New 8-bit
Games Round-Up
On the 4th of
January I saw ski jumping on TV, the Four Hills
Tournament.
I wondered a bit because the ski jumper Adam
Malysz didn't try to catch bananas and Red
Bull cans during his flight. Why? Let
me tell you about the MiniGame Compo 2003.
The MiniGame
Compo is a programming contest for 8-bit computers
and consoles. Only two programs for Atari 8-bit took part: Mahna-Malysz and Superfly 1k.
This shows that only a few programmers are coding
for our 8-bit Atari. The scene seems to be more
active on other 8-bit systems. There were 13
programs for the Commodore 64, 12 for Sinclair
Spectrum, 10 for the Atari 2600 (at
least the VCS represents the name Atari according
to its importance), 8(!) for Oric, 5 for NES
and 5 for the Commodore Vic 20. Just as little there
were two programs each for ZX81, Apple II and Amstrad
CPC, also disappointing!
In the competition
there were two categories: the 1 KB and the 4
KB
category, that means a maximum of 1,024 or 4,096
bytes of memory were allowed.
Mahna-Malysz
coded by Piotr Fusik scored in the 4 KB category
a remarkable 8th place of 37. In the overall
ranking it even made the 9th place of 63.
In the game you
play the role of the famous ski jumper Adam
Malysz. All you need is the trigger button of
your joystick or the [Shift] key of your computer.
After the ramp jump off Adam makes only
a poor flight: 23 metres without doing anything.
But if you push the trigger during the flight
Adam gets new drive and flies further. It
is very funny to see the nice animation of Adam
rowing with his arms. Take care that Adam is
not starving and collect the bananas and Red
Bull cans (in the game they are named Red Full)
during the flight (it gives you wings).
When Adam becomes
short of food or he bumps into obliging birds,
other ski jumpers or broom-riding witches he
must make an emergency landing and the game
ends.
This game is
really funny, graphics are nice to watch, animations
are cute - even the cows are animated. Mahna-Malysz
also includes simple but good music. Sometimes
you have no chance to avoid the obstacles, so
results are very random. But Piotr
Fusik still brought us a nice game.
WGL's high scores: 1,055 m
(Mad Butscher) 754 m (Bunsen) 643 m (Wizard) 492 m
(Grisu)
WGL
ratings
Bunsen: Fun! Rating:
![[4/5]](images/4star.gif)
Grisu: Mahna
Malysz is funny, a nice idea, but you don't
have much chance to control your flight, especially
when it's getting faster. So it is more or less
luck how far you get. Rating: ![[2/5]](images/2star.gif)
Mad Butscher:
Funny idea, but the gameplay includes too many
random components. Rating: ![[3/5]](images/3star.gif)
Wizard: Good
idea to collect bananas and Red Bull cans during
the flight. In higher levels the game becomes
strange: you get too many points (metres) for
low output. Rating: ![[4/5]](images/4star.gif)
![[Screen-shot: Mahna-Malysz]](images/wgl01.gif)
Game
information
|
Name:
|
Mahna-Malysz
|
Author:
|
Piotr Fusik
|
Players:
|
1
|
Requires:
|
- Atari
XL/XE
- Joystick
or keyboard
- One
bottle of Polish
vodka
|
Price:
|
Freeware
|
|
The gameplay
of Superfly 1K written by ABBUC member Matthias
Lüdtke is similar: all you need is the trigger
to control the player. Push the trigger and
the helicopter moves up. Without triggering, the
helicopter moves down. The objective of the game
is to fly as many metres as possible. But take
care of the barriers and beware of the walls
of the cave. Don't touch them.
The 13th place
of 26 in the 1 K category and the 38th place
of all 63 wasn't as successful as the result
of Mahna-Malysz. But in my opinion it has the
same qualities as Mahna-Malysz. Not to forget:
the coder had only 1,024 bytes instead of 4,096
bytes free.
WGL
ratings
Bunsen: 1K power! Rating:
![[4/5]](images/4star.gif)
Grisu: In Superfly
1K you are always able to control your flight,
but it is somehow too slow and could be a bit
smoother. Both games let me miss the flow of
SuperFly on the ST (by the Reservoir Gods) and
the steering needs improvement. Rating: ![[2/5]](images/2star.gif)
Mad Butscher:
Great what is possible to implement in 1 K. Unfortunately
the random landscape generator decreases the
fun. Rating: ![[4/5]](images/4star.gif)
Wizard: Optimum
perfomance to put it in 1 K. But the game becomes
boring quickly. Rating: ![[3/5]](images/3star.gif)
![[Screen-shot: SuperFly 1K]](images/wgl02.gif)
Game
information
|
Name:
|
Superfly
1K
|
Author:
|
Mattias
Lüdtke
|
Players:
|
1
|
Requires:
|
|
Price:
|
Freeware
|
|
|