CSSCGC 2011 — 2012 — January

Posts from January 2012.

January 10th 2012

Apenao – Game of (Musical) Thrones

I’m sure that Apenao also got the official license to make the ZX Spectrum videogame based in the popular franchise Game of Thrones. I wonder how does this guy to get all those licenses, he must be backed by one of those big companies which emply lots of slaves and sell human flesh in the black market. The fact is that here it is, the official (I guess) Game of Thrones ZX Spectrum videogame! This one comes with a twist. I don’t know if this game is popular elsewere, but here in Spain we got a big deal of it when we were kids. Now kids have Nintendo DSs to play with, so, for the sake of preservation, a computer rendition of the good ol’ Game of Chairs just had to be created. To play the game, you set up some chairs in circle, one less that the total amount of player. Then the music plays, and players have to run around the chairs. Then suddenly the music stops, and the players must try and sit down in one chair. Of course, (you may have guessed if you are good at maths) one of them remains up with no chair to sit down. Well, that guy is, obviously, killed in a rather gory manner. Game of (Musical) Thrones replaces the plain chairs with actual thrones, and lets you pick all the players. Then the music will play… and play… and trust me, it will eventually stop. Some day. And then…

Summary

Choose the contestants, sit back, and enjoy your simulation.

Click here to download.

January 10th 2012

Lee Osborne – ZX81 Sharetrader

Mr. Osborne‘s next entry, also for the ZX81, is a port of a former CSSCGC entry from 2000. It’s one of those boring games a la Tai Pan (and I get my coat) where you basicly sell and buy things and stuff like that. I will never understand how somebody can find this kind of games amusing, as if we didn’t have enough worries in real life. But hey, here it is! The author claims it contains all the features from the original (albeit with a few more bugs), and I will be taking his word for this. I’m quite sorry, but I can’t really stand more than two minutes with this kind of games, but worry not, the judges love them. It looks clean and well presented, and the ZX81 display is always sexy. So here you are, have fun!

Summary

Choose among the tons of options, sit back, and enjoy your simulation.

Click here to download.

January 10th 2012

Lee Osborne – Mega Christmas Cracker Simulator

This is one of those times where I find it better to reproduce the elaborate email which contained the game: “I think I deserve to win, because I coded this game on a real ZX81, and no emulation was involved at all (apart from checking that it works on an emulator, which it does). I’m now the proud owner of a ZXpand interface, a miracle of modern science that allows the ZX81 to save programs in an emulator-ready format direct to SD memory cards. I think you’ll find that Mega Christmas Cracker Simulator is a tour-de-force, which pushes the humble ZX81 to new heights. The advanced simulation engine uses chaos theory techniques to definitively model a range of cracker types and cracker-pulling scenarios, considering such variables as which relative you are pulling the cracker with, and how much money you were willing to spend on crackers in the first place. Once you’ve pulled your cracker, it’s given a score, so you can compare different types for quality of prizes and funniness of the joke. A useful program, I’m sure you’ll agree!“. Yes, Mr. Osborne, I do agree.

Summary

Pull your cracker!

Click here to download.

January 10th 2012

Anders Carlsson – Cowthilde

Yet another musical game! This time involving cows (people seems to know how to get a winner!). In this game, which is actually good-looking if you put on your fancy 1983 glasses, you have to guide your tiny hero using O P Q A to approach each… uh… singing cow in the screen. When you do that, the cow will sing a short tune (a bit random, but a tune) and you have to sing it back to her in order to free her from the underworld. If you do it right, the cow will disappear in thin air, but if you miss a note you’ll lose a life. Quite unfiorgiving, but that’s life. The game works nice, moves nice, responds nice, sounds nice and plays nice. Not very crap, indeed, just made in a vintage manner. I’m sure that if a time machine existed, you could easily bring this game back to 1983 and sell it to Micromega for a good sum, and then come back to the present and enjoy the accumulated royalties in your bank account, buy an expensive car, and marry a stripper.

Summary

Use OPQA to move around, approach the cows and sing back their tune using the numeric keys.

Click here to download.

January 10th 2012

Apenao – Star Wars – The Old Republic

Nobody knows how, but Apenao got the official license from Lucas Arts to produce the ZX Spectrum port of their latest blockbuster in the Star Wars franchise, a MMORPG (won’t tell what it means ’cause I always mix up the initials). The problem was that they are quite unflexible when it comes to deadlines, and the time Apenao had to develop this game was minimal. And it shows. Luckily, Apenao managed to extract the most important aspects of SW:TOR and gave full priority to them, so they are completely implemented. So the game lacks some things from the original, but the essence is there: the exciting light-saber duels between Jedi Knights and Lord Siths, complete with power-ups and character level growth. And, of course, you can’t play this alone, as this is a MMORPG. May the force be with you, young padawan! (sorry, I had to say that).

Summary

Q controls the Jedi Knight. P controls the Lord Sith.

Click here to download.

January 10th 2012

Dalibor Sver – Trta Mrta

Well, this one comes in an unknown language (for me). The author sent me the correct translation to every message on screen, but I won’t tell you ’cause I believe that it would spoil all the fun. The game starts asking for a lot of questions, then lets you position two squares on screen (using Q, A and M for each), and then it plays some kind of tron-like cycles battle. You control the leftmost “cycle” (or square), and the rightmost cycle is controlled by the computer. Well, I’m not very sure about that, ’cause it never turns so it’s pretty easy to beat. Unless I’m missing something. Which I can’t tell. Mr. Sver didn’t provide any explanations, so you’ll have to figure this out. You can always look at the sources (I was a nerdy kid who did exactly that when I was 13 and had no clue about what I was supposed to do in crappy BASIC games and type-ins).

Summary

Keys are O, P, Q, A and M. That’s all I know about this game.

Click here to download.

January 10th 2012

Pgyuri – Keyhero 50

This is one of those “musical games” where the sound produced by the computer isn’t music at all. This so called game is a collection of more than 50 one-liners: a couple of instructions/info blocks and 50 levels in 50 BASIC one-liner separate loads. The concept is pretty simple and straightforward: press the correct key when the labeled square containing which hits the top-most flickering lines. Like an upside-down Guitar Hero (scrolling from bottom to top using Sinclair BASIC is easy, but doing the opposite is not), but you use the keyboard instead of a guitar. And you listen to random bleeps instead your Metallica favourite number. But the achievement is the game itself: I wonder how this guy got the nerve to produce 50 levels without getting bored. Great, great achievement, to be honest!

Summary

Urm… Good luck.

Click here to download.