Rodent - Writer Requests...

[PaulEMoz]

And I say again - I don't give a shite *who* composed the tunes. Game music doesn't matter and if you still think it does, then you really need to go outside and buy some proper CDs.*

Gameplay is all. Sneer on about attribute clash and eight colours and whatever - just remember what Huge Euge said about game design being all about limitation. Spectrum game designers had to concentrate on making the games fun because they couldn't rely on that extra (superfluous) sound, graphics-handling, Mhz, whatever.

Anyway, all of this and more will be covered in my Why The Spectrum Is Best And C64 Owners Cry As They Wank piece in the forthcoming special.

So - who's writing the C64-Is-Best feature? Ideally, I'll need it sometime this week...

*Unless, of course, it's stuff like Rez/GTA, where good, proper music is artfully matched to the action.

To be honest, I would say ALL game designers back then had to concentrate on making the games fun, because none of the systems around back then had room to mess around. That said, there were a couple of Commodore 64 games that sold more copies because some people did buy them for the music. I agree that music does not make the game, and if the game is shite no dressing up of that will save it, but back then it did add something to the game, having a tune the likes of which had never previously been contemplated on a home system. It kind of drove you onwards in the game. In the end though, I loved my C64 because I loved the games on it, simple as that.

I never hated the Spectrum, though. I almost had one, in fact, courtesy of my weaselly mate-at-the-time. But when my dad asked me, a few weeks before Christmas, "Wouldn't you rather have a Commodore 64?", I was sold. There were good games on the Speccy, but from that moment on I was transformed.

[biggestjim]

Speccy was better because it had Skooldaze first...har-har.

[Stevo]

I had a C64 the only reason my dad bought it for
us (my brother and I) was that he won $10,000 on a
scratch and win ticket that my borther bought for his
birthday...........And in Australia I dont even think that
they sold the spectrum (I never saw one and I didn't
know anyone who owned one). When I saw a Spectrum
in a U.K. magazine I thought who would want to buy a
piece of crap that has rubber stamps for a keyboard
It looked like an over sized remote control..

[Harlequin]

I've had writer's block for well over a decade, although extremely vague thoughts of an Elite article are floating around in my head somewhere.

I suppose that I could give you that old "Cannabis and Computer Games" article that I wrote for Hookah years ago, although ISTR posting it here once upon a time.

H.
_________________
* Whisper my favourite words: "I'll buy it for you."

[koworld]

When I saw a Spectrum
in a U.K. magazine I thought who would want to buy a
piece of crap that has rubber stamps for a keyboard
It looked like an over sized remote control..

And the earliest mail-order versions didn't actually even fit in the case, they had sort of hernia bulges and sellotape holding them together.

To be fair though, if the spekky had been made by Sony it would have been hailed as a miracle of technology miniaturisation.

And then lobbed into the bin where it belongs.

[No Name]

I've had writer's block for well over a decade

yay! you're beating me by seven years!

Bloody awful though, isn't it?

[Harlequin]

I've had writer's block for well over a decade

yay! you're beating me by seven years!
Bloody awful though, isn't it?

Indeed it is. I have many ideas in my mind but I appear to be terrified by blank sheets of paper and empty word-processor pages .

H.
_________________
"The freedom to say whatever you want means you will hear things you don't want to hear."
[Stephen K. Gielda]

[HGFB]

And I say again - I don't give a shite *who* composed the tunes. Game music doesn't matter and if you still think it does, then you really need to go outside and buy some proper CDs.*

*sniff sniff*. I smell a bitter Spectrum owner,

Beep beep

[sack]

The Speccy is better because, truth be told, it was slightly less powerful than the C64 in most areas, therefore the (100% true) fact that it is actually better, is all the more stupendous.

Didn't the Speccy have a 3.5MHz Z80A, as opposed to the C64's 0.985 MHz 6510? (In fact, this link says 14MHz ).

So - it's got over 3 times the grunt, yet the games were 100% qualitatively shitter. What a win for the Speccy.

3 times the grunt? fuck off!

I've just coded a little spectrum demo and found it to be slow as shit.

The c64 video chip does most of its memory accesses when the CPU isn't hogging the bus so for the most part (7/8 of the lines on screen) the processor runs at full whack.

the z80 in the speccy is always being interrupted by the ULA if you access the 'contended' memory (i.e the first 16k, which includes the screen memory) so writing to the screen is bitch-slow. if your code and graphics are also in that block of memory then everything slows to an absolute nightmarish crawl.

and with no support hardware you really do need to hammer that screen memory as fast as possible.

this, combined with the fact that all spectrum owners are incontinent misanthropes, explains why the c64 reigns supreme.

[piku]

If you've read and enjoyed our fine - if you will - 'webzine', The Way Of The Rodent, and haven't yet written something for us, then - why the arse not?

Because you smell.

'Why I Love'...
This is shaping up into a nice little regular. Just a few words on an individual game that you absolutely love - simple as that.

Hmm, well I guess I could find some random game I like and rant incoherently about how good it is. I'll see what I can do, and if I can remember/be arsed, you might even get some words

So, instead of spending Sunday washing the car or moaning about the weather or strangling people, transmit your thoughts in word-processor form.

But if I can't strangle people, what else am I supposed to do with them?

[Sickboy]

Let's see, now...

koworld - fuck off with yer conveniently selective mail-order memories. And that Rodent piece in your sig is NOT 'New'.

Harly - I'd love to see the Cannabis article.

(Blether about video chips and bus-hogging and contended memories and whatever)

Uhuh.

Whatever.


HellgateFanboy - not bitter at all. I never said the Spectrum's bleepiness was any good. But I do know the difference between music and what rose-tinted fanboys still insist on squeezing out of the SID chip.

piku - I do not smell, but I'd love to see you write something for us.

[Yak]

piku - I do not smell, but I'd love to see you write something for us.

I do smell, and I write stuff too - is that allowed?

\
(:-) - Yak
/

[Sickboy]

piku - I do not smell, but I'd love to see you write something for us.

I do smell, and I write stuff too - is that allowed?

Heh. Of course. Actually, I do smell a bit today - of swimming-pool.

[Yak]

I knew someone who had a Mattel Aquarius once.

Not only did he have a Mattel Aquarius, he was firmly convinced it was the Next Great Thing, and set out to found a software house on the basis of that belief.

\
(:-) - Yak
/

[Harlequin]

Harly - I'd love to see the Cannabis article.

Okay, I'll have a dig around for it.

piku - I do not smell, but I'd love to see you write something for us.

I do smell, and I write stuff too - is that allowed?

Ha! I bet you've never had a producer offer you laundry money out of expenses just so the rest of the cast wouldn't mind sharing a dressing room with you!



H.
_________________
"It always seemed to me a bit pointless to disapprove of homosexuality.
It's like disapproving of rain."
[Francis Maude]