Hold Up, by Barry Wakelin, is best compared to an early Acornsoft or Micro Power game. Your mission is ridiculously simple. You are in charge of a large mutli-coloured bank robber who must grab a bag of swag from one side of the screen and ferry it back to the other. As you dart backwards and forwards you are under attack from a rain of bombs. The bombs all fall at the same rate but fall at random in columns.
The whole screen is awash with movement after a few moments. The initial delay is due to the fact that your robber is protected, at least initially by three towers of blocks. He can stand underneath any tower and be completely protected, only having to brave the short gaps between them where the bombs fall without impedence. Unfortunately, each time a bomb hits the tower, it destroys one of the blocks of that tower. When the towers are gone, he is completely at the mercy of your frantic keypressing.
Although there's not really a lot to this game, it's sort of fun, in the mindless "let's have another game of Hopper" way. It has the same background music as Hopper, which plays on interrupt throughout the action. Grabbing and returning that first bag of swag is relatively simple and, as the towers start to crumble, the game becomes progressively more frantic as a result. That said, it never really feels very frustrating.
There are some nice inclusions. Rescue four bags of swag and towers begin to reappear (This is an incredible relief when it happens!), even if they are sound pounded down to nothingness again. Each successful fetch and carry mission plays a congratulations tune, and results in an increase in the speed of the bombs and a corresponding increase in reaction time.
When you are hit by a bomb, you fall flat on your back - and a little ambulance whizzes onto the screen, sirens blaring, and carts you off to be fixed up. After that, you can try again.
The high score table features a scrolling message and a curious 'Press 'C' to change any of the values' message. Doing so brings up a menu of sorts in relation to how what the maximum value of the swag bag should be, how many bags of swag you should need to collect and how much swag increases the level (and makes the bombs fall faster). Unfortunately, this menu seems to have been designed almost solely to confuse anyone who uses it with messages like 'Type (3 to 20 x 100) or (10 to 100 x 100)' leaving the player to scratch his head rather than give a quick answer. I found this too frustrating to use and just stuck with the defaults which are perfectly acceptable for a good game.
Warning: Survival is due to a high degree of luck. That said, this simple game could easily have held its own as a fully commercial release. Definitely worth playing.
Hold Up was written by Barry Wakelin and is available on the Your Computer 5.02 companion disc. It runs on a BBC (Model B only) with PAGE at &1900.
30th October 2010
