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Thanks for joining us for another episode of...
...Five Games Five Minutes...
...from acornelectron.co.uk
CASTLE ASSAULT is a Mode 2 platformer, ...
...in which you must climb endless castle walls, leaping bouncing nasties.
There are falling boulders to avoid, ...
...and the occasional bird sweeping from right to left, ...
...which you need to get out of the way of.
To be sure, its programmers had delusions of grandeur.
They describe CASTLE ASSAULT as having...
..."fantastic animation and highly realistic sound"!
It has neither.
But it makes up for them in irritations.
The first thing to watch out for is that, ...
...if you perch on the edge of a pit, ...
...you'll fall off the wall when you try to jump over it.
You have to jump from a few pixels back from the edge.
This is presumably a feature, not a bug.
But it's tiresome.
The second thing is that, well, it's not exactly very exciting, is it?
You've got bouncing nasties or a conveyor belt...
...to deal with - neither are particularly difficult...
...and if you complete one screen, all that happens is that you get another.
CASTLE ASSAULT basically has two things going for it.
It's colourful, and the graphics aren't too bad.
Otherwise, it's nothing special.
This is XOR.
Now I think the word "classic" is over- used when it comes to retro software.
But XOR is simply that - a classic of its time.
It sounds cliched, but the game really does live in the hearts of all who play it.
At its simplest, XOR is a maze game...
...where you must collect a number of faces.
You have control of two shields and you can skip between them...
...by pressing SPACE.
In some mazes, the shields are housed in different sections of the maze...
...and can never actually meet each other.
In other mazes, you have to position them cleverly...
...to solve mini-puzzles, and ensure faces don't become trapped.
Everything about XOR is beautiful.
The scrolling is fast and smooth.
The fact you can collect a map, which then appears in a panel, ...
...means that you can solve the puzzles without resorting to...
...pen and paper. And the graphics and colours are perfect.
The only thing I will warn you about is that the game itself is tough.
Even the first level is no walk in the park.
I really do believe that everyone should play this game at least once.
It's perhaps one of the best Acorn Electron games ever written.
CAVEMAN CAPERS.
Now you know those games that were, like, ubiquitous.
It seemed EVERY software house wanted CAVEMAN CAPERS.
First it was released by Icon, then by Audiogenic, ...
...then by Beau Jolly, and then finally by Alternative.
Blimey! What was all the fuss about?
It's only one man riding a turtle, for goodness' sake.
Well, CAVEMAN CAPERS scores...
...because it's an incredibly easy game to play.
On the first few screens, you simply need...
...to jump at the right time to clear them.
Oh yeah, and avoid the grinning dino- saurs stretching over the right-hand side.
As the screens get more difficult, ...
...you have to deal with low-flying pterodactyls, ...
...both in and out of caves...
...as well as that dinosaur that leans progressively closer.
Get your timing wrong, and you get a nice animation...
...where you fall flat on your face.
It reminds me a little of the old cartoon "The Flintstones"...
...which MIGHT explain why it was so incredibly popular.
Even now, it's aged amazingly well.
And it's still great fun to play.
It's tempting to jump straight into CAMELOT...
...without reading the instructions.
After all, it just looks like another graphic adventure, right?
Wrong - don't do it...
...because, yes, CAMELOT *is* another graphic adventure, ...
...but one with so many quirks that, ...
...if you try to play it without knowing about them, ...
...you'll be suicidal within a few minutes.
You play King Arthur, and your mission is to score 3,000 points.
You score points by killing creatures...
...and collecting gold bags.
You can throw fire- balls to kill creatures.
However, and this is VITALLY important to appreciate, ...
...every time you kill a creature, the energy level...
...of ALL other surviving creatures is increased!
Yes, you heard me right.
If you kill a witch on one screen, ...
...all the other witches become MORE difficult to kill on the others!
You can carry up to five items at a time too...
...but, in another quirk, you can only carry one of each "item type" at any time.
So, for example, one key is your lot.
Open a door with it to make it disappear.
CAMELOT is a good game.
Released by Superior/Acornsoft, it even surpasses the standards...
...set by previous graphic adventures.
It runs full- screen in Mode 1.
Hence, its graphics are very well-defined.
CONFUZION.
Do you hear the music in the background?
It's not often that you get a music track recorded on the reverse side...
...of a cassette tape - but with CONFUZION you do.
The game was Incentive's one and only arcade game...
...and it's basically SLIDING BLOCK PUZZLES with characters floating around on them.
The aim is to get the spark to the bomb...
...or bombs...
...by creating a path for it to travel along.
As you can imagine, that's easier said than done.
Now there are basically two different ways to tackle this:
As every grid starts the same way, ...
...you can work out the combinations of keys to press...
...to get the grid in order, and so determine...
...how to complete a level by trial and error.
Or, you can press SPACE to start, and then furiously move the blocks...
...about in a blind panic - and just hope that it all works out for the best.
CONFUZION was later released by Alternative Software...
...without the Eighties music being included.
What a shame.
Not.
Subtitles by Subtitle Workshop