uMIA(?): "Igra"

[TMD2003]

All right, I may as well post this here.

For years on end, I've had this game on my hard drive. No idea where, or when I found it, but I'd guess it was around 2003-04 or so, and the most likely source was the Yolkfolk.com forums, which I had a brief fling with.

It's merely called "Igra", which I know translates as "Game" in various Slavic languages. From what I remember, though I may be wrong, it was Bulgarian. And, after lots of digging on WOS to find "modern" games from the Wilderness Years, I know it's one of those "colour lines" games that was popular with the Russians in the late 1990s.

Strangely, I've also unearthed an info file for it, and it reads:

Full title: Igra
Year of release: 1997
Publisher: G.E.C.A. Soft Ltd
Producer/Author(s): CaH4e3
Machine type: ZX Spectrum 48k
Number of players: 1
Controls: Kempston
Type Text: Logic/Puzzle
Message language: English
Availability: Available (z80 snapshot)
Protection scheme: Undetermined

I've put it here:
https://mega.nz/file/MLoHHLja#DppFb4eMV ... fwo3cwFll8

If anyone recognises it as something that's already filed under a different name, do tell me. I'm not exactly ahead of the curve when it comes to Wilderness-era Eastern European games.

[Ralf]

Why Bulgarian? "Igra" sounds perfectly Russian although it may be not the real name as it simply means "game"
And in the code we have:

\ĎŇă†Hćだ˝ć4Î\Ď˙ tŇčĺ2Î\ĎtŇ:ŕ‹Ňď)ä íí STAFFíí •č¸Î tŇ®âq3tŇ)ä PROGRAMMER: A.CHURIOWíí
•č¸Î tŇ®âq3tŇ)ä DESIGHNER: ALEKSANDER CH.íí •č¸Î tŇ®âq3tŇ)ä MUSIC & SOUND: CHURIKOW ALEKS. •č¸Î tŇ®âq3tŇ )ä THANKS: 'GAMOS' KOMPANY &íí •č¸Î tŇ
®âq3tŇ)ä íí INTEL PENTIUMíí
•č¸Î tŇ®âq3tŇ
Ňă…uĺLĎtŇ)ä GAME BY: AL. CHURIKOW LTD

So the author's name seems to be Akeksander Churikow which is 99% Russian.

There is also "T o B o S - F P FLOATING ©COMPILER Torun 1986 Wojciech Skaba Jerzy Borkowski" in the code but it's the authors of the compiler:
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=8893

I have some experience with Russian soft for Speccy and don't recognise the game itself. So yes, I would say it's uMIA.
Thanks for uploading it!

[TMD2003]

Why Bulgarian? "Igra" sounds perfectly Russian although it may be not the real name as it simply means "game"

Might be my memory playing tricks on me. Maybe the forum member of... wherever it was, yolkfolk.com or not, who originally posted the game was Bulgarian. It's not as if I've come across a lot of Spectrum software of any kind from Bulgaria before, so this may well be Russian after all. It might remain a mystery...

[R-Tape]

All right, I may as well post this here.

Definitely! Ta.

Full title: Igra
Year of release: 1997
Publisher: G.E.C.A. Soft Ltd
Producer/Author(s): CaH4e3

Where did ^this^ info come from?

Does anyone know what kind of puzzle it actually is? How do you play it?

Yep, the title surely isn't "Igra". Anyone here able to add anything, given the info provided? No idea how we'll add it to ZXDB otherwise.

So the author's name seems to be Akeksander Churikow which is 99% Russian.

Cheers Ralf, very interesting. Can you elaborate on this? I'm trying (mostly failing!) to learn Russian, and one thing that came up in conversation with my teacher was that she found Bulgarian names funny (Surnames that mean "handsome" and "stone")!

[TMD2003]

Full title: Igra
Year of release: 1997
Publisher: G.E.C.A. Soft Ltd
Producer/Author(s): CaH4e3

Where did ^this^ info come from?

The text file that accompanied the game, that had been languishing in the "INFO" folder with all the disorganised Spectrum Z80 snapshots, SNA snapshots, TAP files of games I've long since upgraded to TZX... I've just posted that as-is. I had the files as IGRA.Z80 and IGRA.TXT all along.

It might be the Russian (or Bulgarian...) equivalent of what I uploaded to the Dumping Ground recently, just run through a compiler before being released - i.e. some random bloke on a computer, writing a game that everyone else had already done, just for fun.

Does anyone know what kind of puzzle it actually is? How do you play it?

Swap coloured tiles around so that they make lines of the same colour and you'll score points (the pile on the right will rise) and the line disappears. Fail to make a scoring line and more colours will be dumped onto the board, until it fills up completely. It's the same as any of those other "colour lines" games that were all over the Russian scene like a rash at the time. (See exbihits A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, and that's far from being all of them).

It took me a while to work out, but a Kempston interface is the only control method available.

[Einar Saukas]

Yep, the title surely isn't "Igra". Anyone here able to add anything, given the info provided? No idea how we'll add it to ZXDB otherwise.

You should simply add it using title "Igra".

If some finds out the correct title later, then its title can be updated in ZXDB. Although I would still store "Igra" as an alias. If it has been known as "Igra" for years, then it deserves to keep this title as alias, so people will be still able to find it.