Raah! The results have
been announced!
All entries for the 2001 compo, listed newest-to-oldest:
ADVANCED STUDYING SIMULATOR
by Mikulás Patocka
This entry takes a so-so concept from a worn-out genre and wraps it
up in an execution with almost obsessive attention to detail and
game balance. So sort of arse-about-face really, but fun-crap and
worth a look.
One word of warning, though: it contains an in-game option
to play this year's CSS entries. One of our judges went into a
recursion stack overflow and his face just slaked right off
onto his keyboard. Which was cool. The rest of us didn't like him
anyway, he smelt of cabbage and had no teeth.
Download ast.z80 or
play online using Java
MERVIN AND MARVIN'S TELETEXT ADVENTURE
by Chris Young
Suspicious concept, dodgy execution. Typically solid entry from
Chris, and my wordage is all used up.
Download mmta.tap or
play online using Java
CSS CATCHPHRASE
by Matthew Westcott
The thing about these demo coders is that they're doomed to submit
fantastic entries with far too much technical merit from the word go, and when
the million-channel CD-quality ACBED surround rendition of the
classic Catchphrase music rang out from my speakers a tear ran down
my cheek.
Anyway, so I woke up in a puddle of urine and there was the
ghost of Roy Walker's voice wailing all around me. "Roy, is
that you?" I asked, squinting at the dark stormclouds and absently
sniffing my t-shirt. People were staring. Later that evening [MORE]
Download catchphr.tap
COLLIER'S FIRST LAW OF USENET
by Chris Young
Let it go... just let it go.
Download collier.z80 or
play online using Java
MR BEAN GOES TO ANTARTICA
by PNC Software
It's crap, but in a crap way. Even one of our judges who grins cadaverously at
everything -- particularly warm roadkill and needles -- went stony-faced
at this one, and I could hear his teeth grinding.
Download MRBEAN.Z80
TURBO NOVA
by Lee Prince
Look, I'm getting tired of writing these shitey little mini-reviews
which are delicately worded to avoid giving away the joke of the
submission, if any, in the hope that you'll get off your lazy
pie-eating arse and actually try these games out instead of looking
at the fucking screen shot and soiling yourself, you cunt. It's
23:45 on New Year's Eve and I'm writing blurb for a game that only
runs on a machine that's older than some of my few remaining
friends. I hate you.
So just try this game, okay? Because it's great.
Download TURBONOVA.sna or
play online using Java
DER SCHNELLER LAUFHAUSEN
by Chris Young
Says Chris: "This entry is based on all those foreign ZX81 games - you know the sort, you
can't understand the instructions but you figure you'll try it out anyway.
When you try to play the game, you haven't the faintest idea what is going
on."
Download dsl.tap or
play online using Java
SUPERMARKET TROLLEY JOUSTING
by Chris Young
I'm not sure you can get away with calling your knights 'whitey' and
'blacky' in this day and age. It was probably just fine in 1982
though.
Well, anyway, this is wonderful. My only complaint is that the
graphics are so clean and crisp, and the action so excitingly
fluid... not to mention the options of having AI players on either
or both sides. How pro-ey is that?
Download STJ.TAP or
play online using Java
BUFFY 2: ZOMBIE BLOOD
by Chris Young
Unsatisfactory!
Download buffy2.tap or
play online using Java
GAMES WITH FRONTIERS
by Pablo & Jaime Tejedor
How could you not love a collection of games which includes a game called
PARCHEESI? How, hmm? Tell me!
Download GWF2001.TAP or
play online using Java
AOWEN UTILITY PACK
by Andrew Owen
Well. I don't like rejecting entries even if they were written five
or six years ago, aren't games, aren't crap, and are too esoteric for
most people to be able to understand, let alone find a use for. Pat
on the back to Andrew for the effort and technical achievement and
all that, but that's not what the CSSCGC is about. Let these entries
remain here as a warning to us all!
Download TrueFont.zip
Download bmp2scr.zip
Download raw2scr.zip
Download cards.zip
Download composer.zip
Download if2.zip (this one might actually
be a game but I haven't gotten it to work yet, being submitted
in the form of an Interface 2 ROM. Well, points for originality of
format if not usability.)
MAGICAL MUSICAL MYSTERY SCREEN
by Andrew Owen
Submitted simply as a .scr (speccy loading screen only, for the
viewers at home -- follow the instructions on the screen itself) this proggy is up there in the 'cute' ratings.
Sadly 'cute' does not equate to 'crap', unless we're talking about
Pokemon which we're not. Though I'd like to.
Download mmm.scr or
Download mmm.z80 or
play online using Java
TOP SHELF CHALLENGE 2: THE GETAWAY
by Derek Jolly
I am as enthusiastic about this one as I am its predecessor,
although the incisive originality is somehow missing. Not bad for a
rushed-to-market cash-in on the unexpected success of its predecessor.
Download topshelf2.tap
FIRE ELECTRIC PEN
by Joe Mackay
The CSSCGC Panel Of Judges, when we can focus on the screen through
our collective gin-soaked hazes, does enjoy an unhealthily moist
chuckle at the CSSCGC genre of 'dull concepts turned into unplayable
games'. So we were rubbing our dry, wrinkled hands together at the
prospect of playing a computerized version of that 'real world'
(shiver) game where you have to unshakily guide a hoop of metal
along a wire from start to finish without touching the wire, closing
the circuit, sounding a buzzer and making the old lady burst into
flames (my memory might be faulty on the 'buzzer' part).
As it happens, the desperation of the Japanese games industry is, as they say, even stranger than the CSSCGC.
Now the translation team who brought you 'Stop The Express'
releases a long-overdue port of this N64 'classic' to the ZX Spectrum,
with all the baffling and disarming Japanese charm that has made
them the market-crushers they are today. As they say in the land of
the rising sun: bon appetit!
Download firepen.tap or
play online using Java
SUPER ZITE WORLD
by Equinox Tetrachloride
After the dangerously 'okay' Alex In Town debacle (see
below), Equinox returns to safer ground with another platformer, Super Zite
World. Zite shares many of the positive attributes of
Alex and even eliminates some of the main annoyances such as
the general speed and keyboard response time, and yet somehow manages to
be appreciably less interesting for quite unobvious reasons.
A real contender.
Download zite.tap or
play online using Java
ALEX IN TOWN (128K)
by Equinox Tetrachloride
I have mixed feelings about this one; this is edging a touch too
close to the 'genuinely too good' minefield, and well worth a play.
PROS: Look, loads of bloody colour and billions of really quite
nicely-drawn screens, people moving around, things that go up and
down and crush you, a scary ghost, 128K music and vaguely compelling
jumpy-puzzles.
CONS: Very slovenly controls (a platform game which can't
acknowledge two keys together -- great!), some really sparse
screens, incredibly mundane setting and, I'd swear, an insoluable
phone-box puzzle. That I can't think of much worse to say about the game
doesn't bode well for its craptitude ranking.
Conclusion: Has that wonderful air of 'game the author never really got
around to finishing or actually making interesting' that many speccy
games posessed, but moreso. Still distressingly pro-ey.
Download alextown.tap
COMMANDER G: FIRST STRIKE
by Mikulás Patocka
Marvelous! When the oh-so-clever compressed loading
screen triples loading time, you know that things can only get
better.
But they don't.
And that's what's so great!
Download cmg.tap or
play online using Java
ADVANCED WINDOWS 2000 SIMULATOR
by Chris Young
Says Chris: "AW2KS (Advanced Windows 2000 Simulator) will
run an accurate port of Win2K on your 128K Speccy." I don't
want to give anything away, but it's really not a bad'n (turn off an
emulator's 'quick load' for full effect).
Download aw2ks.tap
CHUNTEY DISRUPTOR SIMULATOR
by Chris Young
When I were a wee knipling (eh? -ed) I dreamed of being able
to tame the chuntey. If chuntey were at my command, I could
topple governments, or not, at my oh-so-fickle choosing, as
long as they continued to run their payrolls and nuclear power
stations on Sinclair computers.
This submission by Chris Young simulates the last thing that these
poor small crawly human-units might have ever seen, if fantasy and
reality weren't so disgustingly unconnected.
Download cchuntey.tap or
play online using Java
FLYING IN THE SKY WHERE THE BIRDS FLY 2001
by Mario Sevillano
Oh, nice! A clear goal, simple controls, the option of realistic flight physics
or a forgiving and whimsical 'arcade' mode... this is rather
too good for serious consideration. Give it a play!
Download fsim2001.z80 or
play online using Java
SPECTRUM BASIC XP (2001 EDITION)
by Santiago Romero under contract with Microxoft Corporation
Spectrum BASIC finally gets an update (from the same people who
bought you the fabulously powerful comm*d*re BASIC... almost), and
it is truly a breath of sewer-fresh air.
Download basicxp.tap or
play online using Java
TOP SHELF CHALLENGE
by Derek Jolly
You're a spotty oik standing in the newsagents with sweaty palms
just itching to have a furtive shufty at the top shelf mags. That
was simply a statement of fact and not strictly related to the CSSCGC,
but Derek went and wrote a game like that, as it happens.
As easy as it might be to suggest that Derek is merely riding on the
coat-tails of Chris Young's seminal CSSCGC2K work 'Erotic Pinball'
in its exploration of badly-digitised pr0n and its effect on society
of the early 1980s, it's fa-- OH MY GOD MUM WAS RIGHT I HAVE GONE
BLIND
PLEASE SEND HELP
Download TOPSHELF.TAP
BBC MICRO SIMULATOR 128K
by Steve Watson
Quite a glut of emulators this year, and this is just marginally the
most sodding half-arsed job I've seen.
Download bbc.z80 or
play online using Java
PLASTIC MEN +2: SARGE'S CAPTAIN'S HEROES
by Chris Young
Glitchy, derivative and crap. Nice try!
"Blow this for a game of soldiers" - The Daily Mail
Download PMP2SCH.TAP or
play online using Java
F1M25
by Chris Young
Race your Formula 1 car around the M25. Another great concept from
Chris. However, apart from the terrible flicker and sludgy control this
game has obviously has quite a lot of effort put into it, and the
graphics might even be called 'effective' as signs and cars and
lorries hurtle by in authentic painstakingly-hand-rendered 3D!
Worth a look.
Download F1M25.tap or
play online using Java
BIGGEST NUMBER WINS
by Equinox Tetrachloride
This couldn't possibly have begun to be fun even without
the computer cheating.
Download BIGGEST.TAP or
play online using Java
CALEY HOOSE
by Robert Mitchell
I have to admit that I lost the plot on this one, but it does have
the requisite unwholesome locations and a grand total of one
mindwracking puzzle. Sort of an 'Urban Upstart' adventure for the
new millenium.
Download caley.z80 or
play online using Java
LASERCANNON
by Hob
Move up, move down. Shoot searing lines of energy at festively-pink
sponges. Oh dear.
Download lasercannon.z80 or
play online using Java
C64 EMULATOR
by Mike Wynne
A comprehensive emulation of something called a "Commodore 64",
which I believe was a platform from the eighties designed
for rich foreign people who didn't like decent games. Anyway, now
thanks to the prolific Mister Wynne you can type in all of those
lucid and educational BASIC listings designed for budding C64
programmers. The ones involving POKEs, at least.
Download 64.z80 or
experience online using Java
FREDDY THE SHORT SIGHTED FROGGER WHO CAN'T SWIM
by Mike Wynne
This made me laugh, and in difference to much of the
arcade-games-as-text-adventures genre this actually works pretty well
(which may be a disadvantage in this compo). Guide Freddy across
roads and dangerous rapids with only a compass and a sharp pair of
froggy ears to guide you. Features an ever-shifting environment and
a 'map' for old-schoolers and pre-schoolers. Sadly pretty good.
Download Freddy.z80 or
play online using Java
WILD WEST HEAD HUNTER
by Tomaz Cedilnik
Young Tomaz almost didn't submit this on account of him thinking
that it'd be 'too crap to win'. Ho ho! This is a sodding great
entry. An atmospheric intro promises much: nine levels of varied
gameplay, a deep and involving plot, challenging AI. But then
you work out how to start the game
and... UNGGG... noooo... brain... blocking trauma... the horror, the horror.
Download Wwhh48.tzx or
play online using Java
PETE SNOW'S ELECTION PROMISE
by Chris Young
Submitted just in time to be relevant and painful, this entry
accurately simulates the thrill of being a perfectly good political
party who are destined to be foiled by a combination of the total
fucking indifference of the UK voting public, an archaic electoral
system and the fixed smile of an ineffectual prat.
Download PSEP.TAP or
play online using Java
GRAPHIC DESIGNER 2001
by Mike Wynne
This actually entirely delivers on its promises, so it's debatable
as to whether it qualifies as crap. Quite a technical feat again
from Mike.
Download Picdes.z80 or
play online using Java
KNOWN LIAR
by Mike Wynne
A high-brow concept-piece with a gritty storyline and an amazing
twist half-way through. You're guaranteed to want to play it a
second time.
Download KnownLiar.z80 or
play online using Java
TUNNEL ESCAPE 2
by Mike Wynne
Physically traumatic to look at and astonishingly devoid of playability, this
takes an already-dull concept and tweaks the speed up (note: up, not
down -- quite a twist on the crap game concept, crap fans, but it
works) so that you are dead within 0.6 seconds of starting.
Technically grand, teeth-grindingly poor.
Download TunnelEscape2.tap or
play online using Java
BRICKLESS ARKANOID
by Equinox Tetrachloride
Such a simple corruption of not one but two classic games! You can
think of this as either 'Brickless Arkanoid' or 'Pong With Your Head
Tilted To One Side'. Wonderful.
Download Brikless.tap or
play online using Java
LEN'S CHUNTEY CHALLENGE
by Alan Maxwell
I still don't know how he did this. It is clearly not only a
technical masterpiece, but also crap.
Download chuntey.tzx
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