"Just off for a wander..."

[PeteProdge]

Imagine that there's a TOSEC set of ZX Spectrum games for an obscure niche.

Someone's gone to the trouble of POKEing all the games so that there are no baddies in them, no challenges at all really, no locked areas, you are literally free to wander around the game's landscape at will. No harm comes to you. Have a wander about.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking: "That wouldn't make it a game then, would it?"

You'd be right. It'd be rather pointless and bland in the grand scheme of things.

But... you have to admit you'd have a few games (er, now non-games) that you'd like to load up just to purely wander about, wouldn't you?

For me: Curse Of Sherwood; Contact Sam Cruise; Jack The Nipper 2 and Sabre Wulf.

How about you?

[flatduckrecords]

Ant Attack. I think there have been various PC demos and remakes of it? And 3D maps etc that you can explore, but the original has such great atmosphere (and nostalgia no doubt) that I would enjoy it just as much without the gameplay. Even spookier and lonely if the boy/girl isn’t there either.

[Spud]

Grange Hill

[sn3j]

Tomahawk - it would be more cruising than wandering of course. I still need to complete the whole map.
Freeform exploration is just great. Bethesda's Arena and Daggerfall should also work on the Speccy.

[Hank Scorpio]

Jet Set Willy 2, specifically the teleporter room of the space ship springs to mind.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Movie because of its different, detailed screens to wander about.

Another one, Psycho City.

[bluespikey]

Absolutely Cyclone. Theres just one island with a beach, building and landing pad. And it has a few trees and possible crate as well.



I'd imagine living there. I'd load the game up just to fly there. Oh for the endless hours of youth.

Otherwise JSW was always good just for a wander. Loading the game up with the only intention of jumping off the flagpole or collecting all the items in the off license was perfectly normal behaviour.

[flatduckrecords]

Absolutely Cyclone. Theres just one island with a beach, building and landing pad.

Yeah, good suggestion. I played Cyclone quite a bit earlier this year, appropriately enough on a holiday to the Island of Benbecula. (If you like wind and beaches you’ll love it). I always preferred it to T.L.L. and found it much more approachable and easy to get into. I’d even keep the cyclones (maybe disable crashes though) and switch off the collisions with other aircraft (I found that a bit frustrating in an otherwise pretty relaxing game).

[Morkin]

Used to love wandering around the castle in Fairlight.

Although there's a bit of occasional tile/room repetition (the small tower stairways), I loved the arrangement of the different room shapes and sizes (including outdoor areas) in a logical and congruous way. Felt 'natural' that each one was part of and fit into the larger castle.

[blucey]

I never thought about trying to complete JSW. I'd just head off in a direction and try to see as many rooms as possible.

It's why I liked JSW2 also.

[stupidget]

For me I'd love to walk around Torot in Firelord. I loved this game BITD but the whole steeling/selling thing in the shops just seemed far too fiddly.

[worcestersource]

I could never be blessed with playing collect-em-up platformers properly and so regularly would wander around Willy’s mansion just exploring. Same too the Wally Week games, Dynamite Dan and so on.

I wouldn’t mind a risk-free wander around the SS Future.

In the modern era, I got bored of the story of GTA 5. I’m too nice to adopt a bad-guy alter ego, but I did rather enjoy jumping in a car and going for a nice drive. That was quite relaxing.

[SkoolKid]

For me: Curse Of Sherwood; Contact Sam Cruise; Jack The Nipper 2 and Sabre Wulf.

Contact Sam Cruise is pretty easily modified to make it wanderable with impunity. Here's a t2s file that will make a snapshot:

Code: Select all

https://worldofspectrum.net/pub/sinclair/games/c/ContactSamCruise.tzx.zip
contact-sam-cruise.z80
--sim-load
--start 33224
--ram poke=62151,235 # Open any door without a key
--ram poke=28310,254 # Unlimited cash
--ram poke=25307,201 # No snipers
--ram poke=25084,201 # Apathetic gangster at no. 15
--ram poke=31325,195 # Apathetic gangsters everywhere else
--ram poke=29368,24  # Apathetic police

Save this as contact-sam-cruise.t2s and then feed it to tap2sna.py from a recent version of SkoolKit:

Code: Select all

tap2sna.py @contact-sam-cruise.t2s

(Or just modify an existing snapshot of Contact Sam Cruise with the POKEs from the t2s file.)

Have fun!

[Waldroid]

Cyclone for me, too!

It's not apparent from the rather brief instructions that you don't have to land on a landing pad - anywhere flat will do. (Though you won't be refueled unless you're on a pad.)

I liked to find a nice spot, perhaps even a beach, and just chill out with my rotor blades lazily windmilling around...

[Van_Dammesque]

For me it would be Technician Ted & Roller Coaster, I played them like that anyway as they were so damned hard!

[Mousey]

I’d enjoy exploring Wriggler without the various creepy crawlies - especially the terrifying white spider!

[PeteProdge]

Contact Sam Cruise is pretty easily modified to make it wanderable with impunity. Here's a t2s file that will make a snapshot:

This is absolutely boss!

[sn3j]

I'd also like to mention Tir Na Nog, it was so unique. I spent hours exploring routes because I thought I could perhaps reach one of the items seen in the background.

[PeteProdge]

I spent hours exploring routes because I thought I could perhaps reach one of the items seen in the background.

"And that, is how I'm so good at Out Run and Chase HQ."

[Mousey]

I spent hours exploring routes because I thought I could perhaps reach one of the items seen in the background.

Slightly off topic, but this reminded me of doing the same in Ocean’s The Great Escape. There was a door on a raised walkway that I spent ages trying to get to. Years later I discover (thanks to the internet) that it’s just a background detail and not accessible. Shame!

On topic, Robin of the Wood is another game I enjoyed running around exploring, but the enemies (and wild boars, if I remember correctly!) were a bit of a pain.

Also, Action Biker which I know isn’t exactly a well loved game, was spoiled by vehicles that were often unavoidable, when all I wanted to do was explore and find items in the houses.

[Nick]

Where Time Stood Still, it would be great to explore the terrain without the worry of bumping into and dinosaurs, swamp tentacles or spear throwing natives. Also, the chocolate egg factory in Chuckie Egg 2 springs to mind.

I have in the past fired up Maziacs and just gone on a Maziac hunt and completely ignored finding the treasure.

[worcestersource]

Yes, Chuckie Egg 2 was a game I’d just wander around for ages.

Did anybody else discover you could mess it up with the save/load function? Can’t remember how, exactly, but we used to do that every now and then for no good reason.

[bluespikey]

Transformers.

Yeah I said it. Theres no other game that recreates the joy of blasting matchbox cars off a table to watch them crash across the floor into a skirting board.




So there. Transformers.

I'm not ashamed.

Not.

Sits in the corner. Sobs.

[R-Tape]

Ikari Warriors. With the hides, footbridges and expanses of shallow water, it's like a nature reserve. Even better than a POKE to get rid of the baddies would be a graphics patch to make them all look like wading birds.

This is a complete turnaround to when I was a kid. I would imagine machine gun nests and landmines when I did visit the nature reserve.

[XTM]

You could make another game featuring your logo creature: Ikari Stonechats (Ikari means Anger, so it would be some sorta Angry Birds)