Comp.Sys.Sinclair Crap Games Competition 2009

The Fourteenth Annual CSSCGC

What is this all about?

The competition rules

(The competition is now closed)

The all important results!

The entries:

(all download links have been changed to point at the archive of all the games and sources hosted on the world of spectrum)

Screenshot:	Review:
	The Love Calculator By Dr Beep 19 hours into the compo and that lean mean, crap game writing machine Dr Beep submits his first entry! This program emulates one of those SMS text scams that you get adverts for on the tv and radio during the late film on Channel Five. Simply text two names, and the Doctor of Beep Love will return the percentage compatibility! Can't wait to find out if you and Mile would make good lovers? then click here!
	UnDoku By Digital Prawn Do you struggle with Sudoku? Have trouble counting up to 9? well then you'll love Unary-Doku! In a counting system with only one number you can't fail to complete this puzzle in record time. Probably not the best puzzle to while away a long train journey though, so I don't expect to see UnDoku book 1 in WHSmiths any time soon... game snapshot
	Space Whale By Digital Prawn Check out the parallax star field scrolling, and fast machine code sprites in this exciting space adventure. You are a space whale (yes a space whale! just because it's infinitely improbable doesn't mean they can't exist!) Your mission is to destroy the alien ship before it can report back to base. By shooting at it... I guess space whales have guns then. The collision detection increments your points, but doesn't seem to bother destroying the projectile! Space Whale snapshot
	Whack-A-Nun By Ben Rapier What can I say about this game... you have to whack nuns! There are the boring nuns and the fnar-worthy naughty nuns. Just follow the instructions on screen and start sending nuns to hell. Brilliant! Whack-A-Nun snapshot
	10 PRINT "Hello": GO TO 10 randomly lineinput version By Dr Beep This is a bizarre program, but since it has a score I suppose it must count as a game! You are trying to type the line "10 PRINT "Hello": GO TO 10" against the clock, but the keyword or letter to type is picked in a random order! It took me a while to realise that you don't have to shift the keys, e.g. to type the " character you simply hit 'P' on your keyboard. Apparently after completing the line, the time you have to hit the right key decreases each time. I found it tremendously difficult to even get past the first level, but that's probably down to the pino grigio* As you can see from the screenshot, the program filename makes good use of basic tokens to give a longer than usual "Program:" message .tap file download *Pino grigio sold separately
	Crap Games Competition 3009 - The Adventure By Firelord The included manual asks; Have you ever wondered how it feels to be a judge in the CSSCGC? Now live the thrills of being a judge in the CSSCGC from the safety of your home without being scared of being lynched by the angry fans. Since the game breaks down each game into sections I will do the same Graphics: non existent, I hope you like reading green and magenta text off a grey background! Gameplay: hmm, the less said about that the better I think... it's a little slow. Manual: this is the first entry this year with a manual, always helpful when trying to work out what on earth you're supposed to be doing. A zip containing a .tap file, .sna file, screenshot and manual
	Whack-A-Nun II By Ben Rapier Another exciting release in the Whack-A-Nun series, this game follows the adventures of Sister Sharon who is fed up of going to mass and has decided to run away from the convent for a life full of cigarettes, booze and men. Unfortunately for her, one of the nuns of the Austere Order of Saint Agnes is on stair duty, so you'll have to sneak up behind her and get kicking! .tap file
	GarageBEEP2 By Andrew Owen Hmmm, I was sure I'd written in the rules that games this year had to be games... but apparently I didn't oh well. Whilst not being a game, this entry by Andrew Owen can still claim to be crap in that it's almost unusable without running your emulator at full speed! This looks to be a pretty handy utility for all the other crap game writers, and it even comes with an instantly recognisable demo tune! Strangely it wouldn't play any sounds in Spin, but was perfectly happy in fuse. The z80 snapshot is here The instructions as e-mailed to me are: All the keys are now self-evident, providing you have a round ENTER key and know exactly what I meant the icons to mean. Once you've SAVEd your tune you can LOAD it into your BASIC program with: LOAD "" DATA t() Playback is done via: BEEP 240/(tempo*t(2,note)),t(1,note) where tempo is the number of BPM and note is the note (1-1024) If rests are required then you can test for notes with a period of zero and do a pause of the required length via: IF t(2,note)=0 THEN PAUSE rest where rest is the length of rest, e.g. 240/(tempo*4) = quarter rest.
	Sinclair Blind Flight Simulator 2009 By Firelord This game accurately simulates what it's like to be a blind airline pilot taking to the skies with your blind co-pilot. If you win the game, it also informs you of the exciting sequels, "Sinclair Blind Flight Simulator 2 - Flying the plane" and "Sinclair Blind Flight Simulator 3 - Landing the plane" coming soon to a crap games competition page near you. the zip file provided includes source code in plain ascii, so you can discover for yourself that it's possible to win without even reading the screen, making it perfect for people who actually are blind! zip file containing tape file, snapshot and source
	The Boris Becker Tennis 2009 By Laszlo Simon This game starts off with a loading screen with the words "The Boris BECKER Tennis 2009". I'm glad they were there cause the picture itself appears to be of a man with second degree burns to his face, no eyes, and he's clearly quite upset by this terrible disfigurement, as he appears to be shaking Donald Duck by the neck with his raw fleshless arms... The next thing that the game presents to us is far more pleasing to the eye. The game is compiled C (using the z88dk compiler) and has a nice 64 column printing routine. That's about all the praise I can think of for the game though. It invites me to play a game of tennis (in a text adventure stylee) against the former World No1 tennis champ Boris Becker. Maybe I'm being dumb but I can't for the life of me work out what I'm supposed to do (there is no manual) and whenever I press any key... well I won't spoil the game for you, you'll have to download it to find out
	Attak! By Paul E Collins Attak! has all the makings of a proper crap game. The game responds slowly to input, the graphics are jerky, and the colours are blinding. The author tells me that the game was written in 1992 and condemned to a dark corner of the archive until now [citation needed] The game is a space invaders clone, and features AY music, and an exciting bonus level! I gave up playing at level 5 as my eyes were beginning to bleed. Game not recommended for players with epilepsy... tzx file
	PGD By Paul E Collins Paul writes: "Here's another early '90s effort from me. It's called "PGD" (Platform Game Designer), which amusingly was recently used by Jonathan Cauldwell for his rather more professional Spectrum tool for the same purpose. Fortunately Cauldwell agreed to an expensive out-of-court settlement." By editing the image on the screen one can add walls, spikes, conveyors, etc. The F key allows you to finish drawing and test the game, be sure to save the level you have created before testing it as there is no way to go back! Paul has included six sample levels, and warns that "there is rather buggy behaviour with ladders and spikes, which some of our levels exploit shamelessly." tzx file
	Riddle Master By Digital Prawn Digital Prawn brings us an exciting text based adventure, based on a journey to spiritual enlightenment. As you travel your long and winding path (okay I tell a lie, it's not winding at all) towards ultimate knowledge you are impeded by 10 pesky trolls (or is that just you standing in the middle of the road looking gormless?) posing curious riddles. The game has a reasonably readable colour scheme, and starts off with a rather irritating tune composed with version 3 of Andrew Owen's GarageBEEP program. The answers to the riddles are stored in data statements encrypted with a highly (in)secure algorithm... quite pointless but rather nifty really. riddle.tap file
	Spooki Castle By Paul E Collins (Paul Howard?) Paul enters yet another game from the 90s to the compo here, another platformer. Your small character graphic (that looks suspiciously like one of the ghosts from pacman, especially when you lose a life and get a closeup...) can move left and right and jump to avoid the baddies moving around the rooms in his castle, and collect potions. Apparently hitting switches opens doors in other rooms and there are various monsters and hazards. As you can maybe guess I didn't get very far through the game before becoming frustrated with the terrible slowness of the controls (which are user definable by the way!) and repeatedly dying. PLAY statements provide some fairly nice music and effects. Paul tells me that the game is incomplete, but anyone who manages to open and go down the trapdoor in the garden (which involves a traversal of all existing rooms) can consider himself to have won. tzx file
	TrickBall By Carlos This is a very polished game from Carlos in Palma. The game loads up to a title screen with a nice beeper tune, and leads the player into the game by following the instructions on screen. The game is one of those "follow the ball in the cup" things, with progressively difficult levels (I managed all the way up to level 8 so it can't be too hard!) The movement of the graphics is quite smooth, and a flashing border effect is used at the beginning of each level. I'd be interested to know if anyone completes level 9, or whether it is a trick and goes on forever. I ran ZXSpin at full speed for about 5 minutes and didn't get to the end before giving up! The tzx image is here
	Shades of Dosh By John Young An interesting (and surprisingly addictive) crap game concept, based on opening different coloured boxes each containing a different amount of money (I wonder where that idea came from...!) You choose a box by colour, and wait as every second the amount of dosh you are gambling ticks up. When you hit a key that amount is banked and added to your total, but if you wait too long and the counter ticks above the value in the box you get nothing (also watch out for the counter occasionally skipping a value, don't know if this is a bug or a feature) Finally the game ends with a stop statement which is just plain frustrating as it gives you no congraturations for winning (or instructions on how to claim your prize money) tap file here. The game is well commented with REM statements
	Runner By John Young Another entry from Polomint, this one's an "unfinished game that [he] got bored with" only the kempston joystick option works, and if it's not enabled the game just resets. There is no scoring, or apparent goal, but it's a pretty smooth bit of maze-em-up code. To start the game, RANDOMIZE USR 32768. tap file
	Trashman By John Young Yet another game from Polomint, this time starring a sanitation engineer called 'Olop' (hmmm...) After a night of substance abuse you sustain a head injury and begin to hallucinate, your mission should you choose to accept it (in fact you have no choice in the matter, you should have thought about that before knocking back all those alcopops down at the roller-disco the night before!) is to shoot all the flying rubbish bins. You have thirty bullets in your bin disinfectant targeting thingummy to try to get as high a score as possible. the tap file is here
	Mega-Hi-Lo (Z80 rom edition) By John Young Here's a great game for machine code buffs! See if you can get all the way through the "Z80 rom" (the system rom of the machine you are using) guessing if the next memory location in the rom will be higher or lower than the current one. If you get it wrong you lose and have to start again, can you get through all 16383 levels?! an very interesting idea and neat execution, but possibly not the most exciting game in the world. Tap file here
	Monty Python's Argument Clinic By Laszlo Simon This text adventure type game is based on the Argument Clinic sketch from Monty Python's Flying Circus. The game is played like a "choose your own adventure" book, or the conversations between characters in Lucas Arts games. The game is generated by a C program which takes a file of text and parameters and outputs the adventure. The program is compiled with z88dk and is included in this archive the tap file is here
	Overtake the Pope By Edward Cree As the title suggests, this game involves passing the pontiff (no that's not a euphemism!) You are driving your C5 about in Rome, and you get stuck behind His Holiness crawling along in the Popemobile. Your battery is going flat, and if you don't get past him soon you'll be pedalling home. controls are QAOP TZX file here
	MONObirinth By Laszlo Simon Introducing possibly the most boring maze game ever written, MONObirinth by Laszlo Simon brings all the joy of pressing Q, A, O, and P to your spectrum with over 2 hours of exciting gameplay! With 64 different levels you'll have endless fun and everyone's a winner! The game is written in C and compiled with z88dk. Simon has also written a sprite converter in perl which is included in the zip file.
	Commode Nybbler Part Deux By Digital Prawn This game skirts *very* close to breaking Rule 1, in that it is VIC-20 based, written in 6502 assembler and running in James Smith's "Twenty Commodes" emulator for the ZX Spectrum. (Un?)Luckily it's crap enough that this flagrant rule bending can be overlooked since it does achieve the intended result. Something that runs on a spectrum and is near unplayable! This is a snake/worm type game using left/right style controls (anticlockwise/clockwise) and your snake/worm can move in 8 directions. Eat the toilets to progress through the levels while avoiding hitting obstacles. There are ten levels in total but winning is "almost certainly impossible". The .zip containing snapshot, manual, and 6502 source code is here
	See How Many Points You Can Score in the Allotted Time By Trellis The premise of this game should be obvious to all but the thickest skulled nitwits... So to elaborate, See How Many Points You Can Score in the Allotted Time is a game in which upon starting the round a timer immediately begins counting down. You the player only have until this counter reaches zero in which to increase you score counter to as high a value as you can. In other words, see how many points you can score in the allotted time! The game has a fairly nice in game tune, but this loops over and over until it drives you mad. The controls are fairly slow and there is no verification that input is valid. The game teases you with the promise of a special treat if you achieve over 100 points, but I won't spoil the surprise, you'll have to play it for yourself. The game is compiled basic and the zip file is here
	Minemower By Chris Young You expect a lot from a "classic" genre like lawnmower racing simulations, and this game doesn't disappoint (well obviously it does, that's the idea of a crap game...). The game asks for two players to choose their lawnmower from a selection of fabulous models, all described with bucketfuls of creative flair. I discovered that two players aren't actually required (that's lucky, you billy no mates - Ed.) and the game can be played by ones self by simply utilising two fingers instead of the intended one. the tap file is here
	Sofa Move Simulator (3D) By Laszlo Simon Another compiled C entry using the z88dk tools here. An homage to the excellent "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" your mission is to remove Richard MacDuff's sofa from it's current position inexplicably wedged halfway around the corner of the stairwell. The 3D rendering is blisteringly fast (by CGC standards!) and source is included in the archive
	Horace and the Boulders By Arda The instructions provided for this game are pretty vague: "controls are 67890" so I'll do my best to improvise... Guide your little Horace sprite around the platform levels collecting things without getting hit by the (I presume) boulders which roll down from above. I picked up a key and so I presume that the item at the top of the level is a door to the next level... I never found out because the controls are infuriatingly awkward. Download the game to see what I mean
	Steroid sports: Tennis By Apenao New from Fubete Software, the most realistic simulation of tennis yet! Coming soon to a news-agent near you! This pong-a-like game features colourful animated graphics, and a hideous beeper rendition of the opening bars from Chariots of Fire. The controls are Q (up) and A (down). tzx image
	Balls! By Gavin Callard Firstly let me state I have absolutely NO idea why this game is called balls... Perhaps this is just what you say when you lose? The game features 4 players (three AI and one Human) each trying to reach a goal. You choose how many credits you want to spend (each credit moves you one step towards the goal) and race off against the other players to the target. The twist is that until you have spent your credits you don't know how far away the target will be! The "graphics" are letters and symbols drawn on a grey background in classic CGC style a z80 snapshot is available here
	Real 3D Maze By Chris Young The latest release from Unsatisfactory Software breaks all the technological barriers. The advanced stereoscopic anaglyph rendering engine makes you feel like you're really there in the cursed catacombs. Simply pop on your yellow/blue glasses (Quality Street not included) and dive right into the action! tap file
	Steroid Sports: 100MT - Bolt vs Semenya By Apenao The latest game in the Steroid Sports series, this game combines all the excitement of competitive athletics with a heavy dose of speculation. Place yourself in the enormous shoes of Caster Semenya and try to beat the world's fastest man Usain Bolt. This game uses patented psychic technology developed in consultation with a leading circus gypsy to provide the most intuitive control system to date, simply chose your favourite control key and toggle it to pump those enormous leg muscles. Game in tzx format
	The Sinclair Tandoori By David Purcell This is your chance to experience the heady thrill of managing a popular ethnic food business! You've got a great high street venue, a 500 quid overdraft, and a store room full of miscellaneous meat. Can you turn this business into an overnight success? or will you be yet another victim of TESCO's buy one get one free jalfrezi ready meals? Only time (and playing this game obviously) will tell! tzx file and shiny PDF manual available here
	Ultimate Car Park Simulator By Dr Beep Dr Beep writes: "This game is based on the parking problems from a collegue. He bumped on the car behind and got a ticket for driving away after a collision. May this parksim help you park better than he did..." Unfortunately I fared no better than the gentleman mentioned, smashing my Ferrari at immense speed into the Porsche behind. (probably my fault for putting the emulator into full speed) The controls are the number keys corresponding to the 48k mode cursors, and the front wheels of the top parked car indicate the position of your own wheels. download tap image
	Monty Python's Marathon for Incontinents By Laszlo Simon Another Monty Python inspired entry, this time based on the Silly Olympiad sketch. The game helpfully explains what you are supposed to do, and what the controls are so there's not much for me to say, other than that the game is another compiled C z88dk entry and the source code is provided. I like the way the game runs faster when there are less sprites on screen, this surely earns a few crap points. tap file and source code
	Sinclair Blind Flight Simulator 2009 for the ZX81 By Siggi This is the first shameless rip off in this year's compo. Siggi says: here is a game for a ZX81. I made it by myself, but it is not more than a port of the Speccy game "Sinclair Blind Flight Simulator 2009 By Firelord". But it think, all blind ZX81 fans should also have the chance to fly The game is a direct copy with identical "gameplay mechanics" so if you can win the original, you will be an expert at the ported version too. If you are Firelord's lawyers, Siggi is over there /me points you can download the .p file here
	Reasonably Constant Alien Attack By Mulder This is a very polished space invaders clone (in fact it plays more like a demo of an unfinished game than a CGC entry!) The game features smooth scrolling sprites and AY sound effects. It does begin to get tedious of course, the alien attack being reasonably constant... I have no idea if there is a win condition, I suspect you just play for as long as you can be bothered clocking up a higher and higher score. tzx file here
	Knot in 2D (Machine Code Edition) By BloodBaz BloodBaz seems to have missed the point, and entered an extremely polished and epic snake clone! There are a couple of slight glitchy bugs, but mostly the scrolling, sound effects, end of level effects, etc. are all extremely good. assembler source, and full instructions are provided

ZX Spectrum Index

Return to Index Page