Ooh, crikey! A fourth QL game!
Anyway, for reasons which are dull and boring, I've had two submissions via email this week, that I have only had the briefest window to review. I am now preparing for a residential weekend in which I will have absolutely no access whatsoever to Tim Berners-Lee's wondrous creation. Hence, I can't leave the usual weekly report until after dinner, but even so, I've made time for a couple of reviews, and who cares if it's early? Neither are for Sir Clive's business-oriented machine, but don't let that put you off!
END OF WEEK 25:
Number one for this week, and number 29 for the year, is Gonzalo Medina's allegedly-first-ever attempt at programming a Spectrum (which I don't believe for a minute, "I have no idea how arrays work" be damned),
Las Aventuras de Eustaquio I. Knowledge of Spanish isn't necessary to guide Eustaquio through his quest on the Earth, Moon and Mars, and I've thrown in some English translations where I thought it necessary - see "Jim's additional material".
Number two this week, and number 30 for the year - so I'm now tied for entries with the 2016 competition - is a second entry from Andy Jenkinson, the bizarrely-titled
Cliff Richard Loves Rihanna... FACT!. Written mostly in BASIC but enhanced by 5.7K of machine code, it's a sort-of-dating-sim based on some childhood playground game that showed which boys and girls secretly loved each other and which had cooties (or does that only happen in 'MURICA?) It features a proportionally-spaced font that Andy put to good use in
Sir Clive's Ink Lair last year, an AY soundtrack that
technically doesn't need a 128K Spectrum (but will require a Melodik AY Soundbox), and has the potential to throw a sack of spanners in the works of more friendships and relationships than (anti-)social media ever could. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
So... Steve, I will count your entry as number 31 (it's from the same day as CRLR...F! but I saw that one first), I'll take it with me, and if there's a window of opportunity over the weekend, I'll assess it. Failing that, I'll make it my first priority on Monday when I get home.
I encourage the use of CRLR...F! to act as an official arbiter of what is reality and what is fake news. I put "DILWYN JONES LIVES THE SINCLAIR QL" into it, and what do you know, this is 89% true! I suppose the other 11% must have been when a microdrive failed or the dongle fell out in the Wild West days.