Reviews

Space Escape by Aleisha Beesher.

If you're growing tired of flip screen space adventures, and I am not, then you'd do well to try this impressive first AGD outing by Aleisha Beesha.

You, the space suited protagonist, have been abducted by an alien squadron while on a quite routine scouting mission. We never get the aliens side of things do we? Perhaps this 'scouting', as we're pleased to call it, is unlicensed trespass and nosey parkering.

Either way you've been abducted and you need to find your laser, launch key and fuel for your escape. Some pathways are impassable until you get the laser, giving the game a puzzle element. Graphics are decent enough, the map is varied and fun to explore (and has the odd easter egg), more so with the teleporters.

The difficulty level is mostly spot on, though a couple of screens spoil it by spawning too many aliens in a cramped space resulting in a rapid loss of all lives. It's doable, but a questionable feature if you want the modern leg jiggling player to persevere.

A great game and very impressive first attempt by not only a newcomer to AGD, but to the Spectrum.

If released BITD we'd be speaking of it now, and more fondly than Project Future.

Rating: Everyday nourishing porridge with a spoon of syrup. (~7/10)

Tags: AGD, flip screen, space, platformer

The Spectrum version of SQIJ came into existence in the early 17th Century during a botched attempt by occultists to raise the devil. Instead of Satan, a twisted homunculus of an idea entered the astral plane, struggling and thrashing against the tide, accreting malevolence, until one day in 1987 it found its outlet via the most atrocious hatespunk of Sinclair BASIC the world has ever seen. Then, inexplicably, it was deemed worthy of a cassette release by The Power House and a number of young gamers learned a valuable lesson about human nature.

SQIJ is a very poor game. The best thing about it is that it doesn’t actually work – you have to POKE 23658,0 if you want to play it. The giant sprite does not make up for the ropey graphics, numerous bugs and slow gameplay. It’s nearly impossible to say anything good about it, other than the fact that it’s become a wellspring for banter and an important part of Speccy history.

Although I couldn’t resist taking the piss, I do feel sorry for the author. If he continued as a software developer it’s probably something to miss off the CV. It was intended as an ‘up yours’ gesture to the publisher and get him out of what he presumably saw as an unfair contract (it wouldn’t be the first case of a developer being treated badly), it was never meant to see the light of day. I’d love to hear a ‘warts and all’ account of what process (or very long lunch) lead to The Power House calling his bluff and releasing the bloody thing.

The C64 had a decent version of SQIJ, I gather it was too hard, but it was a proper game with graphics, sound and it ACTUALLY WORKED. This 8 bit inequity was finally put to bed in 2018, when Tardis Remakes released SQIJ 2018.

Rating: Trouble is, 1 is the lowest possible vote, and if the 1 - 5 scale isn't exponential it should really go up to a million.

Comercio Cosmico
ZX-SOFT Brasil Ltda

A Brazilian BASIC game originally released in 1987, translated into English with minor updates in 2015.

This is a respectable Space Trader game set in our own solar system. You travel between Mercury and Neptune (stopping before the block of ice that is Pluto) buying and selling as you go. Each planet has a niche – for example Uranus is a prison and Mercury, with a surface temperature of over 400oC, is an agricultural centre (obviously). So you can buy goods cheaply on one planet and sell more expensively on another. The largest profits can be made on food while products like Androids are less lucrative, Uranium is costly but stable, so seems to be the interplanetary equivalent of gold. The cost of travel, arrangement of planetary niches and availability of certain goods is well thought out and the player has to work hard to maintain even a small profit.

All the play happens on the same GUI which is not the prettiest, but far from the ugliest. The intro screen gives the latter a run for its money but is so deliciously naff you would still take it home to play snugglebunnies. And if you can think of a better way to display a planet hoving into view other than using the CIRCLE command I’d like to hear it.

The game is unfinished with a lot of intended backstory & features not implemented, which might explain the slight lack of personality, but if I wasn’t aware of this fact I would file Cosmic Commerce under competent, simple and playable.

In 1987 the young coders clearly envisioned a relatively bright and technologically advanced future, though expecting every planet of the solar system to be colonised before star date 2001 might have been a tad optimistic.

Rating: 3/5, an honest bowl of porridge, undersalted.

Thank god. After 30 years of hurt we can finally hold our heads high. SQIJ, or ‘the elephant dung in the room’, has finally been shovelled up and removed by Tardis Remakes, who have released a playable remake of the C64 version. Remaking SQIJ for the Spectrum is a lot like going to a dinner party with Idi Amin – fraught with danger but whatever happens it won’t be you looking bad at the end of the night.

SQIJ 2018 is pretty polished, which should come as no surprise given the team behind it – Soren as reliable ‘finisher’ coder, graphics from Lobo, veteran pixel perv Simon Butler and the immeasurable redballoon. Saul Cross’s music is okay but I would prefer a different choice of beeper engine, I think this one is the over squelchy ‘SpecialFX’.

The original Speccy version was so bad it’s easy to forget there was even a game behind it, so it’s worth a quick recap of what SQIJ is actually about. You were an everyday happy mutant bird until the population holocaust, then you were overcome by insatiable hunger when the food ran out. It then smoothly sedgeways to some ropey mystic bollox about collating the Ener Tree on the Great Platform in the underground Labyrinth. Aye. Barmy.

It’s a well above average flip screen game, the 24 x 20 sprites and decent beeper spot effects give it a very fresh feel in this age of AGD. I’m not a big fan of the ‘spawnalot’ genre, but the nasties appear at a manageable rate and aren’t overbearing. The collectable keys and bits of tree are in the same place every game, but a lack of variety in the scenery makes the maze very difficult to navigate. SQIJ 2018 is very completable, a welcome design flaw compared to the C64 version, but you’ll really need to draw a map if you’re to stand a chance.

A cassette version is planned with enhanced replay features, presumably not by The Power House.

Rating: Bad porridge made very good. 4/5.

Baldy ZX
2015 Paul Jenkinson

There are times when all you need in life is an uncomplicated avoid & collect platform game, and this is a perfect example of one.

Poor Baldy has been robbed of all his games, but thankfully the miscreants were the undiscerning sort and on realising they were retro, promptly discarded them. Little did they realise you can probably get about 5 spond per cassette these days. You must jump, squat and teleport your way across 20 levels collecting them up again.

Each screen is made up of floating islands and Baldy can leap between them, duck under flying arrows (or hamburgers etc) or use the up/down teleports where available. Baldy can’t walk in the usual fashion but is unusually supple, he can crumple into an amorphous fleshlump that would be the envy of any limbo dancer. It’s a good design choice that he remains ‘ducked’ or ‘unducked’ after teleporting.

There are a few avoidable attribute glitches but the graphics are colourful, cartoony and cute. If you’re playing on a 128K (or one of the few with 48K AY) you get some rather nice AY spot effects, that are so regular they make up for the absence of music. Paul is an AGD master and it shows here, Baldy was probably not straightforward to implement.

Granting 3 lives is a bit mean and will probably lead to most players cheating or giving up, either case meaning the game is not properly experienced. In my opinion 10 lives would be more appropriate.

Baldy reminds me of a few games, shades of Nifty Lifty perhaps, but I can’t think of anything exactly the same. This would have been a big hit BITD and I can picture the conversations now “trying to remember a game – it had colourful islands and a bald bloke”.

4/5.

Mr Freeze.
Firebird 1984

You’ve put it off for long enough, it’s time to defrost the freezer. You don your protective gear and rue the day you bought the thing. It was an easy mistake to make, go to Currys, choose a model and instead of listening to the after sale options you found your attention diverted by a ripe pustule on the shop assistant’s forehead. As a result the cold store you cram into the car boot comes replete with armed sentries, a motion sensitive death ray and marauding grapefruit. Still, at least it came with a flame thrower.

Single screen platformer, avoid the nasties, touch the de-ice button on each of 6 screens.

Mr Freeze has a nice smooth sprite that is well animated, assuming the limp is intentional, the sounds are simple but adequate and the graphics are average for 1984. One annoyance is the fact the sprite is coloured BRIGHT while the background is not, giving a beaming blue box around the player. Maybe it didn’t show up so badly on CRTs, or it’s meant to be his warm aura. The game mechanics can be frustrating, poor key response and sometimes unfair collision especially, but I’m happy to consider the quirky jump as one of the game’s rules that you just need to learn. Who wants every platform game to have the same perfect jump arc? Not me.

A lot of thought has gone into the level design, largely based around outsmarting the death ray that homes in on you when you use a ladder. Deciding which ladder to climb first, or pretend to climb, adds a bit of a puzzle to the action.

The intentional features and unintentional quirks of Mr Freeze make it very challenging, actually I’ll say HARD, but at 6 screens long completion always feels within reach. De-icing just one screen feels like a big achievement, so the game is not without its rewards. At the time of writing I can de-ice 2, nearly 3 screens. It’s very addictive, almost there…

Rating: Porridge with some lumps, but you’re very hungry. 3/5.