Tag: Gabriele Amore

The Training of the Warrior

Gabriele Amore is back. Did he ever go away, I hear you ask? Quite frankly, we’re not sure. I mean, we asked him to leave, but two days later I found him in the Sqij Towers kitchen eating all our biscuits. He distracted me by throwing a Shuriken into the wall behind me, which on closer inspection turned out to be a Spectrum game called “The Training of the Warrior”.

THE_TRAINING_OF_THE_WARRIOR.TAP

It wasn’t an original copy, being on a C90 with no inlay or instructions. Fortunately the title screen looked exceedingly helpful, despite being in a nearly unreadable font (bonus points for that), giving the two available keys “O – Punch and P – Kick”.

Eager to start my samurai training, I press O or P and am presented with some pixellated training screen.

THE_TRAINING_OF_THE_WARRIOR.TAP_2

I figure that at this point, pressing O or P might come in handy, probably P for Punch (or was it O?) as directed on the status guff at the bottom of the screen.

Pressing keys makes the screen flicker and moves the arrow at the top of the screen backwards and forwards. Sometimes it brings up an extra arrow and a white block. This might be a bug or it might be intentional and integral to the gameplay. I really have no idea.

Sometimes it does this.

Sometimes it does this.

Eventually after stabbing random keys, I complete my training, despite having no idea whatsoever what I was supposed to be doing. I bet real samurais didn’t get off so easily!

THE_TRAINING_OF_THE_WARRIOR.TAP_5

I then started up the game again to see if I could work out how to play it.

Other times it does this

Other times it does this.

It just showed me a different screen and flashed between kick and punch text and that was it. I reset the Spectrum in frustration. This is buggier than the average PC game on the day of release.

Score: 1 ninja star out of ten ninj… AAARGH, I’M SURROUNDED BY NINJAS. SEND HELP.

Download: .tap

Sex on 1st Date

Here comes yet another entry from the (appropriately-named, in this case) Gabriele Amore. I’ve been pussy-footing around this game for a while, but finally managed to stop fannying about and snatch a few spare moments to review it, although I think it might be a bit hard.

SOFD01

Enough of the puerile Finbarr Saundersisms. As you’d expect from the title, it’s a game involving having sex on the first date. As I’ve been in a relationship for 18 years and have two young children, the concept of both a “date” and “sex” are just a distant memory, but never mind, at least I can recreate it on the Speccy. Look at those graphics! I don’t think I’ve ever got so excited by a few well-placed attributes. Your lover and sex teacher Helen Blond certainly is easy on the eye (if you zoom right out and take your glasses off – alcohol probably helps too, but don’t drink too much)

SOFD02

My hart is full of lust, apparently. These pictures really don’t do the game justice, as they feature the best use of FLASH since the Manic Miner loading screen. And FLASH is the operative word – I won’t spoil the rest of the screens, but let’s just say that by the time you get on to the actual game your little swimming chaps will be stirred…SOFD06Did I mention this game was hard? Well it bloody well is. Using the M key (not sure what the M stands for – perhaps it’s something a bit mucky in Sicilian) you have to time your thrusts so that your lover is satisfied, and without getting too over-excited. Yellow star good, red cross bad.

SOFD07

On my first go, I got all aroused and it was all over far too early – a classic example of art imitating life. However with a bit of practice I worked out that if I hit the sweet spot every time my rubber lover would soon start BEEPing in ecstasy, and I moved on to the next position.

SOFD09

Now, either I’m not very good at this game, or I’m enjoying this position far too much, as I can’t ever seem to get off this level, and Helen keeps accusing me of being a selfish lover. Art imitating life again. Gab even included a link to an instructional YouTube video, but perhaps RedTube would’ve been a more appropriate place to upload it, as it now seems to have been pulled off (Stop it! Ed.)

Score: 69. What else?

Download here.

Stickman Olympic Challenge – 100 Seconds Hurdle

This is the first of two games from Gabriele “when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s” Amore – it would have been three, but he decided to turn his 1D Frogger entry into a proper non-crap game called Hop ‘n’ Frog. A shame, as the original entry really was a pile of old bobbins. “Done with AGD in creative Sicily”, Gab says – and mamma mia, just look at this animated title screen!

You can guess what’s coming next – yep, the flashing screen is the best part of the game. Although it’s actually quite a colourful affair, with a nicely-drawn stick man on an athletics stadium. Confusingly the starter starts the race with “Get set, ready, GO!” which throws me off my stride a bit.

They're under starter's orders... (That's horses! Ed.)

They’re under starter’s orders… (That’s horses! Ed.)

With no instructions to speak of, I’m left to stab at the buttons. Now I was expecting this to be a keyboard masher in the style of DTD or Hyper Sports, and it is to some extent, but it took me three or four attempts to realise that (unlike the aforementioned games) I don’t need to press alternate keys to make our hero go faster. It’s just one key, repeatedly, stab stab stab stab stab, and then another key to jump. I’ll leave the discovery of which keys do what as an exercise for the player. I bet you can’t wait, huh?

Clatter, crash, bang, ouch.

Clatter, crash, bang, ouch.

So once you get the hang of running, it’s a case of timing your jumps. If you manage to clear the hurdle you get a point. However if you knock over a hurdle you lose a point – assuming you had any in the first place. After a while I got the hang of how fast I needed to press the “run” key and got myself a point – yay!

See, I'm not completely pointless.

See, I’m not completely pointless.

And that’s it… you run, and jump, and run, and jump some more, until the timeometer reaches 100*. There even seems to be some sort of athletics track simulation in action here, because if you’ve knocked over any hurdles, they seem to come round again later already knocked-over, meaning you can’t gain any points from jumping over them. So there’s even a strategy element to the game! (What – don’t knock over any hurdles? Not exactly strategic, is it? Ed.) After a while I got into my stride and reached a high score of… wait for it… thirty-nine. Ta-daaa!

Usain who?

Usain who?

Like most sports, there’s no purpose to this at all, other than trying to beat your own score. Despite this, it’s fun and quite addictive – almost not crap at all! Must try harder next time!

 

*STOP PRESS! Since posting this review Gab has contacted me to say there’s an updated version which RANDOMIZEs the time you get to run round the track – clearly I wasn’t paying attention when he sent the games in three-and-a-half weeks ago! So both versions are available below for download.

 

Score: 3 failed doping tests out of 100.

Download .tap file here (100 second version) or here (random time up to 100 seconds version)