Be Excellent To Each Other

Welcome to Season 3 of the 8 Bit Challenge. 9 games voted for by you. Each week we play a game, you post a screenshot of your best score and we allocate points for the highest scores:

1st place - 10 points
2nd place - 8 points
3rd place - 6 points
4th place - 4 points
5th place - 2 points
6th place - 1 point

The deadline for scores is 5pm every Friday afternoon, so you'll have a week to complete each game.

The games are:

Super Robin Hood (CPC)
Way Of The Exploding Fist (Spectrum)
Pang - GX4000
Arkenoid (Spectrum)
Jack The Nipper 2 (Spectrum)
Chase HQ (CPC)
Barbarian (C64)
Bad Dudes v Dragon Ninja (CPC)
Manic Miner (Spectrum)


Current Scoreboard (Manic Miner - Speccy) - Last Updated: Thurs 22:34


Itia - 54337
Joans - 27122
Zaphod - 16662
Devilman - 7385
Chinny - 4002



League Table (Week 8 of 9)


1 - Zaphod - 58 points
2 - Devilman - 54 points
3 - Itia - 41 points
4= - Chinny - 32 points
4= - Joans - 32 points
6 - Malc - 17 points
7 = - Rev Owen - 1 point
7 = - Bobbyaro - 1 point


Last Weeks Scores: - Bad Dudes V Dragon Ninja (CPC)

Zaphod - 50850 - 10 points
Devilman - 37,475 - 8 points
Itia - 35535 - 6 points
Joans - 21375 - 4 points
Chinny - 15425 - 2 points

This weeks game is Super Robin Hood on the CPC.



The Oliver Twins first game for Codemasters sees Robin Hood needing to rescue his lady from the evil Sheriff of Nottingham. You need to collect the hearts to complete the game.

Scattered around the castle are keys which activate the various lifts. Be warned, some keys activate lifts that are quite far away!

Top tip: In the options screen you can turn off the background graphics which make for a clearer screen.

You can download the game from here:

http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/downloads/filedetail.php?recid=883


Emulators are here:

http://tacgr.emuunlim.com/emulators/emulators.php

Winape is my personal favourite which you can get here:

http://www.winape.net/


Mac owners:

http://bannister.org/software/arnold.htm



To run the game, insert the disc image and type:

run "robin

(yeah CPC's don't need the closing quotation marks, cool eh?)

15480

12060.

I tried to take a screenshot but it started a new game for me and I can't be arsed to try again as I'm not winning.

Looks like both servers aren't working

Moral: make sure you have images of every game ever, as the Internet is rubbish.

Its the redirects that aren't working. The FTP servers seem to be fine (I went direct to NVG). To save hassle I've attached the file.



[Cowers from wrath of mods]

If you use FTP from the command line then you'll see it has a list of mirrors. Use the FTP address of the FTP site in the UK, adding in the right path and filename to the end (same as the site it tries to take you to) and it's there instead.

Um, yeah, bit of an annoyance.

Wait, I've still got the exact link -

ftp ftp://www.cantrell.org.uk/ftp.nvg.ntnu. ... binhoo.zip

Use that.

Game's rubbish, too.

As far as I'm aware, that's not a problem.

the file type says its a zx spectrum game.

I've been having good fun with it actually, although I keep on getting stuck at the same point.

Do you have a Spectrum emulator installed? It's simply tagged it as owning it.

DSK disc images were first used for CPC emulators and then adapted by the Speccy brigade since the Speccy uses a CPC compatible formatting system anyway.

hmm, im struggling to get it to work with the caprice32 emulator and thought it might have been the wrong file.

I've tried run robin and run superrobin but had no luck, any ideas what im doing wrong?

Have you inserted the disc image?

At the ready prompt type:

cat


It will then display a directory of the disc. You should have a file there called robin which is 38k.

If you have then you have the correct disc image. Type run"robin"

Try and ensure you are emulating an original CPC 6128, not a Plus. No idea if it works on a Plus or not.

Even years later, the Amstrad is aspiring to be a spectrum

hmm, when i enter cat it says disk drive a: is missing. Should I try another emulator?

Odd. You have inserted the image into drive a: haven't you? Not loaded it as a snapshot, tape or cartridge? Opened it within the emulator, not just clicked on it?

I've just downloaded that file and Arnold opens it fine. I'd try another emulator.

Arrrgh, I'm not stuck at exactly the same point I was "back in the day". Can't better my earlier score because I always die trying to make a certain jump when I return to the first screen.

I'd forgotten quite how much sampled speech the game had. When I used to do sampling on my CPC I used to be able to fill the memory very easily so kudos to the Olivers.

Just had the one go so far - 10280. I'll sort a screenshot when I do better..

17590 so far. (1 game, whilst holding a baby on my lap!)

Malc

15770.

15430



A few quick questions :

Is there a better way to kill the 2 crossbow shooting guys than just standing there and blatting them (for around 1/2 your health)
Is it possible to jump over the little flame thingies without losing at least 1 health point ?

dodge the arrows?

Malc

You kill the first and take the penalty and duck for the second.

The key is also to preserve the health pills where you can so avoid consuming them unless you require them.

The flame things, it is possible to cleanly jump them but it needs to be pixel perfect.

Meanwhile:

24340

Malc

22430. It's not a bad little game, if a bit unforgiving.

14220 for my first go on this in about 20 years (I had it on the spectrum, but I barely remember anything about it). Took me bloody ages to get it working though.

21700

I fall too much

25080. That'll be my final go as it gets annoying. There are too many health pick-ups early on and bugger all when you actually need them.

Then can be killed without taking a hit if you climb up the ladder, fire a shot, nip back down and repeat.

47530

Malc

Can't make this work. I just take the hits.

Is it me, or in the game does Robin look rather like Sir Clive Sinclair?

Although the Oliver Twins have asked me to point out there is no profanity in the speech. That said Maid Marion sounds like she used to be a man.

Meanwhile, will anyone be able to touch Malcs score? I've now got further than I ever did on my Amstrad but now keep on getting stuck.

27680.

It's a bit harsh.

Off to play some more.

Malc

bah 46430



Malc

Harsh but fair , in that if you've got it wrong , you've got it wrong - i like the little extra bits that the keys add , so when you go back to a section you can see how to do things.

It reminds me a bit of Caverns of Khafka on the Atari

Its also a game which demands patience , theres no timer , and its up to you when you make that jump / run / whatever , if you get impatient you tend to die :-)
32000

Someone should persuade my brother to do enter this. Just for this week, like. We used to play this quite a bit. This and Harrier Attack.

Malc

My goodness! There's a jump on one of the screens that for 24 years I've been assuming needed a platform to be activated, yet the intention is that you make the leap yourself. Those cheeky Olivers make it look like its a moving platform when it isn't!

The annoying thing however is that I died pretty quickly after I made the discovery by jumping to get past an archer and thereby plummeting to my death on the next screen. Bah!

For sneaky short cuts, you can ride the spiders (but make sure you have some health as it goes down pretty quick!)

Malc

If you have the speech on, start a game and press the escape key.

51420

Malc

Ruddy hell!

I've got to the room where Marion is being held, and I can only see 1 key left, but I have no idea how to get it (it's the one on the bottom of the screen directly above where you start) I'm sure I've missed other places too, but I keep on having accidents as I traverse the levels, so I'm going to try and make a map.

Oh, I got a new high score: 55490

Malc

I have also 'seen' Marion , and a new score from me , there are a number of annoyances later though , including crossbow dudes hiding behind stuff so you cant shoot them , and ones standing next to ladders than i cant get past without them hitting me at least once (although i think if i can activate the platform on that level i can shoot the bugger)



36400

And i assume the speccy has at least a similar map - you can see one here :

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sincl ... inHood.jpg

(unless you'd like to make your own)

Wow, I never realised the game was so huge! You can tell it was the Olivers first big game, I doubt the same kind of effort went into Grand Prix Simulator when they started just churning out games factory like. OK so there was Dizzy.

Ghost Hunters (their second Codies game) is often forgotten about due to its bizarre control system. It also marked the start of them using the CPC also to code the Speccy version so the CPC ended up with rather duff graphics instead of the vibrant colours of Super Robin Hood.

Here's mine if anyone wants it.

(it's a bit rough and ready as I messed up twice and had to cut bits out in paint and paste them in the right place again, so alignment is shonky)

Malc

It keeps telling me it's not a valid disk file

er...ok, it seems to be running but in French??

Oh no it's fine, ignore me. I just now to work out the controls now. So far I know how to shoot.

Ruddy hell Malc! You need to save that so we can put it on the main site!

That really is a thing of beauty. Nothing finer than a 8 bit game map laid out in front of you.

Did you keep a less compressed version?