tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41888360704223598742024-03-19T01:48:37.388-07:00They Were Our GodsPaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.comBlogger129125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-47384982430587347912013-03-30T14:05:00.002-07:002013-03-30T14:05:10.813-07:00Introducing theywereourgods.com<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hello gang!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Today, I bring you news. You may have already heard this news if you follow me in other places, but I should make it official here, for the benefit of anyone that doesn't, or that stumbles in here.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I am pleased to announce the launch of <a href="http://theywereourgods.com/">theywereourgods.com</a>. </span><br />
<h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">I feel like this is a pretty big step forward in the life of the
book. It should also be more fun, as it means I can add all different
kinds of sections if I feel the need. A blog is somewhat more
restrictive in that regard.</span></span></span></h3>
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I'm still learning what the host
and its tools are capable of, so don't be surprised to see things
appearing and disappearing, styles and fonts changing and so on... at
least in the short term. It'll all settle down soon enough though, I'm
sure.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">You'll probably notice that there are two blogs at the top
of the page. One tool available to me allowed the importing of blogs,
so I've imported the <i>They Were Our Gods</i> blog and also
my original blog, <i>A Gamer Forever Voyaging</i>. That should give you plenty
to read while I'm working on new stuff.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">There are also some other features... a news section, an "extras" section where I will host things like my calendar... and probably more interesting to you, an "excerpts" section. Here, you can find quotes and extracts from the book, so you can get a flavour of what I'm doing. There aren't many there now, which is through choice. I will add more as time goes by though, to keep it fresh and interesting. There will be more sections appearing too, and you can make suggestions if you want, I'm open. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">In time, all my updates will take place on the new site. I'll continue to update
my blog on Blogger for the time being, but if you follow what I'm doing
then you should add the site to your favourites or bookmarks... it'll
be the place to be! Oh, and please, please, pretty please, with a
cherry on top, share the site anywhere you visit where there might be
an interest. Let's really get the word out there so that this can be
the greatest retro games book ever!</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-29311545644820273582013-03-20T15:59:00.003-07:002013-03-20T15:59:31.752-07:00Budget Day - Bionic Granny (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And finally, as if to show that my day hasn't all been fun and games (well, OK, it has been all games), I thought I'd play what is considered to be one of the biggest abominations in computer games history... <em>Bionic Granny</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you haven't played it before, and I hadn't, then you aren't prepared for the horrors that lie in wait. This is truly a throwback to the days when software companies would take anything that loaded and throw it upon an unsuspecting public. There weren't many reviews mags around in the early days, and they were a little afraid of upsetting software companies, so it was common for poor games to sell way more than they deserved, as nobody knew any better.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Bionic Granny</em> is one such game.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Having said that, I'm pretty sure that nothing could have persuaded me to part with my cash for this. It's not like they could have had great screenshots on the back of the box. No amount of mocking up could make this look decent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7QArtuUWfXM/UUo-10PkniI/AAAAAAAABOk/dAVw_lZZ-sQ/s1600/BionicGranny1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7QArtuUWfXM/UUo-10PkniI/AAAAAAAABOk/dAVw_lZZ-sQ/s1600/BionicGranny1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>Don't go near her, kids. She's a nasty old crone.</em></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The story, too, is shockingly bad. But I can see why it might have appealed to people under the age of twelve. I'll quote directly from the title screen, if I may:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">"IT'S NEARLY FOUR O' CLOCK AND TIME FOR THE KIDS TO COME HOME FROM SCHOOL.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">YOU'R A BIONIC GRANNY AND ARE WAITING OUTSIDE THE SCHOOL TO HIT THE KIDS AS LEAVE.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">SOME WILL WALK DOWN THE ROADS BUT OTHERS WILL TRY TO EVADE YOU BY KEEPING OFF THE ROADS.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">DON'T LET THE LOLLIPOP LADY THROW LOLLIPOPS AT YOU."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UWekKUL6duM/UUo_A8UyhfI/AAAAAAAABOs/73dQ6M2Ib1I/s1600/BionicGranny2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UWekKUL6duM/UUo_A8UyhfI/AAAAAAAABOs/73dQ6M2Ib1I/s1600/BionicGranny2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Go on, lollipop lady... get in there and belt her one!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Alright... if you were a granny and were lucky enough to be bionic, why the hell would you use those powers to hit schoolkids on their way home? Wouldn't you rather be rescuing cats or baking awesome scones, or something?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Also, the instructions say "don't let the lollipop lady throw lollipops at you". Good luck with that... she roams around the top of the screen flinging them as though her life depended on it. And as whatever bionic feature you are installed with has the disadvantage of rendering you unable to move forwards or backwards, there's not really much you can do to stop her.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In fact, there's no evidence that this granny is bionic at all... the lollipop lady is substantially quicker than her. I think she's just a cantankerous old biddy who takes pleasure from whacking kids. There's a place for menaces like that... and it provides free room and board at Her Majesty's pleasure.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nbF5rRy0OIw/UUo_LxKSX_I/AAAAAAAABO0/9_nqMcjrtc8/s1600/BionicGranny3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nbF5rRy0OIw/UUo_LxKSX_I/AAAAAAAABO0/9_nqMcjrtc8/s1600/BionicGranny3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mad old bat needs locking up.</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If the game had any semblance of fun or ironic humour to it, you maybe wouldn't mind. But it's appalling. You just toddle about at the bottom of the screen, hoping one of the homebound kids happens to meander into your stick, which will score you points. There's no comedy, no entertainment, no fun. It's a horrible piece of software, and if budget games had continued in this vein then the industry would have been in a horrible place indeed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Fortunately, it became a breeding ground for real talent, as you've seen from today's posts. We were blessed with imaginative, entertaining and enjoyable games, some of which were very ambitious, some of which were better than many full-priced games. That era of pocket money games was pretty special, and we never saw it's like again. We should think ourselves lucky for what we had... the kids of today may be spoiled, but they've missed out on one of the most memorable chapters of gaming history.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-85656765396848471492013-03-20T14:16:00.003-07:002013-03-20T14:16:59.728-07:00Budget Day - Jason's Gem (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My search for previously unplayed games takes me to many places. However, sometimes the games I find aren't particularly suitable for blog posts. Sometimes they're too complicated to get into, or sometimes they're just too bland to write anything interesting about. I play a lot of games looking for good blog fodder.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Jason's Gem</em> has been sitting on my "to play" list for a couple of years now. I've meant to play it and never got round to it. That's partly because I've never played it before, and I've tended to see the name at times when I've needed a quick post. To write about a game that's new to you, you need a bit of time. Fortunately, today I've had some</span><span style="font-family: Arial;">.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r7gyTkjKnEM/UUom2U1pimI/AAAAAAAABOU/iEaHYmyVj20/s1600/JasonsGem1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-r7gyTkjKnEM/UUom2U1pimI/AAAAAAAABOU/iEaHYmyVj20/s1600/JasonsGem1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Aaaargh! My eyes!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The first screen of <em>Jason's Gem</em> is annoying and completely unnecessary. Your spaceship glides down the screen, and you must land on a moving platform to pick up some cargo. It's never specified what this cargo is, so unless it's your ship's laser then this irritating screen could have been left on the drawing board.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Having successfully completed this screen, I was horrified to find myself in a <em>Lunar Lander/Caverns of Mars</em> type of game. Jason must not only pilot his craft to the bottom of the cave, he has to shoot his way through. This is very difficult... you don't have much time to react and you need to be pixel perfect when moving through gaps. To make it worse, you can leave a screen in such a position that you die instantly on the next.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dKJCh5RNDv8/UUonGrDLmNI/AAAAAAAABOc/2bbxvGqaO4o/s1600/JasonsGem2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-dKJCh5RNDv8/UUonGrDLmNI/AAAAAAAABOc/2bbxvGqaO4o/s1600/JasonsGem2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That's ridiculous. Did the writers of Galaxy Quest invent this room?</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Should you reach the bottom of the cave, Jason exits the ship to go exploring the cave in an attempt to find his missing gem. I'll tell you what, that must be one hell of a gem because those caverns are terrifying! Too terrifying for me... I was unable to negotiate my way to the end.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Jason's Gem</em> is alright for a £1.99 game, but certainly not as good as its average rating on World of Spectrum. I could certainly imagine myself persevering with it in 1985... it would have held up much better back then. Now, though, it's a bit too obtuse to stick with.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-20444275668542222432013-03-20T12:58:00.004-07:002013-03-20T12:58:22.143-07:00Budget Day - Train Robbers (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm heading back in time again for this latest game, but whereas I played a good guy in <em>Kane</em>, this time I'm playing a positively bad guy in the form of Cactus Pete, in Firebird's <em>Train Robbers</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Cactus Pete is fairly prolific as robbers go... he's currently worth $4,000, which is no small amount of cash. That doesn't concern Pete, though... he's constantly on the lookout for more trains to rob, and more lovely lolly. And you're going to help him.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vDaDYW8Go6o/UUoUMbittBI/AAAAAAAABN8/C5ttvDrg02E/s1600/TrainRobbers2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vDaDYW8Go6o/UUoUMbittBI/AAAAAAAABN8/C5ttvDrg02E/s1600/TrainRobbers2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ooyah!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's a dangerous business, train robbing. First of all, you have to actually get on the train. When you're a robber, you can't just buy a ticket. Pete's method of entry is a little less straightforward. He leaps onto his trusty steed and waits by the railway line. When the train comes buy, he leaps from his horse, climbs the train's ladder, and runs along the rooftop to the cargo carriage at the back of the train.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">That sounds like a piece of cake, but you try jumping a gap on a train at 80 miles per hour. It's tricky. It's even trickier when you consider that the railway cuts through a number of hills, meaning there are tunnels aplenty. If Pete doesn't duck in time... well, it doesn't bear thinking about.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sD2Q9TOOh4I/UUoUYPgEmcI/AAAAAAAABOE/E3QDZoxfLCQ/s1600/TrainRobbers3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sD2Q9TOOh4I/UUoUYPgEmcI/AAAAAAAABOE/E3QDZoxfLCQ/s1600/TrainRobbers3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sneak! Sneak! Sneak!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">When (if) Pete makes it to the loot car, he can fill his boots. All he has to do is climb down the ladder inside the car, pick up the two keys, unlock the safe and make off with his stash. Oh, and avoid the two vicious dogs that patrol the carriage...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Should Pete manage to empty the safe without being bitten, he'll find himself back on top of the train. Now he needs to get back to the front of the train where his horse will be waiting for him. It's another tricky journey, with mailboxes to jump over or duck under. Still, with all that adrenalin running from having completed another successful heist, that should pose no problem at all!</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IwX75fiLi6Y/UUoUlhgbXnI/AAAAAAAABOM/PpXcJgDends/s1600/TrainRobbers4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-IwX75fiLi6Y/UUoUlhgbXnI/AAAAAAAABOM/PpXcJgDends/s1600/TrainRobbers4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Is it dark in here, or is it just me?</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Train Robbers is a funny little game. It's funny as in odd, and funny as in amusing. It has some great touches... the way the screen goes black and you can only see Pete's eyes when you go through a tunnel is particularly funny. It's pretty tricky, too... I can say in all honesty that I've never managed to get back on my horse after a robbery, not in 1988 and not in 2013. But I played it quite a bit, and it remains an entertaining little budget game.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-65541543701009900432013-03-20T10:30:00.004-07:002013-03-20T10:30:35.845-07:00Budget Day - Kwik Snax (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I figured that any round up of budget games, especially this close to Easter, would not be complete without a <em>Dizzy</em> game. Trouble was, I didn't much fancy any of that leaping around and putting objects in the right place carry on. Luckily, <em>Dizzy</em> branched out a bit in later years... and that's how I came to play <em>Kwik Snax</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I wasn't quite sure what to expect from <em>Kwik Snax</em>, but I don't think I was prepared for a <em>Pengo</em> clone. After all, <em>Pengo</em> was an old and outdated game even when <em>Kwik Snax</em> was released, never mind now! Still, if you think you have a good idea, you might as well go with it. Pity I never really liked <em>Pengo</em> that much...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LvNs4oRqDa0/UUnxvS-oArI/AAAAAAAABNo/t5aAR_DCikQ/s1600/KwikSnax2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-LvNs4oRqDa0/UUnxvS-oArI/AAAAAAAABNo/t5aAR_DCikQ/s1600/KwikSnax2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I like bananas, but I don't like rain. Go away, rain!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Kwik Snax</em> sees Dizzy in Mario mode, as his friends have all been kidnapped by the evil Zaks, and only Dizzy can rescue them. As Zaks is insane, Dizzy must rescue them by collecting all the fruit from icy, hazard-filled mazes. Bad guys were much more imaginative back then.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's lucky that the walls of the mazes are made from blocks of ice, because Dizzy can push these around to facilitate easier fruit collection. And not only that, the blocks will crush anything in their path once shoved, making them very handy weapons!</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BqSXgusLQfQ/UUnx_KhRvlI/AAAAAAAABNw/MbYghEDlPqw/s1600/KwikSnax4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BqSXgusLQfQ/UUnx_KhRvlI/AAAAAAAABNw/MbYghEDlPqw/s1600/KwikSnax4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An apple a day keeps the doctor away. Pity, I might need him with these vicious critters about!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Should Dizzy collect all the fruit in a level, he will move on to a bonus level. These play differently in that only a set amount of time is available to collect the fruit, and once you start moving you can only change direction if you're stopped by a wall. So if you make the wrong move, you're knackered.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's a very playable and addictive game. The bonus levels add much-needed variety, and there's a nice little <em>Bomb Jack</em> scoring mechanic, whereby you can collect all the flashing fruits in order for more points. I had a lot of fun with <em>Kwik Snax</em>, much more than I was expecting, and I think I might go back to it once the day is done.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-2134488625336460392013-03-20T09:50:00.001-07:002013-03-20T09:50:14.220-07:00Budget Day - Oh No! (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is no way... no way, that you would buy <span style="font-style: italic;">Oh No!</span> just from looking at the cover art.
There's a cow with a space helmet on its head, an odd-looking furry animal, a
desert and, in the background, a spacecraft.<br /><br />The spacecraft is the
important part. <span style="font-style: italic;">Oh No!</span> is a shoot 'em
up, and although the storyline is odd, the game most certainly is
not...<br /><br />In <span style="font-style: italic;">Oh No!</span>, the year is
1,000,000 AD, and you are a breeder of space oxen. These beasts are very highly
coveted by other entities, who will stop at nothing to get their hands or other
genetically-modified appendages on them. The rustling bastards. So you must
mount up on your trusty space-steed and put a stop to their stealing
shenanigans.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rKIS4t4Ch70/UUnn4862SGI/AAAAAAAABNQ/5GkVRd_dLH0/s1600/OhNo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rKIS4t4Ch70/UUnn4862SGI/AAAAAAAABNQ/5GkVRd_dLH0/s1600/OhNo1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Save the clock tower! I mean, the cows. Those glowing round things. Save them!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's much simpler than it sounds as a game... confined within one (scrolling) screen, you
must blast anything that comes within range and stop them from taking the oxen
off the screen. If all the oxen are lost, the game is over. Them's the rules,
and they're easy to follow...<br /><br />And indeed, the game is simple in theory.
Once you start playing it, though, you'll see that it's much more difficult in
practice.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Oh No!</span>, to my mind,
stands right up there among the finest of frantic shooters. What it essentially
does is to cross <span style="font-style: italic;">Robotron: 2084</span> with
<span style="font-style: italic;">Defender</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Missile Command</span>. Wait... let me explain.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJ3FFBYmuFw/UUnoLl64_4I/AAAAAAAABNY/thw-ZDF5Uik/s1600/OhNo2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-AJ3FFBYmuFw/UUnoLl64_4I/AAAAAAAABNY/thw-ZDF5Uik/s1600/OhNo2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right... *cracks knuckles* come on, then...</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You have a playfield where you have to protect your oxen... they're like The
Last Human Family, but in bovine form. But unlike in <span style="font-style: italic;">Robotron</span>, they're not killed when enemies get
to them. Instead, they're captured, and you have a limited amount of time to
rescue them before they're taken off the playfield. See, that's like <span style="font-style: italic;">Defender</span>.<br /><br />The game is split up into
different planets, and each planet has nine waves, with each being progressively
more manic than the last. There's no break between waves. Once you destroy every
enemy in a wave, the next one rushes in without a second thought. If you want
any kind of a break for your trigger finger, you'll have to wait nine waves for
it.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KjMPRDHI0NA/UUnohYAgXKI/AAAAAAAABNg/IFWR5RzrvdA/s1600/OhNo3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KjMPRDHI0NA/UUnohYAgXKI/AAAAAAAABNg/IFWR5RzrvdA/s1600/OhNo3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's OK... I'll be your Defender...</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As your only objective is to save your oxen, it's important to keep them close
together or, if it all gets too much, let them all go except for one and be sure
to defend that one to the end. That's the <span style="font-style: italic;">Missile Command</span> aspect... it's very similar to
your endgame there, where you concentrate on keeping one city
intact.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Oh No!</span> is a Sensible Software game, and probably one of their least well-known at that. It was well-reviewed
by ZZAP! 64, but I'm not sure how well it sold or was received in general.
Comments on <a href="http://www.lemon64.com/" target="_blank">Lemon64</a> seem to be mixed, but I absolutely loved this game when I
bought it and I still play it occasionally now. It's a really pure shoot 'em up
high-score experience, guaranteed to get the adrenalin pumping. Lovely stuff.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-42764271246937469822013-03-20T09:21:00.002-07:002013-03-20T09:21:39.725-07:00Budget Day - Booty (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arrrr, Jim Lad (fer that be yer name)... yer on a ship that be occupied by
naught but ghost pirates. But this ship is laden wi' booty... and it's yours fer
the takin', if ye can outwit those scurvy knaves and scabbards, and empty the
hold o' its goodies.<br /><br />Arrrr... enough of that, Talk Like A Pirate Day is
months away! <em>Booty</em> is a platform game where you play the put-upon cabin
boy who, sick of his lot in life, decides to gather up as much of the pirates'
loot as he can and, to use modern parlance for once, "do one".</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ztnBTTfn1eU/UUnh73QIhNI/AAAAAAAABNI/MCV9GYd7wXA/s1600/Booty3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ztnBTTfn1eU/UUnh73QIhNI/AAAAAAAABNI/MCV9GYd7wXA/s1600/Booty3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">No, Jim lad! Don't do it!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Naturally, they're not about to give up their ill-gotten gains as easily as all
that, and they walk the decks, cutlasses in hand, all ready to hand out a damn
good thrashing to anyone wi' sticky fingers. Whoops, sorry.<br /><br />It's a clever
little game, is <em>Booty</em>. For all the pirates and their parrots deal
instant death, the biggest obstacle is the layout of the ship. Some of the rooms
are really tricky to negotiate, with keys having to be picked up in the right
order to allow you access to certain rooms at the right times. Oh, and some of
the treasure is booby-trapped...</span><span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r_OYmSwK8xY/UUng-vCia6I/AAAAAAAABNA/a_h81CxovEE/s1600/Booty2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r_OYmSwK8xY/UUng-vCia6I/AAAAAAAABNA/a_h81CxovEE/s1600/Booty2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Do you think J-Lo or Beyonce would like this game?</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I first played <em>Booty</em> on a mate's Spectrum, and I liked it so much that
it was one of the first games I bought when I got my Commodore 64. Pity, then,
that the 64 version was wretched and a huge disappointment (and waste of pocket
money!). There's no such problem with the Spectrum version... it was a cracking
release from Firebird, and gave me a taxing but enjoyable hour or so when
playing it again. Arrrr, that it did. Oh, bugger.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-34320852924937793032013-03-20T08:25:00.001-07:002013-03-20T08:25:26.034-07:00Budget Day - Raging Beast (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The matador.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Noble. Proud. Cruel. Foolish. All adjectives that can and have been used to describe the bullfighter in years gone by. In today's "civilised" society, the matador is often considered barbaric. However, the sport and tradition is an ancient one... it's tough to know, in this day and age, when something like bullfighting should be abandoned and when it can justifiably continue.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Or if you don't want to enter that debate, you can play <em>Raging Beast</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8Zdbwk9M2XE/UUnT49HWcqI/AAAAAAAABMg/31UhdqdOMFs/s1600/RagingBeast1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8Zdbwk9M2XE/UUnT49HWcqI/AAAAAAAABMg/31UhdqdOMFs/s1600/RagingBeast1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A timeless battle is about to begin...</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Proving that truly nothing was impossible, Firebird brought us a computer game based on the sport of bullfighting. It seemed inconceivable that it could be any good, or even that it could be done, and yet here it was. How could they get away with the slaughtering of bulls for computer entertainment?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">They didn't even try.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">In fact, the bull is the true star of <em>Raging Beast</em>. As soon as the two protagonists enter the ring and stare each other down, you know that it's probably not going to end well for you. When your only form of defence is a little red hankie, you need to be really good... because this bull knows what he's doing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GCPOwKYwmOg/UUnUErUzzRI/AAAAAAAABMo/0r1BxsV8Xeo/s1600/RagingBeast2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GCPOwKYwmOg/UUnUErUzzRI/AAAAAAAABMo/0r1BxsV8Xeo/s1600/RagingBeast2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It appears as though the bull has the upper hand in this bout.</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's quite amazing just how much character has been packed into the few pixels that make up Alfonso the bull. As soon as you start waving your red rag at him, he'll snort, he'll paw the ground, and then he'll start to approach you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's at this point that I make like the weedy guy up against the mighty gladiator in <em>Monty Python's Life of Brian</em>... I turn and run.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Doing this will not win you the game, but it's funny. You will genuinely laugh as you're haring around the bullring with a hefty bull chasing after you. But it doesn't get anything done, so at some point you have to grab the bull by the horns (not literally) and attempt to confront Alfonso.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rAUD3GW76kc/UUnUQIQWm-I/AAAAAAAABMw/HL-Kmb1SEYk/s1600/RagingBeast3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-rAUD3GW76kc/UUnUQIQWm-I/AAAAAAAABMw/HL-Kmb1SEYk/s1600/RagingBeast3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now... who exactly is in charge of this situation?</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I used to be half-decent at this back in the day, and could "<strong>Ol</strong><span style="font-size: medium;"><strong>é</strong>"<span style="font-size: small;"> with the best of them. But I don't mind admitting that I struggled to get to grips with it this time around. I don't mind admitting it because, again, it was funny. Getting stomped into the dirt, thrown into the air or flung onto the bull's back for an impromptu ride around the ring is good entertainment.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-size: small;">It can only last so long though, and eventually you get a little bored and want to move on to something else. But for a unique, amusing and entertaining experience, <em>Raging Beast</em> hits the nail on the head. And there's not even the slightest risk of injury!</span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-49061928408602010382013-03-20T07:40:00.002-07:002013-03-20T07:40:50.104-07:00Budget Day - Nonterraqueous (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Time for a game I've never played before, despite always wanting to... the rather majestically named <em>Nonterraqueous</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's certainly a name that sticks with you. Whether it was one of your favourite games or you only read a review, the chances are that if you've ever heard of it, reading this article will ring a small bell in the back of your brain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JusxSupCmF4/UUnJb0VQtQI/AAAAAAAABMA/YhgBHLrX1ek/s1600/Nonterraqueous2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JusxSupCmF4/UUnJb0VQtQI/AAAAAAAABMA/YhgBHLrX1ek/s1600/Nonterraqueous2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look, it's a bermb. A bermb? Yes, a bermb.</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I first read about <em>Nonterraqueous</em> in ZZAP! 64, where it was given a lukewarm reception and a 48% review score. As the Spetrum version seems to be more highly regarded, I thought I'd give that one a try today. Fingers crossed...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The plot of the game sees a nightmarish future come true. An evil computer has developed a superior intelligence and is using this to oppress the people that built it. In an attempt to wrest back their lives and their freedom, the people have constructed a robot seeker droid and have sent it to locate the computer base and destroy it!</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CiBD1oCI10s/UUnJtws_nYI/AAAAAAAABMQ/sxJLLqVJ9hk/s1600/Nonterraqueous3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-CiBD1oCI10s/UUnJtws_nYI/AAAAAAAABMQ/sxJLLqVJ9hk/s1600/Nonterraqueous3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now I'm a sproing helicoptery thing. Wheeeee!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This isn't an easy task... the game is massive, with over a thousand screens! So many screens for only £1.99... that would have been pretty much my ideal game in 1986.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">My first play lasted seconds, as I absent-mindedly blundered into a photon thruster and died instantly. Harsh! Armed with this useful information, I set about my task with a little more caution.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eQLqgL5ZcYI/UUnJ7iNbRvI/AAAAAAAABMY/pNaAnAslRdQ/s1600/Nonterraqueous1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eQLqgL5ZcYI/UUnJ7iNbRvI/AAAAAAAABMY/pNaAnAslRdQ/s1600/Nonterraqueous1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">White lines. Don't do it.</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">As you make your way around the complex, you'll find bombs lying around, and it would be rude not to pick them up (also silly, as they'll be used to destroy the computer, no doubt). You'll also notice "SWOP" machines, where you can change your form. I'm sure this will be very useful in places... I've only done it so far because it looks nice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Nonterraqueous</em> brings to mind a number of similar games, such as <em>Starquake</em> and <em>Arc of Yesod</em>. Having played it for a while, I don't think it really comes close to matching those classics.. the main problem being that you start every game on the same screen. Randomising your starting position would have helped a lot, with so many screens to explore. But there's undoubtedly a massive challenge here, and a lot of playtime for your couple of quid.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-54507463244412390322013-03-20T06:52:00.001-07:002013-03-20T06:52:29.625-07:00Budget Day - Kane (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Boys love playing at being cowboys. I'm no exception. The (fairly) recent <em>Red Dead Redemption</em> allowed me to live out those Wild West fantasies in full, riding a horse around glorious barren landscapes in glorious sunsets, playing poker with the boys and taking down the bad guys. Great stuff.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Of course, there have been cowboy games for almost as long as there have been games. Possibly the earliest example was the arcade game <em>Boot Hill</em>, where you faced off against an opponent in a one-to-one shootout. I loved playing against my dad on that game... we would later replicate it at home with Atari's <em>Outlaw</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7ojZzSjBA5Q/UUm-o7RRxdI/AAAAAAAABLo/PEFrfSRpF_U/s1600/Kane1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7ojZzSjBA5Q/UUm-o7RRxdI/AAAAAAAABLo/PEFrfSRpF_U/s1600/Kane1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyone fancy a stir fry tonight?</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Another of my favourite early Wild West games was Mastertronic's budget effort, <em>Kane</em>. Written by John Darnell, who would later be responsible for classics such as <em>Star Paws</em> and <em>Escape from Singe's Castle</em>, it was owned (in one form or another) by probably everyone I knew. We all thought it was a classic, although that might just have been because it was one of the first games we owned!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It was easy to be impressed by <em>Kane</em>, though. For a start, the main sprite was basically Agent 4125 from <em>Impossible Mission</em>, in a cowboy hat. And as the good agent was one of the best characters in computer games at the time, that was no bad thing. The first level saw you shooting ducks with a bow and arrow, and they let out a rather pained sampled squawk when hit. For a budget game, this first level alone made you sit up and take notice.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Other levels had just as much to impress. The second and fourth levels feaured a very nicely animated horse... hey, it didn't take much to catch your eye in those days! That said, those horse-jumping levels were a bit repetitive, and if you fell off in the wrong place you'd be stuck and your game would be over.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-htbXCZzVES4/UUm-1IBxi6I/AAAAAAAABLw/p5WrbNLtnQg/s1600/Kane3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-htbXCZzVES4/UUm-1IBxi6I/AAAAAAAABLw/p5WrbNLtnQg/s1600/Kane3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Peek-a-boo, I see you! BLAM!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The third level saw Marshall McGraw, for he was the character you played, holed up in the town of Kane, with bad guys aplenty hiding out and hoping to take you down. They'd appear in doorways, windows, up on rooftops or from behind barns. If you weren't Quick Draw McGraw, they'd shoot you dead (or at least, dead enough to remove one of your lives).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Kane</em> certainly had more than enough about it to keep us teens entertained for a good while. Although it wouldn't have been great value at full price, it was a great little budget game, and it kept us occupied for many an evening whilst waiting for something else to roll into town.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-7373253284773013022013-03-20T06:46:00.004-07:002013-03-20T06:46:53.915-07:00Budget Day - Star Farce (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's another game I played for an earlier edition of Budget Day. I picked this one because I love the arcade game <em>Star
Force</em>. Still, I was a bit wary... would this be a total pisstake? I'm not necessarily a fan of parody games, unless they're done really well. I suppose there was only one way to find out.<br /><br />It turns out that <em>Star Farce</em>
is a really good vertically-scrolling shooter. The reason for the name lies in
the amusing plot... aliens have been trying to make contact with Earth for
years, but every time they do, paranoid Earthlings send out waves of attack
craft to wipe out these "aggressors". The Universe is collectively sick of this,
and to put a stop to it (and to save those that are left), they've sent in a
fighter pilot to destroy Earth's resources and attack craft, and all its
inhabitants while they're at it. You are that fighter pilot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A_Rde9Ot68Y/UUm9WE4HF9I/AAAAAAAABLY/FI2-zE3SzD0/s1600/StarFarce.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A_Rde9Ot68Y/UUm9WE4HF9I/AAAAAAAABLY/FI2-zE3SzD0/s1600/StarFarce.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Pew, pew, boooom!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was amazed by <em>Star Farce</em>. For just £1.99, this would have been
amazing value. The graphics are really great, being detailed and colourful.
Pretty much everything you see is destructible... it felt fantastic to shoot a
power generator and see it set off a chain reaction that destroyed everything
connected to it. There are loads of other tricks and surprises, too, one
of which sees you going under the planet's surface to tackle a mothership.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It is, however, very, very difficult. You won't be completing this game any time soon, that's a guarantee. In fact, you have to start learning the enemy attack patterns to progress, otherwise you'll be creamed in seconds, every time. I can imagine that might be a problem for some, but it didn't bother me in the slightest here.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZkHb6YEhGiE/UUm9lYNqOkI/AAAAAAAABLg/-q0cTPUuaX0/s1600/StarFarce2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZkHb6YEhGiE/UUm9lYNqOkI/AAAAAAAABLg/-q0cTPUuaX0/s1600/StarFarce2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Off to see 'Er Indoors...</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You
also get loads of options before you even start playing the game. <em>Star
Farce</em> is one of the most full-featured and entertaining shmups I've seen on
either Spectrum or C64, which makes the price (and the tiny 58% review in CRASH) all the more surprising. The only
quibble I really had was with the firing rate of the ship, but even that can be eased through a <em>Star Force</em>-style pick-up. Oh, and I suppose the amount of colour can be slightly detrimental at times as it can get har to pick out what's happening on occasions. That notwithstanding, <em>Star Farce</em> is probably as close to an arcade game as you could get on the Spectrum</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> I
had a really great time with it, and quite fancy another go now...</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-31927996397382390492013-03-20T05:34:00.003-07:002013-03-20T05:34:37.821-07:00Budget Day - Arnie (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If it's the early Nineties and you're making a game about an all-action hardman, you could do a lot worse than calling it <em>Arnie</em>. Just that one name conjurs up images of a gun-toting muscleman, cutting a swathe through entire squadrons of armed bad guys. It did then and it still does now, twenty years down the line.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's appropriate enough, because the <em>Arnie</em> of this game is, indeed, a one-man army. Dropped into a warzone by chopper, it's up to you to guide this man of steel around the map, shooting down everything in his path, until the inevitable confrontation with the mad dictator at the source of all the troubles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S-nyqm0WT2o/UUmsZKe-JgI/AAAAAAAABLE/I6qZaIfXyTk/s1600/Arnie4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S-nyqm0WT2o/UUmsZKe-JgI/AAAAAAAABLE/I6qZaIfXyTk/s1600/Arnie4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's not much that's as satisfying as exploding enemy hardware.</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It's a tried-and-tested scenario, but the game is a bit more interesting and enjoyable than its cliched storyline. That's partly because of the graphical viewpoint... <em>Arnie</em> is in glorious isometric 3D, which is fairly unusual for a game of this type. It does mean that your viewing area is restricted at time (when you reach the edge of the map), but this doesn't really cause any problems.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Unusually, the game is not split into levels. You're deposited into the jungle, and from there you just make your way across the landscape until you (hopefully) reach the end. I often wondered why more action/shooting games weren't like this. Life isn't split into levels, nor are action films. Why shouldn't a shooting game be one seamless journey? It works really well, with not a single break in the action.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AyQJSOIHl7U/UUmspXe8VWI/AAAAAAAABLI/FVzKyoYIaYE/s1600/Arnie5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-AyQJSOIHl7U/UUmspXe8VWI/AAAAAAAABLI/FVzKyoYIaYE/s1600/Arnie5.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That enemy truck looks dangerous. Luckily, my rocket is about to take it out.</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Arnie</em> was programmed by Chris Butler, and you get a little bit of a feeling that he was out to prove just how good a shooter he could program, having been hamstrung by Elite when programming (the still very enjoyable) <em>Commando</em> conversion. This is a bit slower-paced than <em>Commando</em>, but still has plenty going on. With extra weapons to pick up and new enemies and obstacles introduced along the way, it's never boring.</span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Arnie was released later in the Commodore 64's lifetime, and as a result it had a more expensive budget price of £3.99. It was still well worth that bit extra though... I never regretted the purchase, and even today it's a worthwhile blast and a fair old challenge.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-60559187362476803892013-03-20T05:28:00.002-07:002013-03-20T05:28:41.117-07:00Budget Day - Pippo (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I played <em>Pippo</em> for my other blog, A Gamer Forever Voyaging, a couple of years ago. I was using my tried-and-trusted formula of trawling <a href="http://www.worldofspectrum.org/" target="_blank">World of Spectrum</a> and picking out highly rated games. <em>Pippo</em> averages a score of 8.28 from the public vote... high praise indeed! I felt sure I was in for a minor classic.</span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;"></span> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My
face fell a bit, though, when I read that it was a puzzle game. Not
exactly the way I want to spend any time off, playing puzzle games.
Still, I was committed, so I loaded it up anyway.</span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DDF9S1FYkaE/UUmqxI1sg8I/AAAAAAAABKw/1xlaxfBh080/s1600/Pippo1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DDF9S1FYkaE/UUmqxI1sg8I/AAAAAAAABKw/1xlaxfBh080/s1600/Pippo1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>What a dilemma! All that lovely money bouncing around, but you can't pick it up!</em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br />
<br />
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It
turns out that Pippo is essentially a 2-D Q*Bert clone. That doesn't
help much though... I hate Q*Bert as well! In Pippo, you play an odd,
fat character, who must hop about the game board, changing the colour
of the tiles. There's no reason given for this, that's just what you
do.</span></div>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Naturally,
the boards have inhabitants, and they're dead set on stopping you in
your tracks. I say that... they're not that dead set; they just
potter about on their little paths, seemingly oblivious as to your
presence unless you happen to blunder right into them. And they're
all a bit odd... numbers, dollar signs and the like are the order of
the day.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><div style="font-style: normal;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FyKX0HJD1Mk/UUmrWVAdW1I/AAAAAAAABK4/23nU3OMayAo/s1600/Pippo2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FyKX0HJD1Mk/UUmrWVAdW1I/AAAAAAAABK4/23nU3OMayAo/s1600/Pippo2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em>Ooohhhh, Pippo... whyyyyyy?</em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
If you do happen to find them too offensive to
actually share space with, an energy pill appears at times which, if
collected, turns the enemies into springs (of course) which you can
remove just by bouncing over them. Hurray for odd items that give you
supreme power!</div>
</span><div style="font-style: normal;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-style: normal;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That
makes <em>Pippo</em> a bit easier and less frustrating than <em>Q*Bert</em>, but on the
other hand, it's not terribly exciting, either. It does have some
nice touches... the music was better than I'd expected, and there's a
sampled (if slightly garbled) scream if you happen to fall off the
game world. <em>Pippo</em> is quite good fun and a nice enough diversion. I can at least
consider myself a little more enlightened after playing this one.</span></div>
</span></span><br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span></span><br />PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-89918052129698096122013-03-20T05:03:00.001-07:002013-03-20T05:03:04.100-07:00Budget Day - Slimey's Mine (Commodore 64)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"YOU ARE HERE!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Right now, you're on <em>They Were Our Gods</em>. Back then, you were in <em>Slimey's Mine</em>, and you'd just picked up a map. You knew that, because the game shouted it at you. It shouted a lot of things at you, did <em>Slimey's Mine</em>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you've never played <em>Slimey's Mine</em>, you probably should. I guarantee that you'll crack a smile, at the very least. It's a completely bonkers game, the sort of concept that was realised regularly in the Eighties and went sadly missing for a long time, but is (thankfully) coming back with a vengeance in this day and age.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v04KKRCb8Mg/UUmkyEZenRI/AAAAAAAABKQ/4htr0CUk0ms/s1600/Slimey3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v04KKRCb8Mg/UUmkyEZenRI/AAAAAAAABKQ/4htr0CUk0ms/s1600/Slimey3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There he goes!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Slimey is a frog-like creature, who has somehow managed to get himself trapped in an asteroid belt far, far from home. All he wants to do is make it back home. Home is where Slimey's heart is. Unfortunately, the only way off the asteroid belt comes in the form of a giant balloon... which is on the other side of a yawning chasm. Slimey's only hope is to venture into the mines in the asteroids and collect frogs, which he can spit into the hole to fill it up, thereby creating a bridge to the balloon, freedom, and home!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If you're wondering what kind of game could possibly be spawned from a storyline like that, then let me tell you: it's a shoot 'em up. Of course it is. Each asteroid contains a number of caverns which Slimey must negotiate to get to the frogs. As you'd expect, it's not as easy as that...</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hFSLMYM6mi8/UUmlEKMoibI/AAAAAAAABKY/w8x0wZA96zU/s1600/Slimey4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hFSLMYM6mi8/UUmlEKMoibI/AAAAAAAABKY/w8x0wZA96zU/s1600/Slimey4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>I'm forever blasting bubbles...</em></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The asteroids feature a number of indigenous life forms, and guess what? They're not friendly. Some will actively attack Slimey, while others will wander about minding their own business. Contact with all creatures is harmful to Slimey, though... he'll dry out, and eventually expire! Fortunately, Slimey can collect water jars, which although not giving him any direct benefit, will turn bubbles to water that Slimey can collect.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">There are other benefits to be found, too. Apples will clear a screen of dirt, leaving you free to wander its entire area. Banana bombs can be used to attack a number of enemies at once... useful. A map will appear every so often, which will give you a reminder of the asteroid's internal layout. And then there are the diamonds...</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--pv3xbZhSTc/UUmlTnoZKRI/AAAAAAAABKg/IxP8KcGKm2w/s1600/Slimey7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--pv3xbZhSTc/UUmlTnoZKRI/AAAAAAAABKg/IxP8KcGKm2w/s1600/Slimey7.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eeek! Get away! Get away!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Now, don't get me wrong. Slimey's not a greedy Gertie, Bertie. But Slimey's only way off a screen is to collect enough diamonds to make a red diamond appear. Once he collects the red diamond, all the critters disappear, leaving Slimey free to leave the screen. Well, if he can avoid the death-dealing lasers, that is...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I'm sure that if you haven't played <em>Slimey's Mine</em>, you're probably shaking your head right now. And you have a good right to be... it sounds ludicrous. And it is ludicrous... but in that fantastic, imaginative way that fills you with a certain kind of joy. It's loud and obnoxious, with hilarious sampled screams, gulps and utterances constantly brightening proceedings. And although it eventually gets repetitive, it's great fun. This was a terrific purchase back in the day.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-62959744922796250022013-03-20T04:03:00.003-07:002013-03-20T04:03:58.687-07:00Budget Day - Lap of the Gods (ZX Spectrum)<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If there's one highly-rated budget game that I just didn't get on with, it's <em>One Man and His Droid</em>. For some reason I couldn't get into it... I couldn't figure it out at all. My highest score was something pathetic like 5, I think. So you can imagine my disappointment when I loaded up <em>Lap of the Gods</em> and it turned out to be some kind of pseudo-sequel.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">It was something of a relief, therefore, to find out that <em>Lap of the Gods</em> is a much simpler game to play.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">The story, it has to be said, is pretty crazy. You are trapped in a comet's time vortex, and only the Eight Gods of Zzarn can return you to the future... but you must deliver them the Eight Crystals of Zzarn. Trapped in a comet's time vortex... is that even possible?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cU0ZhrVE5tc/UUmXMo11XWI/AAAAAAAABJ4/PXJZ2CZdaDQ/s1600/LotG3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cU0ZhrVE5tc/UUmXMo11XWI/AAAAAAAABJ4/PXJZ2CZdaDQ/s1600/LotG3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><em>You're the green thing, about to be harassed by the blue Egyptian things.</em></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Naturally, it's easier said than done. You must transport three effigies to a special chamber. If you can do this, then the Gods will bestow special powers upon you. Only with these powers can you gain access to further chambers and therefore more crystals.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">If that was all there is to it, you'd still be on Easy Street. Unfortunately, the chambers are patrolled by Devil Incarnations... if they touch you three times, they'll take one of your prcious effigies. This displeases the Gods, to the extent that they will remove one of your magic powers. The rotters!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_jW7lWAiQCI/UUmXapbZ9DI/AAAAAAAABKA/QDXe4EsX9VY/s1600/LotG2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_jW7lWAiQCI/UUmXapbZ9DI/AAAAAAAABKA/QDXe4EsX9VY/s1600/LotG2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><em><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Success! The three effigies are in place. Amazing powers will now be yours!</span></em></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">I was surprised by how much I enjoyed <em>Lap of the Gods</em>. Although it's technically a fetch-and-carry game, and a frustrating one for the first few plays, it gets better and more enjoyable the more you play. And once you get to grips with it and it starts to open up, it gets its claws into you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><em>Lap of the Gods</em> would have been a great way to spend two quid back in the day, and it's a pretty good example of its genre. This was a good pick for today's feature.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-83743534899996772272013-03-20T03:43:00.001-07:002013-03-20T03:43:04.088-07:00Budget Day 2013<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Good morning all, and welcome to Budget Day 2013!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">For those of you that didn't follow my old blog, <em>A Gamer Forever Voyaging</em>, this is something I've done for the last couple of years now. The intention is to take our minds away from the misery and drudgery of having more taxes imposed upon us and more of our hard-earned money taken from us in the Government's Budget, by going back to the days where a little of our money went a long way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Often, when buying a budget game, you were taking a bit of a punt. It's quite possible you were buying it on a whim, without having read a review. Maybe you liked the screenshots on the back. Maybe it had a nice cover. Or maybe Rob Hubbard did the music. Whatever it was, there was a reasonable chance that your £1.99 purchase would give you about half an hour's entertainment before being consigned to the back of the bottom drawer. That made it all the more satisfying when it turned out you'd bought a little gem.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7exGX9J7110/UUmSdARHgmI/AAAAAAAABJo/SbV1y_JJWbY/s1600/BudgetBagTWOG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7exGX9J7110/UUmSdARHgmI/AAAAAAAABJo/SbV1y_JJWbY/s1600/BudgetBagTWOG.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen... the House is in session. It's Budget Day!</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">Today, as I have done in the past couple of years, I'll be playing a mix of the great and the good (and the terrible) budget games that graced our Spectrums and Commodores. Oh yes, I'll probably throw in a couple of stinkers just to remind ourself that not everything in the garden was rosy. How I suffer for my art!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">This particular Budget Day will be a little different, as I'll be reposting a few of the posts from previous years, probably with new screenshots and possibly with a little rewording in some cases. It's a cheap and easy way to bolster the day's content, but what the heck.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial;">So, sit back and relax as we take a trip back to the days of the budget game, and we'll see if our happy memories are justified or if we just couldn't admit to ourselves that we'd wasted our pocket money...</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-88063140401875459982013-03-03T07:09:00.005-08:002013-03-03T07:09:49.938-08:00Day 279 - Ohhhh, what's the point?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Phew! Those ringtones took a lot of time and effort. They were well worth it though... they've been very popular, and what's more, if you'll forgive me for blowing my own trumpet, they sound great.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, you might have seen the title of this post and thought, "Uh-oh!". Well, don't worry, it 's not as negative as it sounds. I just thought it was a good time to take stock and let you know how I'm doing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lately, I've felt a little bit like I'm swimming against the <i>From Bedrooms to Billions</i> tsunami, which is sweeping along every name I'm looking at in its giant retro wave. I'm resigned to the fact that I'm unlikely to get contributions from some of those names.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the more I see of it, the more I'm convinced of the worth of my book. <i>From Bedrooms</i> is a brilliant project, and I can't wait to see it. I've backed it, and I expect to thoroughly enjoy it. But they're covering a much larger time period than I am, and and there's no way they can include the sort of things I want to include in a documentary film. They simply don't have the time, unless it runs for about four hours. Even with a deleted scenes disc, it wouldn't be able to focus on all the things I'm focusing on.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uwCEgsCe7xA/UTNnWPTxbjI/AAAAAAAABI0/FwU4HusnYOg/s1600/FromBedrooms.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uwCEgsCe7xA/UTNnWPTxbjI/AAAAAAAABI0/FwU4HusnYOg/s1600/FromBedrooms.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>From Bedrooms to Billions. <a href="http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1195082866/from-bedrooms-to-billions">Go an back it, if you haven't already.</a></i></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They're showing the world how the industry grew in the UK. I'm celebrating the individuals involved, and their wonderful (and at times, not-so-wonderful!) work. While there's bound to be some overlap, I'm confident that my book is going to stand as a unique testament to the remarkable talent we had (and still have... many are still actively programming today). And it'll include a lot more of the unsung heroes of the era, who might not have the big names but are no less well-remembered by our community.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've got some tremendous material so far, and some terrific support from within the industry, for which I am very grateful. So with that said, I'm going to finish up and send my latest email to one of our Gods. Then I'll think about who I'd like to contact next...</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-1187688308447329452013-02-27T15:15:00.000-08:002013-02-27T16:11:01.762-08:00(C) 64 ways to make your Android/MP3 phone better!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think, although I'm not sure, that I can create links to the Commodore 64 ringtone files I made in Dropbox so that you can download them. Won't that be great if it works? So I'm going to try and do just that. If it works, you can pick and choose from any you like the sound of, rather than waiting for me to e-mail you the whole batch. Everybody wins!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the "track listing":</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Commodore 64 ringtones - Android/MP3 versions</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/C64%20Ringtones.zip">The Complete Commodore 64 Ringtone Collection</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><br />
</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Action%20Biker.mp3">Action Biker</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Action%20Biker.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%202.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%203.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 3</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%204.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 4</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%205.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 5</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%206.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 6</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%207.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 7</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%208.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 8</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%209.mp3">Beyond Forbidden Forest 9</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Bionic%20Commando.mp3">Bionic Commando</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Citadel.mp3">Citadel</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Crazy%20Comets.mp3">Crazy Comets</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Cybernoid.mp3">Cybernoid</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Delta.mp3">Delta</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Dragons%20Lair%20Part%20II.mp3">Dragon's Lair Part II</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Driller.mp3">Driller</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Dropzone.mp3">Dropzone</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Finders%20Keepers.mp3">Finders Keepers</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Firelord.mp3">Firelord</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ghosts%20n%20Goblins.mp3">Ghosts 'n Goblins</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Green%20Beret.mp3">Green Beret</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hades%20Nebula%201.mp3">Hades Nebula 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hades%20Nebula%202.mp3">Hades Nebula 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hawkeye.mp3">Hawkeye</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hunter's%20Moon.mp3">Hunter's Moon</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20International%20Karate.mp3">International Karate</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Last%20Ninja%201.mp3">Last Ninja 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Last%20Ninja%201B.mp3">Last Ninja 1B</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Lazy%20Jones%2021.mp3">Lazy Jones 21</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Monty%20on%20the%20Run%201.mp3">Monty on the Run 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Monty%20on%20the%20Run%202.mp3">Monty on the Run 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Monty%20on%20the%20Run%203.mp3">Monty on the Run 3</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Mutants%201.mp3">Mutants 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Mutants%202.mp3">Mutants 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Nemesis%20the%20Warlock.mp3">Nemesis the Warlock</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ninja.mp3">Ninja</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Novaload.mp3">Novaload</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ocean%20Loader%201.mp3">Ocean Loader 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ocean%20Loader%20Early.mp3">Ocean Loader Early</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Panther.mp3">Panther</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Paradroid.mp3">Paradroid 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Paradroid%202.mp3">Paradroid 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Parallax.mp3">Parallax 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Parallax%202.mp3">Parallax 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Penetrator%201.mp3">Penetrator 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Penetrator%202.mp3">Penetrator 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Platoon.mp3">Platoon</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Rock%20n%20Wrestle%201.mp3">Rock 'n Wrestle</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Sanxion%201.mp3">Sanxion 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Sanxion%202.mp3">Sanxion 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Spellbound%201.mp3">Spellbound 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Spellbound%202.mp3">Spellbound 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Thing%20on%20a%20Spring.mp3">Thing on a Spring</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20UridiumFX.mp3">UridiumFX</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Uridium.mp3">Uridium</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Warhawk.mp3">Warhawk</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Way%20of%20the%20Exploding%20Fist%201.mp3">Way of the Exploding Fist 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Way%20of%20the%20Exploding%20Fist%202.mp3">Way of the Exploding Fist 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Wizardry%201.mp3">Wizardry 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Wizardry%202.mp3">Wizardry 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Wizball.mp3">Wizball</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Zoids.mp3">Zoids</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/MP3%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Zybex.mp3">Zybex</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span>These are not complete tunes; rather, they're snippets that I reckon make for good ringtones. I've edited them so that they loop around pretty neatly, and I think there are some really good ringtones here. Oh, and they're not <i>all</i> tunes...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you like these, please comment and let me know. And by all means share this post wherever you think there would be an interest. They took ages to make so they might as well be spread far and wide! </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Don't go pinching them for another website though (at least not without asking)... that wouldn't be nice!</span><br />
<br />
PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-70211795188898974442013-02-27T15:14:00.002-08:002013-02-27T16:12:41.815-08:00(C) 64 ways to make your iPhone better!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think, although I'm not sure, that I can create links to the Commodore 64 ringtone files I made in Dropbox so that you can download them.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Won't that be great if it works? So I'm going to try and do just that. If it works, you can pick and choose from any you like the sound of, rather than waiting for me to e-mail you the whole batch. Everybody wins!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's the "track listing":</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Commodore 64 ringtones - iPhone versions</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/C64%20Ringtones.zip">The Complete Commodore 64 Ringtone Collection</a></span><br />
<br />
<a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Action%20Biker.m4r">Action Biker</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%201.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%202.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%203.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 3</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%204.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 4</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%205.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 5</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%206.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 6</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%207.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 7</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%208.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 8</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Beyond%20Forbidden%20Forest%209.m4r">Beyond Forbidden Forest 9</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Bionic%20Commando.m4r">Bionic Commando</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Citadel.m4r">Citadel</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Crazy%20Comets.m4r">Crazy Comets</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Cybernoid.m4r">Cybernoid</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Delta.m4r">Delta</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Dragons%20Lair%20Part%20II.m4r">Dragon's Lair Part II</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Driller.m4r">Driller</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Dropzone.m4r">Dropzone</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Finders%20Keepers.m4r">Finders Keepers</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Firelord.m4r">Firelord</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ghosts%20n%20Goblins.m4r">Ghosts 'n Goblins</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Green%20Beret.m4r">Green Beret</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hades%20Nebula%201.m4r">Hades Nebula 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hades%20Nebula%202.m4r">Hades Nebula 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hawkeye.m4r">Hawkeye</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Hunter's%20Moon.m4r">Hunter's Moon</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20International%20Karate.m4r">International Karate</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Last%20Ninja%201A.m4r">Last Ninja 1A</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Last%20Ninja%201B.m4r">Last Ninja 1B</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Lazy%20Jones%2021.m4r">Lazy Jones 21</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Monty%20on%20the%20Run%201.m4r">Monty on the Run 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Monty%20on%20the%20Run%202.m4r">Monty on the Run 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Monty%20on%20the%20Run%203.m4r">Monty on the Run 3</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Mutants%201.m4r">Mutants 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Mutants%202.m4r">Mutants 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Nemesis%20the%20Warlock.m4r">Nemesis the Warlock</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ninja.m4r">Ninja</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Novaload.m4r">Novaload</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ocean%20Loader%201.m4r">Ocean Loader 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Ocean%20Loader%20Early.m4r">Ocean Loader Early</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Panther.m4r">Panther</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Paradroid%201.m4r">Paradroid 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Paradroid%202.m4r">Paradroid 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Parallax.m4r">Parallax 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Parallax%202.m4r">Parallax 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Penetrator%201.m4r">Penetrator 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Penetrator%202.m4r">Penetrator 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Platoon.m4r">Platoon</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Rock%20n%20Wrestle%201.m4r">Rock 'n Wrestle</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Sanxion%201.m4r">Sanxion 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Sanxion%202.m4r">Sanxion 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Spellbound%201.m4r">Spellbound 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Spellbound%202.m4r">Spellbound 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Thing%20on%20a%20Spring.m4r">Thing on a Spring</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20UridFX.m4r">Uridium FX</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Uridium.m4r">Uridium</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Warhawk.m4r">Warhawk</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Way%20of%20the%20Exploding%20Fist%201.m4r">Way of the Exploding Fist 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Way%20of%20the%20Exploding%20Fist%202.m4r">Way of the Exploding Fist 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Wizardry%201.m4r">Wizardry 1</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Wizardry%202.m4r">Wizardry 2</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Wizball.m4r">Wizball</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Zoids.m4r">Zoids</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/72007150/iPhone%20C64%20Ringtones/64%20Zybex.m4r">Zybex</a></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, iPhones are a bit fiddly, and have their own special format for ringtones. They can't use MP3s for such purposes. Luckily for you, I'm awesome, and I have converted these to work on your iPhone. Just add them to your iTunes and drag them to your phone, and they will automatically populate the Ringtones section. Simple!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These are not complete tunes; rather, they're snippets that I reckon make for good ringtones. I've edited them so that they loop around pretty neatly, and I think there are some really good ringtones here. Oh, and they're not <i>all</i> tunes...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you like these, please comment and let me know. And by all means share this post wherever you think there would be an interest. They took ages to make so they might as well be spread far and wide! Don't go pinching them for another website though (at least not without asking)... that wouldn't be nice!</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-73220497515126906922013-02-24T07:01:00.001-08:002013-02-24T07:01:31.023-08:0064 ways to make your phone better!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hey there! It's my dad's birthday today... 65 today! Congrats, fella! And what better way to celebrate than for me to give YOU stuff! I'm great like that.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In this case, I may be seen to be biased towards one side of my potential readership (sorry, Spec-chums!). I have created, for your pleasure and enjoyment, sixty-four Commodore 64 ringtones! </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, some of the finest Commodore compositions have been hacked into bite-sized chunks by me, for the sole purpose of brightening up your life when you get a text or phone call.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">SMILE! as the <i>Crazy Comets</i> bassline signals an incoming call. GRIN! as your slacker mate phones to the sound of that famous tune from <i>Lazy Jones</i>. SMIRK! when your girlfriend phones and the soundtrack to <i>Penetrator</i> plays... LAUGH! at the sheer silliness of having <i>Uridium</i>'s "Land Now!" siren blasts to announce a phone call, or even the sound of a <i>Novaload</i>'s screech. Yes, I've thrown a couple of left-field efforts in there, too...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sMHEr28ng8U/USorEmMT6pI/AAAAAAAABGU/MuXkJ_k3z_8/s1600/Novaload.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sMHEr28ng8U/USorEmMT6pI/AAAAAAAABGU/MuXkJ_k3z_8/s1600/Novaload.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, I recorded the sound from this very screen.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I do enjoy making stuff like this for a bit of fun, and I hope you appreciate and enjoy them too. You'd better, because it takes me ages! But if you don't, there's no harm done.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now for the tricky bit. I haven't got any webspace at the moment, so you can only obtain these either by e-mail or through Dropbox. Either way, just send me an e-mail to paul.e.morrison at gmail.com (you know what to do there) and let me know how you'd like to receive them, and I'll arrange it right away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can get these for either iPhone or Android (or any operating system that uses MP3s). So I reckon that most people are covered here. If you fancy spicing up your life, then get in touch!</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-80076242996882742612013-02-17T06:09:00.001-08:002013-02-17T06:12:05.983-08:00Zzzzzzz.... wait, what?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hi gang!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Things continue here at TWOG Towers, if not at as fast a pace as before. I've got a new job which involves a year and a half of learning and exams... which is great, but it will certainly eat into my time or capacity for rational thought!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm adding little bits all the time, though, which isn't very interesting for anyone wanting to read a blog, but there you go. I do have a few sections which I consider to be "completed", although I will naturally go back over them and edit them, and of course there's the presentational aspect to consider. But the text and screenshots are there, so I can move on to other subjects. No, I'm not going to tell you which pieces are finished!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_PIq4qiUnA8/USDlC8M_yrI/AAAAAAAABAg/vMJBze9PkZ4/s1600/Ring.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-_PIq4qiUnA8/USDlC8M_yrI/AAAAAAAABAg/vMJBze9PkZ4/s1600/Ring.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The anatomy of a ringtone.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm writing a piece about Sensible Software's underappreciated classic <i>Parallax</i> at the moment... look out for that very soon. I'm also working on a batch of Commodore 64 ringtones, which is also very time-consuming! Great fun, though, and I think you're going to love them (if you were a C64 fan).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, there we have a brief update to let you know how I'm doing. The project is alive and well, so keep checking in! And do remember to follow me on Twitter and Facebook if you use those media... I post lots of little snippets there that aren't worthy of full blog posts. If you only read the blog, would you prefer that I add stuff like that here? I would consider it to be too "noisy", but this is about what you want...</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-43785201238355807602013-01-28T14:07:00.000-08:002013-01-28T14:07:13.518-08:00Day 247 - Eeeeeeviiiiiiillll!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I haven't used this title purely because I've just watched the lost Mermaid Man and Barnacle Boy episode with my youngest child. Ooohhhhh, no. I'm using it because that's what this post is about. Pure evil. And we (almost) all were guilty...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was just digging through my retro stash (thanks again Mr. Reed), when I came across some of these:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BfAYpGcMdhs/UQboBy3paxI/AAAAAAAAA-c/8zA-9M3izyw/s1600/C15ASmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-BfAYpGcMdhs/UQboBy3paxI/AAAAAAAAA-c/8zA-9M3izyw/s1600/C15ASmall.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Look at that. The 80s equivalent of a bar of gold.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Surely everybody that owned a computer, be it C64, Spectrum, Amstrad, Dragon 32, BBC or Oric must have had a stash of these. They were perfect. You could fit almost any single-load game on one side, which negated the need for tediously hunting through tapes and writing down counter numbers for each game. You'd just load up the game, play it, and when you'd finished you'd turn the tape over, rewind it the short distance to the beginning and load up the game on that side. Brilliant!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, the fact you were doing so meant that you were a filthy, stinking PIRATE! But to be honest, I don't think many kids back then even knew what that meant or what the consequences were. It wasn't something I even thought about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That said, there can have been no other reason for these cassettes to be produced other than for kids to copy games onto. They were dead cheap (anyone remember exactly how much?), ideal for kids with limited budgets. And let's face it, how many of us actually wrote our own programs? Well, I wrote one... a database of ZZAP! 64-style reviews. But it only consisted or PRINT and IF...THEN...GOTO statements. Hardly a complex work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1rtIkHp9gHc/UQbycnX3FhI/AAAAAAAAA_I/R4iER40UASo/s1600/C15BSmall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-1rtIkHp9gHc/UQbycnX3FhI/AAAAAAAAA_I/R4iER40UASo/s1600/C15BSmall.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Erm... that's right, m'lud. My reviews database was called "Commando". Honest.</span></i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And for all that, I owned tens of Boots C15 cassettes. Boots even sold cassette carriers, which held ten or twenty of these things and had a handle... perfect for carrying your evil ill-gotten games to a mate's house.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, there were times when a C15 wouldn't do. Complex multiloads needed more tape room, for starters. And then there was the fact that you could get up to ten games on a side of C90 cassette. So if you didn't have a big enough supply of trusty C15s, then you had to break out the big fella.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I probably sound like a right scumbag now. But to be fair, I owned over 200 original games for my C64. The problem was there were just so many great games available, and kids of our age had a very finite amount of cash. It was simply impossible to buy all the games we wanted, which is where blank cassettes came in. But I know that I, and most of my mates, had a very impressive collection of original games. We bought as much as we could, not necessarily because we knew it was right, but because we liked owning this stuff.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2bR4izu7sQk/UQb16sjkJAI/AAAAAAAAA_0/iJ3h2OvigSc/s1600/C90Small.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2bR4izu7sQk/UQb16sjkJAI/AAAAAAAAA_0/iJ3h2OvigSc/s1600/C90Small.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That's just WRONG, man! Who would waste tape on Trivial Pursuit?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm much the same now. I've never owned any copied games for any system beyond my Commodore 64 (except for inherited copies that have come with a second-hand system I've bought). I'd rather buy and own a film than download it. And although I will admit to downloading music on occasion, I will either buy it if I like it or delete it if I don't. Although in this day and age, there are programs available that legally allow you to preview music before you buy it so downloading is becoming a bit of a thing of the past.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't really have a point to this. I'm not staunchly condemning the evil pirate scum or implicitly advocating the purchase of absolutely everything you like. I just thought it would be fun to write a bit about the old days, having found a box of treasures. There's not much that's more fun than digging through the past.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-31902317255129740052013-01-20T09:28:00.003-08:002013-01-20T09:28:44.774-08:00Day 239 - snow means... Horace!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If you look at it, any good hardware manufacturer over the last couple of decades has had a mascot. Sega has (had) Sonic, Nintendo has Mario, Microsoft has Master Chief, Sony has... erm, I dunno, who's Sony's mascot? Sackboy? Crash Bandicoot? Kratos? I dunno.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, it wasn't always like this. Although there were tons of memorable characters in the 80s, not many of them were attached to a platform as a mascot. Miner Willy, you could argue, might have been the face of the Spectrum. But if there's one unofficial mascot that endears today, it's got to be the first blue character that did a lot of running (and other things)... Horace.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KFekJGiF7P4/UPwmwL4msiI/AAAAAAAAA9E/5rS7i64nINs/s1600/HH2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KFekJGiF7P4/UPwmwL4msiI/AAAAAAAAA9E/5rS7i64nINs/s1600/HH2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Om-nom-nom! Horace fills his belly!</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although he made appearances on other computers, Horace feels synonymous with the Spectrum (which probably had a lot to do with the fact that, on the Spectrum, his games were published by Sinclair). He only appeared in three games, but it was enough for Horace to stamp himself into pop culture history forever...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first time we saw the bug-eyed blue fella he was feeling a mite peckish, in <i>Hungry Horace</i>. A <i>PacMan</i> clone of sorts, it featured Horace running around mazes in a park and eating all the food from within those mazes. As you would expect, he wasn't left to his own devices. Vicious parkies patrolled the grounds and wouldn't hesitate to give Horace a good hiding if they caught him.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YBC9H11Jo_M/UPwmwBpthaI/AAAAAAAAA9I/9jBSn42fEOw/s1600/HH3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YBC9H11Jo_M/UPwmwBpthaI/AAAAAAAAA9I/9jBSn42fEOw/s1600/HH3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That parkie's not exactly a handsome lad, is he?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Luckily, Horace could fight back. Bells were scattered around the mazes, and if Horace picked one up it appeared to play havoc with the parkies' inner ears, rendering them vulnerable to a Horace attack. This respite was brief, though, and they'd soon be back on Horace's case.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a slight twist from <i>PacMan</i>, Horace could move on to the next screen without having completed the screen he was on. However, it wasn't possible to go directly back to that screen; instead, Horace would have to work his way back around to it. This was an interesting way of providing an escape route, but was probably necessary as the screens were a little cramped.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eQD6K54tSlo/UPwmvRonBKI/AAAAAAAAA84/FTtrMX9uxec/s1600/HH1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-eQD6K54tSlo/UPwmvRonBKI/AAAAAAAAA84/FTtrMX9uxec/s1600/HH1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Hmmm. This level looks a bit tricky.</i></span></td></tr>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hungry Horace</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> wasn't (and isn't) a bad game at all, and served as a fine introduction to the legendary character. However, it was his next game which would cement his legacy...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That game was <i>Horace Goes Skiing</i>. In essence, it was incredibly simple. Horace was minted up with $40, and fancied going skiing ("Why dollars?" asked a lot of mags at the time... well, remember, it was written by an Australian and that's their currency...). All he had to do was hop across the road, hand over ten bucks for ski rental, get back across the road, and away he could go, down the slippery slope.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnLYk69fj9c/UPwmt-P3d_I/AAAAAAAAA8g/ivUDhDwR45s/s1600/HGS1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnLYk69fj9c/UPwmt-P3d_I/AAAAAAAAA8g/ivUDhDwR45s/s1600/HGS1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>The traffic doesn't look much, but it moves at a fair rate!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In essence, this meant that you played a game of </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Frogger</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> (or more accurately, Activision's Atari VCS game </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Freeway</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) to get your skis, and then played a simplified skiing game with no real goal other than to get to the end without crashing and breaking your skis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That doesn't sound terribly thrilling, but back in those days it was pretty compulsive stuff. Running across the road required little skill and more in the way of luck and judgement, but you did feel like you'd achieved something just by getting into that ski hut.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FVu2Gk4NlVw/UPwmt31By3I/AAAAAAAAA8o/HDX2VsnzZLY/s1600/HGS2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FVu2Gk4NlVw/UPwmt31By3I/AAAAAAAAA8o/HDX2VsnzZLY/s1600/HGS2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ahhhh... just look at that. Look at it, revel in it, drink it in.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then there was the skiing. It wasn't very taxing... you didn't go very fast and there weren't many trees to avoid. Your only real punishment was losing points if you missed the gates, although if you crashed you might break your skis which would force you back to the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Freeway</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">None of that mattered. Horace was now an icon, and <i>Horace Goes Skiing</i> destined to go down as a classic game title. Despite its relative averageness (?), it's fondly remembered by all those that have played it.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b3TAqmCrXDU/UPwmtwYww0I/AAAAAAAAA8k/C457TiE88zM/s1600/HGS3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-b3TAqmCrXDU/UPwmtwYww0I/AAAAAAAAA8k/C457TiE88zM/s1600/HGS3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Well done, Horace! Pluckier than Eddie the Eagle, and looks better on a T-shirt.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It wasn't the last time we would see Horace. Rounding out his trilogy (and story) was </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horace & the Spiders</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It could be argued that <i>Horace & the Spiders</i> was a very ambitious game. After all, you have to remember that author William Tang programmed all the Horace games to run on the 16K Spectrum, and <i>Horace & the Spiders</i> had three different (albeit simplistic) game screens.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JUny0IJ5XT8/UPwmwbAXj5I/AAAAAAAAA9U/GvoAW1QLrrU/s1600/HatS1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JUny0IJ5XT8/UPwmwbAXj5I/AAAAAAAAA9U/GvoAW1QLrrU/s1600/HatS1.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>That spider's got some evil eyes on it.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The first saw Horace running and jumping over spiders in what was almost a simple </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Moon Patrol</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> variant. It was very short, and led straight into the next screen in which Horace had to swing across spider threads to get across a chasm. Once a spider sensed you on its thread it tried to reel you in, and if you didn't get off in time you'd be bitten and poisoned. Nasty!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Successfully making it to the other side meant that Horace would find himself trapped in a cave full of spiders. The only way out was to STAMP THEM ALL TO DEATH!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ox1FymjHQYA/UPwmxC6LzxI/AAAAAAAAA9c/W_MREYrQW9E/s1600/HatS2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ox1FymjHQYA/UPwmxC6LzxI/AAAAAAAAA9c/W_MREYrQW9E/s1600/HatS2.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>How does Horace hang on without any hands?</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That sounds a bit harsh, but in reality all it meant was that you were stuck in a level modelled on arcade game </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Space Panic</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Horace would clamber around on the webs, stamping holes in them at strategic points. The spiders would hopefully get miffed at this and come down to repair the holes. If and when this happened, the evil, heartless monster Horace could pounce!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This variety meant that <i>Horace & the Spiders</i> was a pretty nice little arcade game. All the Horace games were high score games, which meant that repeated play was inevitable for the arcade-hungry kids of the 80s. The fact that the games were all simple and straightforward to play pretty much guaranteed they would occupy the tape deck for lengthy spells.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gpBYaoEEITc/UPwmxj4V4gI/AAAAAAAAA9o/e3Jz86gVysQ/s1600/HatS3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gpBYaoEEITc/UPwmxj4V4gI/AAAAAAAAA9o/e3Jz86gVysQ/s1600/HatS3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>THE SPIDER'S TRAPPED! GET IT! STOMP ON IT NOOOOOW!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I had a mate called Shaun, and it was on his Spectrum that I was introduced to the joys of Horace. I would often find myself at his house after school, where along with the likes of </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Jet Set Willy</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kokotoni Wilf</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> and </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stop the Express</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> he owned all the Horace games. I enjoyed them all, but it's </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horace Goes Skiing</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> that has left the biggest mark. It has that certain something that makes it stay in the memory when other games have long since disappeared.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Sadly, there were no more Horace games. Apparently William Tang had health problems while he was developing the next, and he never finished it. I don't know where he is or what he's doing now, but I hope that he's alive and well and knows how much he's appreciated by the now-grown-up kids of the 80s. And if by some chance he or someone he knows reads this, please get in touch!</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-19393604625660491762013-01-19T06:56:00.001-08:002013-01-19T06:56:14.726-08:00Day 238 - Meep! Meep? How's that for a Cliff Hanger?<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I distinctly remember the first time I played the <i>Road Runner</i> arcade conversion at home. It looked great, but I couldn't help but feel disappointed by the simplistic gameplay. Controlling the Road Runner, you ran along a series of roads, avoiding the ravenous Wile E. Coyote who attempted to catch you in a number of mildly amusing ways.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think the problem with that game was that you played the Road Runner. You don't watch <i>Road Runner</i> cartoons for the Road Runner, after all. The fun comes from Wile E. Coyote's misadventures, mishaps and catastrophes. Why would you play a game that doesn't feature any of that?</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ktyZ7SbQHnE/UPqxpugna4I/AAAAAAAAA7Q/bAs3rkuixMo/s1600/CHRR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ktyZ7SbQHnE/UPqxpugna4I/AAAAAAAAA7Q/bAs3rkuixMo/s1600/CHRR.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">See, I just wanted to let the coyote get the Road Runner. Wile E. is great!</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Luckily, none of that mattered, because may years earlier a company called New Generation Software had released a game called </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cliff Hanger</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. And it was the only </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Road Runner</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> game you'd ever need.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I doubt I'll ever forget the first time I loaded <i>Cliff Hanger</i> on my C64. It was buried in the middle of a C90 that I'd borrowed, and as I'd never heard of it before I'd primarily loaded it to get to whatever was next on the tape. Those feelings appeared to be confirmed when a droning tune burst into life and a crippled looking character (Cliff Hanger himself!) appeared and hobbled across the screen. The fact that his brother was called Coat almost sealed the deal...</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hipf0LPsXRY/UPqyFzHUxMI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/KcbnJpK6jKM/s1600/CH64E.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hipf0LPsXRY/UPqyFzHUxMI/AAAAAAAAA7Y/KcbnJpK6jKM/s1600/CH64E.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm looking at this and thinking that a lot could go wrong...</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still, I'd spent five minutes or so waiting for it to load, and in those days we all had more patience. So I decided to give it a go. What would another couple of lost minutes be, really?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, I had no idea what to do. The first screen appeared, and my character stood in a desolate-looking desert backdrop, appearing to be as clueless as I was. I pushed the joystick right, and accidentally walked over the ledge. Wow... what a rubbish game.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ySfE2MvWP3Y/UPqyYqDIT9I/AAAAAAAAA7g/bEAU03CTHBM/s1600/CHZX3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ySfE2MvWP3Y/UPqyYqDIT9I/AAAAAAAAA7g/bEAU03CTHBM/s1600/CHZX3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, that could have gone better. But at least I'm still in one piece.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The game took me back to a title page, but I noticed it had a different name this time. I pressed fire, and a different scene appeared. And this time, something was moving! It was getting closer... a bandit! I hurriedly ran at the precariously-positioned boulder, knocking it off the edge of the cliff... and squashed the bandit!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">OK, so it was a pure fluke, but in that moment I realised what this game was all about. Set up like a film set, <i>Cliff Hanger</i> has you playing a series of outrageous scenes or stunts in which you, as Cliff, must stop the evil bandit from making his getaway. Some are relatively straightforward, merely asking you to roll a boulder off a cliff and onto the fleeing criminal. Others, though, are very complicated and lead to a bit of head-scratching as you try and figure out what you need to do.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alright, now I'm a bit stuck.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Graphically, the game is very simple... which is perfect. It helps to generate the look and feel of the </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Road Runner</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> cartoons. The simplistic desert settings, although not of the finest quality, could almost have been ripped from your favourite episodes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Interestingly, the tables are turned in terms of how the characters work. The bad guy is now effectively the Road Runner, with the hapless Cliff Hanger taking on the role of Wile E. Coyote. That's why the game is so much fun... you get to act out all the crazy stunts. When you first start playing, you're never quite sure what's going to happen. Sure, there are sometimes clues in the title, but when you're faced with a sparse landscape and just a couple of objects, it's all down to trial and error as to whether or not you'll be successful. And when you set off one of those traps, you're almost hiding your eyes as you do it, wondering how it might go horribly wrong...</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Alright, who put that giant rock there? Thanks, whoever it was!</span></i></td></tr>
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<i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cliff Hanger</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> is hilarious and a heck of a lot of fun. I suspect it was overlooked when it was released, which would be a shame as a lot of people missed out on a great time if that was the case. There's not much to choose between the Spectrum and C64 versions... for me the Commodore version edges it with its slightly more authentic backdrops and the fact that screens are a lot more randomised, keeping it fresher. Either way, though, if you like </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Road Runner</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> you'd love playing </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Cliff Hanger</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Cliff Hanger</i> was programmed by James Day, who didn't write much else. I'd love to get his thoughts on the game, and also from New Generation's Malcolm Evans and their other programmers. New Generation didn't release a lot of games, but there were some genuine groundbreakers among them, and they deserve to be featured in this book. One can only try...</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4188836070422359874.post-4300398679873966452013-01-13T12:15:00.002-08:002013-01-13T12:15:56.161-08:00Day 232 - any time is a good time for a High Noon showdown!<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm going to do more posts about single games from now on... otherwise there's a danger of me only writing one post a month! That doesn't guarantee the game I write about will be included in the book, so if that happens with any of them you can consider these bonus features!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One of the first Commodore 64 games I ever played, well before I even owned a machine of my own, was Ocean Software's <i>High Noon</i>. I used to go to a mate's house and he had loads of games for his, even at that early stage. Some of them might be considered quite obscure by now... for instance, I now distinctly remember playing Jason Perkins' <i>Blue Moon</i>, which I'd completely forgotten about until I started researching Jason Perkins!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JJvFAb-wfCw/UPMVMqUSr-I/AAAAAAAAA6Y/MBRjhnREet8/s1600/HighNoon4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JJvFAb-wfCw/UPMVMqUSr-I/AAAAAAAAA6Y/MBRjhnREet8/s1600/HighNoon4.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Yee-haw, ya rootin'-tootin- varmint!</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One game I never forgot was </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">High Noon</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. Back in those early days, the prospect of any new game loading was exciting. This was a fairly typical early Ocean game, with the Novaload squeaking into life and then a basic loading screen, short repetitive tune and scrolling message popping up. For some reason, even though I was used to the instant access of the Atari VCS' cartridges, the nervous anticipation of seeing a new game was there every time.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once it loaded, <i>High Noon</i> was one of the best things I'd ever seen. It may have had really chunky sprites, but it gave them charm and character. And you could walk into and out of the screen! This made the play area bigger, although you had to learn a whole new method of bullet dodging as a result!</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lAjYKUPFBgg/UPMVgUPrGXI/AAAAAAAAA6g/4Ys-H_9Z6aM/s1600/HighNoon3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lAjYKUPFBgg/UPMVgUPrGXI/AAAAAAAAA6g/4Ys-H_9Z6aM/s1600/HighNoon3.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>You can never die with dignity in the Old West.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Speaking of charm and character, for a game where the focus is purely on gunning down as many bad guys as possible, </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">High Noon</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> has a nice sense of humour. This is evidenced by the undertakers, "Rig + Mortis", who wander out after each kill and drags the still-warm bodies into their lair! Oh, and this even includes your good self, so try not to get hit if you can...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Later levels ramp up the difficulty, with bandits on horseback throwing you off guard, and then there are the robbers with dynamite to keep a close eye on...</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sxU1caSJQZA/UPMVs4Shv-I/AAAAAAAAA6o/OtDy3mCwMoA/s1600/HighNoon5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-sxU1caSJQZA/UPMVs4Shv-I/AAAAAAAAA6o/OtDy3mCwMoA/s1600/HighNoon5.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>Ah. So that's what that hissing thing does.</i></span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You have to keep your trigger finger warm and active if these guys aren't going to make off with all the bank's money or worse, all the saloon's women! And while it does get repetitive, the difficulty curve is well-judged and the gameplay remains frantic enough to entertain. I don't know who wrote </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">High Noon</i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">... there is no in-game credit other than "Ocean Software Presents". But it's a game I've enjoyed for almost thirty years now, and still well worth a little blast today.</span>PaulEMozhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15094549849149150860noreply@blogger.com0