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Those not happy with some of the Ultimate: Play The Game ports to the Commodore 64 that happened during the 1980s, in particular Sabre Wulf, should be interested to note that Psytronik Software has released Darkness for the 8-bit beige beast, and it's available on tape and disk, with RGCD.co.uk handling the cartridge version.

Darkness isn't a direct port or remake, but you can see that it is heavily influenced by the Sinclair ZX Spectrum classic. Your task is to guide Adventurer Stan around a lost jungle in order to rescue a fair maiden from certain doom.

There are 100 screens to explore in this 2D top-down arcade adventure, with some superb and luscious graphics and top quality gameplay.

I normally wouldn't recommend buying a game based on the box, but I have to commend Psytronik for the superb packaging. If you're feeling flush, you may consider purchasing the 'ultimate’ edition (pun intended, I'm sure) which includes a proper big box with full-colour artwork, a poster and a game map.

Full details are available on psytronik.net for the tape and disk version and rgcd.co.uk for the cartridge edition.

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The Mojon Twins has released an excellent arcade adventure game for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 128 and compatible machines called Ninjajar.

It begins when an intrepid hero returns from many months of battling the evil overlord in Chochester (which is a province of Badajoz). His partner and true love has been kidnapped by an evil monkey, which is the last thing he needed, so what should have been a time for some relaxation and vacation time is another adventure into the unknown and more ninjitsu along the way.

This game is very well presented, with the first level being a tutorial and has a guide called Mack who'll help you through. It's like an all-action Dizzy game but with more fighting and a rather bodacious-looking main character and some great gameplay and music. To grab this excellent download and to find out more information, head over to mojontwins.com/juegos_mojonos/ninjajar.

Without a compiler and even with, 8-bit BASIC is usually slow especially if you're trying to build something complex such as a game. And although assembly language is almost certainly the way to go if you're thinking of making any sort of entertainment software, there have been and continue to be perfectly good games written in BASIC even today.

There's obviously not much you can do without the use of variables, and defining your variables first means that they're quicker to use later on, so the first thing to do is to plan ahead.

If you're using something frequently, put it in a variable and if you're using variables for calculations, define and initialise them first. Here are two (fairly arbitrary) examples:

10 FOR I=0 TO 20
20 PRINT "HELLO MICRO MART READERS ";
30 NEXT

This would be slower than:

10 LET M$="HELLO MICRO MART READERS "
20 LET I=0
30 LET S=I
40 LET E=20
50 FOR I=S TO E
60 PRINT M$;
70 NEXT I

Although it takes a little time to declare and initialise the variables, the second example would be quicker when it gets to the main loop. Also, unless you're using a Sinclair ZX80 or ZX81, you can minimise this listing by using multi-statement lines with lines 10 to 40 fitting onto one line and 50 to 70 fitting on another. Happy programming!