RUBBER BALL - The Review.¢¢Article by Richard Gore¢¢Recently, thanks to a few dedicated people, there have been quite a few new items of software released for the 8-bit Atari computers. One individual, Dean Garraghty has acquired the rights to sell some PPP (Power Per Post - a German company) software. This includes the excellent Quick and S.A.M. (NOT Software Automatic Mouth) utilities and three new games Rubber Ball, Glaggs It! and Minesweeper, with hopefully more to come including a 3D version of Pac-Man. Glaggs It! and Rubber Ball have actually been sold in the UK before (by Gralin International and Page 6 respectively) but at inflated prices. All the three games are available on disk only at 5pounds each or 12.50 for all three.¢¢That's got the mundane bits out of the way, now let's look at Rubber Ball (RB from now on) in detail. RB is actually written in Quick although Quick is not needed to run it as RB has been compiled into machine language. Therefore the boot procedure is the one for disabling BASIC, i.e. turn on whilst holding down option. After a short loading sequence you are greeted by a simple text screen with some catchy digitised music playing away in the background. Pressing the joystick trigger gets you into the action.¢¢Whats the game about? Well you play the part of a rubber ball (hence the title) bouncing around the platforms trying to collect the air-pumps. A joystick (in port 1) controls left and right movement but a (simulated) gravity is always pulling you down, not forgetting collisions are never perfectly elastic your bouncing height decreases until you bounce no more, at which point you have to sit there until the timer decreases to zero or you can quit by pressing the fire button. It's a silly key to choose as you could all too easily catch the fire button as you manoeuvre the joystick in a desparate attempt to make the ball go where you want it too. Falling from a platform will cause you to bounce more. As you bounce around, the highly coloured platforms scroll very smoothly up and down. As you move around you must avoid various hazards such as pins which will rapidly end your life (you start each game with five lives). There are also other items such as airlifts and chewing gum but I will leave it for you to discover how they work.¢¢Scoring is achieved by collecting the air-pumps and completing a level, the quicker you complete the level the more points you get. A high score table is maintained and saved onto the disk (so you can't write protect it), something I am not a great fan of, but I know some people like it.¢¢Overall the graphics are colourful and sharp with excellent scrolling, sonics are above average thanks to the digi music on the title page. The game play may seam a little simple at first but you will quickly become addicted especially when you get onto the higher levels. When first sold by Page 6 they wanted ten pounds for this which is too expensive but at five pounds (including postage) it is an excellent buy.¢¢¢** New prices: Rubber Ball, Minesweeper and Glaggs It are now all 4.95 each, or all 3 for 12.50, including P&P **¢
