History VideoGame / RockStarAteMyHamster

* NintendoHard: "Unforgiving" is a fair description of this game's difficulty, as it is based around extremely difficult win conditions and an extremely angry random number generator. To wit:
** You start off with £50,000. Good musicians cost around £15,000 a week ''and rising'', with the most expensive costing £30,000, and you have to pay for good gear upfront out of this £50,000. You can go for the cheapest possible musicians and the cheapest possible instruments, but you will literally ''never'' be able to win because your band will be of such poor quality.
** Your first week will inevitably have to be spent practicing for your band to go anywhere. You won't be able to make money otherwise, but you also won't make any money practicing, and in the meantime your band still wants to get paid.
** Because of the above two facts, it is ''extremely'' possible to go bankrupt within a month. If not ''a week''. It is as such functionally impossible to pair the best musician ("Bill Collins") with someone else because of this.
** You can never change your band's lineup or appoint new musicians. If you've started off with "Dorrissey" and "Sidney Sparkle" to save money, you could be rolling in money but not be able to ''ever'' win because your band is so poor quality-wise that it never hits the charts.
** Any money you earn is disregarded. The only metric for success is getting four gold records. The means of getting gold records is by going up the charts, which may be impossible (see above) and is decided entirely by an ''extremely'' unforgiving random number generator.
** You are given no metrics or other information to decode whether your band is doing well or not. You'll hear them in practice getting (hopefully) slowly better, a sales graph without any numbers is shown in the bottom right of the screen and you can stage a gig and see how many people turn up, but ''that's it''. This is borderline unforgivable given how much of the gameplay hinges on an unseen "popularity" score.
** You need to stage publicity stunts in order to raise money. Any publicity stunt can, at random, ''permanently kill one of your band members'', immediately costing you a heap of popularity and therefore earning potential and sales. This too makes the very best musician completely impossible to play as your sole band member, as you won't be able to afford the wages for both him and someone else and he could die at any moment and give you a game over.
** Every so often you get a call asking you if you want to do a charity gig. The charity is decided at random ''after you say yes or no'', with no indication beforehand as to whether you're agreeing to do a gig for "Deaf Aid" (good!) or "The Nuke Your Granny Foundation" (bad!). Choosing "wrongly" based on this immediately slaps your popularity down ''hard'', whereas choosing the correct option gives you very little of a boost.
** You get sponsored by a company for a fair amount of money upfront! Inevitably, the company's products are defective or dangerous in some way, and you lose lots of popularity. If you refuse the offers, they keep coming until you accept.
** Your "stars" are very divaish and unless you shower them with gifts (on top of their massive wages) they are liable to quit the band at a moment's notice if you don't indulge them in some ridiculous (and very expensive) whim right before a show. As mentioned, you can never replace them.

''Rock Star Ate My Hamster'' is a video game created by Colin Jones and released by Creator/{{Codemasters}} in 1989 for the UsefulNotes/ZXSpectrum, UsefulNotes/AmstradCPC, UsefulNotes/Commodore64, UsefulNotes/AtariST and UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}. The game starts with Cecil Pitt and his put-upon employee Clive who realise their theatrical agency is all washed up and decide to give the music industry a try. Hiring between one and four rock stars and staring out with a small inheritance, they have one year to make it big. It doesn't take itself too seriously.

* AntiHumor: The inside cover is a so-called "Funny Page" and has four comic strips which are parodic in nature and don't actually have good jokes with punchlines on their own.

* TheAlcoholic: The fake TV listings page included in the instructions lists the show ''Ffloyd on the Ffloor'' with the description "hic!", a reference to then popular TV chef Keith Floyd who was well known for enjoying a glass or two of wine on his cooking shows.
* AnyoneCanDie: A PublicityStunt always has a chance to ''kill'' one of your stars! This hurts your groups popularity and abilities and it takes time for the remaining members to overcome the setback.

* FakeCharity: You get offered charity gigs, some for genuine (in game) charities such as "The Princes Truss"[[note]] a parody of the real life charity The Princes Trust[[/note]] and some for not so genuine such as the "Nuke Your Granny Society". Turning down a genuine charity or agreeing to a fake one will hurt your rock groups popularity - unfortunately you don't get told the name of the charity until ''after'' you agree to or refuse the gig!

** Your first week will inevitably have to be spent practicing for your band to go anywhere. You won't be able to make money otherwise, but you also won't make any money practicing, and in the meantime your band still want paying.

** Any money you earn is disregarded. The only metric for success is getting four platinum records. The means of getting platinum records is by going up the charts, which may be impossible (see above) and is decided entirely by an ''extremely'' unforgiving random number generator.

** You get sponsored by a company for a fair amount of money up front! Inevitably, the company's products are defective or dangerous in some way, and you lose lots of popularity. If you refuse the offers, they keep coming until you accept.

* ParodyNames: Every single star you can hire is a parody of a then popular star. The other groups and acts on the charts are also parodies of real bands and artists. See the [[Characters/RockStarAteMyHamster characters page]] for a full list.

* TimedMission: You have one year of in game time to get four gold records and win the game. After one year it's game over, no matter how successful you've been otherwise.

"MSX: buy yourself a Spectrum, Commodore 64, Atari St etc."\\

"IBM SERIES 34 Have you operator mount the Rockstar punched cards in the feed hopper, then ask him to load them during the next free time slice."\\

"HAL 9000: Engage HAL in musical conversation. Ask if he's heard of the game 'ROCKSTAR'.At this point, HAL may go into Spectrum emulation mode (instructions above) or instead hum the entire score of Tubular Bells, which is only marginally less interesting.\\
"IBM SERIES 34 Have you operator mount the Rockstar punched cards in the feed hopper, then askhim to load them during the next free time slice"\\
"We are sorry if you own an abacus - due to the present state of the market we feel that we can no longerconvert games to this format economically."

"We are sorry if you own an abacus - due to the present state of the market we feel that we can no longerconvert games to this format economically."\\

* DeadpanSnarker: In the instruction sheet of all places:
-->''"[=ZX81=]: You'll need a small add-on for the game to work properly. Go to your nearest computer dealer and ask for a 'ZX Spectrum'. Unpack and test it, then follow the instructions Cassette: Spectrum above."''

* AnyoneCanDie: A publicity stunt always has a chance to ''kill'' one of your stars! This hurts your groups popularity and abilities and it takes time for the remaining members to overcome the setback.

* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Averted '''hard'''. Every single rock star is a vicious and unflattering caricature of a real one, ranging from the nearly harmless [[Music/PhilCollins "Bill Collins"]] to the downright frightening [[Music/KylieMinogue "Bimbo Baggins"]].

* FakeCharity: You get offered charity gigs, some for genuine charities and some for not so genuine such as the "Nuke Your Granny Society". Turning down a genuine charity or agreeing to a fake one will hurt your rock groups popularity - unfortunately you don't get told the name of the charity until ''after'' you agree to or refuse the gig!
* InfinityPlusOneSword: More like "Infinity +1 Rock Star", but Phil Collins has the highest stats (which is no surprise considering his popularity during the game's release), but he's also the most expensive, with a wage of 30000$ a week.