Resource centre for ZX Spectrum games
using Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy game engines
Archive of the
Manic Miner & Jet Set Willy Yahoo! Group
messages
|
|
|
|
|
Message: 5052
Author: andrewbroad
Date: 15/11/2005
Subject: Maria on Tour (Andrew's second play)
I played _Maria on Tour_ again today, and for rather longer than ten
minutes this time. It's a lovely game: visually, and in the way it
brings in features from MM (e.g. Skylabs, switches) and JSW II (e.g.
fast horizontal guardians).
The falling stalactites [52] are a masterstroke (and reminiscent of
Underwurlde), and the row of non-swinging ropes in Quazi-Mojo [112]
reminds me of _Horace and the Spiders_ (why does the vertical
guardian move in JSWED but not in the game?).
The simulated game of Frogger in "The Games Room" [91-94] is very
innovative, and reminds me of my own idea of having games within a
game (albeit not based on JSW-mechanics). The security-quiz [97-99]
is another innovative touch.
"Mysterious Forces at Work" [114] reminds me of the destruction of
the T1000 in Terminator 2!
The Manic Miner section [57 onwards] is a particular joy to play,
and reminds me of the feelings I had as a child discovering the
early caverns of the original Manic Miner for the first time.
I love the way you can edit the positions of the switches and of the
cells they remove (I worked out how to do this in the MM game-
engine, but I haven't actually edited them myself yet apart from in
MirrorMM (the SPECSAISIE function that wrote reniM cinaM)).
But I stopped playing when I encountered infinite death after taking
the portal out of "ORDER within Chaos" [70] - it takes you to "The
scumbags lost Girocheques" [71], killing you on entry.
Also, shouldn't the portal in "Pac in time or something?" [62] take
you to you to "Rolferoos in the double licker!" [63] rather than
"ORDER within Chaos" [70]?
Once again, I must commend John Elliott for empowering us to write
such wonderful games with the JSW64 game-engines and JSWED.
The JSW48 demo feels faster than the JSW64 version. Would it be
possible to compensate for JSW64's loss of speed by applying Mark
Woodmass's Fast JSW patch?
--
Dr. Andrew Broad
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/
http://www.geocities.com/andrewbroad/spectrum/willy/list.html
|
|
|