30th October 2010Looking for something a little bit special to breathe new life into your Beeb? Well, PD Games #11 is a new (Gasp!) BBC PD/8BS compilation featuring a number of BBC and Electron games salvaged from various contributions to software houses or user groups. As with many of the discs in this collection, it's not your average disc full of BASIC type-ins - most of the games are semi-professional machine code numbers. With a grand total of 22 games on the single disc, that's a lot of bang for your bucks too. Incidentally, the more games there are on these compilations then the longer our reviews seem to be. Without further ado therefore, let's get started.
Amidar is a hitherto unseen release by Adrian Stephens who, fact-fans, also wrote the famous Killer Gorilla from Micro Power. I am not quite sure what the title means but the game itself is an overhead grid game. You are in control of a sprite (on level one it's a gorilla, on level two it's a paint roller) and must visit every part of the grid to win, without colliding with the natives. As you border each rectangle on the grid, it is filled in in blue reminiscent of Frenzy. If you get cornered by the natives, hit the space bar to send them bouncing skyward for a few vital moments to make good your escape.
Complete each level and you get a bonus round where you hit the space bar at random and your character falls from the sky, possibly hitting a bonus at the base of the screen. Although this bonus round is a bit too random for my liking, the Amidar game itself is impressive, insofar as early Beeb games go. There's a tune playing on interrupt (only one channel sound though) and the natives make the game sufficiently challenging that it's good for quite a long gaming session.
Aqua Attack I do remember from my youth as an Acornsoft game present only on the BBC Master 128 introductory cassette. Basically this is centipede done underwater - it runs in Mode 2, runs smoothly and gives quite a sparse playing field. You try to blast the ever-descending green caterpillar thing (or sea monster variant) which splits in half if you score a direct hit on anything other than its head or tail. It's not a bad Centipede rip-off but there's frankly not a lot new here - the spider which pervades the base of the screen seems more intelligent than some of his cloned counterparts and the mine-laying snail which crawls across from right to left will merrily leave a trail without gaps if you don't shoot it up quickly.
Aqua Attack does not have much sound to speak of but the title screen and High Score table are both typically Acornsoft-looking. The game works on the BBC Model B too with no discernible differences. Alas, although it runs on the Electron, it does so so slowly that playing it is impossible.
Next we have Arcadia which looks to be a BBC version of Tynesoft's Electron release Wet Zone, a tough arcade blaster in which your ship falls from the top of the screen on each level, only to be rapidly attacked by scrolling, descending nasties of various shapes and sizes. The action in both versions takes place as a pace that can only be described as frentic.
This Arcadia is a curiosity item indeed. Loading it up brings the intriguing pre-game menu of normal, or demonstration, game. The latter gives you infinite lives and a shot at getting as far as you can on each level - if you are killed the level simply advances by one. The normal game basically just pits you against each type of adversary in turn and, if you see any adversary other than the flying arrows of level one you've been extremely lucky.
I found the key combination of X for left and C for right extremely irritating for obvious reasons. That said, there is more variety than you might at first imagine - playing the demo game really brings this home. Enemies start off simply scrolling and descending, but by the later levels hover, swoop, twist and spin. The game is very colourful and despite all the action on screen there never seems to be the slightest degree of fluxation.
It would be interesting to know if Arcadia is indeed this game's original name. The menu has no title screen and the game itself just displays the message 'PRESS ANY KEY TO START' in each mode!
Next we have Centipede; this one I know the origins of as it originally appeared in Your Computer (the magazine we have a big focus on this issue!). This is a highly polished clone of the classic bug game. It runs in Mode 2 so it's highly colourful. In this version it's actually a dude with a bazooka rather than a laser base and the field is littered with mushrooms which, rather than disappearing when shot, just create a narrow path that further rounds can travel through.
This makes the game surprisingly tough whilst at the same time providing a challenge that is not impossible. Furthermore, all of the elements of this clone are fully customisable. Simply tap ESCAPE and you can change everything from the number of mushrooms on screen at the beginning of each level to the speed of the 'mushroom dropper'! You can even enable a joystick instead of keys.
However, there's a flaw and, for Centipede purists, it's a big one. The centipede of the title in all of the clones worthy of the name moves down the screen from top to bottom and splits in half whenever it is hit by a carefully-aimed bullet. In this version however, no splitting occurs. The piece of the pede which you strike simply disappears and the course the pede was following remains completely unchanged! This dynamically changes the pace of the game itself, removing all elements of randomness and severely downgrading the gameplay. This is a real shame because if it remained true to the arcade original, I would have no hesitation in saying this was a better version than Bug Blaster!
I don't know if there was a prequel to Chopper II but what we come to next is another classic clone, this time of Acornsoft's Planetoid. The main difference being that, instead of flying a plane, you take control of a helicopter (hence 'chopper').
I must confess I am not a big fan of these "Defender"-style games where aliens teleport into the screen, shoot at you and try to pick up stalagmites from the base of the screen and carry them to the top. Alas, this version is the most infuriating I have ever played. You can fire lasers from your helicopter but they frequently pass straight through the foes. Their bullets on the other hand seem to never miss. So they teleport in, right next to you, unleash a microscopic pixel wide bullet you can hardly see and the next moment boom that's another of your three lives gone.
Having said that, obviously Chopper II is a little bit more than your average compilation game. With a little perseverance it's playable and perhaps a "must have" item if you get your adrenalin rush from needing lightning fast reactions and the ability to process the actions of multiple enemies at once.
Next we come to Cred Breaks Out, perhaps one of the best games I have ever played on the Beeb and, it would appear, originally written by TSB for young savers to play in branches whilst their mummies waited to withdraw the family Giro. Remember TSB? The bank that liked to say yes? As for "cred" breaks out well, I'm not too sure if that's meant to be credit but the game has nothing to do with banking so let's see what you do in fact have to do.
Basically, this is a top down maze game with the goal of rescuing some clueless survivors and leading them to safety. Safety is defined as your spaceship at the top left hand corner of the screen which helpfully glides in and out of view at the beginning and end of each level. Two marauding cartoon nasties patrol the corridors. If you bump into them you will lose a life.
When each level begins, you see five hapless characters trapped in a box somewhere in the maze. The first thing you need to do is to reach them and open the door. To assist you, you are carrying two blocks (labelled with the TSB logo). You can drop a block in front of you at any time and it serves as a barrier to anything in the maze that moves, including you and your companions. Indeed, you can effectively box yourself in quite easily by dropping one block in front of you and one behind you. The blocks will protect you from the nasties for about ten seconds; after this they disappear.
Get to the box and open the door and the fun really starts. Like some human caterpillar the posse of people attach to you - five bleeps one after another indicates they're all ready to follow you. You try (!) to lead them to safety, again avoiding the green blob things intent on doing you in and using a cunning combination of blocks and last minute changes in route planning.
If the nasties touch one of your followers there is a dirge of notes and the chain breaks and they go scuttling off in all directions. You therefore need to go and track them down in the maze, again avoiding all the nasties and waiting for the appropriate bleep to signify that they are following you again. All the time an oxygen bar in the top right beats down.
Being nothing but an overgrown child myself, I can honestly say that I love this game - it's a simple idea done extremely well and is very, very addictive. The layouts of each maze grow in intricacy as the game progresses - level five is very tough and is far as I have reached.
In amongst the Software Projects titles on the Acorn Electron World web site is a little game called Ewgeebez by one Matthew Newman, marketted as a BBC only game but one which worked wholescale on the Acorn Electron too. Guess what? Newman also wrote another unpublished game, Drunken Dan, and it too works on all series! It's the next thing on this compilation; a very simple Mode 2 jaunt with lives symbolised by pink elephants.
The idea is this, Dan is rat-arsed but still lives with his mum, who has told him he's not to come home inebriated. So your task is to sober Dan up by popping as many breath mints as possible. Cue big vast open space into which the computer throws, at varying speeds, breath mints, cocktails, pints, six packs and cider. You must avoid anything apart from the mints, or neutralise the beverages with a bottle of soda stream grasped in your sweaty fingers. Eat enough breath mints and you'll see the door to your house fly open and you can struggle across the arena towards it and hope you're not clobbered by the last flying wine glass before you make it home!
It's a pretty stupid idea for a game and there's not a lot to it but it's surprisingly fun.
There are two hangman games on this disc too. Hangdroid is the first, from which you can choose words from categories like 'space', 'computing' or 'tv' as well as defining your own. You are then given a blank screen and asked to guess a letter. Each time you do, the computer goes through a long tortuous sequence of flashing lights and animated processing for no good reason, finally drawing a piece of an android if your chosen letter is not in the word.
Hangman (Desert Style) is the second, a much more polished product which draws a rather natty looking gallows and cowboy as the incorrect guesses pile up. This attempts to import hangman to an arcade game with a high score table proclaiming "Lay your name on me, hot stuff" and introducing all manner of zippy little sounds and tunes throughout. It made me smile. Unfortunately there is no facility to input your own words without hacking into the program and so it is limited to only a few goes before words begin to repeat.
It's fairly obvious who Jedi Knight was written for - Star Wars fans. It is a straight-forward beat-em-up - you vs. Darth Vader, each weilding swords. Rather unusually for a game, it is rendered in Mode 1. Hence the graphics are very detailed and appealling. Unfortunately, the gameplay is appalling. You advance towards Herrn. Vader, taking one step for each press of the 'right' direction control button. Then hit 'up' and 'strike'. And he dies. Every. Single. Time. Level after level is cleared. I got bored within two minutes. I'm not sure if this was just meant to be a demo with good graphics. I'm sorry to say it doesn't deserve the title of "game".
Jouster is a strange title - it's sort of a poor man's version of Skirmish but with the speed cranked up to maximum. You sit astride a buzzard and practically bounce around the screen flapping its wings and trying to collide with an enemy buzzard controlled by the computer. The sound of the wings flapping is good and the game really does move fast. But the atmosphere of the original arcade Joust is sadly missing. The skill of the original is in trying to manoeuvre your bird so that it is a fraction of a pixel higher than your opponent's - with the action moving at the speed of light this is an impossible feat. Collisions therefore become a simple question of luck. That is, when you can manage to make contact with the enemy at all. On many occasions, time runs out before either you or the computer can be crowned overall winner.
On then to Mastermind which is the first pure BASIC game on this disc and is the whole familiar 'guess a sequence of colours' shebang. Groan! This is programmed terribly - if you make a mistake in typing, the whole layout is corrupted by spurious messages. You basically choose the number of colours (4-7) and then, if you dare to tap any key not in this selection you get shouted at. There isn't even any reward for success!
Morfix is a game for arcade adventurists who like the weird and the unexplained. You are told, on loading, to solve the many puzzles to rescue your true love. That's it. You are then thrown into an odd monochrome castle where you control what looks like a ghostly snowman. You can move left and right and jump from platform to platform. Unlike most traditional arcade adventures you do not walk from one room to another but teleport there by means of the archways that you find on some of them. Pictures of John Wayne, lampshades and posters provide some platforms, and there also seem to be a number of puzzle pieces to collect and items to be collected and used in the appropriate place.
Morfix is a full machine code game of the type one might expect to have been released by Superior/Acornsoft. Everything moves very smoothly in Mode 4 and the character designs are superb. The whole thing really feels quite eerie. Swinging on ropes takes a lot of getting used to but the puzzles all feel fairly logical, even if the environment is mindbogglingly strange. I get the feeling there's a little gem here waiting to be explored.
Next up is Mr. Do which is a maze game far too slow and ridiculous to be called fun. You are a little miner with a fireball in his hand and your aim seems to be to collect the carrots. In the very centre of the screen is a vortex from which emerge dragons. These can be taken care of either by flinging the fireball at them or by leading them underneath a falling rock.
What really irks about this game is both the slow speed and the level of difficulty. Both you and the dragons can burrow around creating a maze on the fly. What therefore tends to happen is that dragons plod around, but as you try to get near enough to them to fling the fireball, they suddenly barge through whatever piece of scenery was separating the pair of you and, because the game takes so long to respond to your keypress (to retreat) you are unceremoniously sizzled to death.
After four dragons have been released, the vortex turns into a diamond which, when collected causes the immediate unleashing of three pacman-like ghosts. This can make eight nasties on a 12x13 grid! With one measly fireball, I don't fancy anyone's chances much. The trouble is that the rocks seem to take about three seconds to dislodge after you've walked under them so you need to bear this in mind when planning your strategy. The keys are somewhat strange too - SPACE to go down? And when you are killed, the game freezes. Ugh, get it off my screen!
And on to Orcrest. This is another graphic adventure, this time done in very colourful Mode 5 with the protagonist a cartoony balloon with feet. The goal of this game is not to solve puzzles but simply to explore the playing area and collect all the crystals you can. The game plays a little like Bug Eyes 2 with large sprites and an even larger playing area to traverse. Clearly this version has been hacked by someone as the energy bar on the right never diminishes no matter how many times you accidentally jump into the patrolling beasties.
Judging gaps between platforms is made somewhat difficult by this game. You can practically walk right out into thin air before you need to press the jump key meaning you can cover much greater distances than it at first appears. Furthermore, you can also use baddies as stepping stones meaning that, if you jump at the right time, you can immediately jump again to cover even bigger areas. This is important because the game initially leads you straight into a trap from which it is impossible to escape. You need to find where you can diverge from this obvious route to see other areas of the game.
I'm not sure how complete this game is - there is the energy bar hack and some odd effects (such as the flashing scenery) that make me feel somewhat uneasy about its completion status. I suspect it was originally destined for some software company but never made it out of the lab. Worth a look though.
Protector is one of those annoying BBC games which is totally joystick-controlled. Usually such indicates that the game was made for one of the BBC Micro & Electron shows and not intended for a wider release. Protector does look as if it has got a lot of promise though. Unfortunately, with no joystick near my BBC at the moment, a review of this game will have to wait for another day.
Next we have See Emily Play which opens with a message suggesting it was a free game downloaded from the Bulletin Boards. Again, this is a fully-featured machine code number. In this one, you play a witch and must collect magic hats liberally scattered throughout a number of levels. You can run left and right along platforms or press RETURN to unleash a blast of broomstick power, propelling you upwards until you press either the left or right keys to glide in the appropriate direction. Birds and 'mini-witches' float around draining your energy.
Each level starts with a nice scrolling message and death gives you the amusing message "Hey punk! You completed x% of the show." Based on the messages I've received I figure there are 100 levels in total. It's colourful and each level is perfectly possible to complete without losing any lives, as long as you have a bit of patience.
Side Fighter is another not famous game by another famous name, this time by Mr. David Hoskins, the creator of all-time favourite Ghouls. Its instructions boast it is the ultimate zap game. I'm not too sure about that but it does involve a pretty furious zapping spree with two separate drone ships unleashing the torrents of fire. Both are under your control - one sitting at the top left of the screen, the other at the bottom right.
You choose, as each session starts, how you wish to operate these. Either you can move each one independently (not recommended) or you can dual-control them so that they both fire simultaneously but, as you move the left one down the right one moves up (recommended). Either way you quickly find that if you send a volley of bullets into the centre of the screen, the volley will either hit something or rebound back and forth until it does.
Aliens teleport in in increasing numbers, spraying their own bullets in all directions and before you know it, it's fair to say that this game descends into pandemonium. That said, the display is cool and the scoring system was very ahead of its time - each number sprite is both large and impressively 3D-shadowed. Another title which could have easily held its own as a professional release.
Now we've got yet another unreleased Acornsoft game next - Sphenisciformes by J. C. Mutton. This is undoubtedly the official Acornsoft version of Mango/Rubble Trouble with a few little twists of its own. The idea of Sphenisciformes is that you are alone in a maze with four mutants. The only way to kill them is to hurl the icecubes which make up that maze at the mutants to crush them. This is, of course, easier said than done. First of all, you need to clear a path, or find a path, where you can hide behind a cube and hurl it successfully. Secondly, whilst you are concentrating on doing this, the mutants tend to seize their opportunity to attack you!
This Acornsoft variant introduces a few ideas that I have not seen elsewhere. Firstly, there is a teleporting snake which is seemingly quite innocuous. It just initially sits in one location hissing and spitting and is, naturally, best avoided. However, it jumps between its initial location and another. When it is about to teleport, the area it is going to move to flashes. This has the effect of sometimes interfering in your carefully laid escape plans.
Secondly, on most versions of this game, you start with just two mutants to avoid. Others may hatch from eggs (or the like) but there is a steady increase in difficulty. In Sphenisciformes you start not only with four mutants but with another four in eggs which will hatch in about thirty seconds. You therefore need to make a choice in the first few moments as to whether you are going to try to take care of those mutants already on the rampage or instead try to destroy the eggs. You destroy the eggs simply by touching them - which is much easier than hurling icecubes at them after they hatch.
Thirdly, and finally, you can either melt an icecube or push it, using RETURN or SHIFT appropriately. On most versions, if a cube is not blocked by another it automatically melts, else it is pushed. I cannot really see any reason why this version has a different system but it is not particularly troublesome.
This is a nifty little game, very high in difficulty but cute enough to attract you back for one last go. There's also a nice game over sequence.
Next up is Tubes, a little BASIC game by Simon Ward which is basically a twist on a reaction test. Parcels fly down three tubes (initially) correspondingly numbered. You tap the appropriate number key as the parcel reaches the end of the tube to connect it to a central tube and complete the delivery. There's really not a lot more to the game than that. The graphics are unimpressive and the game appears much like the results of a Saturday afternoon at the keyboard.
Turbo is basically Superior's Overdrive with the car size made a little smaller and the addition of bends. Unfortunately the BBC's lack of memory means the bends are always of the same degree and, rather than the road steadily turning into a bend, the straight road is blanked out and suddenly replaced by a bend. I do realise that this was probably the only option but it looks terribly amateurish, even if the game itself plays quite well.
You use the ZX*? combination to control the car and speed it up and brake. Graphics and sound are also good and the game features a high score table and a nice bouncing-in effect of the car under starters' orders. There are some mountains in the background but the decision was evidently taken not to scroll them. This is a shame; I think the bend effects could have been greatly improved with such an addition.
The last game on the disc is called Westquest and invites you to make decisions to speed your wagons towards Oregon. It is in Mode 7 with block graphics and is aimed at young children. It asks simple questions like 'You have $700 left. What will you spend on your oxen team? Food? Misc?' and waits for your replies. You are then offered the chance to hunt. If you take it up, you need to copy words exactly from the screen to the keyboard to kill an animal and feed your family.
There are some unintentionally humorous elements to this game. I responded $0 to the demand for 'Misc' and was instantly told 'You didn't buy any medical supplies and have died of pnemonia. Would you like a fancy funeral? (Y) Would you like us to inform your next of kin?' I typed Y again and was charged another $50 for a telegram. Nice to know exploitation of the dead continues even in computer-world.
When one considers that the maximum number of games present even in some Beau Jolly releases was twelve, PD Games #11 is quite simply a brilliant compilation. It is worth downloading just to play Cred Breaks Out but I would also recommend Amidar, Morfix, See Emily Play and Sphenisciformes as particularly praiseworthy. I hope we will see a lot more discs like these over the coming years and who knows? There might be some as yet unseen games hiding in your disc collection?
