A while ago I wrote a script that picked a random game from the complete STH collection. I also said that I was thinking of doing semi-regular "reviews" of the games randomly plucked from the archive, since every time I ran it I usually got a game I'd never heard of before.

Well, here's my first attempt at doing just that. I'll review anything the script picks, with the exception of:

* Text adventures
* Educational software
* Non-game software
* "Cheat" versions of games
* "Adult" games. (Amazingly, there are a few.)

If any of these come up, I'll just pick another one.

So here's the first of my reviews, which I have perhaps rather foolishly decided to do in video format. Enjoy.

Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgN5BiVWCN0

EDIT: Complete list of video reviews so far

The Maze
Diamonds
Heist
Thrust
Joust
Exterminator
Bouncer
The Horse Lord
Invaders
Mango
Three games

Or see the complete set on YouTube, here: http://www.youtube.com/user/8bitlion#grid/uploads

Join in! See Samwise's step-by-step guide How To: Create BeebEm Video Reviews on Windows

Other members' reviews:

• Superior Software's Barbarian (Samwise)

Very nice! I mean the review, not necessarily the game!
I'd never heard of that game before I have to say.

Sorry David - missed this!

What an excellent idea . The video format is great, very enjoyable, and if you'd dropped a dozen on there I would have sat and watched them all. I'm not very adept at games but this sort of thing is somehow very watchable and whether or not one likes the games, it's highly entertaining to see examples in action with some impartial commentary. Nice one and keep 'em coming

Martin

Loved it David, definitely keep in video format if you can. Nice to watch with a cuppa and a biccie

Yeah, agreed! Really enjoyed that - entertaining, and also a really nice way of being introduced to games I've never seen before (like that one!). The animated Mode 7 graphics were cool!

Looking forward to some more of these in the future!

Me too, great little review, very enjoyable to watch

Two new ones!

Diamonds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKIqDM9HHiY

and Heist: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsBWwP_Fn54

Excellent!
Although the music to Heist is now stuck in my head... and that is not a good thing!

Gah... me too....

Once again, excellent reviews and great fun to watch

(Mind you, should I ever write a game, I'm starting to think I'd be a bit scared of the 'Lion' review... )

Out of curiosity - if RichTW, Tom, Steve, Dave or any of the other graphics gurus look in, could they offer an opinion on how the first (tank thingy) and second (Repton rip) might be doing the screen movements etc.? I'm not suggesting they're particularly clever but having been following the game related articles on RS, I have a new found interest in the many graphics techniques used on the Beeb.

Martin

I mistakenly said that Diamonds was a magazine type in game - there was one that I typed in that was very similar but it looks like Diamonds was a commercial release

There are six levels, which I managed to complete first time having never played the game before - I don't think they solutions will give The Kraken any sleepless nights!

Once you complete level 6, you get the high score table - that's it.

The levels might make a good "child" set for Repton 1 though.

These are great!

I'm wondering if we should do some sort of recurring sticky topic, where we take turns doing this kind of review? That would spread out the workload, so more games could be covered and I bet ppl will have very different views on them.

What do we think? I assume a good proportion of ppl here should be able to record a video with their own soundtrack on? Or we could pull together a guide for anyone who doesn't?

Sam.

I'd be up for that if it was a group effort . It'd be good if you could have at least 8 people doing perhaps one a month each to give a couple of reviews a week. No stringent obligations, just as time permits.

Of course, I'd need that idiot's guide but that will come as no surprise to Sam

Martin

Another great set of reviews. Don't know about others doing them as well. I like the sense of consistency with the same reviewer. But if others wnt to do them, go for it...



Not played the actual games but looking at the videos;

The Maze
The blocks are all the same colour (from what I've seen). So to give the appearance of scrolling the programmer just adds or removes (sometimes both) lines of colour to the edges of the existing blocks. Mmmmm.... Have I explained that ok..... Say a block appears to move down, all the author has done is put another line of magenta on the bottom of the block. When the entire block is on screen, line is added to the bottom and one removed from the top. This is quicker than software moving the block but restricts to limited graphics for the walls.

Diamonds
Looks like software scroll, hence the quite small playing area. The programmer literally shifts the data around by moving the bytes on the screen programatically. Slow, but can make your other parts of your code simpler (for sprite plotting etc.)

I've showed these to a handful of babes by now, and they all love the way you (Lion) barely conceal pissing yourself during your reviews

Do some famous ones, go on. Do Ghouls, Repton, Canyon and Blagger

Games are selected by the Almighty Mersenne Twister only. I review whatever come up, subject to the aforementioned exclusions. So yes, it's quite possible that Repton might come up. And if it does, I'll review it.

But no hand-picking!

What thing is that you're using on OS X with such nice icons, though?

Um. "Finder"? It's like Windows Explorer. Or the Filer on RISC OS.

Er... "duh" Which emulator? Dude?

Oh! It's just BeebEm for Mac:
http://www.g7jjf.com/beebemmac.htm

Cool. I haven't touched Macs for about two years, but now I have a nice shiny Snow Pussy to feed.

Will look forward to that one.

Cheers Steve, you did indeed and it's obvious once someone has pointed it out . I guess it's quite an efficient way of moving large plain angular objects round the screen. I've even already tested the method with a quick and dirty Basic program. It's deliberately no frills to demo the method and given this is just clumsy Basic, it looks as if it'd be pretty quick in machine code.


Martin

Nice job, it's a good technique for looking good at little speed penalty. Like you say, write that in assembler and it'd be even better.

Similar techniques to this are used in racing games to make the track move and curve for bends.

Not one of Micropower's better-known efforts, but I do enjoy a little try out on it every so often. Compare and contrast with the very similar Star Maze by Software Invasion.

I presume this game must have been subject to a name change somewhere between writing and marketing, as it's referred to as The Maze throughout, yet I'm pretty sure was released as Maze Invaders. To muddy things further, Micropower also released a game entitled Space Maze, but that was a poor, incredibly slow-to-draw 3D maze type thing, wasn't it?

Jeremy
(graysonscolumn)

New review of "Thrust": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cs7BVm594TE

Sorry about the sound on this one, my voice is too quiet and the game is too loud.

Also YouTube has made the horizontal lines look really psychedelic. In reality they're all the same colour.

The spooky thing is that, earlier on, I was going to cite Thrust as another example of a game which uses the same technique as "The Maze" to render its landscape, i.e. only adding or subtracting new edges. Thrust even makes its life 50% easier by only drawing every other line

Another nice video - cheers! Though, I have to admit, I prefer the scathing commentary of the obscure titles

Enjoyed again thanks - I suspect you're more than randomly good at that one . I used to be good at Thrust but apparently only a Beeb coz I can't get to grips with Caps & Ctrl being above one another on a PC keyboard

Interesting . So for angles other than vertical and horizontal, effectively the same process but they would presumably use some clever bespoke plot routine to calculate the points to be painted/erased? Is that then necessarily as complex as the spacial line drawing routines you've been discussing on RS? (...which made my head hurt btw )

Which is quicker then, this method or hardware scrolling and what would be the cue to use one over the other?

Martin

The "caps/ctrl" mode that I enabled right at the beginning of the video maps the keys to A and S. Much easier.

Aha!

Cheers David, I really should make time to explore those BeebEm menus

Martin

I do like the obscure ones better I think (I'm not likely to have seen them either with no Electron versions) but it's good to see a familiar game as well.

btw - on Thrust you should also blow up the power generator thing (looks like it's blowing bubbles on the surface of the planet)... you destroy the planet and double your bonus. You can damage it (so it stops blowing bubbles) to cut the power to the guns but once it's damaged badly, you only have 10 seconds to escape so you need to already have the little ball thing! It makes it all a lot trickier!