Guess the screen$

[WallyX]

A wee bit more. From a well-known publisher, mediocre game.

[Pobulous]

Asterix?

[WallyX]

Asterix?

Correct "Asterix and the Magic Cauldron" to be exact.
I remember trying to like this game back in the 80's but it was clunky, especially the combat system. Nice graphics though.



https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... c_Cauldron

[Lee Bee]

Ah I'd forgotten about that game. Very beautiful with such a distinctive style. I'm guessing the screenshot was ULA+?

[WallyX]

Ah I'd forgotten about that game. Very beautiful with such a distinctive style. I'm guessing the screenshot was ULA+?

Nope I used the JSSpeccy link from the game's page on this site, played to that part and then took a screenshot.

[WallyX]

Hmm.. now that I look at it, I didn't even notice the colours are unusual. Is the JSSpeccy link on that page using a version with ULA+ under the hood?

EDIT: Nah, going into basic and testing some colours it just seems to render them weird. Kinda fits the game though, lol.

[Stefan]

Regarding jsspeccy’s breadbin-like palette, see viewtopic.php?t=10921

[sn3j]

Here's the palette from Fuse. And below, the same pic in ZX Paintbrush.
I think Paintbrush is more accurate. Notice how blue and bright-blue hardly differ?
In Fuse the contrast is somewhat cranked up beyond what's true on a CRT I think. And the non-bright red comes out as fox brown.

[SteveSmith]

Anyway, how about a new image?

[Pobulous]

The cyan and yellow, put me in mind of Melbourne House, and the large black outlines around the other colours made me think of Asterix.


How about this steaming turd of a game?

[Pobulous]

According to ZXDB it was a full price game by a big publisher, but both big mag reviews are for a budget release.
Given the quality, I can't imagine it was sold for long at full price.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Saracen?

[Pobulous]

Saracen?

That's it.

I don't get why US Gold ever put this one out!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

That's a terrible game that I couldn't get it back in the day, formtunately.

My turn:

[SteveSmith]

One aspect of the otherwise perfect-in-every-way Sinclair User was their Twilight Zone section, where they'd give write up very small reviews and no screenshot. No idea why they did this, unless printing a screenshot took up a lot of resources, but unfortunately Saracen falls into this category, so I never knew what it looked like.

[sn3j]

That's a terrible game that I couldn't get it back in the day, formtunately.

My turn:

Fred?

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Yep, I thought it was going to be harder.

Your turn!

[sn3j]

Yep, I thought it was going to be harder.

Har har. I always thought the colours are wrong, it should be green/red.

Your turn!

This is from a loading screen. There's a connection to one of the recent threads here.

[sn3j]

A bit more:

[Lee Bee]

Oh. How can this not be Star Trek? And yet, it isn't!

[ParadigmShifter]

Spec... the final front ear

[SteveSmith]

Thunderbirds?

[sn3j]

Unfortunately no right guesses so far.
Will this help?



And a little clue if required:

Spoiler

You could think of it as an early FPS.

[WallyX]

Buggy Blast

[sn3j]

Buggy Blast

that's it

your go