It's obscure in-joke time yet again, folks! This game is based on a pointless and infantile comp.sys.sinclair thread cascade that fizzled out about three years ago. Despite the usual minimal amount of BASIC code, there appears to be a couple of fine examples of severely dismal programming glitches. For example, line 1140 says PRINT a$ when it should surely be PRINT b$ - this ruins the effect of the cascade as the Speccy seems to ignore the player's contribution to the thread and instead duplicates its own response twice on the screen. Secondly, the computer's attempt to produce a random response usually results in something looking like a mathematical equation rather than anything like an English word (with an "uh?" bit tagged onto the end, of course). There are no graphics at all in this game, just plain text. There is also no sound. The author might have at least taken the opportunity to program the game on a ZX81 as the result would have been virtually identical, but ooooh no, the lazy bast instead decided to insult the Speccy's capabilities with this baloney. I managed to score about 23 points before I got too careless through utter boredom and typed the U-H-? characters in the wrong order. I'll be amazed if anyone out there can beat this score - it would involve playing the game for a whole minute, and 60 seconds really can seem an awfully long time... |