Spectrum Computing

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:


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 !

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

:facepalm: I tried it while playing!

Yes, while staying in the start-of-game message screen the cheat worked, confirmed on the same setup.

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.

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.

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

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