Tag Archives: Review

Arcade Games

Hunchback Arcade Game by Century Electronics

2 Comments

Although most people will remember the various home ports for Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and BBC Micro, Hunchback was originally released by Century Electronics in 1983 as an arcade machine. The game itself was a relatively simple “pitfall” style platformer, with multiple left to right flip screens, each one featuring a number of challenges to overcome, in order for for Quasimodo to rescue Esmerelda.

Hunchback arcade machine
Screenshot of Hunchback

The origins of the game are however more interesting, given that the original theme of the game was apparently nothing to do with the famous Victor Hugo novel. As the story goes, the original artist had penned a fairly lumpy version of Robin Hood, that appeared to look more like a Hunchback. After the artist left the company, it was decided to rename the game to fit the artist’s rendition of the main character in the game. Looking back at the game with this in mind, it does appear to fit based on the available clues:

1) Liberal use of arrows in the game as hazards, and the bright green costume, very Robin Hood

2) The seemingly “bolted on” nature of the bells at the of each stage, and fact that the castle ramparts seem out of place on Notre Dame cathedral

3) The soldiers are dressed as crusaders, as featured in Robin Hood, from a war that ended in 129, and the Victor Hugo book is set in 1482

This does not detract from a great game, that clearly captured the public’s imagination, everyone accepting the premise that Quasimodo was on a jaunt to rescue Esmerelda, and nothing to do with Nottingham Castle, Robin or Marion.

The game itself was quite tricky, with increasing levels of challenge as the game went on, most reliant on perfectly timed jumps across ramparts, catching ropes, and avoiding flaming pits and arrows. Faster completion times awarded higher bonuses, with 5 screens cleared in a row without loss of life awarding a Super Bonus. When you reach the end of the ramparts, you rescue Esmerelda, and the game starts again, only faster.

 

I had fond memories of this game, starting at the end of Southend Pier in the early 80’s, and continuing through ZX Spectrum and BBC versions which I owned. Only putting this review together, almost 20 years later, did I discover the strange provenance of the game, and the alleged links to a Robin Hood game that never was.

ZX Spectrum

JetPac for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum by Ultimate Play the Game

4 Comments

A new kind of game for the Spectrum

JetPac was one of the first of the games released for the early 16k Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer, and developer Ultimate managed to fit a lot into the tiny memory. This game didn’t fit into any easily definable retro gaming genre, as it had a number of elements, being part shooter, part action-platformer.  

Jetpac forZX Spectrum Cassette Inlay
Jetpac forZX Spectrum Cassette Inlay
What it did do was deliver to early adopter Spectrum owners the arcade experience they had been looking for in their humble home computer.

Due to the memory constraints of the basic Spectrum model, JetPac did away with mutiple screens and stuck to a very simple formula. Use your JetPac to collect space ship parts that fall from the sky, kill the aliens that try to attack you, build a rocket from the parts and take off in it when its complete. Then do it all over again, repeatedly, until you die. And that’s it.

JetPac for the ZX Spectrum
JetPac loading screen for the ZX Spectrum

Despite the simple premise, one which would not hold the attention of many 10 year old game veterans today, Ultimate managed to build a sense of achievement into JetPac, as well as a desire to progress further through the game. You were pushed to tackle just one more screen, in order to see a new alien type with a different attack pattern. Every few screens you would get a new rocket, starting with an Apollo 13 style vehicle, and ending with a space shuttle (Tetris on the Gameboy also did this as a reward for completion).

There was also a great sense of colour in the game, from the garish alien designs to the multi coloured laser blast, but again due to memory limitations the only sound was the squeak of your laser and the plop when the aliens were destroyed.

JetPac for the ZX Spectrum
JetPac screenshot on the ZX Spectrum

JetPac was a masterstroke of packaging in a time when memory was incredibly expensive. Developers Ultimate had to think about not only the gameplay but how they could most effectively fit it into the space available, and maximise the number of Spectrum owners that could play the game.

JetPac Sequels

A sequel to JetPac was later released entitled Lunar Jetman, this time for the 48k Spectrum, with better graphics, a lunar buggy to ride around in, and more varied gameplay.  It was also incredibly hard, and as such not as fondly remembered as the original.

JetPac was also released on the Commodore 64 and the BBC Micro, but was most popular on the ZX Spectrum, and with this game Ultimate set a new standard for gaming on the home computer platform for other developers to follow.

 

BBC Micro

Mr Ee! Retro Review for the BBC Micro

1 Comment

Mr Ee! came from a time when copyright law didn’t seem to apply to video games, otherwise this game would never have existed. Imagine taking the latest Super Mario game on the wii, copying it, calling it Super Dave and releasing it on the XBOX. That’s what Micro Power did with Mr Ee on the BBC Micro, a blatant copy of The Mr Do arcade game.

Mr Do original arcade game
Mr Do original arcade game
But there are plenty of blatant rip offs out there in video game history, and this is not the reason why Mr Ee needs to be celebrated. What it did, it did brilliantly, providing an almost arcade perfect copy of the original, recreated on a home computer whose primary purpose was teaching IT in schools.

On seeing Mr Ee playing on my friend’s BBC, a kind of cross between Pac Man and Dig Dug, I knew I had to have one. Everything from the full colour graphics to the manic (if repetitive) music, shouted quality, and to me it looked and played just like the game I had played in the arcades. It was the first time that I realised that commercial quality gaming was possible on a personal machine. It is no suprise to read interviews with Adrian Stephens (the programmer behind the game) had spent hours playing the game in the arcades and had wanted to recreate that feel.

Me Ee! for the BBC
Mr Ee - spot the difference

Mr Ee goes back to a time when one programmer, part game fan / part self taught coder, could produce a commercial quality game at home and it become a huge hit, selling in thousands. Today this is just not possible, not even in the world of teenagers selling games through the app store. In this open market space a popular game will need programmers, artists, musicians, marketing teams and serious money in order to compete with the thousands of quality games available.

So hats off to the BBC and their indirect promotion of blatant plagiarism for the sake of the 80’s gaming public – it will never happen again.

Grandstand, Handhelds

Astro Wars by Grandstand Handheld Review

1 Comment

On the last day of term at my primary school we would all bring in toys, which back in the early 80’s would include games like Operation and Buckaroo, which still exist relatively unchanged 20 years later.

There would also be the kid who had the really cool toy of the moment, and one of those was Astro Wars.

Grandstand had previously brought out handheld electronic games such as Kevin Keegan Soccer, which was a single colour LED based game, not so much using a screen but a number of red lights to represent players on the field and the ball. Later on they introduced the first of the classic handheld shooters, Galaxy Invader, which used a Vacuum Florescent Display (or VFD), to represent brightly lit green character sprites on a black screen. This game was a passable version of Space Invaders, albeit in a fixed 3 column format.

Galaxy Invader 1000 Screenshot
Galaxy Invader 1000

Grandstand took the basic format of Galaxy Invader and ramped it up to 10 with Astro Wars, with it’s multi-coloured VFD display, 5 column play area and unique magnified lens. The action was also suitably turbo-charged, with the speed and volume of enemies on screen increasing to a frenetic level, putting the maximum score of 9999 well out of reach of all but the most dedicated players. There was also a novel docking station level, similar to that on arcade game Moon Cresta (at least that’s what I remember) to introduce some variation in the gameplay.Compared to the handhelds of today, Astro Wars was slightly less than portable, and heavy too given it was powered by 4 “D” batteries, so this is probably better described as a tabletop rather than a handheld. As with all of these early units, the play was fairly repetitive, given that it was hard wired in both hardware and software terms to support only one game.I’ve become a big collector of Grandstand handhelds, having examples of most of the games released in my collection, and today you can still find good examples on ebay. The games are robust, but tend to suffer from being left in the loft with batteries in, and from the VFD display giving out, which is pretty much game over as they cannot be replaced.

I will be looking to cover a number of these fantastic machines in the coming months, but for me Astro Wars will always be the greatest.