The inimitable MatGubbins returns with yet another Keyword Challenge entry in glorious Chunk-O-Vision®™©(patent pending). As with most of Mat’s games it’s yet another case of style over content, with some of the best graphics I’ve seen so far in the competition – sadly utterly wasted on the thin excuse for a game!
It’s a gambling game. Now, I’ve been addicted to many things over the years – beer, cigarettes, spicy Nik Naks, sex (You should be so lucky! Ed.) but one thing I’ve never understood is gambling. My dad did the football pools for years back in the Eighties – my Saturday afternoons were dominated by “Queen of the South nil, Stenhousemuir nil” – yet he didn’t win so much as a brass farthing. I was in a lottery syndicate for a year back in the Nineties, and we never won so much as a thruppenny bit. And every year at work we do a sweepstake on the Grand Horse Racing Race (or whatever it’s called), and every year the boss wins, much to everyone else’s annoyance. However, the beauty of a Speccy game about gambling is you don’t have to spend your hard-earned cash at all!
I’ll keep this review fairly quick, as I know there haven’t been any updates for ages (for my part, a combination of school holidays and crap internet at home was to blame). You have 100 coins and have to gamble it up to 2000 so you can pay your fare to the New World by seeing if your random arrow lands on a pirate. Sounds easy, right? Wrong… if your arrow lands on a pirate, you win some more coins, but if it lands on a non-pirate, you lose. A bit like my dad with the bloody football pools.
I have to say, Mat’s really excelled himself here with the Chunk-O-Vision graphics and characters. I’m not quite sure how he did it or how long it took, but it looks brilliant! However the game is just a bog standard BASIC guessing game, and once again suffers from the RANDOMIZE curse – I’ll give you a tip, don’t gamble too much for the first 10 or so goes, as you won’t land on a pirate. However Mat more than makes up for this with a pixellated version of Emilia Fox without any clothes – hubba hubba!
As the game itself is so crap, Mat’s kindly included a demo mode showing all the characters, which can be accessed by GOTO 6800. And if you do eventually win the game, there’s a nicely-rendered screen at the end (no spoilers, but unfortunately it’s not a properly-pixellated Emilia Fox) If not for the characters I would’ve lost interest after about three seconds, but I’ll give this 99 dubloons out of 100, provided Mat goes away and makes a proper game out of those graphics!
Download tap hearrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.
Shame about Redhead Mllie. Maybe her parents were dyslexic?
Great graphics and very nice finish after you reach 2,000.
Unfortunately, there’s not a lot that’s crap about it, except maybe the repetition, and the fact it took one hell of a time to get the required coins.
Could have done with some sound, like an awfully out of tune captain pugwash or something.
I would have eagerly paid £1.99 to buy this as a spotty adolescent in the early to mid 1980s.
Millie somehow lost her i in the development stages – it’s there in version 1 but somehow vanished in the final edition.
Me and the beep command don’t get along too well, it’s always flipping the finger at every corner, but sometimes I manage to fight back with a choice swear word and use it.
It is the early 80’s and I would like my 1.99 please.
Correct indeed Simon, to show the characters before betting would be wrong. Point At A Pirate takes the view of there might be a pirate in the next set of game characters and will the pointer pick one out – double gambling indeed.
It clearly states on the outside of the box 50″ Full HD screen with all the gubbins (hey!) but in the box is a couple of sheets of plywood wrapped in newspaper – that’s the gamble too (yes, welcome to the world of fleabay)
I got up to 550 coins before I got bored.
Would be improved by showing the cast of characters before you place your bets – then you have some idea of how much to bet. At the moment you may as well replace the INPUT with LET bet=5 and allow the game to play itself while you have your tea or something.
Isn’t this supposed to be the crap game competition?
Improve? Why would anyone suggest how to improve a game. Oh, I see, if it got improved it wouldn’t be a contender for the competition.
That’s good tactics.
Well, I figured Mat had taken the “crap” out of “crap games competition” already, so he may as well try and win the competition he clearly thinks he’s entered.
Absolutely delicious graphics, I’m tempted to have them screen printed onto canvas.