August’s game is a somewhat deceiving. On the surface, it is a simple direction shooter. Be careful, though, as those asteroids speed up. It may start out easy, but Asteroid £ Metor will frustrate you—as it did me. After you give the game the retro try, let’d dig deeper into it.
Here it is in July and I have another one of my dodging games to share. But, this one is a little bit different. You don’t need to dodge all of them, or in this case go through all of them. Nevertheless, if you want the juicy bonus points, you need to grab as many of the blocks as you can. The twist is how the pylons change as you play.
I seem to like avoid the wall games. I wrote many of them over the years, inspired by other games I played like “Cavern’s of Mars.” It isn’t a surprise as the ZX81 made it pretty easy to write a vertical scroller. For Death Maze, I added a little twist. Is it enough to make the game fun to play? Let's find out.
I had lots of ideas as a teenager. Many of them became actual programs, while others languish in my notebooks. Others made it a bit further, becoming programs on my ZX81, but never finished. A journey abandoned is still a journey. Let’s explore one such program this month: Tower of Love.
Jim notified me earlier this month that I’d missed one of his remakes of my ZX81 programs when I blogged about them earlier. Tower Dodge for the MC-10 is Jim’s version of my updated Pole Dodge 2. Not sure how I missed it as he rewrote it back in 2014. Of course, I can’t believe I wrote mine back in 2012! Time sure flies—get the pun? Anyway, let’s dive in and see what’s new.
Wait what? Another month? Another game? You betcha! April is upon us, and pretty much over. So, to pass the time I introduce Blaster, a shooter with a twist.
Use Z to move left, . to move right, and M to fire. Not the most exciting game ever, but you’ll find it hard enough to spend a few minutes with it.
Taking a turn from games, March's program is a bit more useful. Although not as flexible as some modern programs, Bar Graph does the job. Add some data and print. What could be easier? Well, a lot.
I’ve been wanting to create my own version of digital rain for some time. The effect is well known from the Matrix movies, which used florescent green characters. Inspired by that version, I decided to go retro and generate a black and white stream of characters using the ZX81. Let the geekiness begin.
I generated water in a previous model, but I wasn’t overly happy with it. It was a bit too smooth—more like bath water. So, I tried again with a different LEGO model. And, this time I’m pleased with the results.
Since the start of the year, I’ve been participating in a weekly photography challenge in an attempt to improve my photography. Although I shared them on Flickr, I wasn’t blogging about them. Perhaps it was because of a lack of confidence of their quality, not liking their originality, or just fear of ridicule. Overcoming all that, I’d like to share last week’s photo. It’s all about fun!