But Which CHR$?

Post date: 31-May-2016 22:12:19

Game by: PROSM

Reviewed by: Simon Ferré

I accidentally typed the OPEN# keyword into my 48K spectrum AND a strange shimmering portal opened AT the corner of my DIMly lit lounge. I didn't know IF I should be bold, but eventually, excitedly, I took a daunting STEP through into an unknown land, in which time appeared to PAUSE. Upon my RETURN I found that time had NOT stood still, and what felt like a week there was in fact over a month of usual Earth time. I would LIST all the activities that took place there (some being quite CHR$ building, but what's the POINT), but I feel I ought to write the NEXT review instead. I may use it as a PLOT for my next crap game.

So, here I present But Which CHR$. Even though the program presents itself with this instruction screen, I had absolutely no idea what to do when I ran the game for the first time, so this gains it bonus points. The yellow background seems to me to be pretty garish, and after playing for only a short while I was hypnotised.

You get a point for every character you guess correctly, but the game for all its simplicity is so darn quick in that it hardly gives you time to think, let alone recall how decimal values are stored as binary, and then to figure out which of the three characters the 8 decimal digits represent. The time bar at the bottom goes so fast it was even pretty tricky getting a screen capture, but thankfully I've found a pause key on my emulator. If only every go was as easy as this one:

I've been using the Eighty One emulator for all these reviews, so I feel I have to keep using it on the basis of fairness (and I'm such a tight wad I will not pay for an emulator), but I do so wish it would save the screenshots in a format other than BMP. The site I am using for the competition doesn't allow me to upload BMP files into these reviews, so I have to convert every single one of them to PNG. I didn't realise so much effort was involved in each review, but I'm glad I'm hosting the competition this year.

For the first few goes I blindly selected one of the possibilities, only to get it wrong. When you do choose the wrong answer you are quite severely mocked, which I found quite Devilish:

At that time, I must admit I really wasn't quite sure what I was doing, and it was only after several goes and losing quite convincingly that the penny dropped and I finally started to understand what I was supposed to be doing.

When I got going, I quite liked the effects that appear on screen for correct answers:

And I really started to enjoy this game the longer I played it. I feel that it's almost too good for a crap game. It gets the brain working overtime, and eventually, while I didn't beat the highscore (which I really am amazed is set so high), I feel I ended up on a pretty good personal best. Try to beat this if you can:

It's one of those games that you say you'll never play again, then try to beat your high score. The brutal way this game behaves is great. It's like playing Jet Set Willy starting with only one life, and collecting 250 objects before falling into the pit. It could have been so much worse, had it presented the 8 values in Hexadecimal, or after loading a custom character set. Maybe that's an idea for a sequel.

Score - K out of d (look them up in your user guide).