Cheerful Chicken

By MykeP

Genre: drop ‘n’ don’t hatch

This is more, or less, based on the modern game character of a similar name.  Those familiar with it will know it involves button (or pad) mashing in order to lay as many eggs as possible, and that this version bears little to no resemblance whatsoever!  The ever increasing number of sprites to be drawn on the screen presents a problem for the spectrum coder: how to maintain game speed and keep pushing those pixels around?  Well, with some lightening fast machine code, clever game design and general use of nifty tricks it is more than possible to make a playable version for the good old ZX-Spectrum.

But this is the CGC, and thankfully MykeP has used none of the above!

 

Fans of loading screens be sure to turn off turbo load and appreciate the lovely easter eggs hiding under the attributes.  This chicken based game is programmed in BASIC and marks an excellent first entry from Myke.

I've not played any modern version, but I think I've got to grips with the gameplay here.  Press the any key and the chicken lays an egg, fail to press a key before a random counter winds down and they hatch.  It is not actually so much about button mashing, as button holding, as that suffices to keep the game going!  The number of eggs on the screen is your score.  So naturally it is fairly easy to accrue a large number of eggs, and equally naturally the spectrum slowly grinds to a halt giving S.N.A.I.L a run for its money!  I suppose in this sense the biggest challenge is one of inner strength, how long can you bear to keep mashing a key  and watching your poor spectrum get tortured?

Nice presentation, lovely beeper music, and an unplayable load of old carp that is most welcome in the competition!

Thank you Myke!

Download TAPE here.

Countless Runes All Pisspoor

By Steve McCrea

Genre: Capricious platform

I could be wrong, but it looks like this charming little game is loosely based on EFMB, an ingenious cross platform game released in 2012.  It’s hard to believe that a crap game could result from such an innovative, addictive and playable concept.  Somehow though, Steve has managed this feat.

So the aim of the game is simple enough, move the cyan main character around the platforms collecting the yellow runes while avoiding the (stationary) red runes.  These runes are randomly generated each level using the RND function, some array thing I don’t understand and poking the UDGs.  Following the rule that each byte of the rune is symmetrical and not zero, they more often than not, with a bit (or lot) of imagination, bear a passing resemblance to something.  Here are some choice examples C.R.A.P generated while playing:

(1-Headless screamer, 2-Telepharg , 3-Zogstomper, 4-Bunnybot)

C.R.A.P has similar advanced 4 way screen wrapping to EFMB and teleporter mechanics, and is quite good fun for a few tries.  Each screen takes a while to generate, and creates setups that are impossible to complete without losing a life (or several lives).

Countless Articles Rather Poor.

Tipshack: don’t let the excitement of randomly generated runes distract you from the gameplay.

HACK PACK: Immeasurable lives: at the start of line 190 insert: LET nl=3

Download here.

Rat Mole!

By Rebelstar without a cause

Genre: Pliagamaze

Hmmm.  Rat Mole!  Reminds me of something somehow* but I just can’t think what.  Anyway, have a look at this introscreen.  You might be forgiven if you thought the asymmetry of the R-Redefine keys was a mistake, but on closer inspection it’s obviously an ingenious way to offset the whole screen and give the game an anarchic feel.

It’s rare for a crap game to have a redefine keys option, and all I will say here is that Rat Mole! takes an….alternative approach to it.

The game starts and gives the appearance of a rather nice 1980s type in maze game.  The goal, I assume, is to shoot all the other udgs on the screen (you are the black one).  The first thing to notice is the speed, Rat Mole! is excruciatingly slow and the keys unresponsive.  In fact at one point I thought the code actually intentionally waited for the baddy to pass before allowing me to shoot at it!  There’s some interesting collision detection here, sometimes you can’t shoot the baddies in the backside, and it’s funny watching them collide with each other and spend a while stationary while deciding what to do next.  The AI involves changing direction on collision with a block or another baddy, so they spend more time on the outer reaches.

It took me a little while to work this out, but when you shoot the blue udg the game completes and gives you a ‘You Success!’ message (and caused me to unintentionally guffaw – quite an achievement).  So the aim of the game is more to ‘shoot the blue UDG’.  I had a poke about in the code but couldn’t see why this was, as it uses the DIMension command which I never got to grips with while learning BASIC (for shame).  There’s some pretty decent coding behind this, especially as it was coded very quickly and after bedtime!

Rat Mole!  has a lot of great features that makes it perfect Cassette 50 material: an inkling of an idea, some effort put in, not too shabby coding, but fundamentally flawed - So well done Rebelstar!

All in all a model entry, and with some sound effects, a few bugs fixed and played on an emulator cranked right up – I would actually enjoy this.

*My lawyers will be in touch

Tipshack: the sprites spend most of the time on the outer corridor, so stay in the middle and shoot from there.

HACK PACK: Immunity 606 LET tomato=255

Download here.

EDIT-Rebelstar downloaded a bugfixed (?!) version which can be downloaded here.