Home Computing Weekly


Oil Panic/Jet Plane
By Mark Jameson
TI99/4A

 
Published in Home Computing Weekly #96

The first game on this cassette places you in the position of the owner of a hotel in which the boiler in the basement has broken. Unless you can act swiftly, the boiler, fast filling with hot oil, will burst and kill you and all the guests.

Your robot, Mr. Fixer, can be used to connect sections of pipeline between the boiler and a nearby safety valve.

The actual circumstances of this scenario do not bear close scrutiny. The floor, for example, is covered in bricks which the robot must avoid, and it mustn't touch the red-hot walls or it's the scrapheap for it.

The idea is quite interesting, but the effect suffers through poor keyboard control.

The second program, Jet Plane, involves stealing a plane from its hangar and trying to escape with it. Graphics use is minimal, and the program is generally poorly implemented.

It both cases, the instructions were confined to the display with no written copies, which means that you must write down what you need to know. The programs suffer from spelling mistakes and appear to have been written by a child.

P.B.