Micro Mart


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Published in Micro Mart #1169

There's some great new software available for your favourite 8-bit personal computer, as Shaun Bebbington explains

Fundamentally Loathsome

I'd like to say that this first news story involves a life drawing class simulator. It is, however, a new piece of entertainment software by The Mojon Twins for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, which, not for the first time in its productions, features a scantily clad female (so perhaps not one for younger readers).

Its new release, Fundamentally Loathsome, is a simple survival shoot-'em-up with a somewhat fantastic storyline behind it. You play a female-formed robot called Phantomasa, who happens to wear high heels, but would otherwise appear naked to the human eye. Your creator, Julius Gepetus, is an inventor and installer of doors in the open countryside who lives in a small shed in the middle of the forest of Mnor, located in the province of Badajoz. This peaceful existence was quite rudely interrupted by by invading bugs and monsters, who have kidnapped the unsuspecting Julius. It's your job to save him.

Travelling through four dimensions, you must guide Phantomasa to collect the coins while avoiding or shooting the nasty bugs, although your armoury is limited. Fortunately, it may be replenished by collecting the relevant power ups, which fall from the skies above intermittently. Once you've collected or scored enough points, you're transported to the next level.

Fundamentally Loathsome is a quirky, but fun game, which, although a little on the easy side at first, can become quite compelling as you progress. For more information (with the English instructions being in an ltalicised font), go to tinyurl.com/Mojon-FL-ZX

One To Keep

A new game for the unexpanded Commodore VIC-20 has been released called The Keep, featuring a fast 3D environment with 256 floors to explore and escape from, which is quite an achievement for the 3.58K or so of RAM available to the programmer. Not only that, each level isn't exactly on the tiny side, and the game keeps track of your progress with a helpful map builder as you play.

You can choose from the pre-set or random map, so there's a lot of game on offer here, even after you have learned the quickest routes from the default game world, but you'll have to be quick because your lantern is running out of oil and, when it does dark, the Grues come out and eat you! Fortunately, you are resupplied [with oil] once you enter a new level.

What started as a simple experiment by the prominent programmer Kweepa (whose other works can be seen at www.kweepa.com) to create a Wolfenstein 3D-environment for the humble VIC-20 has, in a short space of time, become a full game that's lots of fun to explore. For all the relevant information, head over to tinyurl.com/TheKeepVIC

Chang's Adventure

I have another Commodore release to report on, this time for the infamous C64, which is crafted by the coder known as Mad Scientist. Chang's Adventure is aesthetically early 80s in look and feel, and is, fortunately, a whole lot of fun too. You must guide Chang around a maze-like island to fight and defeat hordes of ninjas, find the treasure, and board a boat to freedom. The whole production seems inspired by the 1985 Silverbird release Willow Pattern, so if you remember this budget release then you could do worse than to point your web browser at tinyurl.com/ChangC64

Shaun Bebbington