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DESERT ISLAND DISKS

By Eldad Petreanu

A regular feature of Your Sinclair, Eldad Petreanu suggested a revival of this section in which readers tell us all about their 8 favourite games, which they would use to keep them company on a deserted island! To start off, lets hear Eldad`s favourite list:

Which eight games would YOU take to a desert island?

  • HEAD OVER HEELS
    (Screenshot)

    Need I say more? Oh well. The best isometric game ever, with brilliant puzzles, hypercute characters that move over, around, and through each other, and polished gameplay. Monochrome never looked better.

  • HIGHWAY ENCOUNTER
    (Screenshot)

    Shoot and block aliens and remove obstacles, clearing the path for a weapon you must push along the highway. With the exception of its sequel, this is quite possibly the only game in which your extra lives follow you around, doing their best to get lost before you have a chance to play them!

  • SKOOL DAZE
    (Screenshot)

    A whole school in 48K! So real you could actually learn something from it! The little characters with their individual,demented personalities do their worst to make you think school could be fun. But we know better, don't we?

  • SOLOMON'S KEY
    (Screenshot)

    An arcade conversion that was infinitely better than its PC incarnation. This platform game lets you create and destroy the platforms. Though it may seem very difficult at first, there's actually a foolproof method around every screen.

  • SPLIT PERSONALITIES [AKA SPLITTING IMAGES]
    (Screenshot)

    Takes the sliding block puzzle where no sliding block puzzle has gone before. A unique and rewarding experience, and the feeling of completing a complex maneuver to get a piece of the picture to its right place is beyond words. What a shame I'm good enough to complete it every single time.

  • STARION
    (Screenshot)

    The unlikely combination of shooting vector spaceships, collecting their cargo to complete anagrams and flying to the time the anagram is needed actually works very well. The brainy bits make a welcome change from the otherwise-monotonous smooth vector graphics. The snap in the ftp sites is corrupted, so can anybody who still has the original make a .TAP of it? PLEASE?

  • TRAPDOOR
    (Screenshot)

    Dash frantically through the castle, trying to prepare whatever your master feels like munching on, be it boiled slimies or eyeball crush. HUGE graphics and a convincing game world set this one apart, and Berk is so cute you'll want one (of whatever he is) as a pet.

  • TRAVEL WITH TRASHMAN
    (Screenshot)

    Fly all over the world, clean whatever country you're in until you can see your face in it, and make enough money for your next air fare. The countries all have their distinct 'look and feel' - the way to lose the KGB agents in Moscow has little to do with the technique to avoid falling coconuts in Samoa. And with the ability to choose your route this means there's a lot of gameplay in there. The classic 'traveling salesman' problem may well have its roots in this game!


    If you would like your own top list of games included in another issue`s desert island disks, just send us your list of games and why you like them so much, and you too could be sailing off to a tropical island with just eight speccy games for company!


    SAVE OUR SOFTWARE!

    by Eldad Petreanu

    There are quite a few sites on the 'net with Spectrum software, but none of them is good enough the others can be content with simply mirroring it. Some come close, but all in different ways. The definitive Spectrum archive is still a long way from completion.

    What can we do?

  • Find a site where we can store several hundred megs of information on the net. Do you know any millionaire who had a spectrum when he was a kid? or is your university extremely generous and willing to risk potential legal problems? I thought not. This site should probably be outside the US, who have this thing about software, er, reproduction.

  • Agree on a format for Spectrum software. It seems to me that the .TAP format should be used whenever possible, since it preserves the structure of the original tape. The .DAT format is great for multiloads and other unconventional loaders, but sadly programs need to be individually hacked. Finally, when these are not available, a simple .Z80 or even .SNA will have to do. Actually, it's best to have everything in .Z80 too anyway. Do you agree? What about +3 Software? Some programs may require special treatment - remember Shadow of the Unicorn, which came with its own replacement ROM?

  • Create the perfect directory structure. Thinking only about the snaps directory of this definitive site for a moment, it seems reasonable to create these subdirectories:

        game
        demo - of the graphics/sound variety
        gamedemo - if the whole game is not available, or a demo contains stages not found in the complete game, the demo should be here
        business - word processor, databases...
        utility - any software for creating software
        hardware - hardware-specific software (the kind that's bundled with digitizers/light pens/whatever)
    anything else I forgot?

    inside each directory, subdirectories for the different machines can be found:

        16
        48
        48AY - runs in 48K mode, but plays 128K music if available
        128
        +3 ?

    What do you think about this directory structure? Again, this is just off the top of my head, and your suggestions may be much better.

  • Convert software to the relevant format(s) and start uploading! Some software is probably lost to us already, like several adventures with sales in the dozens. Let's not let any more software die!

  • CD-ROM, anyone? This could be cheap, just to cover costs; a little more expensive, if done for profit by people who don't mind advertizing and risking getting sued by the software publishers; or with the profit going to some charity - what publisher would sue such an operation, knowing this would make it look like a total sleaze?

    Is this plan really that far-fetched? Or can it some day become a reality? Oh. Well, never mind. It was just a thought.

    Some good ideas there on how to organise the Speccy scene! I agree on many of his points, although using TAPs a standard may alienate users of Emulators which don`t support this format. Any more suggestions anyone? ED.


    [Contents] [Part 7] [Part 9]