• CBM Free Magazine, Issue 56 - Part 9

    From Stephen Walsh@39:901/281 to All on Wed Dec 7 10:25:05 2011
    when I looked I was very unimpressed on first looks. The game is something that looked like a SEUCK game, HOWEVER I was totally wrong! And you will also find this out as soon as you start pressing fire and moving. This is no SEUCK game, this is very smooth, and while the graphics could be improved somewhat; the game play is very solid. Music wise on the title screen is a classical piece that sounds a bit like “ave maria” but without the melody, this loops and actually sound OK, its a more electronic version than a true classical replication of the original. And on death we are greeted with another tune.

    LEVEL1 GUARDIANS OF THE GATE

    The attacks come in waves, and from what I have heard and seen there are some very random characters to destroy, even penguins get a look in! Each wave has a name and this is displayed at the bottom of the screen along with number of remaining lives and score. The game is very fast action and super responsive. In game sounds are great think of Galaxians, and you get a rough idea.

    LEVEL2 MADNESS MOONS

    Level 2 sees us with a different attack faze and some killer moons to attack these don’t just scroll down but seem to roll around the screen. You seem to have to kill a set amount on each level to progress further in the game, my poor attempts didn’t seem to find any power ups and I think this is something that should be implemented especially smart bombs!

    LEVEL3 THE CELESTIAL SEA

    Level 3 is about the best I can muster up (without cheating) with my ham-fisted flying experiments, you can only move left and right and not up the screen. The movement on level 3 is definitely a disadvantage, when the fish start to attack you really need an option for moving up and down. The game has as you will be aware from the screen shots, a very Jeff minter feel about it; not just because of the strange aliens but more the game play. The more you play the game the more you “get into it” very nice effort indeed.

    Even after my futile attempts to destroy the world we are greeted with a strange death sequence looks a bit like a psychedelia type of mix, sorry it doesn’t show up well in an static shot think of symmetrical moving blobs.

    DEATH SCENE

    On of the later levels, looking very Jeff Minter like

    Solid game play and actually you do get used to the graphics, sounds are great, no in game music to distract so you can listen to your own preferred artist.

    On the main screen you have 2 options
    1. Pressing the Commodore key will toggle the game mode from normal to insane The insane option has the effect of speeding up the advancing aliens to they attack faster.

    2. The other option is pressing the control key will cycle through the starting levels, so you can play the later levels even if you are as bad at shoot-em-ups as I am.

    Graphics 6/10
    Sounds 6/10
    Gameplay 7/10
    Lastability 7/10
    Overall 7/10

    Solid gameplay and a wacky outlook on life are what you will get from playing this, if you like flashing strobe effects then its one to try, smooth scrolling and little to fault, its a tried and tested formula but well executed and with a vary Minter style.

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    ADVERT
    On the Way to Fun: An Emotion-Based Approach to Successful Game Design

    Roberto Dillon (Author)

    Product details
    Paperback: 200 pages
    Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press (8 Mar 2010)
    Language English
    ISBN-10: 1568815824
    ISBN-13: 978-1568815824


    Golden Age of Video Games: The Birth of a Multi billion Dollar Industry [Paperback]

    Roberto Dillon (Author)

    Product details
    Paperback: 209 pages
    Publisher: A K Peters/CRC Press; 1 edition (28 April 2011)
    Language English
    ISBN-10: 1439873232
    ISBN-13: 978-1439873236


    ****************************
    PRINCE OF PERSIA
    COMMODORE 64 VERSION
    ***************************

    Finally it is done...........

    Mr Sid has completed a version of the famous and very eagerly awaited Prince of Persia (commonly referred to as P.O.P) for the curious you can look at his blog http://popc64.blogspot.com/

    WHAT IS IT
    Prince of Persia is a platform game developed by Jordan Mechner and was originally released in 1989 for the Apple II computer. The game was a major mould breaker mainly because of the animation used. Jordan watched his younger brother running, jumping and playing and created a character that mimicked his brother with a process called roto-scoping, this involves tracing the outline of a real person and his movements into a sprite package to give a realistic impression of movement. Think Impossible mission and you get the idea

    IMPOSSIBLE MISSION FOR THE C64 BY EPYX

    Although the game was released for a number of hardware platforms, it never made its way to the commodore 64, this could be due to the memory limitations and the fact the game would have to continually pull data from a disc or be produced on a cartridge; and this may have been thought to expensive a process because the Commodore 64 was maybe thought not a viable hardware platform at the time. Who knows?

    The port of the game was achieved by studying the original Apple II code and copying it across to the Commodore 64, to run the program you will need an
    EASY FLASH cartridge (again because of the amount of date and the continual

    --- CrashWrite 2.0
    * Origin: -:)--- Dragon's Lair BBS --(:- (39:901/281)