ZX Spectrum Vega game #0026
Dear Readers,
Today I'll talk about this platformer by Keith Purkiss, D.J. Burt, M.A. Trace and Artic Computing Ltd from 1985. It's a single screen exploring platformer, kind of like Jet Set Willy.
The loading screen is a nice yellow sand Arabian setting with camels and stuff. The title screen is a nice minimalist setting with a dark sky, a couple of palm trees and a sandy hill and blue landscape.
The very first screen of the game I found almost impossible to beat! Mostly due to that bird thing that kept getting in the way. That huge spider may be more intimidating to look at but that bird is far more troublesome. Then after many tries I found that it's an exploring single screen platformer, kind of like Jet Set Willy. You can even walk through blue brick walls and many other walls too, just not the cave ones.
I managed to get on to the precipice to the right which is just a sheer cliff, so I went down into the cellar. Big scary ol' skull here. To the right is the passageway. This screen has faster movement than the other screens, due to not having so many moving objects here. That jump you think you can make is impassible though. Come on! It's only a tiny step! I had to turn back.
Past the cellar and through the top left into the chandler's. A place with a ship and flying sails and falling anchors. I got a game over here and got a few more game overs trying to get back. Those platforms in the first screen are tricky enough to suss!
I eventually got back to the chandler's and picked up all the fish. Then I went left to the menagerie. There was a flying bird, dangerous looking snake and a jumpy monkey here. The monkey was easy enough to suss, as he just jumps between two platforms. The bird is still as tricky as ever though and I don't think I can make it past the snake. I got a game over from trying anyway.
Back to the first screen and several more game overs. That gap between the big red floating platform and the one to the right of it gets me every time! At one stage I even fell down through the central blue stalagmite. Another time, I managed to collect all the diamond shaped things on the screen. I didn't know what they did though and they reset when you leave the screen and come back if you don't collect them all, so I didn't bother going out of my way to collect then again.
I started again and headed left to the technocave, which is less painful than dealing with the first screen's platforms. Those weird yellow bouncy things always catch me and keep me bouncing in one place until that weird bad guy robot catches up with me. It's tricky then trying to catch those flashing platforms above it. I eventually made it past. I kind of like this screen from a lore point of view. It's weird and anachronistic.
On the left side of the technocave there are two ways to the left. The upper path goes to the lower part of the menagerie, which makes no sense as I fell to the cellar earlier, which connects to the upper part of the menagerie. The lower part then takes me to the lower part of the chandler's! Maybe it's some kind of curse that the screens don't connect logically? Anyway, I'd say I won't get anywhere new if I don't collect all the thingies.
Another thing weird about this game is that the loss of life sound is the same as the screen transition sound, so you don't know immediately if you've gone to the next screen or got killed by a bird or something.
No comments:
Post a Comment