Tag: raison d’etre

RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE

Challenges, Crap Games
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Here’s the first entry from Sqij Towers’ very own (curiously monikered, as his real name isn’t even Barry) BloodBaz. Now when I set the Keyword Challenge I was kind of expecting a game called RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE to appear, and I wasn’t disappointed! RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE is the longest program name you can have by using keywords (well, apart from CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6 CHR$ 6, but nobody can really see that, can they?) And here’s the proof:

RANDOMIZEx10

I like the way that even though there’s no word wrapping, every word makes sense – as well as RANDOMIZE you’ve got “RAN” (past participle of “run”), “DOMIZE” (another word for death), “RANDO” (Portuguese restaurant), “MIZE” (plural of mouse in Somerset), “RANDOMI” (ancient tribe from Kidderminster or somewhere) and “ZE” (last letter of the alphabet, according to Americans). So really, this game should be called RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RAN DOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDO MIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMI ZE RANDOMIZE, not RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE. I’ll overlook this error just this once.

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A rather colourful menu appears, which explains the premise of the game… although I’m not convinced RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZ(Yes, yes, we get it. Ed.) is a game yet. However, it does feature a “raison etre”. Oh goody, another one of those French biscuits! Anyway, a well known factoid amongst crap game authors is that the Speccy’s random number function – RND – is only random once RANDOMIZE is used. If you reset your machine and type LET n=RND without first RANDOMIZing, a value of .0011291504 will always be returned. It’s why Watching Paint Dry had such predictable scoring – there was no RANDOMIZE in there, so the same numbers were generated each time the game was run.

RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE avoids this pitfall, by RANDOMIZing not once, not twice, but ten times! So the numbers should be ten times as random as they would be if they were just randomized once! (If you have the cash to spare, there’s also a pro version available – contact BloodBaz for full details, including some sort of shady repayment plan involving a guy called “Dodgy Tony” and a baseball bat)

RANDOMIZE3

By now you’re probably wondering what the point of all this is, and to be honest, so am I, which is why I’ve repeatedly padded out the review with the title – which, in case you’ve forgotten, is RANDOMIZE RANDOMIZE RAN(Oh, shut up. Ed.) I suppose if you’re a crap game author and you need some genuinely random numbers, you could do a lot worse than use this utility. On the other hand, there’s no gameplay element whatsoever. Still, to paraphrase William Shakespeare (or was it William Shatner?) “Never let gameplay get in the way of a truly crap CSSCGC entry you’ve just wasted over half an hour of your life reviewing”.

 

Score: an utterly predictable .0011291504%.

Download .tzx here.

 

Strictly Come Dancing – The Game

Crap Games
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And we’re off! First out of the starter’s block is Colin Woodcock, a veteran of the Spectrum scene – he’s even written a book called The ZX Spectrum On Your PC. With credentials like that I have high hopes for this game.

In Colin’s own words, “Enjoy the glamour and sparkle of ballroom dancing in this stunningly realistic strategy adaptation of BBC1’s hit TV show.” Well, at the time of writing it’s a Saturday evening, so it only seems right to play it now given that I’ve had the bloody thing rammed down my throat every Saturday evening for four months of every year since 2006.

What really astounded me was how quickly Colin managed to get the game across to me after I’d announced the competition open – only 14 minutes! If he carries on producing games at the rate of one every 14 minutes he’ll have written over 30,000 crap games before the end of the year, and if I carry on writing reviews at the rate of one every day the CSSCGC2015 will officially finish some time in 2097. I’ll be 122 years old by then, the same age as the oldest person who ever lived, so perhaps I’ve finally found my raison d’etre (Isn’t that a French biscuit with fruit in it? Ed.)

Anyway. a good start, what a fantastic loading screen this is! You can really tell Colin’s spent a long time eliminating the colour clash, rather than just bunging the first image he could find through ZX-Paintbrush or something:

strictly

 

There follows a BEEPy rendition of the theme tune, which loses crap points for sounding far too much like the original, but gains points for repeating just enough times to become annoying. Also, pressing a key has no effect whatsoever other than eliminating the pauses and speeding the tune up just a bit.

Then we come to the game. No instructions, just straight into Week One. American smooth, apparently. Sounds more like a cup of coffee than a dance. Perhaps I can dunk my raison d’etre into it. I only know two dances – the “six pint shuffle” and the “embarrass your kids in front of their friends dance”. Oh, and there’s that annoying beepy tune again. Four bloody times. Again.

Finally, the strategy element of the game kicks in. With 40 hours to practice, and with that tune still ringing in my ears, I had no idea how to split my time – so I just punched numbers into the keyboard at random, imagining that each key I punched was Colin’s head. But how did I do on my first go?

strictly3

Despite a “se-vennnn!” from Darcey – or maybe because I was given one by Craig (f’nar) – I got voted into the dance-off and unceremoniously dumped out of the competition, putting me in such esteemed company as Edwina “I boffed John Major” Currie, Goldie (the jungle producer, not the Blue Peter dog – she came second that year, despite having died in 1992) and rent-a-Cockney-geezer off of Quadrophenia or Parklife (depending on your age) Phil Daniels (not to be confused with Paul “Not a lot!” Daniels – even he managed the second round!)

So is it possible to win the competition? Do we get to see a pixellated Kara Tointon or Rachel Stevens wearing not very much as a reward? Download here and find out…

As for the scores… I give this game se-vennnn!

Percent.