The main problem with magazine listings is the general very poor quality of the software, mainly due to the fact that they are written in BASIC. Spectrum BASIC was user friendly, but very slow, and just not right for fast arcade games. Strategy games fare better, which is why I was pleasantly surprised to see two rather good games in PCW, Drafts and a decent version of Noughts and Crosses. The other problem is the quality of the coding. I've been using Spectrum BASIC for long enough to know when a game has been sloppily coded, and some of the examples are shocking. A game I've just typed in, Superman, uses about 30 lines to define three UDGs when about five lines would have done, and the other thing that annoys me is when people use the BIN command because they couldn't be arsed to add the numbers together, e.g. BIN 01111110 instead of 62. At least Your Specutrum had a quality threshold so that a minimum standard of coding was achieved. If only other magazines had done the same, and, yes, I'm looking at you PCW!
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When you spend absolutely ages typing in a listing, having to renumber most of the lines, debug it and play it, and then you realise that you have already played it and it's in the guide. Grrr!
Typing in a listing of a game called Bandit, which was printed in Popular Computing Weekly in 1984. The problem is that it needs to be typed in in two parts, which are then loaded. I use an emulator, so this is going to be rather tricky...I'm sure I'll find a way around this!
Work in underway on v3 of the Guide. This will include games which appeared as listings in magazines, as well as extending the date range to the present year. However, this is a mammoth undertaking, and I don't anticipate that it will be ready until at least early 2014!
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AuthorI have been playing computer and video games since the late 70's and have owned: Archives
February 2014
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