Games World

Paul Brett with the latest gaming news.

Once again e have another action packed games world column for you to enjoy, plus of course we are including the games we mention on this issues CD. As I am sure you recall AcornArcade have been gradually releasing the full range of Tom Copper games on their website. Sine last issue two more great games have become available, Hamsters and WaveLength.

Hamsters

Hamsters was written by Tom Cooper, and was released commercially by Gamesware in 1994 and has been freewared by Imparo. This version has been supplied by Matthew Thompson with a screenmode from Jason Tribbeck. It is a multi-level politically incorrect platform game. Each level has a time limit. Only when you have successfully squashed every furry animal on the level will you have completed it. Also littered around the levels are several bonus items that you can collect to increase your score. In order to progress through the levels you will need to use your hammer, firstly to squash any small furry animals and secondly to bounce you up to higher platforms.

Hamsters should run fine on RISC OS versions from 3 to Adjust, but not on RISC OS 5.

Hamsters in action

To move about the levels you need the following controls:

Left Z
Right X
Use Hammer/Jump RETURN

The longer the RETURN key is held down the harder the hammer blow will be.

Hamsters can be configured to your own personal requirements - to tailor the game to your own particular taste. The options menu is accessed from the introduction screen - to scroll through the options press Z to move up and X to move down. To select a particular option use the RETURN key. Once you have finished tailoring the game select exit options to return to the introduction screen and start the game.

Start Level - This allows you to enter a password if you wish to begin the game at a particular level.
Scenery - This will alter the detail of the background scenery. There are Four options, Low, Medium, High and Full.
Blood - This will tailor the game to suit either the most squeamish or the most Blood-thirsty! There are Four blood options, each altering the degree of carnage left behind by squashed animals - None, Some, Lots and Buckets.
Messages - There are 3 options for the ingame messages and prompts - Off, Clear and Solid.
Wibble - The Wibble option reduces or enhances the amount of screen shake caused by a hammer blow. There are 4 options - Off, Low, Severe and High. It is not recommended that you play Hamsters with Buckets of blood and a High Wibble setting if you are suffering a hangover.
Music On/Off - This allows you to turn the in game music on and off.

You can look at the high score table and take heart from the fact that you are not the only psychopathic maniac that enjoys killing defenceless, soft, furry animals. To exit Hamsters press the ESCAPE key until you return to the introduction screen. Select Return To Desktop. To remove Hamsters from the icon bar press the MENU button over the Hamster icon and click SELECT on quit. The Hamsters goodbye screen will then play. To skip this press the SPACE-BAR.

WaveLength

Another Tom Cooper classic, again this was supplied by GamesWare and has been declared freeware by Imparo. Wavelength lacks the humour of other Tom Cooper games and rather is a classic shoot-em-up. You start off with a ship armed with one single cannon, however by carefully destroying the enemies you will be able to collect weapons uprades, rather like Xenon 2. Although this starts out quite slowly it soon gets quite manic, and don't forget that if things get too much you can always back off for a short time and pick off enemies one at a time.

WaveLength should run fine on RISC OS versions from 3 to Adjust, and on RISC OS 5 with the help of Aemulor Pro.

Wavelength in action

Z and X - Turn left and right
Shift - Go faster!
Return - Fire main weapon
Space - Launch bomb
Escape - Quit to menu

A quick update on WaveLength, it seems that CJE Micro's actually own the distribution rights to this game and so it has been removed from the Acorn Arcade downloads area. Of course we have also removed it from this software section of this issue's CD.

CMan

Now it's time for a new game from Neil White, the man who it seems has produced more new RISC OS games than anyone else over the last couple of years. CMan is a version of Pac-man, written as a C programming exercise. Neil has included the full source code for those that want to see how the game works.

CMan in action

As the game is in pseudo 3D the controls operate diagonally:

O - Move up and right
D - Move down and left
K - Move down and right
Q- Quit

That's all we have time for this time, I hope to be back with more games next issue.

Paul Brett