Joystick Hero

By Pgyuri

Genre: Arcade: Waggler

An interesting entry here that one can play without even owning a telly, (though you do need a Currah µSpeech unit and ideally a joystick).  While some may complain about the Spectrum’s graphical limitations there is no argument it led the world in sound capability.  Those beautiful fuzzy crackles that were farted out in games like Ghostbusters still cause a wetting of the mouth, oops sorry – eye.  Such games didn’t use the Currah unit, and I think it’s fair to say that most Spectrum owners will not have one – but used correctly, it helped enhanced a few games (like err E.T?).  No problem if you don’t have one though, as some emulators include a Currah feature (ZX Spin for example).

So, once you connected up your Currah unit (the game checks it’s there and crashes accordingly) and load the game, you get an all black screen and a barrage of digital, clicking gibberish which I presume is meant to be words.  I put the babel fish in my ear and all became clear:

You follow the various messages & choices, like type of controller and gender, then we are launched into FAST PACED RESPONSE FUN!  You are asked to push up, pull down or move left/right on your joystick.

What’s that?  You don’t own a joystick?  Well you can still be a JOYSTICK HERO! just press 5 and use keys 12345 (lrduf).  This is how I played the game, and found it strangely fun – possibly mainly because I’m not used to these keys and actually working out the correct finger to twitch was mildly fun. 

Who knows, if you have the inner strength even YOU may be able to negotiate the obstacles and hear those immortal words…

".....Y***uUUu REE &LLL ****JSTkck hirow....."

So, is Joystick Hero crap?  Well, I spent most of my time playing attempting to work out how the hell it worked, couldn’t understand a word of the speech assault and found it totally unplayable without help. Well done Pgyuri!

(Though once I knew what was being said this was actually quite good (I played with my eyes closed), and a good idea for a more developed ‘proper’ game.)

Tipshack: As per the instructions press ENTER while it loads, and it prints a speech translation at the bottom of the screen (not that you’ll need that of course).

HACK SACK: Success after one key: 190 LET l=100

Download the game here and the instructions here.