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Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.

Hello and welcome. It's been a fairly quiet couple of months on the gaming front, however I still have a couple of classic Acorn games for you to enjoy.

ChuckieEgg (32Bit) - Michael Foot

Michael Foot has updated his previous port of ChuckieEgg (the classic BBC game) to make it 32bit compatible. As such it should now run on both the Iyonix and the A9.

For those that don't know, and I can't believe that there could be many of you, ChuckieEgg is a classic platforming game where you, as the farmer, need to collect all the corn and all the eggs from each level whilst avoiding the birds. ChuckieEgg supports a number of players so you can have multiplayer matches to see who an get the highest scores.

The control keys are:

  • Up - a
  • Down - z
  • Left - ,
  • Right - .
  • Jump - Space
  • Hold - H
  • Abort - Escape + H
  • Quit - Escape (only from menu screen)

Inside the game application directory is a configuration file named !Config. Loading this into a text editor will allow you to change the game options. Initially, the options are set to:

  • Lives=5
  • Level=0
  • SingleHeight - Set this parameter to 1 to force 640x256 256 colour mode.
  • RetroFont- Set this parameter to 1 to use a scaled version of the system font instead of outline font used currently.

BugHunterII (BugHunter in Space) - Ian Richardson

Ian Richardson recently released BugHunter in Space as freeware. This was a real RISC OS classic title and followed on from the earlier BugHunter, which was only available as part of a compilation, mainly due to it's small size. BugHunter in Space (or BugHunterII) is a much larger game. It was originally published by Minerva software in 1990, bur despite being 16 years old it still stands up today as a great platform/puzzle game.

The background and Instructions to BugHunterII can be found by pressing I from the main screen, however to make things easier I have reproduced the text, having ripped it from the game, below.

"Genus Hysteron Proteron was originally designed by the bio-engineers to be an incredibly strong, intelligent and loyal super-soldier. What they actually got was a six inch bipedal invertebrate with a stupidly large mouth and an irrational dislike for insects. The multi million pound mistake managed to show its value to the world, however, by becoming the most entertaining to watch insect exterminator in history. (Why not buy the original bug hunter game -its available at only £17.95 from Minerva software- for the full story?) now, several years have passed and orbiting radar systems detect a fleet of alien craft on the edge of the solar system."

"Are aliens hell bent on destroying all life on earth? You bet they are. Due to some highly improbable chain of events, earth rulers decide against nuking the fleet and take the rather unusual option of sending in one small bipedal invertebrate to destroy the aliens. Thus you must guide Hysteron Proteron around the alien craft killing the aliens, stopping the engines and shutting down the reactors."

Hysteron Proteron has sucker feet which allow him to walk up walls and along ceilings, but has no weapons of his own and so must kill the aliens by dropping objects onto them or using the weapons found around the spacecraft.

The control the keys are:

  • z-walk left
  • x-walk right
  • shift-jump,pickup,drop return-activate - you cannot jump while carrying an object.
  • Return can be used to activate devices you are carrying or ,if you aren't carrying anything, devices you are standing by.
  • m-see map
  • k-kill yourself (when you get stuck!)
  • copy-pause
  • delete-continue
  • q-sound off
  • s-sound on.

The mouse buttons can also be used instead of z,x and shift. Press escape before the music starts on the introduction to return to the desktop. when you have killed all the aliens on a screen, walk into the blue teleport to reach the next screen. If the spacecraft is moving you must also shut down its engines and on the last screen of each craft you must trigger the crafts reactor and escape from the ship before it explodes. You will then be given a codeword allowing you to restart the game at the next spacecraft. contact with the aliens will cause you to lose one of your 3 lives. It may be worthwhile to spend a few of your lives experimenting if you are stuck. it is possible to complete all the screens without losing any lives, so if it seems impossible you are missing something!"

So that's all from me for this issue. What will I have for the July issue? Well you will have to wait and see!

Paul Brett

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