ZX HSC Round 6 - Parsec / Gryzor

[akeley]

Here you can vote for one of the two games for the next round. This selection was made by picking a subsequent game submitted per each active player.

The second game of the round will be drawn from the pool of the remaining ones using RNG.

This round will start on Sunday afternoon.

DEAR LURKERS! You can still join in at any time! Please do! There will be a chance to submit scores for previous rounds later in the season (no, wait - it's this week!), but in any case competing in single rounds is fun too.


Lots of big names in this poll, wonder which one will make it?

[R-Tape]

Tough call. This week, I'd actually like Byte Bitten or Green Beret, but I voted for Parsec because I don't want that gem to miss out. I'll see how it goes and change the vote if it's looking different.

[akeley]

I'm always with the underdogs and never heard of Parsec, so it got my vote too.

[Morkin]

Voted for Tapper, as I played Parsec fairly recently.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Another vote for Tapper

[stupidget]

Got to be Arcadia for me as it was the first game I ever played on a Speccy

[akeley]

Ok, the voting is over, the winner is Parsec, edging out Tapper by one vote. The RNG this week has decided to be true to its name (Run N Gun...geddit?) and has chosen Gryzor as the second game.

So:

Parsec (Martin Mangan, 2020, chosen by Pegaz)

Gryzor (Ocean, 1987, chosen by R-Tape)

The round ends at midnight on Sunday 6th September. Look out for a bonus game on Wednesday!

New players can still join in, at any time. Rules of this HSC are written up here and here, any questions please ask.

So this week we have a very modern game, Parsec, and another arcade classic - Gryzor (Con-what? Contras? No politics please, we're Spectrum fans here).


Attention! Achtung! Pozor! 注意! Uwaga! Attention! Achtung! Pozor! 注意! Uwaga!
Seeing as we're a halfway through the season, this week's round is also a REDEMPTION ROUND. This means you can submit scores for all the games from previous rounds! So if you missed one, or have an improved score now is the time to post it.

Good luck!

[R-Tape]

Great pair of games.

The author of Parsec has just made an updated version that we should use (few little niggles and loader changes). We haven't had chance to add to the archive yet.

http://www.dizzy.eu/download/parsec.tzx
http://www.dizzy.eu/download/parsec.tap

And here are the instructions (but the main thing to remember is that it's best played on a 128K, and you press keys 1,2,3, to change lift speed.).

front: http://www.dizzy.eu/download/Parsec_front.jpg
inside: http://www.dizzy.eu/download/Parsec_inside.jpg

[Morkin]

OK, fair enuff, let's have another go at Parsec then.

Haven't played Gryzor for a while. I think it's meant to be difficult isn't it? If so, everyone's allowed to curse at R-Tape.

[animaal]

My apologies - I think that fancy loader is causing trouble for some people due to the sensitivity of the timings. I haven't seen these issues myself, but I know they're there.

I've replaced the game (at the links provided by R-Type above) with an identical one but that has a "vanilla" loader, to avoid these issues.

[Morkin]

Thought I'd have a quick bash on these.

Gryzor: 27,000
Parsec: 9,900

Lots of fast shooty action this week. I got to the 'maze' bit of Gryzor but wasn't sure what to do, apart from mash the movement and fire buttons and occasionally die...

[R-Tape]

Lots of fast shooty action this week. I got to the 'maze' bit of Gryzor but wasn't sure what to do, apart from mash the movement and fire buttons and occasionally die...

Similar here. When I chose it, I thought it was all sideways action. I'm quite impressed with it so far, despite the occasional camouflaged bullets.

What keys are people choosing for this? I'm homing in on Q - jump, A duck, 1 up, OP Space.

[clebin]

Gryzor - 37,800

It's another one I've never played before, although coincidentally I bought a copy off eBay cheap only a couple of weeks ago (which I hadn't got round to loading). Rock-hard and really unfair at times. Quite enjoyable despite that though. The maze bit is confusing and it took me ages to realise you have to lie on the floor to shoot the target on one screen.

What keys are people choosing for this? I'm homing in on Q - jump, A duck, 1 up, OP Space.

I quite like Sinclair/Interface 2 keys as your thumb is free to hit the spacebar for jump.

[R-Tape]

Oh thank God. Now I can deal with this fire.

Nohzdyve: 1,300

If you can manage a thou, two is just as easy. Just saying...

[cmal]

Had a go at Gryzor and it is indeed a brutal game. I did not reach the so called "maze" section, but I plan on revisiting the game for another try.
After that I needed something easy so I played Pssst since I missed playing it earlier. Also had a few rounds of Parsec which is great fun.

Gryzor 18600
Pssst 144200
Parsec 12900

[cmal]

Lots of fast shooty action this week. I got to the 'maze' bit of Gryzor but wasn't sure what to do, apart from mash the movement and fire buttons and occasionally die...

Similar here. When I chose it, I thought it was all sideways action. I'm quite impressed with it so far, despite the occasional camouflaged bullets.

What keys are people choosing for this? I'm homing in on Q - jump, A duck, 1 up, OP Space.

I chose Q - up, A duck, IO Left/Right, N for fire and B for jump. Maybe that's why I sucked at it so much. I should make Q the jump key on the next round. My thumb wasn't quick enough jumping between fire and jump.
How did you get the P key to work? I tried to map OP for left/right, but P seems to be mapped to pause. Couldn't play with the P key at all.

[cmal]

And an early benchmark for Parsec, but this new version seems a lot buggier than the previous one. I lost my last three lives here to bullets I couldn't see.

Parsec: 22,800

Could it be your laser getting too heated up? I thought the same thing happened to me then when it happened again I realized my laser heated up too much. A quick message flashes at the bottom notifying you of this. Easy to miss the message.

[Spud]

Is there a an easy to find list of all the games from each round? Having missed this entire thing (until round 5) I'd like to have a retrospective bash at them all.

[MarkRJones1970]

This is the best I could manage this morning!


I forgot how frustrating it is. I hate it that if you're in the water on the 1st level and a baddy fires at you there's nothing you can do. You die. You can't lie down to dodge the bullet because then you'd be underwater. I think it's silly too how you can scroll the landscape along in between dying and your next life appearing on the screen and sometimes you materialise on top of baddies already there, meaning ANOTHER death! Sheeeesh!

[R-Tape]

How did you get the P key to work? I tried to map OP for left/right, but P seems to be mapped to pause. Couldn't play with the P key at all.

P works fine on the 128K Erbe release. However, once I couldn't get P, but I'm not sure what happened.

[R-Tape]

Is there a an easy to find list of all the games from each round? Having missed this entire thing (until round 5) I'd like to have a retrospective bash at them all.

Aye here we go:

Round 1, round 2, round 3, round 4, round 5.

[Spud]

Is there a an easy to find list of all the games from each round? Having missed this entire thing (until round 5) I'd like to have a retrospective bash at them all.

Aye here we go:

Round 1, round 2, round 3, round 4, round 5.

Thank you, although I wish you'd told me there wasn't a list to force me to do it myself Would it be useful to have a regularly updated standalone sticky thread listing them as the thing progresses maybe?

[akeley]

Would it be useful to have a regularly updated standalone sticky thread listing them as the thing progresses maybe?

I can't edit posts so it'd be bit of a hassle to maintain, same with all the other updates. I should've posted a list for the redemption round but forgot ...so thanks to R-Tape for the above links.

Other method is to type: "ZX HSC round" in the advanced search box and ticking "Topic titles only".

Please post your old games updated scores in this thread.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

First atempt:

Parsec: 5,800
Gryzor: 8,500

[akeley]

STOP THE PRESS! I actually had some time to play games. Shocking.

Gryzor - 37,700
Parsec - 18,800

That Gryzor port is quite ridiculous. There is probably like 20% of content...you can only run ahead...lol It also makes it totally unfair. The maze sections are actually not so bad, compared to side scrolling ones. You need to shoot those things on walls that shoot at you, to remove the barrier.

Parsec is amazing, didn't realize it's that TI port. Awesome...so much retro. Also interesting gameplay, though the ship's handling is...curious, for the lack of a better word.





If anybody has a suggestion for tomorrow's Bonus Game, I'm all ears. Just bear in mind it should probably be something not too great, because then it's sort of wasted on a fixed-points round (eg Patrick Paddle would work much better in normal rounds). So something quirky/rubbish, but with scoring