to Geordie Racer than a bad television show. That’s right, there was GEORDIE RACER, THE GAME, FOR THE BBC MICROCOMPUTER.

The game was released on a 5 1/2 inch floppy disk, you know, the kind that actually flopped and took ten minutes to load, the video game version of Geordie Racer actually was kinda cool, but purely because it beat the endless handwriting and Italian lessions that my primary school forced upon us.

The BBC Microcomputer had the graphics of the old style Teletext, and this is pretty much what this game offers. After a very badly rendered title screen with one-bit rendition of the theme tune, players are treated to the main game, which consists of…. “Part 1″ and “Part 2″.

Comprehensive.

After selecting one of these, you can choose to go to a “Metro station”, which is funny, because Newcastle-upon-Tyne has no form of underground or overground tram system. It barely has bus routes. It’s also funny how this tram system conveniently has stations named “Home”, “Shoe Shop”, “Chemist”, “Bank”, etc. – I sure wish that the GMPTE would build me a tram system that only went to the places I went too!

After you visit the bank to get “£20″, the chemist to get “Foot Cream” and the “Shoe Shop” to get shoes, you can start the race. This involves answering questions, each one you get right progresses you 1 mile, each one you get wrong earns you a blister. Too many blisters and you’re out!

The questions are basically asking about things that happened in the TV show, so without watching it, you’re pretty stuffed to actually complete this game, and as such, I have now eaten the floppy disk.

Well, that was painful. Time to tally up.

Danny’s Retro Rating:

Welcome to Issue 2 of the Retro Review, the column that loves to take old software by the balls and give them a good shake. Today, we’re looking at that no doubt memorable classic: