Friday 9 December 2016

Return Of The Gruesome Games - Zombo's Christmas Capers



The Unofficial Zombo's Christmas Capers (ZX Spectrum) : 

Remember that unofficial game my brother did last year, based on 2000AD's Zombo character? I covered it back in October...Well, he's only gone and made a Christmas-themed sequel....




Based on the sort of free games you used to get on Covertapes with the Spectrum magazines Your Sinclair, Crash and Sinclair User, The Unofficial Zombo's Christmas Capers is slightly easier than the original, but still full of all those nice little touches you'll have come to expect from the first one. Anyway, here's the plot and gameplay details....



THE PLOT

Centuries of overwork and stress have finally taken their toll - Santa™ has suffered a psychotic break and gone missing from his workshop in North Renfrewshire. The Government™ have tasked Zombo™ with tracking down Mr. Claus™ and retrieving the gifts for all the good little boys and girls™. Luckily, the naughty list is rather long these days, so he only needs to find a total of six presents.




GAMEPLAY

You must retrieve 6 presents and defeat the end of game baddy to win. Colour coded keys are scattered around, as are several other items, some of which are useful, others of which are not, but there's a Shootybang 2000™ somewhere which'll probably come in handy, (please bear in mind that the Shootybang 2000™ can only fire horizontally).

CONTROLS

Kempston Joystick
Sinclair Joystick
Keyboard 
Q - Up
A - Down
O - Left
P - Right
SPACE - Fire
H - St. Bernard's Watch (Pause)
3 - Instantaneous Death Button (Quit Game)

BADDIES

Killer Sprout - Bounces, requires 1 shot to kill.


Yellow Snowman - Moves erratically, requires 1 shot to kill.

Nutcracker Soldier - Moves vertically, unkillable.

Scrooge-Elf - Moves horizontally, unkillable.

Killer Xmas Tree - Follows player, requires multiple shots to kill.



The Zip file includes the instructions and mock inlay shown above, tzx, tap, z80 and sna files, PLUS a version you can run straight away without setting anything up! Just extract the files, click on "Zombo's Xmas Capers.bat", (or "Capers.exe" in the 'PC' folder), and you'll be up and running. You can even use your favourite control pad by selecting 'Kempston' from the options. However, please note that this version does away with the loader, (but if you want to see what that looks like, click here).

For more info, the link to download the game and even details of a new improved version of the original game, click here to be teleported over to my brother's blog....




4 comments:

  1. Just might have to download this little gem

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    1. Hehe..you should! It won't take long to play through the game...

      You should check out the first game too...It's a wee bit trickier! :)

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  2. Cool! I wish I had the skill set to make games. I should give this a play through.

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    1. My brother created it with help of a game-making utility...you can find details of that on a link from his blog, if you ever want to dabble in making ZX Spectrum games! I don't have the patience, personally..hehe.. ;)

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