THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE Cassette 50 PUBLISHER Cascade Games Ltd AUTHOR Various YEAR 1983 DESCRIPTION This tape is a compilation of Spectrum BASIC games contributed to Cascade Games by many, many home users. Cascade paid UKP10 for the best ones and put them on this tape (although, as we will see later, the knowledge that these games were the -best- that Cascade got truly boggles the mind). This are the Games on CASCADE?s Cassette 50: 1. Muncher 18. Ski Run 35. Field 2. Ski Jump 19. Tanks 36. Draggold 3. Basketball 20. Solar Ship 37. Space Search 4. Frogger 21. Ten Pins 38. Inferno 5. Breakout 22. Cars 39. Nim 6. Crusher 23. Stomper 40. Voyager 7. Startrek 24. Pinball 41. Sketch Pad 8. Martian Knock Out 25. Cavern 42. Blitz 9. Boggles 26. Laser 43. Fighting Mission 10. Alien Attack 27. Alien 44. Mystical Diamonds 11. Lunar Lander 28. Cargo 45. Galaxy Defense 12. Maze Eater 29. The Race 46. Cypher 13. Microtrap 30. The Skull 47. Jetmobile 14. Motorway 31. Orbit 48. Barrel Jump 15. Labyrinth 32. Munch 49. Attacker 16. Skittles 33. Bowls 50. Space Mission 17. Race Track 34. Raiders CONTROLS Varies depending on game (instructions are included with each game) INSTRUCTIONS What follows is a short description of every game on the tape: 1)Muncher A passable UDG version of Pac-Man. Eat all of the periods, avoid the two "munsters" chasing you, and eat the asterisks to have a go at eating them for awhile. Rack up huge points for camping out at the place where the munsters show up again after being eaten, then eating them again and again and again and.. 2)Ski Jump A fascinating venture into the seamy world of ski-jump betting. You start with ukp50 and try to make huge amounts of money guessing which of six skiers will jump the farthest. Gets very boring very quickly, despite the fun of watching the skiers actually jump off the slope and land on top of each other. 3)Basketball Absolutely laughable version of basketball. Only one person can move at a time, reducing the game to a stalemate of your opposing player just decides to hold down a key to keep you from moving. A foul is called if your man stands on top of the other man when you take a shot. Run very far away from this one. 4)Frogger The first not-horrible game on the tape. Basically like the arcade game, except instead of hopping on logs in the second section, you have to avoid things like alligators and battleships. 5)Breakout Hopefully everyone knows what Breakout is by now; you have a bat, they have a large wall, you have to kill off that wall by hitting it with a ball.. 6)Crusher You have been captured by the evil Dr. Death and are placed on his crusher. You have to get the addition sum shown on the screen right or else you get crushed (which may be a good thing when looking at the quality of the game). 7)Startrek It's the ancient Startrek game, straight from the PDP-11 to your Spectrum. Put all of your megalomaniacal delusions to work as you kill off Klingon after Klingon. 8)Martian Knock Out Destroy an entire fleet of Martians with only 15 missiles. All you can do is type in what velocity you want the missile to go at. Just for kicks, your gun moves after every shot, and you get a dud missile every now and then. 9)Boggles Take turns taking up to a certain limit of items from the pile. Whoever takes the last item from the pile loses. Hours of exciting fun. 10)Alien Attack Fire away at evil UFOs from your hidden underground bunker filled with guns. A minute to learn .. a minute and a half to master. 11)Lunar Lander Try your best to manually land on the moon without killing yourself. In an amazing feat of BASIC programming, the game gives you a close-up view of your ship as it nears the surface (this could have been advertised as "3-D graphics" by the standard of Spectrum game companies). 12)Maze Eater A somewhat more true-to-the-arcade version of Pac-Man with no energizer dots. Make the little green box and eat all of the asterisks without getting eaten by the little red boxes. 13)Microtrap You are trapped inside a fiendish computer which tries to kill you by placing little bits of wiring in your way. Your object is to make it to the fuse on the left to blow up the computer. Epic in its uninterestingness. 14)Motorway Oh dear.. You have a car at the bottom of the screen, and the object is to avoid all of the cars (okay, one car) and hit all the little men running down the screen. It's games like these, no doubt, that causes teenagers to commit violent crimes. 15)Labyrinth Navigate the not-very-treacherous labyrinth, avoiding the red asterisks, and reach the flashing dollar sign in the middle before running out of time. 16)Skittles I think I played a ZX81 game that was exactly like this. Knock over as many of the 30 skittles as you can with six balls. 17)Race Track A version of this exists for every computer known to man. Keep your little car between the walls on the side of the road for as long as possible. 18)Ski Run Navigate the full-screen ski trail, going between the flags and not hitting any trees, flags or people. Actually kind of fun, and unlike most other BASIC games, actually goes too fast to be playable. 19)Tanks Navigate your boxy tank across the screen without hitting any of the (invisible) mines. The game is impossible, and every now and then the game puts a mine on top of your starting point, adding to the "challenge". 20)Solar Ship Try to collide with as many suns as possible before your ship goes off the top of the screen. Overall a fairly laughable game. 21)Ten Pins Dire bowling game. Your ball swishes magically across the alley; press the "Z" key when you think it's positioned correctly, and it flies down the alley and hits some pins. No scoring; the game ends after two bowls. 22)Cars Very suspiciously similar to "Race Track" (see above). Drive around an end-less track and avoid slamming into walls. 23)Stomper Another Pac-Man-ish game. Scurry around, avoiding Mr. Skull while trying to catch the green thingy running around. 24)Pinball Well, it's not really pinball.. There are no flippers, for one thing (instead there's a Breakout-style paddle you move left and right)..there are no bumpers (there are pink circular things that give you points if you hit them).. and there's not much of anything else (besides walls). 25)Cavern Very, very suspiciously familiar to "Race Track" and "Cars", except this time you're on a spaceship, and not just on some piddly race car. There are also some people strewn across the track that you can run into for points. 26)Laser You're a spaceship, and you have absolutely nothing to worry about (besides running out of fuel and getting hit by strange-looking "enemy ships"). 27)Alien Ooooohh, it's just like Space Invaders except it's in color, your ship's about three times bigger and, well, it's written in Spectrum BASIC. 28)Cargo Blast your way through the Pink Walls of Destruction(tm), make your way to the flashing "o", and get immediately killed by the skull that was right on top of the "o". Admittedly the game would probably be better if some instructions were given. 29)The Race Suspiciously similar to "Ski Jump" (see above), except that this time, instead of betting on ski jumps, you're betting on 100m-dash races. And this time you even get ukp100 to play with! Hours of fun for all the family! 30)The Skull It's an exact copy of "Cargo" (see above). I suppose that Cascade, not liking the way "Cassette 49" sounded, decided to pad the tape by copying some things twice. 31)Orbit Thirty games into the tape and we finally come upon a half-decent one. Your ship and a little dot are both orbiting around an "O" representing the sun; the object is to crash into the little dot by increasing and decreasing your orbit. Sort of interesting, anyway. 32)Munch Move the giant pair of lips around, trying to eat as many red thingies as possible, without eating any of the blue thingies. Very simple. 33)Bowls Some sort of odd game involving hitting red and blue balls around. The best feature, without a doubt, is the fact that you get to type in whatever score you want to have (since the game doesn't keep score). 34)Raiders Quite a bit like Space Invaders, except that (a) the invaders don't move, and (b) shots sort of rain down from the sky, as opposed from being thrown at you by the invaders per se. Uses the BEEP 10,10 command to good effect. 35)Field This game tries to be true to life as possible. The object is to get the green plant while avoiding the farmer's dog, as well as the invisible mines (did I mention that the farmer installed a minefield on his crops last night?). Another game that makes extensive use of BEEP 10,10 for extra annoyance. 36)Draggold An adventure game written in under 6K. Wow! Your only options are to move ahead, left or right, but that's ok, because all of the (flashing) words weave a rich and enchanting story. Until you die without warning for the millionth time. Avoid at all costs. 37)Space Search The object is to search for a particular asterisk in a screenful of asterisks. You get additional fuel by orbiting around certain asterisks. More nonstop thrills than Mortal Kombat. 38)Inferno You have to pick up buckets of water in the room on the right to put out the fire in the room on the left. You die by getting burnt, and by slamming into a wall (you die of embarassment, I suppose). 39)Nim Suspiciously familiar to Boggles (see above) Take stuff from the pile, try not to take the last thing from the pile, turn off the game, etc. 40)Voyager A huge game (16k), this game even has its own title screen! Beyond that, it's suspiciously similar to "Solar Ship" (see above) except with slightly better UDGs. 41)Sketch Pad Draw, draw, draw on your screen until you vomit! 42)Blitz Your airplane is running out of fuel and, for some reason, the only way to refuel is to bomb every single skyscraper on the screen to bits. Logic was never a high point of 8-bit games, and this is no exception. Oh yes, and the game is dire, too. 43)Fishing An absolutely laughable fishing sim. Buy supplies at the shop, then sit around for ten hours as nothing happens. 44)Mystical Diamonds Another one of those "make your way to the top of the screen while avoiding those invisible mines" games except this time the author let you SEE the mines! It does not, however, make the game any better. Sorry. 45)Galaxy Defense An OK game where you shoot and shoot and shoot at aliens coming from the spaceship above your planet. Nice UDGs, at the very least. 46)Cypher The largest game (over 23k..!) in the collection, this Master Mind clone is actually sort of fun, if you find 20-year-old mind games fun. 47)Jetmobile A somewhat surreal game where you have to keep the little yellow box from hitting the walls (an easy task if it weren't for the fact that your box is nearly uncontrollable!) 48)Barrel Jump Now this game is fun. Your little guy runs across the screen, and, in order for him to survive his little trek across the screen, you must make him jump over all the barrels in his way. Woooo.. 49)Attacker Another somewhat surreal game where you have to make the little white box enter the big box in the center of the screen for big points.. and now we come to the end of this epic of Spectrum rubbishness.. 50)Space Mission Move the "H" around, avoid the blue boxes, hit the red boxes.. and finally we've reached the end of the cassette!!!! Congratulate yourself! CHEATS Unknown, although it's an easy task to edit the BASIC code to your liking.. SEQUELS None known, although another Cascade compilation tape is rumored to exist.. URL ftp://ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/sinclair/snaps/games/misc/cass50.zip (This is a .TAP file, for use only with emulators that can use tape images) NOTES This cassette falls into the "so bad it's good" category - spend an afternoon playing the games inside. If you can make it through all fifty games and not have a nervous breakdown, then you, sir, are a true Spectrum lover. :)