Previous Next

Einar Saukas has recently released a puzzle game named Zen, which will work on all models of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, including the 16K variant. Einar claims that this production has "very intuitive gameplay" and therefore there are "no instructions needed".

If you're running Zen on a Speccy with more than 48K, you'll be treated to some excellent music by Mister Beep, who's a master at manipulating the internal beeper to great musical effect.

The game involves creating a closed circuit with all of the pieces presented on each level, with each containing up to four connecting ends. Those with three or fewer ends may be rotated clockwise until each component has no loose ends.

Rotating each piece is done by moving the cursor to highlight it first, and then using fire on the joystick or space if you're using the keyboard controls of the odd configuration of Q, A, O and P (for up, down, left and right respectively).

There's a really nice loading screen to gaze at, which is the only real bit of eye candy that you'll get as everything thereafter is simply functional, as nothing more is needed for this sort of production anyway. There's over 25K of songs to listen to on load. Unfortunately, there's nothing to listen to during play.

Zen is a puzzle game that would have benefitted from a timer during play, but that's my only real gripe with it, as I like this sort of grey-matter-taxing entertainment software a lot. And adding the timer may have required a password system, which would have meant fewer levels or no way of loading on a 16K machine, so there's some balance in the design decisions made here.

Einar has been kind enough to include the full course code along with the tape images, bundled in a zip archive for you to download. To do so, point head to oldschool-gaming.com/news.php?art=228

Previous Next

Super Starship Space Attack (SSSA) is a new game from Misfit for the expanded Commodore Vic-20, requiring an extra 16K of RAM to work.

The game begins with some rather pleasant music, with three skill levels to choose from. In order to unlock the bonus levels, it must be played at the middle skill level. If you have the trainer 'child' level selected, the music slows down, which is a nice touch.

Once you're ready to start, things appear to be a typical vertically scrolling 2D shoot-'em-up. Actually, SSSA is a bi-directionally scrolling affair in which you must collect the pods in order to escape the level (the exits are only open when you've collected the correct amount of pods).

Each pod is in a pre-determined place, but certain attacking aliens may appear anywhere within the level.

There's quite a lot of polish to the game, which includes the sort of smooth pixel scrolling seen on more powerful 8-bit personal computers, as well as the gameplay to match. Scrolling upwards and downwards and the exploration element to play means it's something a bit more than just another vertically scrolling blaster.

To find out more and to download the game file, head over to the Vic-20 Denial community forums at tinyurl.com/Super-Starship-Space-Attack.