"I am the King and Queen's Blue Raven. I have MAGIC powers."
Posted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 9:31 am
This one will be instantly recognisable to any Brit of a certain age. It's the Blue Raven from the iconic educational computer game, Granny's Garden, for the Acorn BBC Microcomputer line of machines that were so common in British schools in the 1980s and 1990s. Anyone who knows the game will surely now have the folk tune, The King of the Fairies, playing in their head, 8-bit microcomputer-style.
I was feeling nostalgic about the game, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year (and, brilliantly enough, is still available in retro and modern forms), and really wanted to make my favourite character from it - the Blue Raven, who was assigned to guide you through the adventure.
The Blue Raven is differently-coloured in some of the home versions of the game (in some, he is a darker shade of blue, in others he's not only a darker blue but he also has yellow legs and feet, and in others still he's instead the "Grey Raven"), but I never knew of their existence at the time, and the original is a distinct shade of sky blue, so that's naturally what I went with.
He's a little more detailed than the original on-screen sprite due to his wings and toes/talons being visible, and depicts how I perceive his looks. He's mostly made from sky blue fleece, with a matching sky blue felt for his beak, legs, and feet, to give him a little bit more texture and visual variety.
I've looked around, and have not found any other soft toy tributes to Granny's Garden online, so it's possible that he's the first of his kind.
Just for fun, here he is, pasted into the screenshot of his introductory scene;
Happy Anniversary, Granny's Garden!
I was feeling nostalgic about the game, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year (and, brilliantly enough, is still available in retro and modern forms), and really wanted to make my favourite character from it - the Blue Raven, who was assigned to guide you through the adventure.
The Blue Raven is differently-coloured in some of the home versions of the game (in some, he is a darker shade of blue, in others he's not only a darker blue but he also has yellow legs and feet, and in others still he's instead the "Grey Raven"), but I never knew of their existence at the time, and the original is a distinct shade of sky blue, so that's naturally what I went with.
He's a little more detailed than the original on-screen sprite due to his wings and toes/talons being visible, and depicts how I perceive his looks. He's mostly made from sky blue fleece, with a matching sky blue felt for his beak, legs, and feet, to give him a little bit more texture and visual variety.
I've looked around, and have not found any other soft toy tributes to Granny's Garden online, so it's possible that he's the first of his kind.
Just for fun, here he is, pasted into the screenshot of his introductory scene;
Happy Anniversary, Granny's Garden!
That is to say, absolutely everyone who went to school encountered them and everyone remembers them fondly.
