Bleedin’ Bob Carolgees (2000)
Bob Carolgees, one time major celebrity and friend to the stars, and now haberdashery shop owner in Northwich, Lancashire, has suffered a major attack on his body by his puppet pal Spit the Dog.
Bleeding profusely from almost every artery in his ample frame, you must guide him to bandages, which help stem the claret flow. Fail to collect them, and you bleed even more! Step in the spilt blood, and it’s Alien acid-like nature drains you of even more energy and life-juice!
Curse that loveable furry dog!
- Full Manual Included!
- Smoke On The Water Riff!
- Blood!
- All Leather Interior!
Reviews:
“You know, it’s very realistic. What is it again?” – Bob Carolgees
“What a waste” – The Give Blood Foundation
“Polly Wanna Cracker! Squark!” – A Parrot
Get Carter! (2000)
Compressing the entire plot of the Michael Caine film into a two line Text Adventure takes some talent and intelligence! The uncanny similarity to the film comes from many years watching and studying, and intense Sinclair BASIC training.
And it paid off! Look at the gorgeous graphics! The intense intenseness of the gameplay! The full-on Caine experience!
Get Carter! – Out Now for Spectrum!
- Thankfully, No Caine Quotes!
- No Spears! That Was Zulu!
- Text!
Reviews:
“The Only Way Is Up!” – Yazz
“I’M A KNOWN LIAR!” – Pete Thoma$
“Help me, please!” – Man stuck down a well
Many, many, many years ago, I wrote a terrible text based roleplaying game called RSG. I initially made a version for the Sinclair Spectrum, but lost the code soon afterwards. Then I wrote a version for the Acorn A4000 in BBC Basic instead of doing my A level computing project. Then a version for the Casio programmable calculator when I’d finished a physics exam. At some point I also made a version in AMOS on the Amiga, and eventually rewrote it for the Spectrum for the 1999 comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition.
Since then, I’ve made a version (that didn’t work) in Flash, a version in Perl, and I even got part way through a port on the original Game Boy, until I ditched it and wrote Advanced Lawnmower Simulator for that instead.
But now! With the soon to be released Gamebuino, I’ve been learning Processing (again, I sort of learnt it a few years ago, but forgot it all again). And here is the fruit – a Processing written RSG. In a tiny, tiny little box. Why a tiny box? That’s the resolution of the Gamebuino!
https://lofi-gaming.org.uk/tools/processing/rsg/processing.jsfunction getProcessingSketchId () { return ‘RSG’; }
Yes. Yes, that is it in that little box there. Click on it and begin the greatest of all diminutive adventures!
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(Another suggestion from @JayTay)
I’ve only ever been to Kempston once, and that was to go to Sainsbury’s in the middle of the night. I’ve driven through it a handful of times, though, and without wishing to offend those who live there, it is pretty unremarkable. Sinclair is not, as far as I’m aware, a location anywhere in the UK or any of the countries I’ve ever visited. With this deduction, I presume the comparison requested is between the two competing joystick interface standards for the Sinclair Spectrum.
That certainly makes more sense, anyway.
Notice that I said “joystick interface” rather than “joystick”. Although Sinclair, and probably Kempston, branded sticks existed, and games always referred to “Kempston Joystick” and so on, it was actually the interface that made the difference.
Unlike many other machines at the time, the Spectrum didn’t have any joystick ports built in, and wouldn’t until the +2 model came along. Instead, an interface device needed to be plugged into the computer’s edge connector, and joysticks were plugged into that. The joysticks themselves were actually standard Atari-compatible one-button sticks with 9-pin connectors, and could be used with either interface (or indeed most of the less common alternatives, like AGF and Fuller), or indeed with many other computers and consoles of the era.
To the player, that meant that there was no real difference between the two. In my experience, more (most, in fact) games supported Kempston as a default option, but the Sinclair interface was actually quite clever: It replicated number keys on the keyboard. If a game didn’t support joysticks but did support redefining the keys, then you could still use a stick. Of course, the Cursor joystick interface did the same, but that isn’t up for discussion. In addition, the Sinclair interface offered the capability to use two sticks at once – one replicating the keys 1-5, the other 6-0.
At a technical level, and I’m barely a machine code coder so bear with me, communicating with the interfaces was just as simple for each. You read hardware port 0x1f for Kempston, and either 0xf7fe or 0xeffe for the two Sinclair ports. However, as a BASIC programmer (which I’m infinitely more proficient at, I mean, have you not seen Octopus Lite?) reading joystick ports is slightly more complicated and unusual. Not so with Sinclair sticks as they register as keys, so a quick INKEY$ is all you need.
However. It was much, much easier, and cheaper, to get hold of a Kempston interface (not least because the official Sinclair ones also did other things besides just provide joystick sockets) so that’s what most Spectrum owners did. Kempston became the de facto standard for Speccy joystick interfaces, with some games equating the term “Joystick support” with support for the Kempston interface, and so effectively Kempston was best just for that reason.
Sinclair may have been more useful, but Kempston was King.
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