To start our new series, here’s reader Dan Tootill on Ocean’s game of the band. Word on the 1985 playground is that you can “do anything” in this adventure…

This game is just so darn weird. I challenge anyone to name another 8-bit game that has the player creeping around people’s homes, finding them dead, rooting through cupboards for drugs and then wandering off with someone’s cat. Frankie’s myriad of sub-games create a mind-boggling adventure with more twists and turns than your average gamer can handle today, let alone in 1985.

Many who played the game back in the day were never sure what were supposed to do. Picture the scene: “A ceramic duck on the wall comes to life and flies away, then you have to shoot Ted Heath for some reason and then get electrocuted by a manhole”. However, once you understand each element of the game it becomes more and more enjoyable.

The graphics are clean and colourful while Fred Gray’s SID renditions of Frankie’s hits are the icing on the cake, propelling the game from a curiosity to a piece of art. I became slightly obsessed with it, as it is so legendarily difficult to complete but I finally did so after 35 years. Even then, I kept going back to play it some more. Shooting stars never stop, even when they reach the top…CF