A
ZX Spectrum and
C64 computer game, by
Automata, which was extremely weird. The game came with a soundtrack on a seperate tape, which was synchronised with the gameplay. The voice talent includes
Ian Dury,
Jon Pertwee,
Donna Bailey,
Frankie Howerd,
Edward Thompson and
Mel Croucher (the coder and writer). The game consists of seven sub-games charting the life of a "mistake" that evolves from within a machine into a human being, and eventually dies. Throughout the game you have a percentage score which you must try to maximise. A very strange, original and groundbreaking game, not without its faults.
"it’s hard to decide
whether this is an extension of the computer video game by music, or an extension of the ‘concept album’ by the addition of games playing. In the end it doesn’t really
matter - Deus Ex Machina is a noble development idea, which points towards a new understanding of what can be done with computer games. It isn’t perfect but it is a
lot more fun than the idea might at first sound." - Zzap!64
The artwork on the cover of the game Deus Ex is an homage to that of Deus Ex Machina, presumably engineered by some wag at Eidos.