Before I played this game, I had no idea who Roland Rat was. After I played the game, I still didn’t really know. I always assumed that he was some character created specifically for this game. Many years later I would discover, via the wonders of the Internet, that Roland Rat is a British puppet that happens to be somewhat of a television celebrity in his own country.
I almost never got to play his game, since it exhibits a quite unusual quirk: to play the game, you must disconnect the Commodore 1541 disc drive from your system, otherwise the game would hang immediately after you start. For months, I thought it was broken.
On the occasion that I finally figured out how to make this thing go, I was greeted with some of the catchiest music to come out of the SID chip, and one of the most unusual games I’ve ever played.
Roland navigates the sewers armed with nothing but his patented Glue-Pac, and must track down and assemble the pieces of a door for reasons not readily apparent (we got this game second hand, so we didn’t have a manual). You are pursued by ambulatory pairs of boots and the occasional train, and according to the Internet both of which can be temporarily immobilized with a shot from your Glue-Pac. I only ever tried to stop the boots, I thought trying to stop a train with a spot of glue was silly.
If you can manage to bring all of the pieces of the door to the… door’s archway, and manage to eat the blue glowing fruits to keep your health up (getting hit by a train hurts). You will have completed this game.
I couldn’t manage more than about half of it.