Pobtastic pobtastic

Pheenix contains a surprising number of visual elements from the arcade game, especially given it’s only a 16K game.

This article looks at the “transition effect” which I guess is a little like the ship going into hyperspace to move onto the next phase/ level.

I played this one quite late on, probably as a magazine cover tape. Strange too, as I’m a HUGE fan of the arcade version - and this is a fantastic conversion!

I did a thing!

I don’t tend to do talks anymore, and certainly never about Skoolkit and disassembly! So this is very much a first for me.

Walking down the rabbit hole…

Keep uncovering new CALL routines and trying to gain context for what they’re doing.

How to display fonts as images.

Starting with configuring the logo, and then moving onto the Game Entry Point for the first routine to disassemble. This will give you some insights, as generally it will do some “set-up”, clear the screen, and display a menu.

Scripting a new game skeleton. Why walk when you can run!

Continuing on with 180 having some really pro-level coding, it also has speech in it!! Incredible given it’s a budget game and that the speech works on the 48K Spectrum beeper!

I’d love to know how they achieved this cheaply enough for it to not be a full priced game.

180 has some really pro-level coding in it! For a budget game at £2.99, a lot of love and care went into the code. Garry Hughes I believe is the author, I really hope he does a talk about his experiences some day.