Previous Next

Jonathan Cauldwell has started 2009 in style with his own unique twist on golf, now available for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Golf is one of those pastimes that I have a love/hate relationship with - as in I hate to watch it, and, for that matter, to play it (in real life at least) - but it's one of those concepts that transfers to the binary world very well in my opinion. I was therefore intrigued by Jonathan's latest creation on receiving the advanced preview copy - and true to form, Albatrossity melds together a few different game types in one fell swoop.

Each course is exactly one screen and wouldn't look out of place in a 2D platform game. Rather than having a par score for every hole, and different types of clubs to choose from, you have a number of three different balls, each with its own characteristics, which may be changed before you take your shot. These are rubber for extra bounce, the heavier steel, and finally sticky. You can then direct your shot, adjusting the power that you're going to put into it, and before you can shout 'fore!', your projectile should be heading towards the hole, marked by a traditional flag.

Whilst you're given a fairly easy starter, you will soon realise that later courses can only be completed if you have a certain number and type of balls left; for instance, steel will shatter through the barriers found intermittently from the fourth onwards.

Albatrossity allows up to four players to compete, with a course editor included for good measure. Proceedings are accompanied by some thoroughly lovely musical scores by Matthew Westcott for those with AY-equipped machines. Head over to Jonathan's homepage at members.fortunecity.com/jonathan6/egghead to find out more and download this latest production.

Previous Next

If you had time to get online over the seemingly-long-ago Christmas period, you will already know about Frosty The Snowman II by Joe Dixon for the Commodore 64, which was released on Christmas day by Beyond Reproach. This game is unofficially the sequel to the 1990 Your Commodore cover tape epic Frosty The Snowman.

Frosty The Snowman II is a split-screen run and jump racing game for one or two players, with each snowman being on a mission from Santa Claus to negotiate the nasty hazards ahead, including disappearing platforms, moving Christmas puddings and roaming bottles. The idea is to get to the end of the course safe and sound. There are several improvements over the original, including the ability to push your opponent into the obstacles on screen. It's all great fun if you want to get into the festive spirit again for, er, Christmas 2009 already. Head over to http://www.redizajn.sk/tnd64/f_f.html

There haven't been many racers released on 8-bit home computers during this non-commercial era (certainly not from a driver's perspective anyway), so I was pleased to discover that Tomi Malinen's Grand Prix is planned for release this year for the Commodore 64. Tomi is actually the programmer, and not a driver from Finland who is breaking through the ranks. The elementary game mechanic is looking fairly solid already, so it's one to keep an eye on. A fairly basic playable preview is available from koti.mbnet.fi/malintom/c64/tmgp_20081227.prg to use on your emulator, or to run on a real machine with the relevant transfer methods.