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The Comp.Sys.Sinclair Crap Games Competition 2001

Celebrating 19 years of misery

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entries  

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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(c) 2001 Adam D. Moss