Dr BEEP writes:- Try the 'ultimate eye surgery simulator'.

Controls Cursor and ENTER to select.

See the new medical innovations like square lights.

At first you must be the fool who shoots a piece of metal in his own eye.

After succeeding the eyetest where you must type in the tokens that you see, you are allowed to do the surgery.

The surgery must be done in the right order to succeed.

Have fun,

Dr Beep.

I ask, is this a first for the CGC? What we have here is the ill-fated "Megagame" project now finally fully realised and you don't even need a dongle, but you could of course try sticking one in whilst playing this to see if anything happens.

This is more than just a single game, being in fact a series of minigames to test the dexterity, strength, intelligence and guile of the player. Colourful hi-res graphics used throughout - you'll positively drool over the trees at Thermopylae.

Features a segmented BEEP tune on main menu which cunningly sounds exactly "a flattened fifth out of tune", perhaps even in homage to the late Douglas Adams (or not).

After all this time, we finally have the "missing link" in the evolution of the well known and loved lawnmower simulation games. Speccy crap game archeologists or "specrapologists" will now be pulling an overtime shift on piecing together the murky history behind this proto-game. Of course for the rest of us casual players, it's a chance to marvel at the ZX rendering of a lush green, peaceful suburban garden. It also gives us the ability to relive those carefree summer days when gardening was such a simple pleasure. For best results, play whilst listening to Radio 4's "Gardeners' Question Time".

Woody tells us:-
"With a fully animated intro and high-speed, high-quality graphics, be prepared to be thoroughly engrossed for up to a minute in this brand new, action packed release for any Spectrum 48K/128K machine. Or something."

*Updated 14/11/08* - Woody tells me:-

"Maybe I should perhaps add that the paths through the tunnel sections in Escape from Niburon Prime are actually completely visible on a real 48K machine, and also in the more recent versions of SpecEmu :)

I'm hoping, given time, that it gives a little more incentive for emulator developers to add the extra brightness levels to their emulators. We'll see..."

Here's the tile editor as promised. I've included the machine code source so that if anyone does actually use it they won't have to write the display routines from scratch, although they are really very crap (hint, hint).

I've included some tiles converted from NetHack. Here's the quick and dirty way to import tiles (not included in the text file):

Use BMP2SCR, RetroX alpha, Mac2Spec or whatever to convert two 256x192 24-bit screens to Timex mode-2 screens. The tiles should be in the lower two thirds. Open the editor. Go into storage mode. Load the first .SCR. Press B to switch bank. Load the second .scr. Press B to switch bank again. Presto - tiles imported. This will destroy the upper part of the display though. Press BREAK. Then RUN. The tiles are not displayed yet. Press T to get into storage. Then press X. Voila.

Cheers!

Hmm, now do I get away with this attached entry ;)

Only joking!

Well it is in the compo, so Woody did at least get away with entering it and let's face it the compo badly needed another submission at this stage!

Arda tells me that the game contains a bubble sort type-in within. Pit your wits against the CPU as you try to manually sort your list of random numbers quicker than the CPU can bubble sort its own list.

Keys are Q=up, A=down, Enter=swap numbers, Space=finish sorting. Nice touch reminiscent of Wacky Darts as each level gets more difficult and you meet some hilarious characters such as "Vicious Panda" & "Alien Bug" - each having their own animated UDGs too. Arda provided an instructions file for the game in the downloadable zipfile.

Anyway as for the game itself, use keys O & P to guide the Tardis left and right with our home planet in tow (don't be too rough with it now - we don't want to upset the resident life forms). Be sure to avoid crashing in to passing objects, except for the large 'F' characters which are in fact extra fuel and you must grab these as they are crucial to your journey. Again, this is another 100% machine code game from Woody and you can marvel at the high speed line and star drawing routines.

*Updated 29/11/08* - Woody has submitted an improved version of the game with sampled sound, faster graphics and additional in-game obstacles. Also shows the keys on the intro screen.

In this game, watch out because the maze walls are lethal. You play the part of a small stick man. I was going to suggest that lack of colour in this title means complete source-level portability with ZX81 systems. But wait, there is some welcome colour here. It is only afforded to those victors of the game though, why waste colour on losers? Also, watch out for impossible mazes that are sometimes generated. Don't play on a 16K system (like I initially did) or you'll see a capital 'A' instead of the intended stickman.

Today we are able to find out if Turing's expectations were exceeded by determining if a machine in the year 1982 with 16 Kilobytes of RAM could also pass the test. The question is:- can you be fooled into thinking the program's responses are indistinguishable from those of a human being?

Guesser notes:- "if you can get it to load and run you're doing well, the loader doesn't auto run so it will load the game instead. if you want to see the loading screen (lots of colour clash for no reason) you'll have to load the tape again and RUN :)"

Because of this issue, I made a snapshot of the program for the crap game arcade with it already loaded and ready to play and also grabbed the loading screen for this page.

But really, it wasn't going well for Dr BEEP as he attempted to code his current minigame entry on the train on the way home. So, he pulled the emergency cord and jumped out of the train, wherupon landing in a farmer's field, he quickly coded this crap game on his laptop. Or at least I imagine that's what happened.

But in any case, here we have a really involving simulation of the trials and tribulations faced by a modern day crap game coder. How will you cope as the CGC deadline looms? Will you make the right decisions leading to a succesful entry, or will you just pack it all in as a bad job and go down the pub?

For those of you thinking of submitting a real crap game to the CGC, why not perform a "dry run" in this simulator first?

Oh yes, another Christmas themed title arrives at CSSCGC 2008. Break out the mince pies and pour yourself a moderate glass of sherry, as "playing" this one may make you feel a little cold.

A simulation of synthetic snow, and absolutely bugger all else is provided here which gives a somewhat authentic reproduction of a modern day Lapland-themed park in the UK.

Can you succesfully manage the park by overseeing absolutely nothing, and doing absolutely nothing on a regular day-to-day basis? Just sit back and wait for the cash to roll in, hopefully guaranteeing a rather cosy Christmas for you and yours.

*Updated 06/12/08* - The program was optimised down to one line of code. Hey, it's a one-liner - I just had to get one!

On screen instructions steadfastly stay on-screen during the game, lest you forget which keys to press. Read 'em quick though because they'll be partially overwritten during the course of the interstallar battle.

Nice large alien ship sprite wouldn't be out of place in R-Type. Excellent "Snowy TV" effect when you die. The whole game has something of a cinematic feel as the action takes place within the bounds of something not unlike a moving filmstrip. Of course I'm sure it is not actually meant to be a strip of film!

You have but one life to save our precious blue orb from ominous mass extinction.

Woody states:-

"I'll not bother coming up with any usual game blurb for this other than to thank Elite and Hewson Consultants for their pretty graphics I, erm, borrowed :)"

Paul tells me that he traditionally submits four games to the CGC every year and for this, his fourth game he has dug out a relic from 1994.

Initial impressions seem to be of a well polished game, certainly of commercial standards with a veritable array of mulicolored game tiles on display as well as some fitting AY sound effects via the 128K PLAY command.

I have a feeling I'm going to get back to this when I have some further free time and actually seriously play it!

So, what's crap about it? Well I've only reached screen two at present and so I don't know what could be in store in the later levels. But so far, so good (as opposed to crap).

Seriously, check this one out if you like puzzle games - you may actually enjoy it!

Fortunately, although the accident in question is completely unavoidable for the player (call it fate), there is a chance that the offender will be brought to justice.

Let's not ask any awkward questions, like what where you doing standing still in the middle of the main road, with your eyes closed and wearing a pair of headphones?

Anyhow the perpetrator is subsequently lined up in an identity parade along with eight other random members of the public. Is your memory good enough to tell the assailant apart from the others?

The police will very generously give you up to three attempts to nail the offending motorcyclist. Choose wisely, or the offender will be laughing in the face of justice.

Having recently watched the sci-fi classics "Shape of Things to Come" and "Back to the Future Part II", I was now certainly well prepared for this title.

Is this game more accurate than those films? Well, just about the only thing "BTTF PT.2" got right was the mass disposal of obsolete optical disk based media by 2015 (alleyway scene).

I won't give too much away about this game though, providing only a glimpse of the mystical loading screen on this page.

Suffice it to say that its predictions of the future would not be out of place in the BTTF timeline known as "1985-A" (the violent timeline that is!). It is my duty to point out that CSSCGC 2008 cannot be held responsible for any injuries that may occur during the playing of this title. Perhaps the author is a "Three Stooges" fan?

In any case, I was warned by Apenao that if I like this title then I must be ill. I'm probably somewhat ill (no secret about that) - but I do like this title, because it's the only one I've seen so far (or can remember) that features the word "CRICKET" in it. You impressed me with that Apenao, hehe!

Dropped onto an alien planet from a hastily departing mothership, your orders are strictly to pratt around in front of an unfeasably large gun until either your head gets blown off, or you make it to the next level. Note to mothership pilot - "Drop me off behind the gun next time, not right in front of it, cheers Space Marine. Also, someone tell me this isn't a government operation!"

Use keys O and P to move the spacesuited player character around making sure to avoid the lethal combination of standing on temporarily raised ground at the moment a head-chopper projectile is passing by.

Excellent "Gibbous phase" planets overhang in the sky, giving a real alien-world feel to the game.

As for the game itself, you'll probably have to escape your body (perhaps with the aid of some pharmecutical substances) in order to actually understand it. Suffice it to say I died a few times whilst playing. It's probably my own fault though, I pressed a key.

Arda probably thought the world had forgotten about this one, but it came back to haunt him. (Think the Global Thermonuclear War game that keeps phoning you back). Enough respect to Arda who was willing to let this one back out in the wild again!

Congratulations to ADJB on getting the 100th title!

As for the "game" itself, the idea was originally mentioned by Andrew Owen, but alas he did not have time to complete the title, being very busy with a plethora of other exciting projects.

And so, ADJB took up the challenge and coded the game, which is nice to see in the compo. Clever use is made of the BRIGHT attribute to simulate the effect that paint always darkens somewhat when it dries. You also have a choice of the full range of colours offered by the ZX Spectrum pallette.

Now I hope you won't cheat, by cranking up emulation speed whilst playing this! I'm sure the true intended feel of the game is only possible by playing it at 3.5MHz!

*Updated 10/12/08* - ADJB sent in a newer version of the program, including a loading screen.