It's time to kicktake this up a notchgear. I've bought myself a top of the range, very expensive, second hand, base model, cheap as hell DVD recorder. No more propping the camera up against the C64 and manually taking pictures at the same time as playing the game for me!
Except when I tune it into the C64's signal I get vertical rolling, even when I pass the signal through a VCR. Back to the camera it is.
Tonight, I'm going to play 'a totally original game for C64 featuring outstanding graphics and a sound track created by a professional Piano Wizard'. I can safely say that I've never played a game like this before.
It's...
Yes, it's Jeff Minter presents Jeff Minter's Hover Bovver by Jeff Minter. I bought it more or less accidentally. Nobody chucks working tapes on my watch.
Ta da!
I wish I were a Piano Wizard. It sounds exciting.
The eighties were a simpler time, it seems. Gordon's a flash bastard with sixteen lawns but no mower, so he calmly heads off to his neighbour Jim's wide open garage and takes his one without a care in the world.
In the background we've got a pleasantly obnoxious arrangement of 'English Country Garden'. Real background music that's more than a few notes long! That
is new!
Let the games begin!
Hover Bovver is a bit like Pac-Man. You have to mow all the fuzzy tiles of long grass while avoiding both the dog and the neighbour. I'm really, really bad at it. I'm finding it hard to tell which part of my sprite is where I turn around. I think it's the mower part.
These camera shots aren't working very well with these vivid colours. I wonder what it looks like monochrome.
If the neighbour gets you, you instantly lose a life and Gordon has to go back and get another mower. Thankfully, the tiles don't completely reset or any nonsense like that.
Somewhere along the way I exhausted my supply of Dog Tolerance, causing the dog to run after me constantly. If the dog collides with me, my Mower Overload goes to full and I'm immobilised for several seconds. More than enough time for the neighbour to kill me.
I'm in a bit of a pickle. Gordon runs really slow to start and picks up speed the longer you run in the same direction. This here is perhaps the only situation where I can use this to my advantage and outrun the dog.
Gordon's walk isn't so much a 'walk' as it is a 'thrash'. He looks as if he's suspended by his shoulders and his legs are free to dangle around beneath his body.
I'm on to my last life already. Jeez...
I've got the hang of this now. The dog and the neighbour are jammed behind the impenetrable hedge, leaving me free to mow the remaining tiles of long grass and complete the level.
This looping arrangement of 'English Country Garden' was very nice at first, but it's starting to get a bit old now. I'm glad to not be left here in silence but I'm not convinced that the tune wasn't designed to slowly liquefy the victim's brains. Such is the wrath of the Piano Wizard.
If I hold the fire button down, the dog goes after the neighbour, keeping them both off my back temporarily, but I'm out of Dog Tolerance so quickly that the dog's back in less than a second.
And I'm dead.
Nice one, Gordon. You've alienated yourself from everyone you know and none of them will ever give you the time of day again, never mind let you borrow their mower. Your lack of morals has poisoned your community and everybody starts locking their doors, not talking to each other in the street and generally being miserable.
And then they get tired of that and just kick you out. They worry for a couple of minutes that THEY ARE THE REAL MONSTER, but then they figure out that they're really not and have a great old time without you.
One more go?
OH MY GOD THESE CUTSCENES ARE UNSKIPPABLE.
Damn it. It keeps happening. Without any Dog Loyalty, I can't keep the dog away. And I'm dead. Either I don't know what I'm doing or this game is really, really difficult. Perhaps there's some kind of slick manoeuvre that I don't know about where I can keep my speed while going round corners. If not, then I have no idea.
One more go?
Fire space up down left right run/stop restore F1 F3 F7 F5 enter
Level 3! I turned the music off... is that cheating?
I'm still not getting very far here. The game's rules are consistent, so I'm going to blame the creaky joystick that I got with the C64. This game demands absolute precision and I can't do that with this joystick.
IS IT FUN? It's like Pac-Man except I'm not used to it. And you can't really hide behind things or have epic chases or exploit patterns. So... not exactly. It's a perfectly functional game and it would probably make a good highscore battleground, but I'm not really into it.