Suspension Bridgeman

[PeterJ]

I was recently contacted by Ionut Ghionea to let me know about 10 games which were developed by Adrian Chivu and Ionut Ghionea, Mecosoft team, Romania.

Our first game is Suspension Bridgeman.

I'm testing the upload facility for the first time. Initially this will only be available to administrators but I hope to roll it out to supporters in the near future as an extra feature. The aim would for it to be a temporary storage for game files (or other small files). (Obviously not replacing Pavel's form).

[Andre Leao]

Wonderful find!

[PeterJ]

Wonderful find!

Another one tomorrow

[Andre Leao]

Shared at the usual place

[Ralf]

Great graphics! And obviously some Mario inspirations.

For years we didn't have much games from Romania available. It was a kind of terra incognita.
But now it's changing and there seem to be some really nice surpises waiting for us.

[ionut76]

Hi there !
I am Ionut Ghionea, one of the two creators of this game. Thank you for your interest in our work, please ask me anything about this game.
We made the in the mid of 90s while we were in high school. Adrian Chivu is now a great programmer, I am professor at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania, involved in CAD teaching.
The goal of this game is to move the hero left and right on those boards and, when he reaches a hole, press fire/repair to fill it. Keep the hero safe from those cracks and from the stones that fall from the mountains. After the two holes of each board are repaired, move the hero in the middle of the board and press repair again and he will climb to the next board, well, in fact, the holes are coming down...you got the point.
This game is not inspired from Mario, but from this game: https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Casio/Su ... dgeman.htm
I had this game in the early 90s, now it seems it is lost
About our computers, Romania had a lot of clones before and after 1990 (the year communism fell): HC 85, HC 90, CIP 03, Cobra, JET, TIMs etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Z ... s#Romanian
Nice memories

[ionut76]

Take a look here on how to play this game:
https://youtu.be/y1DDHnzQC0s

[PeterJ]

Hi [mention]ionut76[/mention],

Thanks again for sharing the great games. They will be included in the next database update.

Can I ask what made you produce the games in the English language rather than Romanian.

Can I also ask if the games were ever commercially marketed, or did you just share amongst friends?

Thanks

Peter

[ionut76]

Thank you for allowing me to share our work on this wonderful site/forum !
What made us to produce these games ? Well, we were about 15-16 years old, in high school at that time (the best one in Bucharest) and we just discovered computers. The communist regime at the time had to import computer components from abroad, spending dollars on them, which was unimaginable ! Very few computers were officially produced before 1990 in Romania and were intended for pioneers clubs, research centers and institutes and were not sold to the public. Not to mention that we never saw an original Spectrum, western products were considered decadent and therefore banned. Thus, we were able to buy such computers later, after the communism fell, when we were already in high school, after 1990. We started programming in Basic because we managed to find English books and magazines, so most of the software we produced is in approximate English. We also worked on custom software for various companies and schools until 1995 or 1996 when we switched to PC. All the games and programs we made were distributed to friends, we never had a publisher. The copyright law came to Romania in the late 90s, I think it was in 1998 or 2000. However, after 30 years, we can consider that our work is free for all ZX Spectrum enthusiasts and can be distributed as long as the games/programs are not modified. The games are also part of the official Spectrum Next distribution. I intend to search for some other programs we made to upload here if there is someone interested.
To be honest, we never earn too much money with these games but it does not matter, Adrian works as a programmer and the Spectrum was his first step in learning to code.

[Ivanzx]

Hey guys, welcome to the forums!

It is indeed a nice story, and the games have some quality, that is for sure
And yes, it would be great to have them all preserved

[Alone Coder]

About our computers, Romania had a lot of clones before and after 1990 (the year communism fell): HC 85, HC 90, CIP 03, Cobra, JET, TIMs etc.

Hello! Can you please find information on these clones more than there http://www.homecomputer.de/pages/easteurope_ro.html ? Booklets, schematics, extra ports, dates of release (especially of a turbo clone), circulation or serials etc. Newart collects all the info on the clones for his future book!
Maybe there were some computer magazines in Romania that covered ZX Spectrum?
How the computers and software were distributed?

[ionut76]

Yes, sure we had our magazines ! The very first one, hobBIT is still here:
https://www.mediafire.com/file/jp5ru8kd ... a.rar/file
Too bad it is in Romanian, but we learned a lot from it and we made a lot of friends among the readers. Spreading a game or a program was easy, we had Copy86/M and many other copying programs No law was against us at that time.

[ionut76]

Yeah, and about my computer from those times, it is a CIP 03 with a 128k extension, some photos attached. The computer is still working, despite its age. Now I have a N-go clone. CIP means Computer pentru Instruire Personala (Computer for Personal Instruction/Training). Originally, it was a 48k, but I had to upgrade it with 128k.

[Alone Coder]

Thanks for the magazine and the photos!
Do you have a MMN80CPU in your Speccy? There are people who want to test it for compatibility https://discord.gg/SWWZdRyP

[ionut76]

I don't know ! Where should I take a look ? Anyway, I am not giving it for tests

[R-Tape]

[mention]ionut76[/mention] thanks so much for sharing these games. I hope you don't consider speccy coding a closed book - keep making stuff. I for one would like to see a DX version of your sokoban picture game for example.

Tsk. Typical Romanian decadence!

[ionut76]

For me, creating games/software for Spectrum is a closed chapter, I play now in another league.. I just wanted to save and share our past work with the community, but that's it. All is uploaded here should be considered "as is", there are no updates or plans for future development.

[ionut76]

Thanks for the magazine and the photos!
Do you have a MMN80CPU in your Speccy? There are people who want to test it for compatibility https://discord.gg/SWWZdRyP

In the past I've run a lot, hundreds, of games or programs on this CIP 03 computer and I honestly don't remember to meet incompatibility issues. It is difficult now to record a program on tape and to test it. But ask me to run a game and maybe I still have it on a cassette and I can give you the answer if it runs or not.

[Alone Coder]

ionut76: scanned Interfaţa 1 manual has serial number 39296 in it, does it look like the actual number of devices at the time? I only guessed of some 150000 Spectrums in Romania. 40000 of them having a disk drive is unusually high...

[ionut76]

do you want me to take some pictures inside that CIP computer ? like more detailed pictures ? and to put them in a new thread ?

[Alessandro]

For those who wish to know more about Romanian Spectrum clones, there is a great website I discovered when I was searching information for the Spectrumpedia. Here it is: https://sites.google.com/site/georgechirtoaca/

[ionut76]

yes, i know that site !!

[alejandro-ems]

Hi there !
I am Ionut Ghionea, one of the two creators of this game. Thank you for your interest in our work, please ask me anything about this game.
We made the in the mid of 90s while we were in high school. Adrian Chivu is now a great programmer, I am professor at the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania, involved in CAD teaching.
The goal of this game is to move the hero left and right on those boards and, when he reaches a hole, press fire/repair to fill it. Keep the hero safe from those cracks and from the stones that fall from the mountains. After the two holes of each board are repaired, move the hero in the middle of the board and press repair again and he will climb to the next board, well, in fact, the holes are coming down...you got the point.
This game is not inspired from Mario, but from this game: https://www.handheldmuseum.com/Casio/Su ... dgeman.htm
I had this game in the early 90s, now it seems it is lost
About our computers, Romania had a lot of clones before and after 1990 (the year communism fell): HC 85, HC 90, CIP 03, Cobra, JET, TIMs etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Z ... s#Romanian
Nice memories

Ionut, thank you for sharing your material. We have published your story on our website El Mundo del Spectrum. https://www.elmundodelspectrum.com/ruma ... el-olvido/

We know very little about the Spectrum in Romania.

Thanks also to PeterJ.

Greetings from Spain.
Alejandro.

[Ralf]

Yes, we know very little about Spectrum in Romania. For many years it was practically nothing, recently quite a lot
of really decent games were preserved and are available on the site.

I wonder, did Romania had demoscene like Russia or Poland or was it not popular there?

[ionut76]

We had some nice programmers, I know one very well, Daniel Roman, known as Terrorsoft. Very talented, he left Romania for USA to work for Microsoft in the early 2000s. I don't know too much about him since
Another one, Adrian Chivu, my partner in games, a brilliant mind as well, is currently working here for a Danish software company.
There are, of course, others, but I don't know them very well, most of them left the country or are working here for foreign software companies.
To say the truth, Z80 is dead or dying in Romania, I am not aware of a good project, but maybe there are guys to work on Spectrum.
I just want to ask you, PeterJ, did I sent you more games than you already published in the Preservation area ? I have some software, utilities, that I would like to share. I don't know if they are in Romanian or English, but I can take a look.
Alejandro, thank you very much for writing about us !!