frolik
Bass Invader
Okay, I think someone asked for feedback on the compo entries so I've taken the liberty of doing a short writeup on each of them.
Disclaimer: I don't want to upset anyone with any of my comments so if you think I've got something wrong, just say and I'll change it - I haven't thoroughly tested every entry but I've tried to be as unbiased as possible
You can download all these games here
Aka Noid
A ridiculously polished game, for an arcade conversion it even has level saves (savestates) and level editor for completeness. I've never been a lover of pong type games but this has changed my mind and will stay on my SMC permanently. It's great to see games go through revisions until they reach quality - nice one JyCet!
Blair Wars
I have to admit I'm not into slow shootemups, although this one has a funny theme and I enjoyed reading the narrative - extra points for humour! But theres not a lot to keep me coming back unless the gameplay gets a bit more jazzed up
BombsGP
Really cool! I love the original ideas put into the bomberman style game, I've not seen it before so I'm assuming it's original anyway.. I'll come back to this and spend more time but it's a testament to Zot's power and hopefully will tease more amateur zot games creators out of the woodwork.
Cave Copter
Games like this are often dismissed at first glance because of their simplicity, but a sure fire way to beef up a simple game is to add options and different modes and sure enough, thats exactly what you have here - once you get into it there's quite a bit of dextrous fun to be had, could have a couple more options though, like coins and moving walls & the music doesn't complement the game too well (imho) but I'll keep it on as it has certain appeal to me
Deluxe Snakes
I don't really enjoy the snake games ever since I had it on an old nokia phone and it frustrated the hell out of me whenever I was sitting on the loo! But this is a nice twist and, again, has some cool options and modes to keep it a bit fresh.
Elena
I recently started playing a bunch of tetris variants but nothing as jazzed up as this! It's great to see fresh ideas coming out with the cylindrical drop method and the 3D view, it took me a while to realise you could rotate and zoom but when I found them it kinda killed me as I lost concentration - it's not easy when your holding the GP sideways.. One idea would be to add a button or option choice to speed up the rotation as it's not easy to get all the way round to the other side before the block drops. Like it a lot, another quality game release
Goits of Rage
What the hell is a Goit? Anyway, this is a bit of beats of rage fun a'la south park cartoon style. I think BOR is a very professional game but I don't think the different mods are different enough to make it worth playing all of them. This one gets extra marks for originality though as I don't think there are any other cartoony looking mods like this
GPAmp
I've not got any stuff to play on this at the moment but it looks amazing, AND it's got skin support too, and if it's interface is anything like winamp then it's gotta be a hit
GPMax
I've only played the actual dance mat type game a couple of times pissed so I'm not the best judge for this. Great visuals and it really looks like the psx quality coming through, unfortunately I hate the music and as it has already been said, the arrows don't seem to correspond with the rhythm, which needs looking at, but it still reeks of quality and with a little more work this will please many gp32ers immensely
Lacuna
Yess! This is exactly the kind of game that I hope for from these compos, it looks DAMN good, plays like a charm, [I think] it's original, and has a good polish. It won't be everyones cup of tea, but I'll take it black with no sweetner please! There are a few basic options and the music is a great retro style bouncy tune to accompany the action. Don't get put off if you're not that good, this is just that type of game that you need to play the odd game or 10 until you get better and then you'll start sweating and gritting your teeth while you scrape past the gaps.
Masterlator
Extremely impressive emulator, this one seemed to just come out of nowhere and the author must have spent a fair bit of time coding it from scratch which shines through with a very cool interface and all the features that a good emu needs, savestates, brightness, & sram saves. I can't go into too much detail as I'm not big on sms games but a few I tried ran very nicely, only one (Ghouls n ghosts) had a couple of sprite bugs in. I haven't tested this much in depth however
Memory GP32
Nice little game specifically built for 5 minutes of fun on a portable gaming device! Looks like a WIP game as the highscore and options were unavailable, with more features it would make the game a lot more presentable. Nice tunes, and again with that trademark DJ Marky sample!
MGS:VR Missions
I couldn't seem to get this working, on either clock setting it was jerky as hell and I couldn't work out the controls
Nazcadreams
Well, it's nice to see someone undertaking something of this scale, looks like a kind of RPG but more of an adventure without the puzzles, nice to explore the world that has been created here, although there's not a lot to it I'm sure there are many folks out there that this will appeal to. There are some nice graphical effects such as the white grass foreground blending with the bits of white in the background, but the biggest problem I had were in the dark screens I couldn't see the walls on my flu.
Neutron Strike
There's something about this game that works very well, it's not just a one shot - one kill, there's bullets everywhere and a reasonable energy bar. The smoothness of the ship movement is quite nice and the enemy waves are fairly nice. With some more baddies and variety in there this could turn into something rather good.
PBSynth
Woah cool! I've played with stuff like this before and although don't know the exact principles behind it, it's good fun to mess around with. As it stands, all there is right now is a toy to make funky noises, but according to the readme there are some very cool features planned to allow sequencing, filters, more delay and other stuff that I probably won't understand! If only the author could get together with Tobi Drummers author to comine the output of each app, we could be making music!
Pituka
Finally the CPC emulator goes public. I've only tried a few games but it seems to work very well if a little slow. This will open up a whole new set of games for many gp32ers and probably open up that old argument of C64vCPC!
Rom Arcade
I do not have the roms for this and have therefore not tested it
SmashGP
Stylish or what?! I never played Smash Brothers before but I see what it's all about, basically just beating each other up in a fun kinda way! It's a bit confusing with the screen flicking about all over but it is a lot of fun, and would be bloody marvellous if you could incorporate RF-linkup for multiplayer games. I see there are some more things to be added which I'm sure will make this an all round winner of a game.
Tobi Drummer
This has always been a lot of fun to mess around with and now it has a sequencer to save those masterpieces in. Although I was hoping that when playing the sequence you could drum along at the same time, it's a nice update to a nice prog
WWII
Nice little multidirectional shootemup, a bit hard to shoot down other planes but it's quite smooth and as with homebrew shootemups, it just needs a bit more variety to make it a hit
Xump
I used to love Sensitive on the C64 - it was one of those games that you just sat there and zoned out to, this is pretty much identical, I can't remember if the levels are the same but it's another addition to the fine range of brain games for the Gp32 and will live long and prosper on my smc
yAnl
This is the Irfanview of the gp32, you can use tga, pcx, gif, fxe, fxea, gxb, axf, bin, mod, lha and rar files from the launcher, play gtris, and edit mod music! A nice idea and a good bit of fun, but I like my file launcher to be a bit more streamlined, it's nice to see different ideas coming out for the file listing interface though
The End
From what I've seen here, excluding emulators, Lacuna wins hands down, I just damn love it! Coming in a close second is Aka Noid, and third is SmashGP.
Style (presentation) points go to Xump, PBSynth, GPMax, GPAmp, Aka Noid, Elena
Originality points to; LAcuna, BombsGP, Tobi Drummer, Cave Copter
Coding Kudos to the emulator devs for Pituka, Masterlator & ROM Arcade
And a huge thank you to all the folks who entered and made it the best competition yet
EDIT: it's "JyCet", sorry!
Disclaimer: I don't want to upset anyone with any of my comments so if you think I've got something wrong, just say and I'll change it - I haven't thoroughly tested every entry but I've tried to be as unbiased as possible
You can download all these games here
Aka Noid
A ridiculously polished game, for an arcade conversion it even has level saves (savestates) and level editor for completeness. I've never been a lover of pong type games but this has changed my mind and will stay on my SMC permanently. It's great to see games go through revisions until they reach quality - nice one JyCet!
Blair Wars
I have to admit I'm not into slow shootemups, although this one has a funny theme and I enjoyed reading the narrative - extra points for humour! But theres not a lot to keep me coming back unless the gameplay gets a bit more jazzed up
BombsGP
Really cool! I love the original ideas put into the bomberman style game, I've not seen it before so I'm assuming it's original anyway.. I'll come back to this and spend more time but it's a testament to Zot's power and hopefully will tease more amateur zot games creators out of the woodwork.
Cave Copter
Games like this are often dismissed at first glance because of their simplicity, but a sure fire way to beef up a simple game is to add options and different modes and sure enough, thats exactly what you have here - once you get into it there's quite a bit of dextrous fun to be had, could have a couple more options though, like coins and moving walls & the music doesn't complement the game too well (imho) but I'll keep it on as it has certain appeal to me
Deluxe Snakes
I don't really enjoy the snake games ever since I had it on an old nokia phone and it frustrated the hell out of me whenever I was sitting on the loo! But this is a nice twist and, again, has some cool options and modes to keep it a bit fresh.
Elena
I recently started playing a bunch of tetris variants but nothing as jazzed up as this! It's great to see fresh ideas coming out with the cylindrical drop method and the 3D view, it took me a while to realise you could rotate and zoom but when I found them it kinda killed me as I lost concentration - it's not easy when your holding the GP sideways.. One idea would be to add a button or option choice to speed up the rotation as it's not easy to get all the way round to the other side before the block drops. Like it a lot, another quality game release
Goits of Rage
What the hell is a Goit? Anyway, this is a bit of beats of rage fun a'la south park cartoon style. I think BOR is a very professional game but I don't think the different mods are different enough to make it worth playing all of them. This one gets extra marks for originality though as I don't think there are any other cartoony looking mods like this
GPAmp
I've not got any stuff to play on this at the moment but it looks amazing, AND it's got skin support too, and if it's interface is anything like winamp then it's gotta be a hit
GPMax
I've only played the actual dance mat type game a couple of times pissed so I'm not the best judge for this. Great visuals and it really looks like the psx quality coming through, unfortunately I hate the music and as it has already been said, the arrows don't seem to correspond with the rhythm, which needs looking at, but it still reeks of quality and with a little more work this will please many gp32ers immensely
Lacuna
Yess! This is exactly the kind of game that I hope for from these compos, it looks DAMN good, plays like a charm, [I think] it's original, and has a good polish. It won't be everyones cup of tea, but I'll take it black with no sweetner please! There are a few basic options and the music is a great retro style bouncy tune to accompany the action. Don't get put off if you're not that good, this is just that type of game that you need to play the odd game or 10 until you get better and then you'll start sweating and gritting your teeth while you scrape past the gaps.
Masterlator
Extremely impressive emulator, this one seemed to just come out of nowhere and the author must have spent a fair bit of time coding it from scratch which shines through with a very cool interface and all the features that a good emu needs, savestates, brightness, & sram saves. I can't go into too much detail as I'm not big on sms games but a few I tried ran very nicely, only one (Ghouls n ghosts) had a couple of sprite bugs in. I haven't tested this much in depth however
Memory GP32
Nice little game specifically built for 5 minutes of fun on a portable gaming device! Looks like a WIP game as the highscore and options were unavailable, with more features it would make the game a lot more presentable. Nice tunes, and again with that trademark DJ Marky sample!
MGS:VR Missions
I couldn't seem to get this working, on either clock setting it was jerky as hell and I couldn't work out the controls
Nazcadreams
Well, it's nice to see someone undertaking something of this scale, looks like a kind of RPG but more of an adventure without the puzzles, nice to explore the world that has been created here, although there's not a lot to it I'm sure there are many folks out there that this will appeal to. There are some nice graphical effects such as the white grass foreground blending with the bits of white in the background, but the biggest problem I had were in the dark screens I couldn't see the walls on my flu.
Neutron Strike
There's something about this game that works very well, it's not just a one shot - one kill, there's bullets everywhere and a reasonable energy bar. The smoothness of the ship movement is quite nice and the enemy waves are fairly nice. With some more baddies and variety in there this could turn into something rather good.
PBSynth
Woah cool! I've played with stuff like this before and although don't know the exact principles behind it, it's good fun to mess around with. As it stands, all there is right now is a toy to make funky noises, but according to the readme there are some very cool features planned to allow sequencing, filters, more delay and other stuff that I probably won't understand! If only the author could get together with Tobi Drummers author to comine the output of each app, we could be making music!
Pituka
Finally the CPC emulator goes public. I've only tried a few games but it seems to work very well if a little slow. This will open up a whole new set of games for many gp32ers and probably open up that old argument of C64vCPC!
Rom Arcade
I do not have the roms for this and have therefore not tested it
SmashGP
Stylish or what?! I never played Smash Brothers before but I see what it's all about, basically just beating each other up in a fun kinda way! It's a bit confusing with the screen flicking about all over but it is a lot of fun, and would be bloody marvellous if you could incorporate RF-linkup for multiplayer games. I see there are some more things to be added which I'm sure will make this an all round winner of a game.
Tobi Drummer
This has always been a lot of fun to mess around with and now it has a sequencer to save those masterpieces in. Although I was hoping that when playing the sequence you could drum along at the same time, it's a nice update to a nice prog
WWII
Nice little multidirectional shootemup, a bit hard to shoot down other planes but it's quite smooth and as with homebrew shootemups, it just needs a bit more variety to make it a hit
Xump
I used to love Sensitive on the C64 - it was one of those games that you just sat there and zoned out to, this is pretty much identical, I can't remember if the levels are the same but it's another addition to the fine range of brain games for the Gp32 and will live long and prosper on my smc
yAnl
This is the Irfanview of the gp32, you can use tga, pcx, gif, fxe, fxea, gxb, axf, bin, mod, lha and rar files from the launcher, play gtris, and edit mod music! A nice idea and a good bit of fun, but I like my file launcher to be a bit more streamlined, it's nice to see different ideas coming out for the file listing interface though
The End
From what I've seen here, excluding emulators, Lacuna wins hands down, I just damn love it! Coming in a close second is Aka Noid, and third is SmashGP.
Style (presentation) points go to Xump, PBSynth, GPMax, GPAmp, Aka Noid, Elena
Originality points to; LAcuna, BombsGP, Tobi Drummer, Cave Copter
Coding Kudos to the emulator devs for Pituka, Masterlator & ROM Arcade
And a huge thank you to all the folks who entered and made it the best competition yet
EDIT: it's "JyCet", sorry!
