The Anchovy Coast - Anders Carlsson

Challenge Entry "Such an Auntie-Climax"

Another entry in the "Such an Auntie-Climax" challenge, this game is (very) loosely inspired by an episode of the documentary series "The Italian Way". Fortunately since Anders states he has never seen the programme in question - he's based it solely on the summary in the Radio Times; ensuring that the tie-in to the source material is as tenuous as possible (always a good sign in a CSSCGC entry). As a result, Anders has managed to produce possibly the first (and hopefully the last) fishing/lemon harvesting/tourism/rebellion-quenching simulator for the ZX Spectrum.


Graphically, the coast-line is rendered in a reassuringly chunky manner; although judging by the choice of colours it would appear that the Costa Amalfitana was experiencing an unexpected cold-spell during the time period of the game. This particular stretch of the Italian coast also seems to be the home of a particularly large variety of mutant lemon; where a single fruit could easily sink a large fishing vessel. Sound is thankfully absent - which seems like a missed opportunity, since a grating and off-key rendition of Italian folk music would have been the perfect crapness cherry on an otherwise decidedly un-crap cake.


The rules and gameplay are too involved to explain in detail here, fortunately Anders has provided a detailed set of instructions - unfortunately this reduces the crapness score of the game significantly; since being baffled by a game that's far too complex to understand is one of the defining elements of the genre. Briefly, the object of the game is to finish the game with a profit over your original 500 million Lira investment, through a variety of economic activities, such as picking lemons; fishing for anchovies and er, arranging discos. Suffice to say, it plays like an esoteric combination of Taipan, The Oregon Trail and one of The Sims Expansion Packs; by combining trading, survival and party planning.


The game is surprisingly enjoyable, and it's one of the few entries that I'll continue playing after reviewing it, since I suspect it really needs more time devoted to playing to get the most out of it. There's clearly been a lot of thought and planning put into this game - in fact it's of a higher quality than the typical "edutainment" games that were wheeled out (often literally) in 1980's schools in a vain attempt to make the socio-economic plight of southern Europe seem interesting to 12 year-olds.

Loading:LOAD ""
Controls:
Select Actions:1-4
Move Fishing Boat North:Q
Move Fishing Boat South:A
Move Fishing Boat East:P
Move Fishing Boat West:O
Select Next Fishing Boat:N

The Anchovy CoastSpectrum 48K
amalfi.tap.zip 6.58Kb
amalfi_instructions.txt 5.74Kb
Rating
57.14%

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Odds and Evens Classic - Huw Davies

Next up, Huw Davies has provided this tiny (it's possibly the first file I've ever encountered which actually gets bigger when compressed) entry to the competition; which in the words of the author is targeted at those individuals who are "intimidated by the intellectual elitism and strategic complexity of rock-paper-scissors", which I can only assume also encompasses the group of people who "think that ZX80 is a type of engine-oil"; "spend a lot of time trapped in revolving doors" and "don't know how to install or run an emulator on their computer"; so Huw has immediately restricted his target audience to a very small sub-section of society.

The game itself is an electronic re-imagining of the classic finger-based game Odds and Evens where each round, players hold up either one or two fingers; and depending on the total of all the fingers presented, the "odd" or "even" player wins the round. As such, there is very little more to say about the game - you pick a number, the ZX80 picks a number and you either win or lose the round; not a byte has been wasted on such frivolities as title screens, fancy graphics or a round limiter.


Interestingly, in addition to his official "Classic version" entry, Huw has also submitted a "Super Deluxe Pro" version which adds such high-end features as on screen-instructions and scoring. Which demonstrates that the crapness in the Classic version was entirely deliberate and not a result of incompetence or ineptitude.

Loading:LOAD
Controls:
Choose 1:1
Choose 2:2
Crash program:Any non-numeric character

Odds and Evens ClassicZX80 - 1K
OddsandEvensClassic.o.zip 306 B
OddsandEvensSuperDeluxePro.o.zip 804 B [Non-competition]
Rating
16.33%

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