But then episodic games emerged, and retro graphics styles became popular. Now is clearly the time for at least some of that unused material to see the light of day. It’s still many months of development away from being playable, but here’s a first look at… Lethal Penguin - The Game.

Dear Sir/Madam,

I hope and trust that this missive finds you in good health, despite the abject failure of your website to provide either an email or address or a functioning contact form. I write regarding your Sausage, Bean & Cheese Slice; if being there in spirit is enough to get sausage into the title, perhaps you could similarly make a Duck and Potato Slice that only has potato in it? Or perhaps a Lobster and Mushroom Slice with only mushrooms? I’m sure that while it is sadly not to my taste, many people would enjoy the bland taste and weak texture of pastry smeared with jellied ancillaries. Personally, I cannot abide a pastry free entirely of the traditional meats; there is something rather incomplete in the concept, I feel, and I suspect that the Ginsters family shall be retaining my business for the foreseeable future.

In addition I must note with concern that the packaging indicates that some bones may remain in the slice I have abandoned unconsumed; I was not aware that either beans or cheese were vertebrates. This news will bring some alarm to my vegetarian associates, and I fear for their continued nutrition.

Regards,
Mr N. Cross

Cheeky bastard. Never mind the quantity of updates, feel the quality! (Er, apart from this one, obv.)

Anarchy - Hewson, 1987

Eeh, this takes me back. I’ve still got the tape I bought from WH Smiths way back when… I remember being very disappointed, because I’d mixed up this game (where you drive a little tank viewed from above in an infuriating puzzle game) with Rebel (where you drive a little tank viewed from above in an infuriating but cool puzzle game that I’ll be getting to sometime in the twenty-second century). It was almost as disappointing as the time I bought Batman 3D because I thought it was Batman: The Caped Crusader. (And that I got after returning Return of the Jedi, because it was a pile of isometric crap and nothing like the first two Star Wars games. Imagine my surprise to get even more isometric bizarreness and not a flip-screen action adventure. Grr.)

So the map’s full of these blocks, see? And you have to destroy them all to make the screen flash wildly and the exit appear at a random location (and also disable your gun so you can’t shoot your way to the exit). There are traditional spinny-blobby-WTF-JSW enemies roaming around. Your gun only stuns them, so you can’t clear the area and then get on with the block busting.

Four levels in the difficulty takes a sudden drastic leap up to just killing you at random. (Squeeze down a two-character wide corridor RIGHT NEXT TO AN ENEMY and hope it doesn’t decide to kill you.) Rebel is so much better than this game.

Andeskydning - unknown

Andre’s Night Off - Matthew Smith, 1984
The sequel to Jet Set Willy! Miner Willy’s chef has been given the night off and Willy wants a snack from his technicolour-man-eating-pizza-infested kitchen! A proper, enjoyable game at last! Hurrah!

Wait. What is this?

WHAT IS THIS?!

…

Next.

Androide - ERE Informatique, 1984

So about nine months ago I got myself a new phone. I got a T-Mobile G1 phone with the Android operating system. I needed a smartphone so that I could run a satnav system on it (was going to rural Germany, see) and browse the web and maybe write stuff too (so I got a slightly outdated phone because it had a proper keyboard, none of this press-shift-to-use-the-numbers lark), and for a good long time it was quite usable.

Then the browser turned out to be rubbish. Google’s browser kept crashing, or just plain not working with some sites, like Hotmail. Not being able to read my spam and special offers from Amazon was annoying. And then I ran out of drive space, because Android 1.6 wouldn’t let me move programs (I refuse to call them ‘apps’) to the SD card. And it had been losing text messages from day one. So I figured - what the heck? I’ll upgrade the operating system.

Now I’ve got Android 2.2 running, and it’s been slow, and it’s been buggy, and the phone self-bricked when I swapped the battery, and I’ve had to reinstall the operating system four more times, and Google’s browser still doesn’t work, and I’ve had enough. I need a new phone. But all the phones that are out there look rubbish. Every so often I think I might switch back to a dumb phone and get a tablet, but then I remember that if I get a tablet it’s still going to have Android on it and get depressed.

Oh, the game? Well, it’s a Pacman clone. It’s quite fast and smooth, and it uses the BASIC graphics characters, so when you load it up on a +2 the ghosts roam around with ‘PECTRUM’ hanging off them. (Horrible when that happens. There’s never a tissue handy when you need one, is there?)

So I’ve broken the game quite thoroughly, as you can see. At first I was worried I wouldn’t be able to finish the first level since Pac-Clone can’t eat letters, but it turns out that with a little encouragement he’ll eat everything. Including the walls.

And now all the dots are gone, and the screen’s frozen. I think I’ve beaten the game. Well, it was fun while it lasted; 7/10.

Tune in next time, when there’ll be a whole mess of Androids and if we’re lucky some good games…

1. Writing two different XBox 360 games: Avatar Lawnmower Simulator and an untitled Japanese-style action RPG.
2. Playing Halo: Reach.
3. Building a personal website to promote myself as a whole, rather than across a number of different websites.
4. Pondering methods of writing and selling some kind of fiction that would make the process worthwhile.
5. Playing Left 4 Dead 2.
6. Attending Jon’s wedding. (Alright, that one didn’t take that much of my time!)
7. Going on holiday in Germany.
8. Learning all sorts of things.
9. Turning 30. And also 31. (Erk.)
10. Avoiding ’scene’ ‘drama’. Because it makes me a very sad panda.

Some of these things will be expanded on shortly after I’ve fiddled about with the design of the blog a little bit. And then I’m going to talk about some games!

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

Honest.

It came with a half dozen games, all of which had something of interest. Operation Wolf being the daddy, of course - in spite of the slow-down every time you fired, it was still highly entertaining - but all of the games were fun for a while.

Of course, six games can only last so long. It was a shame, then, that just about bugger all was released for it after that, and that it didn’t come with any sort of clue as to how to write any software for it. I’m sure we’ve all had an idea for a cool game that could use a light gun, but had no way of doing anything with it.

Well, I’m going to change that for you right now. This here is a little demo program that lets you point and shoot all you like. It works just great on the real, live hardware, and the emulators I’ve tested it with are RealSpectrum, EmuZWin and Spin. Don’t bother using Spin if you want to score anything though, because it won’t work properly - none of the light gun games work properly with it. (Although Spin was absolutely vital for development, what with having a very nice built-in assembler and all.)

I’m afraid there’s a bit of assembly in here, so mind your fingers:

LABELONE:
	ld bc, 65533
	ld a, 14
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 49149
	ld a, 32
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 65533
	in a, (c)
	and 32
	cp 32
	jp z, labelone

	ld bc, 49149
	ld a, 16
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 65533
	in a, (c)
	and 16
	ld c, a
	ld b, 0
	ret

The first half of that checks if we’ve pulled the trigger. If we haven’t, it loops until we have. And when we have, it checks whether or not we’ve hit a target and returns the result to BASIC. So from BASIC, then, we can call this routine with a USR and we get a number back - if it’s 16, then the player’s shot the target. If it’s not, then they haven’t.

Now, what we might just need for more interesting projects is to split this into two routines, like these…

Check For Trigger Pull

	ld bc, 65533
	ld a, 14
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 49149
	ld a, 32
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 65533
	in a, (c)
	and 32
	ld b,0
	ld c, a
	ret

Check For Hit Target

	ld bc, 65533
	ld a, 14
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 49149
	ld a, 16
	out (c), a
	ld bc, 65533
	in a, (c)
	and 16
	ld b,0
	ld c, a
	ret

…and that way we can wait for the trigger to be pulled from BASIC, at which point we can do something else before checking if a target’s been hit.

PseudoBASIC

	LET A = USR (trigger pull address)
	IF A AND 32 THEN (trigger is pulled)
	LET A = USR (hit target address)
	IF A AND 16 THEN (target is hit)

Of course, you’ve probably realised that just shooting a white square is going to get kind of old kind of fast. But there’s things you can do to get around that - like combining the light gun with the old movie player routine and coming up with something like this:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsRhU-54Ues

So here we are.

American 3d Pool - Zeppelin Games, 1992

Ah, pool - favoured game of people who spend far too much of their time in pubs everywhere. Many’s the time I’ve been challenged to a game of mini-Snooker by someone who’s spent most of their life doing nothing but alternately drinking and playing pool. And every time I decline, on the basis that I am absolutely terrible, having spent very little time in pubs playing pool, they take offence.

When I go to a pub, it’s to have a drink and a chat with likeminded people. It’s not, as a rule, to try to fumble around a table in an effort to not hit any innocent bystanders with a bit of wood while poking balls into the table edges. My goals and those of pool-players have just never crossed over at any point. So please, please, stop asking me to play pool when you know full well that the result is a foregone conclusion. I’m not paying 50p a go to find out that you’re really good at pool and I’m not. I’m not trying to hassle you into a game of Quake, so just go away and let me finish my beer, alright?

Oh, American 3D Pool? Well, look at it. It’s a regular 2D pool game with less balls and with a pointless, badly thought out and badly-drawn 3D view tacked on. Colour-clash all over the shop, and the balls don’t even change size as they get further away from you. It’s about as fun as having a drink with someone intermittently whining that they want to play pool.

American Football - Mind Games, 1984

In my line of reviews it’s not often that I get asked if I want instructions. Naturally, since this is a game from 1984 I don’t want any instructions at all - because if I do ask for them I’m almost certainly going to get seventeen pages of typewriter simulation with lots and lots of beeping.

Sadly that means that when it asks for a defence (’defense’, surely?) all that’s going to happen is I get beeped at and told that I’ve made an illegal play. So, a quick reset and a look at the instructions reveals that there are about a dozen different ‘plays’ for me to print out as a reference while playing. Since I don’t have a printer handy, I just remember about four of them and started the game again. There’s not much point in having a big list, since there’s no clue as to what any of them mean anyway. No diagrams or the like that people who really play American Football get to look at.

So all in all it’s a bit like an American Football management game, only without any of the numbers or anything. Or any sort of tournament options. Or doing anything except calling the plays, in fact. It’s an odd way to play a game; it might as well be a text adventure for all the difference the graphics make. It does what it does well, but… it’s not much fun.

American Football - Softstone, 1984

Sometime in the early eighties, somebody came up with the idea that it’d be really cool if computers beeped when they wanted an input. Not just once, mind you - over and over and over and over until you either press a key or smash the computer into a million tiny pieces. One day I’m going to get my hands on a time machine, and when I do the first thing I do is going to be to get a copy of every set of winning lottery numbers ever. The second thing I do is find out who the person with the bad idea was so that when I go back in time I can murder them horribly before they come up with it, in the hope of never having to hear BEEP BEEP BEEP while I’m picking a team to manage (or whatever).

See, it’s not just those little choices, like picking your team. It’s when you’re at a fairly important menu and considering what approach you’re going to take while managing your ‘football’ team, like, I don’t know, this one:

I didn’t even get to the game - there’s nothing that it could possibly do to make up for that incessant noise. No points for this game.

American Tag Team Wrestling - Zeppelin Games, 1992

One of the best books I’ve ever read is Mick Foley’s autobiography, Have a Nice Day: A Tale of Blood and Sweatsocks. It’s the epic tale of one of the most unhinged wrestlers in its modern history and I recommend it wholeheartedly to everyone.

What I don’t recommend is this wrestling game. Regardless of what characters you pick, there are precisely two types of wrestler - you and the other guy - and regardless of what you do with the controls you’re going to get the crap beaten out of you in short order. You get knocked over and hammered while you’re on the ground, then you get up, are immediately thrown to the ground and then stomped on some more. It’s stupid and pointless.

Nice graphics, though.

Ammytris - Dream Makers Software, 1995

It’s a Tetris clone.

There’s a lot of Tetris clones out there, as I’m sure you’re aware. This… this is excellent. It’s got smooth controls, a fair speed-up from level to level, and a pleasant enough tune in the background too. In fact, it’s better than the last official Tetris game I played, Tetris DS.

There are precisely two flaws with this game - there’s no two player mode, and the ‘next block’ graphic isn’t coloured. Neither of these are particularly bad, either, so I’m quite pleased to give the first real score in absolutely ages - seven out of ten. Hurrah!

Amo del Mundo - Crom Software, 1990

Apparently this is based on a book by Jules Verne. It’s a scrolling shooter in which I can’t tell if I’m actually firing anything, or what’s dangerous and what’s not. I think I’m supposed to be grabbing bits of paper with codes on, but I’ve no idea why since everything’s in Spanish. They’re probably for a bomb or a power plant or something.

Anyway. It’s very bright and colourful, as you can see (and as you’d expect from a Spanish game). And I’ve an inkling that there’s a fairly solid game under it, too. It’s just a little confusing in places; I managed to grab a couple of code thingies by running/flying through and avoiding everything that moved.

Amoto’s Puf - SPE, 1988

I moved house at the beginning of the year. While there was no small amount of stress involved (not least the realisation that a good third of my belongings is made up of Sinclair-related hardware), it also brought some relief. You see, I used to live quite close to a man who believed himself to be the Incredible Hulk. Honestly. Nary a day would pass without him screaming at his colleagues/family members (he repaired cars right across the street from me) and declaring that either they did as they were told, or “I’ll smash!”. What first seemed to be endless entertainment soon became quite tiresome, and I grew to love the double-glazing.

The second most annoying neighbourhood noise was the sound of some wee bairn on a moped. Invariably with an L plate on, as it had been for the preceding five years or so, and always with some damage inflicted on the moped to make it as loud as possible. A fighter jet could have landed in the road and nobody would notice, because the sound of its engines would have been drowned out by the incessant whining of mopeds.

Anyway. This here’s a Spanish clone of ancient arcade machine Head On, only with mopeds rather than cars. It is not particularly interesting or fun, but not as bad as my former neighbours.

Amtrak Rail Pass - Ashley Greenup, 1989

I hate trains. Actually, that’s not entirely true - I don’t hate trains, just the system. I once spent four hours at Guildford waiting for a series of trains that didn’t exist. And I’ve no idea how long I’ve spent at Didcot Parkway (twinned with the seventh circle of hell), but it’s a long time. And don’t get me started on the cost…

So this game is, essentially, a bit like Dante’s Inferno. You get to travel the USA by train. I don’t know if you’re supposed to be going anywhere in particular or just seeing how far you get before you run out of money, or if you’re supposed to be collecting things along the way in some bizarre parody of Trans Am.

Anyway. It took me a little while to figure out the keys, so I’ll tell you what they are in case you want to try it - your options are on the left of the screen, just above the picture window that shows you where you are. 5 and 8 cycle left and right through the options, and 7 selects.

It’s an interesting concept, but I’m not sure how long I can stand pretending to wait for a train.

Well, that wasn’t all bad, I suppose. Next time it’s Amusement Park 4000 and some other games too.