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You know, I love cracking on some of these ancient games... they're too old and weak to defend themselves anymore. Take Gopher, for example. Has anyone ever heard of this one? Talk about your cheeseball concepts. I thought Coco Nuts was bad... this one's right up there with it.

There's this farmer... let's call him Farmer Brown. Farmer Brown loves to raise carrots. He always grows three at a time... no more, no less. Big fat ones.

Well, one night Farmer Brown (he farms at night for some odd reason) was out tending his carrots when he saw something pop out from underground... a gopher! The gopher was making a run for the carrots, so Farmer Brown ran up to it and whacked it over the head with his shovel! The gopher wasn't deterred, though. He kept trying to steal Farmer Brown's carrots... forever and ever.

Yep, there's the plot of Gopher.

YOU are Farmer Brown, defending your carrots from the evil gopher.

You move Farmer Brown back and forth, trying to fill in the tunnels the gopher makes with dirt. The gopher (for some strange reason) can only get your carrots by coming up out of the ground and taking them. I don't know, I thought maybe it would pull the carrots out from under the ground, instead of running across the surface and getting cracked in the head with a shovel.

Farmer Brown looks like the son of Satan. I say this because every time you use the shovel, he gets this demonic look on his face, like he's yelling "DIE YOU GODDAMNED GOPHER, DIE!!!!" Just check out the pic and see what I mean.

Every so often... something magical happens. A weird looking bird flies across the top of the screen, making an electronic squawking sound, and drops a carrot seed. You must catch the seed and plant it, just in case you weren't able to cave the gopher's head in with your shovel and he stole one of your carrots.

This goes on and on... forever. The gopher gets faster and faster, and the sun never rises again. It is eternal night... Farmer Brown and the gopher are locked in combat until the end of time. At least Farmer Brown's not as stupid as the idiot from Coco Nuts - he has a purpose, trying to defend his prized carrots from the evil gopher. The moron from Coco Nuts just can't get it through his head to find another damn tree to walk aimlessly under.

The weirdness that was the video game industry in the early '80s... strange.