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:

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:

Mad Butscher: Funny idea, but the gameplay includes too many random components.
Rating:

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:

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:

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:

Mad Butscher: Great what is possible to implement in 1 K. Unfortunately the random landscape generator decreases the fun.
Rating:

Wizard: Optimum perfomance to put it in 1 K. But the game becomes boring quickly.
Rating:

MyAtari magazine - Review #1, January 2004