After a period of inactivity, we reckon it's probably time we made a bit of an effort, and updated the blog at least once per day for a week. Possibly more. Sadly, we can't really think of anything to write about, so what better time to dig out all of the half-completed and half-baked ideas lurking in our Brokendrafts.txt file? Yes, it's time to send the quality control department of Broken Industries on their annual trip to the funfair in Rhyl ("But it's been demolished!" - The Broken Industries Quality Control Department), and finish off all those posts we'd started to write and then dismissed because they we no longer topical, as good an idea as we'd hoped they'd be, or rubbish. First up:
ASHES TO ASHES: THE TIE-IN VIDEO GAME
Aye, a bit of a throwback to our Lost: The Videogame gag from about a year ago, which we'd knocked up in five minutes, anticipating our regulars would get the reference to an obscure game from 1988, only for it to be included on Kotaku, leading to about ten thousand people thinking we'd passed off the Denton's finest work as our own. Bah.
Anyway, we'd started to knock these up in a similarly hamfisted fashion (who'd have thunk it'd be so difficult to replicate attribute clash via Photoshop, eh?) before giving it up and a bad lot, not least because the series takes place a good year before the Spectrum hit the shops, preventing the screenshots from standing up to any scrutiny. But, as our standards are going out of the window this week (we'll probably be reduced to a tenth-rate rip-off of TV Go Home by Friday, mark our words), he are the pictures anyway. We might upload them again when the third series of Ashes rolls around, because they'll be artistically valid around 2010.
ASHES TO ASHES: THE TIE-IN VIDEO GAME
Aye, a bit of a throwback to our Lost: The Videogame gag from about a year ago, which we'd knocked up in five minutes, anticipating our regulars would get the reference to an obscure game from 1988, only for it to be included on Kotaku, leading to about ten thousand people thinking we'd passed off the Denton's finest work as our own. Bah.
Anyway, we'd started to knock these up in a similarly hamfisted fashion (who'd have thunk it'd be so difficult to replicate attribute clash via Photoshop, eh?) before giving it up and a bad lot, not least because the series takes place a good year before the Spectrum hit the shops, preventing the screenshots from standing up to any scrutiny. But, as our standards are going out of the window this week (we'll probably be reduced to a tenth-rate rip-off of TV Go Home by Friday, mark our words), he are the pictures anyway. We might upload them again when the third series of Ashes rolls around, because they'll be artistically valid around 2010.
It might have worked better if we'd made it look more BASIC, instead of machine code
We are fond of the rubbish attempt to 'digitise' the main characters, though
Special Competition Time
A special prize (i.e. a mention in the next update) is on offer to the first listener to identify the two Speccy titles we've nabbed graphics from for the above two shots.
Special Extra Bit
While looking for games to 'borrow' a cup of pixels from, we found this slice of semi-excellence. It's Flying Train, an overly difficult (and to be fair, not exactly entertaining) early Spectrum title, from 1983. It's the follow-up to excellent (no, really) Rock and/or Roll simulator The Biz, coded by none other than Chris Sievey, more commonly known as Channel M's Frank Sidebottom. Aces.
Okay, it's actually a bit rubbish to actually play, but it is very pretty to look at. And hey, Frank Sidebottom!
(Addendum: It is just our new PC, or has the font on the blog somehow defaulted to Times New Roman? That isn't very good)
4 .:
The green map graphic looks like it's from Turbo Esprit.
Indeed it is!
Not sure what game the compass and watch are from. Some sort of graphical adventure as the font on the bottom blue bar looks like it's been taken from an adventure game? I reckon you did the options menu and title in Tasword Two. :)
The bottom part of the screen was taken from a brilliantly unique take on a standard (and now very tired) genre, and sadly one that has not been replicated elsewhere. And it began with 'R'*.
And indeed, Tasword Two. All the fun of trying to remember where the apostrophe key was on the Speccy, and where the equivalent might be on my PC keyboard, all because my ZX Spectrum font wouldn't work properly without anti-aliasing in Photoshop. All well and good until you notice a stupid spelling error when you've uploaded the pics to the site, then have to mess around cutting and pasting a correction.
(* and ended with 'oy Of The Rovers'. In a tremendous display of invention, the game revolves around Roy Race solving clues around Melchester in order to find the kidnapped players from his team. By the time the clock reaches 3pm, Roy must take to the field along with however many players he'd rescued, and try to win an important match. If Konami would pull their finger out and do something similar with PES2009, it might be worth bothering with for the first time in five years.)
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