Saboteur (ZX Spectrum) iPhone review

8-bit gaming house Elite Systems was a big hitter back in the mid-late eighties, bringing out a number of great titles. I particularly remember its arcade conversion of Capcom classic, Commando and its flick-screen licensed 'Airwolf' game, both of which were favourites of mine. Surprisingly, given most of those old companies having gone bust or been acquired by other, bigger, companies over the years (Infogrames - now Atari - taking over Gremlin Graphics and Ocean in the nineties, for example) the company is still around and has brought a number of classic (and, to be fair, some filler) ZX Spectrum titles to iPhone.






Initially, ZX Spectrum Elite Collection Volume 1 brought 6 titles to the Apple platform but there has since been an update (the originally-titled Volume 2) doubling the total. In the last couple of weeks, there's been a further release (as in-App 59p purchases) of four new volumes, two of Gremlin Graphics games (including the Monty Mole games) and one each for Software Projects (including Manic Miner) and Vortex (including one of my top 5 favourite Spectrum games, Highway Encounter).

Just like a shelf in WH Smiths in 1985

Despite the name, not all the games in the two initial volumes were originally Elite titles - a few, including the one I'm going to concentrate on, Saboteur, were originally published by Durell. Durell is still in business too but it pulled out of the games market in the late eighties, to concentrate on writing software for insurance companies, presumably on the basis that loss adjustment spreadsheet titles aren't going to be copied on C90 tapes and passed around school playgrounds. Elite bought the rights to its back catalogue at that time, a purchase that continues to bear dividends now that technology and nostalgia have combined in the form of emulators.

You'd think they'd station a guard on this jetty

Saboteur is a flick-screen proto-stealth game, with the protagonist an early version of a Sam Fisher type agentWithin a time limit, you have to infiltrate a base, collect a floppy disk (well, it was programmed in the eighties) - at which point the timer thankfully stops - and then escape in a handily-placed helicopter (optionally, you can also blow up the base if you find a carelessly-placed bomb). The base is populated with guards, guard dogs and automatic gun emplacements, of varying degrees of intelligence. There are 9 difficulty levels, adding some longevity to a game that can be completed reasonably quickly (on the lower difficulty levels anyway). And that's pretty much it.






Unlike many 8-bit games, the basic theme of Saboteur is similar to that of modern games - it could be Solid Snake infiltrating this base (though, thankfully, Saboteur doesn't feature a 15-minute cut scene after you successfully do so). The game was considered a technical achievement at the time, with intelligent use of the Spectrum's limited palette and featuring a large, detailed (for the time) central character. When it came out, it was the first game that I had played where the main character had a regenerating health bar, that allowed you to cower in a corner after being savaged by a particularly persistent dog (as the time limit ticked mercilessly down).

The strange 'Man at C&A' stance, is the default standing posture

The muted use of colour (well, it is night-time) is another reason why Saboteur doesn't seem hopelessly ancient today. Some of the games in the collections - Kokotoni Wilf, say - look like garish explosions in a paint factory (albeit a factory that only makes 8 different colours of paint). Saboteur's extensive use of black, together with only two or three colours at a time, means the on-screen action is subdued and consequently less jarring to eyes spoilt by thirty years of progression in graphical techniques.

The game can either be played in portrait mode, with the action shown in the top half and control 'keys' on the bottom, or landscape, with the whole screen used for play and controls superimposed over that. I played the game on iPad, as I do most iPhone games and went with the divided screen option, which worked fine. The conversion is a faithful and well-realised one and either control method works well (or as well as the original at any rate).





With any emulated game, I think it is difficult to divorce the playing experience from the nostalgia buzz and Saboteur is no different. I thoroughly enjoyed playing it again but would that have been the case if I'd been twenty (thirty!) years younger and playing it for the first time? Would some of the gameplay now be too grating (only being able to carry one item at a time for example) if I'd been brought up on Metal Gear Solid and Splinter Cell? Probably I think it would but if you have fond memories of Saboteur and the other games available, the best of them - a category within which I would include Saboteur - can certainly still provide enjoyment.

Game Dev Story - iPhone review

It's strange that App Store games above the 59p price point (or even £1.19) are often the subject of internet criticism that they are 'too expensive', despite being less than a shop-bought sandwich or magazine. Game Dev Story, on iPhone, comes in at a 'weighty' £2.39 and has been subject to such criticism. I used to pay £1.99 for Mastertronic games on the Spectrum back in the 80s - this is only 40p more (and considerably less in real terms) and is a finely-crafted gem of addictiveness.

At its simplest, it is a business simulation, where you attempt to guide your start-up company to success, fame and fortune. The USP here is that the company in question is a videogame developer and the graphics are isometric 16-bit style.





After first hiring a team of coders, you put them to work on either a game or contract work. A number of consoles are available (all of which have a sizeable licence fee that must be paid up front) but you'll most likely start on churning out PC games, where both costs and profits are lower, before being able to afford to move onto consoles.

Games come in a number of types and genres, more of which are unlocked as you play and your team's skills progress (training them helps here). If the genre and type of game are well-suited - samurai RPG, for example - your game is more likely to succeed. Probably best to avoid Ninja Dating games though.

The development work has four attributes - fun, creativity, graphics and sound - and it's up to your team to maximise these categories. Each can be increased by power-ups bought from a travelling salesman who periodically appears and, at least once during development, one of your staff will come to you asking for permission to attempt to boost an aspect of the game.





At the end of a game's development, the bugs that have worked their way into your game can be programmed out, or you can release a game full of bugs (not that that would ever happen in real life).

After the game is finished, it is reviewed by hard-nosed games journalists, who can be stingy with their scores. Fortunately for my games company, games will still sell even if they review poorly, as in real life (as Wii shovelware Carnival Games's 1.5m copies sold shows).

The game works within an annual cycle, with some events taking place every year. There is a sense of progression throughout the game, with new consoles being brought to the market and old ones being discontinued as the years pass.

A proud moment

The game is extremely addictive - I have played it for lengthy periods when I could have instead been playing on one of my 'proper' game consoles. The urge to develop 'one more game' (which leads to another and another....) is very strong. Business in the real world is not an interesting subject but pseudo-business with cute 16-bit graphics is.

And for less than the cost of pint of beer.

Fable III: Kingmaker. Seen in Gorblimey, yesterday

I was in London/Gorblimey yesterday (for non-UK readers, 'gorblimey' was a common (in at least two meanings of the word) exclamation of surprise in 19th Century London, derived from 'God blind me') and, while strolling through Bloomsbury,  walked past the McCann Erickson building.

The advertising agency always displays its wares in a large picture window by the entrance and the current one is Kingmaker-themed (it has the Microsoft account) -

There's treasure worth 2000 gold here. Win!

The main display has two inset monitors, with each displaying flag-planting auto-tweets from the two factions.  I planted a couple of flags while I was there but I didn't see mine pop up - even though the onscreen tweets were coming in thick and fast, there must be plenty backing up.  

Microsoft gave a press release a couple of days ago that said there were 60,000 users who between them had planted over a million flags.  I think this is pretty good going, particularly given that, for the first week or so of release, it didn't really work.

Rebel scum are everywhere

I've currently 'earned' over 30,000 gold, to be put to good use once the game is released in the UK on 29 October.  

Fable III: Kingmaker - iPhone review

Just when I was beginning to think that it was itself a fable, the Fable III Kingmaker app was released on the iPhone yesterday.

As I've written before, the app is part of the Fable III marketing campaign. The app credits state that it has been developed by McCann London, the uber advertising agency that holds the Microsoft account (and whose beautiful art deco offices I walk past on the way to work).

Players register and are then allocated to one of two teams, the Rebels and the Royals (representing factions in the game). I'm a Royal, which would not have been my natural inclination - what with rebels being cooler -  but I figure if players were allowed to choose, we'd all be rebels.

The aim of the game is to have your faction control the most 'territories' (compartments of real-world locations). Each player can aid their team by 'planting' flags on their phone, with that flag equating to their location at that time. The faction with greater number of flags in a territory controls it.  Each day, players are given 10 flags to plant in the 'real world'. I commute between 'Middlinglande' (Herts & Beds) and 'Gorblimey' (London - all regions have comedy names bestowed upon them) for work and spread my flags around them both.

As well as aiding your faction, each flag you plant gains you gold, which you can upload to the game once it's released (and once you've linked Kingmaker to your Live ID). The flags are worth 50 gold each but that increases by multiples of 50 gold if the player links their Twitter and/or Facebook accounts. The app does then tend to spam your accounts, so you may prefer to link them to dummy accounts.

There are additional treasure sites, which the player can visit to claim the booty (first 100 players only at each location though). All of these are in GAME stores, possibly the first example of treasure being found in those locations. The app tells you where your nearest treasure site is - mine is 45 km away!

The app has been a little bit buggy for me at times, kicking me out while logged in and occasionally not calculating my gold properly (my last two flags today were only awarded 50 gold, rather than 150).









The app allows you to monitor how many flags you've placed and how many are remaining, together with an update on who controls the most territories.









There's further detailed analysis available from the Kingmaker website , (I'm currently rated 2435 for gold collected, apparently).










There isn't really much else to it but, for a free download that will provide an in-game benefit, I think it's a nice little app - kudos to Lionhead for coming up with it.

EDIT 17 October

I've had a few days to play around with the app now and think that it has serious problems with its functionality.  My app is linked to my Twitter and Facebook accounts - so, each flag should deliver 150 gold - but, after doing this for a couple of days, it has returned to only giving out 50 gold for each one.  The 'treasure' tab to the app - showing pots of gold near to the player, where a planted flag will deliver 2000 gold - no longer works (nothing appears when it is selected).

I still think that  the app is a good idea but it would have benefited from far more testing prior to release.  That begin said, I would sooner Lionhead concentrated on getting Fable III itself bug-free, than on using finite resources in polishing an app that only European smartphone owners can use.

EDIT 19/10/10

I've noticed that the 'Treasure' tab works  fine in Gorblimey (London) and I used it to rinse 11,000 gold during my lunchbreak.  It seems the streets of London are paved with gold, after all.  On returning to Middlinglande (Herts) it stopped working again.

FINAL EDIT (hopefully) - 20/10/10

The app updated this morning and now everything works - the extra gold for Facebook/Twitter linking; the Treasure tab in all regions; locations of all treasure shows up in the Treasure tab and the log-in/log-out process is streamlined.

Fable III Kingmaker

This morning I received a Fable III flyer from Game.  As well as drawing the Fable III-branded 360 controller  to my attention (can't really see the point of that, though it looks pretty and if I needed an extra controller, I'd consider it), it also revealed an app-based game, Fable III Kingmaker -

If anything, I'm now more excited about Fable III

I'd not heard anything about this before in any of the magazine previews for Fable III  but it seems a really good idea.  Available from either 2nd October (according to the flyer) or 1st October (according to the website), it is a way for the player to accumulate 'treasure'/gold (and for Microsoft to increase gamers' expectations) before the game's release at the end of October (as with Pub Games before the release of Fable II). The flyer only refers to the UK but the website shows French, German, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish and Italian flags (go 'O' Level Geography!), so presumably localised versions will be available in those countries. There were no details on similar products for other territories.

Roll on Friday (or Saturday).

EDIT 2 October 2010 The Kingmaker website has been updated and the App will now be available from 'October'.  Elsewhere on the internet, it suggests that the App will be available for Android phones on 4 October and iPhones a few days after that (no release date given).  There's a trailer here .

And it has also been confirmed that the App will not launch in North America.