DEREK BREWSTER'S
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After playing and reviewing many adventures this contradiction has made itself plain. The complexities of machine code lead to stilted adventures unless the author allows much development time. The economic vagaries of the games market alas, would make it far more worthwhile for such a successful author to produce two or even three arcade games in such a space of time with the certainty of a far higher income. The Quill, as is often plaudited on cassette inlays results in an all machine code program but the structure of each Quilled game is necessarily the same. What is less apparent is the use of similar devices by other software houses in order to reduce the development time of adventures. Herein lies the paradox. Even though machine code should be the more flexible, due to its time-consuming coding it is rarely so in effect and it would seem the case that it is the adventure which makes some use of Basic which shows the There has been for some time a body of opinion which puts originality both in display, theme and plot. So the next time you examine a cassette inlay don't fall into the forward the view that machine code is superior to Basic, per se. Arcade games, where speed os the deciding factor, may well lend trap of making judgements based upon the divisive argument themselves to this argument but some strategy, and all adventure Basic vs. matSiine code. Where the documentation tells of an ail games can be better seved by some Basic routines. The reason machine-coded program this in itself gives no indication of the for this apparent anomaly is clear to anyone who has taken the quality of the game as an adventure Basic is devalued by its time and effort needed to master machine code. Although simplicity and it familiarity but adventure is a more sophisticted machine code is ideally more malleable in any given situation, market than arcade since at a time when the Spectrum has been coding in reality proves to be certainty slower and often less pushed to its limits, imagination, theme and plot are now the decisive factors. flexible, and crucially, the program is less easily altered.
BACK TO BASICS
VOTING FOR THE ADVENTURE CHART The CRASH Adventure Chart has picked up considerably since we first introduced it, with more and more votes coming in every day! To make life easier for sorting, we are now providing a separate write-in
form, so please use it for the Adventure Chart, and not the one included at the bottom of the Hotline details. If you are voting on both charts, you may send Doth forms together in the same envelope of course.
How to register your votes There seems to have been some confusion in the minds of voters for the Adventure Chart, so to clarify the situations, here's how we do It. You may vote for as many titles as you wish (not iust five as in the Hotline Chart) and you may award
ADVENTURE CHART COUPON
any of them points out of ten. So, for instance, you might vote for seven titles giving each of them ten points if you think they are worth it, or only three and give them one each These votes are then added up for each title and the total is divided by the number of people who voted for the program resulting in an aggregate figure. From these figures, the top thirty adventure games are taken in descending order. Phoned-in votes are accepted over the Hotline (0584 3015) in the same way (please state that you are vot-
ing for the Adventure Chart at the beginning), and may also be written in letter form without the use of the coupon if you prefer.
Adventure Chart Prize Draw And don't forget that, like the Hotline Chart, you can win prizes! Each month we draw a winner from the voters, who receives ÂŁ40 worth of software and a CRASH T-shirt, with four runners-up each getting a T-shirt and a mini-subscription to CRASH for three months.
Remember - points out of ten for as many titles as you wish.
Name . . . Address .
postcode Send your coupon to: CRASH ADVENTURE TRAIL, PO BOX 10, LUDLOW, SHROPSHIRE SY81DB
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I CRASH November 1984 103