Advanced "Simon" Simulator

Post date: 13-Dec-2016 21:16:23

Game by: GReW

Reviewed by: Simon Ferré

When I first read the title of this game, it sounded like my ideal Sci-Fi film where I am cloned and my new clone does all the work and chores, while I live the life of luxury. Anyway, I digress. I was born in the 1970s and was flung into the golden age of the digital era in the late 1970s onwards, so Simon is one of those Marmite like games that you either love or hate. I love it. I'm not sure if I had the real original Simon game or not, but if I did I wish I had held onto it, as it would be great to play the real thing. Well, to save the hassle of all that ebay searching, all you need is your old faithful ZX81, an old TV, some ear plugs and a tin of Quality Street (more on that later), or sod all that and get the EightyOne Emulator. To keep it simple, I opted for the latter (I don't have an actual ZX81).

Here's the rather natty Title screen:

So far it's very impressive. Once you calibrate and confirm you can hear all 4 sounds, it's off to the game we go. Once again, there's a real feeling of a very well made product here. I was more than impressed with the game screen. I even managed on my first go to score 'A'. To all of you of a certain technical skill level, that's one more than 9. What happens as you get further into the game I have no idea. Does it continue through all the letters of the alphabet, or is it in Hexadecimal? I didn't get further than a score of 'A' so who knows. Let me know what happens. Here's the mightily impressive game screen:

Here's the thing. There are two important items required for a game of Simon. They are sound and colour. Neither of those are normally available on a ZX81, so here's where the author has become creative. Here's his marketing blurb included in the email:

Attached is "Advanced "Simon" Simulator" for the ZX81 with 8k of RAM or more.

It's based on the Milton Bradley/Hasbro electronic memory, music game.

The game plays a sequence of notes and you have to repeat the sequence back. The 'light' in the centre indicates when it's your turn. The game speed increases every five levels.

The 'sound' effect works on a real ZX81 connected to a TV via RF; and on EightyOne if you turn on Beeper Sound (F4).

To use on a ZX81 with a composite TV mod or through a Chroma or ZXvid interface, place an AM radio tuned to approximately 750KHz nearby.

For the full colour option, obtain a tin of Quality Street and place the wrappers over the appropriate quarter of the screen.

Controls:

Q - Green (Milk Choc. Block)

P - Red (Vanilla Fudge)

Z - Yellow (Caramel Swirl)

. - Blue (Coconut Éclair)

Loading: LOAD ""

Optional: 10mg of paracetamol after more than 5 minutes of play.

The more than clever use of Quality Street wrappers and outputting of high frequency white noise actually works quite well. The last optional element of paracetamol is spot on too. Just turning that Beeper Sound on in the menu for a few minutes while playing was awful. I simply don't know how long I could have kept that up for.

All in all, this game scores highly on presentation, highly for great use of normally unavailable elements of ZX81 usage, but loses a few points because the sound is actually pretty awful. I didn't last long with beeper sound on at all. Also, I'm on a healthy eating kick until Christmas and didn't have any Quality Street in the house, so I printed a few pictures of rappers and tried them on the screen. That didn't work. Might be wise to include a screen overlay in the retail packaging.

Score: 2 semi-tones out of 4 quavers.