BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

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Ralf
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BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Ralf »

A very interesting thread appeared on WOS (yes, interesting things rarely appear there yet ;) )

https://www.worldofspectrum.org/forums/ ... are#latest

So there is a totally unknown till today game called Blam:
Image

It's a space shootemup and looks a bit like R-Type if you ask me. Maybe feels a bit weaker that the classic as it scrolls and moves everything by 8 pixels. But yet it is colourful, playable, has AY music and is definitely on the good side. A true gem found.

The download (includes also the inlay):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/avefl252oaajc5c/BLAM.zip?dl=0

Try it !
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Alessandro
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Alessandro »

Well, to be honest I feel it rather unpolished: graphics are sketchy and the character scrolling is too coarse for my liking. There are many better similar games around.

Anyway it's always a good thing to recover software thought to be lost in the sands of time :)
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R-Tape
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by R-Tape »

A bit clunky from the char scroll and movement but this is very nice to see. It all feels a bit hemmed in, and the screen a bit too small for the large sprite and 8 pix movements, makes it too hard.

I think they wrote the backstory after coming in from the pub though:
Strange beings from the finelfontear are slowly approaching Earth. You are the only one with directions to the chip-shop and a ship to do the mission.
There's a cheat but I can't seem to get it to work. If you hold down "SCATZ" (the author's nick) it should give 'You found the cheat' and immunity. I can't seem to get the Z to register, the key read code is at 38815, what am I doing wrong??

Poke 50892,0 give infy lives.

51692,22 gives immunity.
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Ersh
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Ersh »

R-Tape wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 12:14 pm...If you hold down "SCATZ" (the author's nick) it should give 'You found the cheat' and immunity. I can't seem to get the Z to register, the key read code is at 38815, what am I doing wrong??
Are you using an emulator? Could be 'key jamming', I had some problems with pushing multiple keys while programming food cards in Paranoia Complex a couple of years back, you had to hold down 7-8 keys at once and it pretty much never worked.
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 12:14 pm If you hold down "SCATZ" (the author's nick) it should give 'You found the cheat' and immunity. I can't seem to get the Z to register, the key read code is at 38815, what am I doing wrong?
Playing it in an emulator on a computer with fairly low n-key rollover. ;)
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Alessandro
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Alessandro »

I tried that cheat on my desktop PC, which is equipped with a Cooler Master Masterkeys Pro M keyboard, running the game in Spectaculator, and it didn't work. This keyboard has no rollover, it lets me enter the test mode (or 'QAZPLM') on the +2A/+3, so I think there is something wrong going on in the code.
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R-Tape
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by R-Tape »

Thanks fellas. Yes I've only done this in an emulator (spin & fuse). The code looks correct to me.

Can anyone do the litmus test - on a real speccy?

(Not an option for me at the moment)
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Ast A. Moore
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Ast A. Moore »

R-Tape wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 1:01 pm Can anyone do the litmus test - on a real speccy?
One step ahead of you. ;)
Image
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.

Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
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Alessandro
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Alessandro »

:facepalm: I tried it while playing!

Yes, while staying in the start-of-game message screen the cheat worked, confirmed on the same setup.
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Ralf »

It all feels a bit hemmed in, and the screen a bit too small for the large sprite and 8 pix movements, makes it too hard.
For me it doesn't really feel that hard. I can survive in it for a longer time than in similar games. If I was a teenager back again I feel I could even complete it ;)

Please notice that you don't colide with the background like in other games. You just go behind it, no matter what it is.
Ralf
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Ralf »

And now you can watch my rzx recording of Blam at Rzx Archive

http://www.rzxarchive.co.uk/b.php#blam

[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NW7i3zZTggA[/media]

At first I believed that the game is not finished as I played and played and there was no end of level so I started to fear that the first level is looped forever. But it has 3 distinct levels , just quite long, as well as final bosses.

As I said the quality seems really good for a MIA to me. I treat MIAs with different scale than big hits. If a game is MIA then it probably sold very badly in only few copies. And if it sold badly then it was probably nothing special. So this game is a nice surprise.
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R-Tape
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by R-Tape »

Ralf wrote: Sun Jun 24, 2018 10:48 pm As I said the quality seems really good for a MIA to me. I treat MIAs with different scale than big hits. If a game is MIA then it probably sold very badly in only few copies. And if it sold badly then it was probably nothing special. So this game is a nice surprise.
Nice one Ralf!

If it did sell badly I wouldn't be surprised. It's a very nice game but it was released in 1991, covering ground that Darius+ and Dominator did better a few years before.

Still a very cool thing to appear in 2018 :D
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Andre Leao
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Re: BLAM - quality uMIA game recovered

Post by Andre Leao »

I´m not much of a shooter, but I really liked this game. Here goes the review, and kudos for Michael for recovering the game and the sleeve... :)

https://planetasinclair.blogspot.com/2018/06/blam.html
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