Today we give the possibility of customizing our characters in whatever vaguely-RPG influenced title for granted.
In 1984, that possibility was basically absent from non-RPG titles. Skool Daze is an interesting, if rare, exception. The 1984 Spectrum (and C64) title gave players the possibilty of re-naming all the major characters in the game (teachers, the nerd, the bully, etc), thus giving many a first glimpse of immersion...
Immersion, a word word that, 40 years ago, no one really had any idea how to implement.
Renaming the characters was a simple option that transformed Skool Daze from a basic adventure game (if a slightly cryptic one) into a full-blown "school simulator", sandbox included. Despite its obvious limitations, it was a mighty attempt at working between the lines (heh) of what a home computer could do.
@damianogerli as a kid, I remember loving the times I bumped into a game that would apparently give me more freedom than all other games did. On my MSX, for instance, games like Gunfright or Jack the Nipper were basically old school "open world" sandbox games in a handful of bytes!
@lminiero true, even though I feel Jack the Nipper would fall into the usual "exploration", which was a big part of the gameplay.
Skool Daze definitely feels more like a full-on early sandbox title, since following the lessons and behaving like a good pupil (or not) wasn't really part of the overall gameplay.
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