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Message: 6783
Author: jetsetdanny
Date: 11/02/2015
Subject: "Stay Kool" - Daniel's review
"Stay Kool" is a game by Leigh Hugill, published by Bug-Byte Software Ltd in the spring of 1985 (according to the information given by Matty at https://mattyongames.wordpress.com/category/jet-set-clones/, while the copyright notice inside the game itself mentions 1984). It is definitely a game of JSW interest, actually described by most reviewers as a JSW clone.
The plot of the game, as summarised in "Crash" No. 15 (April 1985), is the following: "Space Pi tot Luke Warm is stranded on his crippled spaceship after one of his less successful space battles. It isn't his day either; although the emergency space shuttle is ready to go he has neglected to keep the fuel rods on the shuttle. They are scattered about the stricken ship and Luke must be guided around to collect them all. Unfortunately (the key word in any computer game) the damaged ship has sent the various automated devices wild. Can Luke avoid the nasties, collect all the rods and be ready in the shuttle bay before the damaged ship falls into the nearby star?"
"Stay Kool" has been mentioned in this Group’s posts twice before, AFAICT, both times by DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!!. The first time was in Message 3108 on 28 Nov 2002, where "Stay Kool" was included among games which could be an inspiration for Igor Makovsky’s "ZX Heroes", and called "another Willy hopeful." The second mention came in Message 4741 on 28 March 2005, where DrUnKeN mAsTeR!!! said, "Wasn't keen on the main sprite for the Space Doubt game a little too Luke Warm, Fair enough Stay Kool was OK but it was gash compared to JSW."
There is a tribute to "Stay Kool" in Richard Hallas’s "Join the Jet-Set!". As he mentions in the text file accompanying "JTJS", the room "Bug-Bytten" is "named for Bug-Byte software, original publishers of Manic Miner and publishers of Stay Kool, subject of the adjacent room (see 'Who is Luke Warm anyway?')." Furthermore, Richard says that the name of the room "Who is Luke Warm anyway?" "refers to a very obscure game called Stay Kool, which featured a main character called Luke Warm. Stay Kool was a mediocre platformer which was very much in the Manic Miner/JSW style, and which was written by a friend of my best school-friend's elder brother. Stay Kool was published by Bug-Byte (see 'Bug-Bytten'). It was never successful. I played it once in a shop, but didn't buy it."
"Stay Kool" may have been "very obscure" when Richard Hallas wrote his notes on "JTJS", but not so much these days. It can be downloaded from World of Spectrum and other sites (in addition to the game files in TZX and TAP formats, a map, several reviews and a couple of ads can be downloaded from WoS at http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0004891).
The game is a rather pale reflection of JSW, I would say, with some elements inspired by MM. In spite of differences with the classic JSW game engine (discussed below), it very much feels like playing a JSW game when you have a go at it. My intuitive feeling is that it might be closer to the JSW48 game engine than any other game featuring a non-JSW game engine (with the possible exception of "Henry’s Hoard"). No wonder both in the 1980s reviews and in Matty' s review it is classified as a "JSW clone".
There are some very apparent inspirations from MM in "Stay Kool". "The Barroom", for example, is a (poor) rendition of "Miner Willy meets the Kong Beast". The guardians featured in "The Prickly Hedgehog room" (also appearing elsewhere) clearly draw upon the Amoebatrons, etc.
There are some obvious references to JSW, too. The room "We must peform a ….WHAT?" is a clear reference (in title and in design) to "We must perform a Quirkafleeg". "The Apple Tree," "The Fruity Bit" and "The Rotten Branch" draw on the Megatree sequence, and so on.
The graphics of the game are described as "above average" in the April 1985 "Crash" review and one of the comments says, "Graphics are quite varied and well drawn, however, and the game makes full use of the colour capabilities of the Spectrum (...)." I would say that by today’s standards (taking into account the development of JSW games since 1985), they do not really merit such an assessment, not "above average", certainly. The sprites lack this something special that the original JSW sprites had; some seem to be just impoverished versions of the original, like, for instance, the guardians featured in "The Bee Hive" (also appearing elsewhere). Actually, there are some good sprites in the game; maybe it is just that the rooms are, as Matty put it, "rather simplistic and easy screens", which affects the overall assessment of the game.
The collision-detection algorithm is apparently different from the classic JSW game engine, allowing for some situations where you think you should have died, but you survive (conversely, there are also situations where you feel your in-game death was unjust). Luke’s figure tends to disappear partially (or completely) on too close an encounter with a guardian (reappearing when you move again).
Guardians can bump into each other without making you die (a jump over two intersecting guardians, one vertical and one horizontal, may be quite spectacular, for instance in the opening screen "* * * The Rolls Room * * *"). Guardians can also pass through non-Air cells.
Luke, the protagonist, falls down in one-character spaces (Air cells) and moves up in one-character columns of Water or Crumbly cells surrounded by Earth cells.
There are crumbling floors, of the fast-crumbling type, I would say.
An interesting feature is that Luke can change the direction on a conveyor by jumping. However, the jump cannot be vertical, it has to be in the opposite direction (if carried to the left on the conveyor, Luke can jump to the right and after that can keep walking right).
There are columns of cells (called "tractor beams" in the "Crash" review) which automatically suck Luke up. This is actually quite cool – perhaps an interesting idea for a future addition to the JSW64 game engine?
There are a couple of teleporters and a couple of switches in the game. There is also a droplet guardian in "The Miner’s Tomb".
There is (at least) one instance of a room where the items have two different shapes ("Rear Deck" with 6 items of one shape and 1 item of a different shape). I can’t recall any other game based on MM, JSW or similar game engine where such a thing would occur.
There are some unfair infinite death scenarios (IDS), such as being sucked up from "The surgery!" into "The Galley" (it can be avoided by jumping to the side if you know what to do beforehand) and some traps where you get irrevocably stuck (i.e. if you land on the [harmless] spikes in "We must peform a ….WHAT?" or the infinite fall in "So long, Sucker!!").
There is a time limit to the game in the form of a thermometer showing slowly rising temperature. From my playing experience I would say that time is not a problem in trying to complete the game.
The "Hall of Scum" chart allows the player to introduce their high scores at the end of the game. Ironically, if you complete the game, you have no opportunity to introduce your high score.
Luke plunges into a Cess Pit if all lives are lost.
A feature of the game which puzzles me is Luke’s ability to withstand a fall from a considerable height (any height, in fact) if the Jump key is pressed before touching the ground (or a combination of Jump with either Right or Left – it does not always work perfectly, but you can always get it right after trying a couple of times). It would seem from the design of the majority of the rooms that this feature was unintended – in a lot of cases, when used, it simplifies the gameplay and allows the player to avoid a lot of clearly intended obstacles. However, in some instances it is indispensable, AFAICT, to progress in the game. One example is the room "The Gymnasium", when entered from the left, after clearing the items in the two adjacent rooms. If it were not for Luke’s ability to fall down from a considerable height, it would be impossible to get down onto the floor of the room and return to the rest of the game map, I believe. A similar situation occurs in "The Games Room" after entering it from the right.
The map of "Stay Kool" created by Ladderman in 2006 is a valuable help while playing the game. It is generally accurate, but not perfect. It misses the room "I.T.A.A", located above "Wot!,No Custard Pies!", with "* * * Rainbow Zone * * *" to the right, "We must peform a ….WHAT?" to the left and "Have you seen my Ape?" above. It doesn’t mark the existence of the (empty) room "So long,Sucker!!", which you can enter when falling down from "The Airlock" (which you can do when the centrally-placed vertical guardian is above you – there is no reason why you would want to enter this room, though, as it is an infinite-fall trap). Moreover, the map fails to indicate some illogical exits, such as appearing in "* * * The Rolls Room * * *" when you exit "Greetings From Loch Ness" upwards.
"* * The Engine Room * *" and "Engine Room West", which hold no items, do not serve any useful purpose other than providing access to "The Prickly Hedgehog room", which can be accessed from "Wardle’s Lair-Les Peaubles" anyway. They can be omitted when playing the game in order to complete it (and should be omitted when you strive for efficiency).
I believe "Stay Kool" in its original shape is impossible to complete, for the following reason. Once the player has collected all of the items, they should go to "The Shuttle Bay" where the game ends. However, there is no way to exit the cluster of rooms: "Pteradactyl’s Lair", "The Giddy Goons", "The Nuclear Reactor!" , "Rear Deck" and the left side of "We must peform a ….WHAT?" to return to the rest of the playing field, AFAICT. Therefore it is either impossible to return to "The Shuttle Bay" after you have collected all of the items (if you have left the rooms from the aforementioned cluster to be the last ones to explore) or you get stuck in this cluster in the middle of the game (whenever you get there), unable to progress any further.
There is a comment below Matty’s review of "Stay Kool", posted by Oh Dear on 17 February 2011, which, in addition to some other seemingly inside information, says, "AFAIK the game was never commercially released beyond the review copies, and the programmer was never paid anything for it." It adds that "Stay Kool" is "buggy as hell as it was allegedly written directly into machine code without an assembler." (https://mattyongames.wordpress.com/2008/09/26/stay-kool-goldfish-bowl-head-goes-fuel-rod-seeking/#comments) This would explain the incompletability of the game. However, the information about the game not being released commercially does not sound convincing to me, taking into account Richard Hallas’s testimony and the publicity apparently given to the game (the ads on WoS).
The solution to the problem I have found is POKE 51504,7, which moves the right platform in “We must peform a ….WHAT?” one row up, making the room passable from left to right.
After this little tweak the game can be completed without losing a single life. Once you have collected all of the 81 items and enter "The Shuttle Bay", the final screen kicks in with congratulations and an ad of Mr Hugill's next game "Transnitron" (which indeed is available for download on WoS).
I was wondering if it would be possible to copy the room and sprite data into a standard JSW game. I suspect that transferring / extracting it might not be a big deal for someone technically savvy. Perhaps somebody in this Group would find it to be a pleasant challenge? Should this happen, I would be willing to create "a clone of the clone" using a standard JSW game engine (or rather, JSW64 to keep as much from the non-JSW48 effects as possible), with some extra rooms perhaps and / or with a much more intense use of the existing space for new challenges (additional guardians, additional items to collect, etc.).
And just to sum up: "Stay Kool" is inferior to many of the later JSW "clones", but it is certainly fun to play if someone enjoys JSW games. Have a go at it if you have a spare moment!
Daniel
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