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Message: 5760
Author: Daniel
Date: 27/03/2006
Subject: DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!'s games - Daniel's review
In the process of playing all of the gamma-released MM and JSW
games, I have recently played several games by DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!,
namely, all of his JSW48 and JSW64 games plus "Bizarre". I still
have to play his other JSW128 games (the Down and Out trilogy).
I would like to share my general impressions, and also mention some
things I noticed in the spirit of constructive criticism.
I have played, to completion or as-near-completion-as-possible:
- The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! (JSW48)
- The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! SE (JSW64)
- Fantasy World Willy (JSW48)
- The F.I.T. (2 JSW48 games and 1 Geoff-mode1)
- Maria on Tour (JSW64)
- Bizarre (JSW128)
In the case of the last two games, this was the second time I played
them (the first time was soon after the release).
In the past I have commented on DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!'s games in
messages # 5045 and 5123 (reviews of "Maria on Tour"), 5182 (review
of "Bizarre"), 4751 and 4760 (considerations about the
classification of the "F.I.T." and "The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!").
As a sort of disclaimer before any other comments, I have to say
that I am not particularly fond of games which are visibly remakes
of the original JSW in the sense that a number of rooms are the same
or only slightly edited rooms from the original. Also, my personal
preference is for games which are "traditional-looking" platform
games, which I would say is not exactly the case with
e.g. "Bizarre". In spite of this, playing all of DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!'s
games was a very enjoyable experience, indeed :-) , and it has
definitely widened my JSW horizons.
Among things I particularly like about DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!'s games I
should mention:
- I highly appreciate the atmosphere created in them, and the sense
of humour. DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! is very consistent in this, and his
crazy ideas have made me LOL more than once :-) .
The interesting thing is that one's subjective perception of the
games may be different depending on when you play them (under what
personal circumstances). The F.I.T. for example will seem
particularly good if you play it on a day when the whole world and
everything you can think of seems "fucking" or "fucked". One of
those days, you know...
- Some graphics are truly outstanding. I particularly like:
a) Various games: the moon (in different variations) - which has
apparently become DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!'s trademark :-) ;
b) "DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! SE": the worms (in the sky castle), the huge
insect in "The last of me!", all of the sprites in "Munty Muntersons
basement" and the crabs (also used in "Maria on Tour");
c) "Fantasy World Willy": the orchestra in "The Mosh Pit", Asmodieus
(or "the priest who was not a God squader"), the church in the
graveyard and the sauna;
d) "Fucked Internet Remake": Eddie the Psychotic Cherry;
e) "Fucked Internet Resurection": the sexual intercourse (in "Where
security fuck the mallrats"), the garden, the huge Kari Krisnikova
and "the dweller of the cellar";
f) "Maria on Tour": Maria's sprite, the fire, Bad Mr Frosty, the
picture in Megatron, the crabs, the forest bugs (?) and the moles;
g) "Bizarre": the trees (and their faces), the cabin, the burning
candle, "the man with a fresh soul", the train engine, the fire, the
huge monster in "Sewer Creeps" and Technician Ted.
- The games are apparently consistent with DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!'s rule
of "no cheating" and "no infinite lives POKE". They are pretty easy,
and with some effort could probably be finished without cheating,
indeed. It's nice, actually, because the gameplay is smooth.
- "Bizarre" is a game which reminds me of movies usually
called "cinema of the road" (I'm not 100% sure what the expression
normally used in English is; a prime example of this genre is "Easy
Rider"). It's a really nice idea, and I must say that when I played
it for the second time, I enjoyed it even more than the first time,
despite the fact (or maybe: thanks to it) that I knew what was
coming.
- It is nice to see a new Geoff-mode1 game ("Fucked Internet
Resurection").
Some constructive criticism - design problems I noticed:
a) "The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!" original edition
I know you realize, DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!, that the game is impossible
to complete without cheating (I completed it using the Writetyper
POKE and some other POKEs, such as the superjump). I also know that
you removed most of the problems in the SE. Just in case you wanted
one day to release a completable fix of the original edition, here's
what I noticed:
- There is an invisible item in "They smashed the stairs" (28). I
guess this is a remnant from the original JSW. The item may be
collected by jumping vertically up on the right side of the column
after inserting e.g. POKE 35358,0.
- AFAICT there is no way to get back to the main playing field after
going down in "They never even touched the wine" (49). You are then
trapped between this room and the three adjacent rooms to the right.
The above bugs are critical. Other non-critical problems include:
- In "Take it to the bridge" (36) you can jump through the Earth-
cell which is the lower stair on the left side. You can then fall
down, exiting the room - you appear falling in "I see something up
ahead" (30) and experience an infinite death scenario (IDS).
- In "West Wing Roof" (56) you can exit the room to the left, which
results in an IDS in "Don't worry it'll be over soon!" (01).
- In "Those bastards blew my boat up!" (59) you can also exit the
room to the left. You appear on top of the wall in "They built this
wall for you man" (60) and are likely to experience an IDS if you
walk to the right into "Grab as much as you can and run!" (00) (you
can avoid the IDS by jumping).
- You can exit to the right in "They even pissed in the pool" (31),
which results in an IDS in "I see something up ahead" (30).
- There is a nasty IDS when climbing up the rope in "The gits never
clean the fridge" (25) into the room above.
b) "The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!" SE
Most of the problems found in the original edition have been
eliminated and the game is possible to complete; in fact, without
losing a single life.
Minor issues, which may be problems for people who try to exploit
every possibility offered by the quirky features, are:
- the problem with being able to go down in "Take it to the bridge"
(36); the only one remaining from the original edition AIAICT;
- the possibility to jump through an innocent-looking block (ILB)
in "Downstairs slightly?" (70) (the one in-between the lowest items
on the left). You reappear on top of the same room and you are okay,
but it's not very elegant..
- the possibility to jump through an ILB in "Munty Muntersons
basement" (71) (the Earth-cell above the leftmost of the lowest
items). You reappear on top of the same room and experience an IDS
colliding with the leftmost vertical guardian.
Other minor issues:
- In "Because Willy bought a microwave" (24) you can collect the
item by jumping from the left onto the ledge on which it is sitting.
This spares you jumping across the platforms in this and in the
adjacent room.
- The name of the room "There's a plane in my ceiling" (42) has lost
sense, because there is no more aeroplane sprite there. A person
playing the SE only would not understand why the room is called what
it's called.
c) "Fantasy World Willy"
AFAICT the game is bed-completable (I played it using some POKEs,
but not out of necessity but to speed up the process). However, when
Willy makes his toilet-run, in "You'd think by now that people" (03)
he collides with the cyan vertical guardian (which is the second one
from the left) and dies. This is a shame, because it looks like the
toilet-run might involve four other rooms, so it might be quite long
for a JSW48 game.
d) "The Fucked Internet Remix"
The game still has the Attic bug, which makes it impossible to
finish without cheating. I have managed to finish it using the
Writetyper cheat (never entering "The Attic").
e) "The Fucked Internet Remake"
The game is bed-completable. During the toilet-run, after
entering "The Stylish Bathroom", Willy gets stuck against the
horizontal platform on the left side of the room, which makes the
game non-toilet-completable.
f) "The Fucked Internet Resurection"
The game is bed-completable. During the toilet-run, after
entering "A Landing for A Novelty",Willy catches up with and
collides with the red horizontal guardian, which makes the game non-
toilet-completable.
g) "Maria on Tour"
The are no real problems in the game, which is toilet-completable
and possible to finish without losing a single life.
A very minor issue for me continues to be (I mentioned it in message
# 5123) the fact the after you gain your twelfth life, you don't see
it any more, because only 11 Marias are shown on the screen. If you
keep gaining lives afterwards, you won't know how many you have
(unless you keep count), because you don't see them, until you have
more than 16 lives, after which the first Maria from the left starts
flickering (because it's displayed twice).
Also, a very minor imperfection is that you can take a shortcut to
the item in "Olde Style kitchen" (10), by jumping onto the leftmost
platform in "West of Olde Style kitchen" (11), as mentioned before
by Sendy and Andrew.
h) "Bizarre"
The game is toilet-completable, but you have to sacrifice one life.
It happens in the room "Romantic Hallucinations" (73). DrUnKeN
mAsTeR!!! has corrected the problem with the lower rightmost item
which I mentioned in message # 5182. However, after collecting all
of the items (you are in the lower part of the room), you have no
way to get back up into the upper half of the room. So you are
trapped, and losing a life is the only way out.
The possible IDS when exiting "Get me out of here I'm a......."
(93) into "The Obligatory Milk Bottle" (94) persists. I have
temporarily uploaded a snapshot called "BizProb.z80" to my folder in
the Files section again, in order to show DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! what I
mean. Just open the snapshot and jump to the left.
There is one other problem I didn't notice during my first
playtesting. In the first room of the sequence "The Old Signal Box",
when you enter if from "Up the fucked up viaduct", you can jump from
the stairs so that you land with the lower part of Willy's body
INSIDE the rails (the white horizontal line). In such case, you can
then just walk to the left and exit the room (you pass the brick
wall by walking through wall blocks at head-height right-to-left).
After you have exited the room to the left, you appear on the right-
hand side of the same room, and you are trapped.
i) Spelling
There are some spelling problems in the room-names. The most common
one is with things like "Muntersons" instead
of "Munterson's", "worlds" instead of "world's", etc.Other
misspelled words in whose case it doesn't look like it was done on
purpose include: "labotamy" (> "lobotomy"), "desocrated"
(> "desecrated"), "seranada" (> "serenada") and "favourate"
(> "favourite").
I wouldn't really mention this phenomenon, because it doesn't seem a
problem in games of "drunken" nature (and I'm not using this
expression in a negative sense at all! :-) ). However, it also
concerns the title "Fucked Internet Resurection" (> "Resurrection"),
which might be improved, IMHO - unless it has been misspelled on
purpose, of course.
In view of all of the above I have a question to DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!
concerning possible releases of fixed versions of his games. In my
humble opinion, it would be nice, DrUnKeN mAsTeR, if you re-released:
- "Fantasy World Willy" with the ending problem fixed, to make the
game toilet-completable.
- "The Fucked Internet Remix" with the Attic bug fixed, and the
colour-code protection removed.
- "The Fucked Internet Remake" with the ending problem fixed, to
make the game toilet-completable.
- "The Fucked Internet Resurection" with the ending problem fixed,
to make the game toilet-completable (and possibly the spelling of
the title corrected).
- "Bizarre" with the "Romantic Hallucinations" problem fixed, to
make the game completable without losing a single life.
- possibly the original "The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!" fixed to become
toilet-completable, but I don't feel very strongly about it, since
the SE makes up for it.
So my question is: DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!, is there any chance you might
decide to do the above-mentioned fixes and to release them in a near
future?
Preparing all of these releases should not take you more than a
couple of hours, taking into account that you can test the toilet-
runs by applying the runtime POKE 34271,1 which makes Maria
disappear (as Andrew mentioned in his messages).
The question is particularly important to me, because right now I am
preparing the list (and files) of games to be sent to Steve Brown of
The TZX Vault for conversion and inclusion in the archives. So I
would be very happy to be able to send him completable versions of
your games to be preserved as such for posterity :-) .
Well, this is all for now. Congratulations, DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!, on
the games I have played so far, and I look forward very much to
playing your remaining JSW128 games - the Down and Out trilogy, and
your future games!
Daniel
P.S. DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!, thanks for your explanation concerning the
teleport in JSW48 :-) .
P.S. 2 A note to Dr. Broad: Andrew, since the author is consistent
in the usage of a mixture of lower and upper case for his game title
(The DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!), perhaps you could reflect it on your list
as well?
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