START GAME

Now I did ask Martin about why no high score table was implemented in these fairly basic screens, and he said that he wanted it to work on all versions of the PET, so this was all down to working with the lowest amount of memory. Carrying on!

DOWN! (2013)

Your village is under attack!

Fleeing into the depths of the caves, there is only one way to go: Down!!!

HOW TO PLAY:

Use keyboard (O,P) to navigate. Pick up items to gain bonus points!

GAME FEATURES:

* Available on Tape and as Digital Download

* Addictive arcade gameplay

* Works on all PET models (except 2001)

* Flicker-free gameplay

RELEASE INFO:

You can order the full game on cassette tape for 7.99 euros, or as digital download for 3.99 euros by emailing: sales@revival-studios.com
If you buy the tape version, you will of course get the digital download for free. The game sees our hero at the top of the screen that slowly scrolls upwards while our hero has to wander through the gaps (he is always trying to walk down so you need only move left or right). You can collect various bonus points along the way. The game starts off easily enough, and you will soon be at the bottom of the screen in no time, but slowly things start to speed up, and the whole thing eventually makes survival difficult.

With smooth gameplay and a well animated character, this all makes for a quality release, so my comments are the same as the other releases. A menu on the title screen, along with a high score screen would complement the game so much, but I know that memory is tight. Also, it would be nice to see some sort of trip hazard that would slow our guy down rather than just bonus points to collect. Otherwise a very competent effort.

SCORES

Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Not Too Much You Can Do Really
Gameplay: 7/10
Overall: 7/10

SUMMARY

I would love to see a menu and high score, but smooth graphics and frustrating gameplay make this a very worthwhile release.


*************************************
REVIEW: THE HYPE GAME
A book by Marwood Packard
By Commoodre Free
*************************************

NOVEL SYNOPSIS ON AMAZON

The programmers and designers at Exactamundo, a software house in the 1980s, dream of blowing the competition off the retailers' shelves with mega-games. The owner and Managing Director, Dallas, cajoles his developers to package their puerile ideas with his savvy for marketing. But are they too late? Their plans are confronted by an over-crowded market, arguments over ideas and
money, and, worse of all, a new brand of charlatanism in the freelance world that threatens to infect the company from the outside. The question is, can they stage-manage their averageness enough to survive, let alone thrive? Compiled from insider information, The Hype Game is a situation tragedy that mixes nostalgia with its antidote to unpick the ways in which technology and self-promotion shaped the workplace we know today. Commentaries entwined
within the novel ask how it and further historical fiction should explore technology's impact on culture.

Contains some profanity and adult themes.

UN THEN REPUBLISHED

Shortly after publishing, the author decided to unpublish the book because he thought there might be more interest outside gamers if it were re-written. I happened to have been elite in that I was one of the first to read it, and as
I say; I actually do; in the editorial: page-to-page, front-to-back, electronic cover-to-cover; all 279 pages (said the Amazon page). I gave feedback that a lot of readers love this sort of thing, so the author has re-published. So Commodore Free has actually brought you a book (in a way)!

SO HERE IS A REVIEW OF THE - ERM - NOW RE-AVAILABLE BOOK!

The first thing to say is that it's made out as if it's a novel, but it's more like a fly-on-the-wall documentary. It follows a 17 year-old programmer as he joins what seems to be a cut-throat industry (probably something we all wanted to do or dreamed of at the time we went to purchase a game!). This isn't the glamour and fast cars story that you would expect. How much have you heard about how easy and glamorous the industry was? Aren't we told that you just created a game, sold it, went to launch parties (with free food), got offered lots of free stuff from companies, then went home and reaped the rewards?

Imagine then working for a software house with all these dreams of glory and massive wages only to find that none of this is attainable in the industry anymore. Imagine that the company you work for needs to release anything just to survive! Some of the major players in the industry, by the time the story
is set in, had already hit financial trouble or closed down completely. So these guys decide they need to make a 'mega game'. Yet is it possible to
create such a title on such lowly hardware because the management can't or won't invest in high-end development equipment?

Personally, I think history has given these guys an era of mystique that shouldn't have been earned. Well this book is about games production in the real world, a real-life adventure; you could say it's 'more real than real-life'. Our young man is an in-house programmer in a games company that didn't seem to care too much about quality of the games. Even bugs would be explained away as 'special features' or 'hidden extras' if they didn't cause a crash. And what if the games weren't any good? Well maybe they could be hyped up to cause enough customers to feel a need for them! It's a bit like when the double-glazing salesman calls round and sells you a complete set of
replacement windows you didn't know you actually needed. The hype is something that the industry has perfected over time; along with children's toys and electrical items of dubious value like the 3-in-one vacuum!

So our software (anti?)hero spills out his life endlessly in text about the team fighting to stay awake for very long hours in badly cramped conditions, and sleeping where they can. It almost paints the picture of digital tramps
who live on takeaways and smoke too much while digging around for ideas. Then there's the attempts to get press from journalists and documentary-makers who visit the company; and a boss who thinks they can hype up anything into a picture people would want to part money with. At one point they take to
lifting code from people's demos on Compunet. It's something they worry will become commonplace. Maybe 'reverse engineering' has!

My complaint about the book is that it doesn't say much about the connection between gaming and developing. Why did programmers join the industry? The main

--- CrashWrite 2.0
* Origin: --:)-- Dragon's Lair BBS --(:- (39:901/281)