THE SPECTRUM GAME DATABASE

Cassette 50

PUBLISHER
Cascade Games Ltd

AUTHOR
Various

YEAR
1983

DESCRIPTION
This tape is a compilation of Spectrum BASIC games contributed
to Cascade Games by many, many home users. Cascade paid UKP10 for
the best ones and put them on this tape (although, as we will see
later, the knowledge that these games were the -best- that
Cascade got truly boggles the mind).

This are the Games on CASCADE?s Cassette 50:

 1. Muncher           18. Ski Run    35. Field 
 2. Ski Jump          19. Tanks      36. Draggold
 3. Basketball        20. Solar Ship 37. Space Search
 4. Frogger           21. Ten Pins   38. Inferno
 5. Breakout          22. Cars       39. Nim
 6. Crusher           23. Stomper    40. Voyager
 7. Startrek          24. Pinball    41. Sketch Pad
 8. Martian Knock Out 25. Cavern     42. Blitz
 9. Boggles           26. Laser      43. Fighting Mission
10. Alien Attack      27. Alien      44. Mystical Diamonds
11. Lunar Lander      28. Cargo      45. Galaxy Defense
12. Maze Eater        29. The Race   46. Cypher
13. Microtrap         30. The Skull  47. Jetmobile
14. Motorway          31. Orbit      48. Barrel Jump
15. Labyrinth         32. Munch      49. Attacker
16. Skittles          33. Bowls      50. Space Mission
17. Race Track        34. Raiders


CONTROLS
Varies depending on game (instructions are included with each
game)

INSTRUCTIONS
What follows is a short description of every game on the tape:

1)Muncher
A passable UDG version of Pac-Man. Eat all of the periods, avoid
the two "munsters" chasing you, and eat the asterisks to have a
go at eating them for awhile. Rack up huge points for camping out
at the place where the munsters show up again after being eaten,
then eating them again and again and again and..

2)Ski Jump
A fascinating venture into the seamy world of ski-jump betting.
You start with ukp50 and try to make huge amounts of money
guessing which of six skiers will jump the farthest. Gets very
boring very quickly, despite the fun of watching the skiers
actually jump off the slope and land on top of each other.

3)Basketball
Absolutely laughable version of basketball. Only one person can
move at a time, reducing the game to a stalemate of your opposing
player just decides to hold down a key to keep you from moving.
A foul is called if your man stands on top of the other man when
you take a shot. Run very far away from this one.

4)Frogger
The first not-horrible game on the tape. Basically like the
arcade game, except instead of hopping on logs in the second
section, you have to avoid things like alligators and
battleships.

5)Breakout
Hopefully everyone knows what Breakout is by now; you have a bat,
they have a large wall, you have to kill off that wall by hitting
it with a ball..

6)Crusher
You have been captured by the evil Dr. Death and are placed on
his crusher.  You have to get the addition sum shown on the
screen right or else you get crushed (which may be a good thing
when looking at the quality of the game).

7)Startrek
It's the ancient Startrek game, straight from the PDP-11 to your
Spectrum.  Put all of your megalomaniacal delusions to work as
you kill off Klingon after Klingon.

8)Martian Knock Out
Destroy an entire fleet of Martians with only 15 missiles. All
you can do is type in what velocity you want the missile to go
at. Just for kicks, your gun moves after every shot, and you get
a dud missile every now and then.

9)Boggles
Take turns taking up to a certain limit of items from the pile.
Whoever takes the last item from the pile loses. Hours of
exciting fun.

10)Alien Attack
Fire away at evil UFOs from your hidden underground bunker filled
with guns.  A minute to learn .. a minute and a half to master.

11)Lunar Lander
Try your best to manually land on the moon without killing
yourself. In an amazing feat of BASIC programming, the game gives
you a close-up view of your ship as it nears the surface (this
could have been advertised as "3-D graphics" by the standard of
Spectrum game companies).

12)Maze Eater
A somewhat more true-to-the-arcade version of Pac-Man with no
energizer dots. Make the little green box and eat all of the
asterisks without getting eaten by the little red boxes.

13)Microtrap
You are trapped inside a fiendish computer which tries to kill
you by placing little bits of wiring in your way. Your object is
to make it to the fuse on the left to blow up the computer. Epic
in its uninterestingness.

14)Motorway
Oh dear.. You have a car at the bottom of the screen, and the
object is to avoid all of the cars (okay, one car) and hit all
the little men running down the screen. It's games like these,
no doubt, that causes teenagers to commit violent crimes.

15)Labyrinth
Navigate the not-very-treacherous labyrinth, avoiding the red
asterisks, and reach the flashing dollar sign in the middle
before running out of time.

16)Skittles
I think I played a ZX81 game that was exactly like this. Knock
over as many of the 30 skittles as you can with six balls.

17)Race Track
A version of this exists for every computer known to man. Keep
your little car between the walls on the side of the road for as
long as possible.

18)Ski Run
Navigate the full-screen ski trail, going between the flags and
not hitting any trees, flags or people. Actually kind of fun, and
unlike most other BASIC games, actually goes too fast to be
playable.

19)Tanks
Navigate your boxy tank across the screen without hitting any of
the (invisible) mines. The game is impossible, and every now and
then the game puts a mine on top of your starting point, adding
to the "challenge".

20)Solar Ship
Try to collide with as many suns as possible before your ship
goes off the top of the screen. Overall a fairly laughable game.

21)Ten Pins
Dire bowling game. Your ball swishes magically across the alley;
press the "Z" key when you think it's positioned correctly, and
it flies down the alley and hits some pins. No scoring; the game
ends after two bowls.

22)Cars
Very suspiciously similar to "Race Track" (see above). Drive
around an end-less track and avoid slamming into walls.

23)Stomper
Another Pac-Man-ish game. Scurry around, avoiding Mr. Skull while
trying to catch the green thingy running around.

24)Pinball
Well, it's not really pinball.. There are no flippers, for one
thing (instead there's a Breakout-style paddle you move left and
right)..there are no bumpers (there are pink circular things that
give you points if you hit them).. and there's not much of
anything else (besides walls).

25)Cavern
Very, very suspiciously familiar to "Race Track" and "Cars",
except this time you're on a spaceship, and not just on some
piddly race car. There are also some people strewn across the
track that you can run into for points.

26)Laser
You're a spaceship, and you have absolutely nothing to worry
about (besides running out of fuel and getting hit by
strange-looking "enemy ships").

27)Alien
Ooooohh, it's just like Space Invaders except it's in color, your
ship's about three times bigger and, well, it's written in
Spectrum BASIC.

28)Cargo
Blast your way through the Pink Walls of Destruction(tm), make
your way to the flashing "o", and get immediately killed by the
skull that was right on top of the "o". Admittedly the game would
probably be better if some instructions were given.

29)The Race
Suspiciously similar to "Ski Jump" (see above), except that this
time, instead of betting on ski jumps, you're betting on
100m-dash races. And this time you even get ukp100 to play with!
Hours of fun for all the family!

30)The Skull
It's an exact copy of "Cargo" (see above). I suppose that
Cascade, not liking the way "Cassette 49" sounded, decided to pad
the tape by copying some things twice.

31)Orbit
Thirty games into the tape and we finally come upon a half-decent
one. Your ship and a little dot are both orbiting around an "O"
representing the sun; the object is to crash into the little dot
by increasing and decreasing your orbit. Sort of interesting,
anyway.

32)Munch
Move the giant pair of lips around, trying to eat as many red
thingies as possible, without eating any of the blue thingies.
Very simple.

33)Bowls
Some sort of odd game involving hitting red and blue balls
around. The best feature, without a doubt, is the fact that you
get to type in whatever score you want to have (since the game
doesn't keep score).

34)Raiders
Quite a bit like Space Invaders, except that (a) the invaders
don't move, and (b) shots sort of rain down from the sky, as
opposed from being thrown at you by the invaders per se. Uses the
BEEP 10,10 command to good effect.

35)Field
This game tries to be true to life as possible. The object is to
get the green plant while avoiding the farmer's dog, as well as
the invisible mines (did I mention that the farmer installed a
minefield on his crops last night?). Another game that makes
extensive use of BEEP 10,10 for extra annoyance.

36)Draggold
An adventure game written in under 6K. Wow! Your only options are
to move ahead, left or right, but that's ok, because all of the
(flashing) words weave a rich and enchanting story. Until you die
without warning for the millionth time. Avoid at all costs.

37)Space Search
The object is to search for a particular asterisk in a screenful
of asterisks.  You get additional fuel by orbiting around certain
asterisks. More nonstop thrills than Mortal Kombat.

38)Inferno
You have to pick up buckets of water in the room on the right to
put out the fire in the room on the left. You die by getting
burnt, and by slamming into a wall (you die of embarassment, I
suppose).

39)Nim
Suspiciously familiar to Boggles (see above) Take stuff from the
pile, try not to take the last thing from the pile, turn off the
game, etc.

40)Voyager
A huge game (16k), this game even has its own title screen!
Beyond that, it's suspiciously similar to "Solar Ship" (see
above) except with slightly better UDGs.

41)Sketch Pad
Draw, draw, draw on your screen until you vomit!

42)Blitz
Your airplane is running out of fuel and, for some reason, the
only way to refuel is to bomb every single skyscraper on the
screen to bits. Logic was never a high point of 8-bit games, and
this is no exception. Oh yes, and the game is dire, too.

43)Fishing
An absolutely laughable fishing sim. Buy supplies at the shop,
then sit around for ten hours as nothing happens.

44)Mystical Diamonds
Another one of those "make your way to the top of the screen
while avoiding those invisible mines" games except this time the
author let you SEE the mines! It does not, however, make the game
any better. Sorry.

45)Galaxy Defense
An OK game where you shoot and shoot and shoot at aliens coming
from the spaceship above your planet. Nice UDGs, at the very
least.

46)Cypher
The largest game (over 23k..!) in the collection, this Master
Mind clone is actually sort of fun, if you find 20-year-old mind
games fun.

47)Jetmobile
A somewhat surreal game where you have to keep the little yellow
box from hitting the walls (an easy task if it weren't for the
fact that your box is nearly uncontrollable!)

48)Barrel Jump
Now this game is fun. Your little guy runs across the screen,
and, in order for him to survive his little trek across the
screen, you must make him jump over all the barrels in his way.
Woooo..

49)Attacker
Another somewhat surreal game where you have to make the little
white box enter the big box in the center of the screen for big
points.. and now we come to the end of this epic of Spectrum
rubbishness..

50)Space Mission
Move the "H" around, avoid the blue boxes, hit the red boxes..
and finally we've reached the end of the cassette!!!!
Congratulate yourself!

CHEATS
Unknown, although it's an easy task to edit the BASIC code to
your liking..

SEQUELS
None known, although another Cascade compilation tape is rumored
to exist..

URL
ftp://ftp.nvg.unit.no/pub/sinclair/snaps/games/misc/cass50.zip
(This is a .TAP file, for use only with emulators that can use
tape images)

NOTES
This cassette falls into the "so bad it's good" category - spend
an afternoon playing the games inside. If you can make it through
all fifty games and not have a nervous breakdown, then you, sir,
are a true Spectrum lover. :)
























