Reviews

I actually wrote this software, but I will still give it a low score! When at university I wrote 3D Rotator for YC ( I was trying to emulate the tank battle game (badly)). After university I was looking for something to do and I suggested I could write a game for the people at Your Computer and they seemed interested. I wrote the game in a period of 3 days. The biggest issue was getting it to run in 16k. There was a computer shop nearby and while I was writing it I would chat with the owner of the shop about the game. After it was printed I was approached by Atari to sell an improved version to them. In the meantime a guy from the computer store took an injuction out on me that I had to sell it to him since he had offered input. So I just did that for 4500 GBP which was more than Atari was offering anyway. Since the guy was such a creep I never bothered to clean up bugs. That is why 3D Dracman exists and with all its bugs!

Please see my review under Dracman - the original magazine version of this game. It will give you some insights into the bugs!

I was actually the programmer who developed the Spectrum version of this game under contract by ASK. I was paid 1000 GBP to develop the program and had some latitude in what I could do. There was another guy working on a VIC version of the game that did not work out as well. A challenge for this game was making a 16k ram version. Some of the program is actually stored in the blue sky (blue on blue pen and ink) to make it all fit on a 16k. This was my first ever attempt at commercial programming. I had just left university after having done a couple of articles for Your Computer and the people at the magazine suggested I do this. I now run my own software company and live in the US but I still have my original working spectrum and a couple on non working QLs in the basement.

One of the magazine reviews asked for curves on the track but ASK did not want that because they wanted the kids to be focusing on answering the questions not steering which totally makes sense - especially at the higher speeds.

Mark C. Jones