Dear Readers,
Hope ye had a nice Christmas! It's been a while since I made a ZX Spectrum Vega post! I thought I'd try out this game by Malcom Kirk of Monsterbytes Software, who made it as part of the 2000AD MESSAGEBOARD ADVENT CALENDAR 2016™ project.
I never read 2000AD so I'm not familiar with Zombo at all I'm afraid. I like new ZX Spectrum games though so I thought I'd give it a go!
The game itself I downloaded from Malcom's nicely presented blog post here: http://malcolmkirk.blogspot.ie/2016/12/the-unofficial-zombos-christmas-capers.html
The plot is a laugh! There are only six presents to collect because there are so few kids that aren't on the naughty list. Love that kind of humour! Also, Santa™ had a breakdown due to overwork and stress. How could he be stressed though with only six presents to deliver? Maybe The Government™ decided he was underemployed and was forcing him to go on one of those exploitative workfare programmes.
The game download is very well presented with the ZX Spectrum emulator configured and ready to go, but I played an included TAP file on my ZX Spectrum Vega. I made a configuration file called "Zombo's Christmas Capers.zxk" and typed the following paragraph into it:
T:Zombo's Christmas Capers
F:Zombo's Christmas Capers.tap
M:48
K:;Q;A;O;P;SP;H;1;SP;3
D:;Up;Down;Left;Right;Fire;StBrnrdWtch(Pause);Start game;Fire;InstDeathBtn(Quit)
Very glad I could fit some of those descriptions into the character limit!
The title loading screen is pretty awesome. It has Zombo™ dressed in Santa™ attire and saying the words "FIGGY PUDDING!". Must be his favourite Christmas dessert. There's also a very nicely done parody of the ZX Spectrum system BIOS where you traditionally load the games from.
Starting the game, I made the mistake of not going right first and getting the key. I had to come back for it. It's the opposite to Metroid, where you had to go left first to get the Morph Ball. The maze gameplay in this game isn't as harsh as Metroid's is though. It's just a nice game to relax with after Christmas dinner. On one of the first screens there's the 2000AD annual to collect, so little things like that are nice and fun!
Is that Horace that's in the lodge? When I went inside, he wasn't there. I haven't played much of Horace's games yet...
I like the name of the weapon, the Shootybang 2000™! It's useful for zapping the Killer Sprouts. The Brussels sprouts I had as part of Christmas dinner were pretty good. If I didn't like them, I could imagine having fever dreams of the ones here with teeth!
So I collected some presents in this house before having to go outside into the woods to another house to collect more. There were Yellow Snowmen out here and they moved in a diagonal pattern. They were easily zapped. Wouldn't like to bump into them though! Ugh!
There were other non moving characters with big bug eyes like a robin and a big snowman. Are they characters in the comics?
The Scrooge-Elves and Nutcracker Soldiers I just had to avoid, like they were Manic Miner enemies. Couldn't shoot them.
Back to the other house after getting the red key. Some nice festive decorations in this game, like candy canes and those colourdy paper chain things. Pausing the game gives you the message "FESTIVE PAUSE MODE" as well.
Those Killer Christmas Trees were kinda intimidating. They follow you and I only realised that I had to get past the one in the passage that I was able to zap them, though they do take a few shots. I like the way tiny particles scatter all over the place when you shoot something in this game too.
Some nice food treats were here like a turkey and Christmas pudding. I don't eat either, but it's fun to have them as a collectible.
That reindeer skull on the ground was kinda cool too.
After collecting all the presents, it was back to the room to the right of the starting point to face Santa™, who had a gun of his own.
It was a matter of avoiding the Scrooges and dealing with the Christmas Trees he was putting out, while also zapping his face lots of times in order to defeat him. After I made his face explode in loads of particles and cool sound effects all over the screen and speakers, I got a fun message that said "YOU'VE KILLED SANTA CONGRATURATION!"
After defeating Santa™, there was a lovely screen saver like thing where you're on top of a house with mountains and trees and snow falling down. My final score was 1,995 Space Euros. I guess I should aim for 2000! ;)
The game over message is fun too. "ZOMBO MULLED BUT HE'LL BE REPEATED GOD SAVE US FROM THE TRUMP". I guess that's a way to ring out 2016. I think we'll be fine though!
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