Prologue
This is demake of Race in Space from 1981 for the Atari XL/XE. A game I have never heard of before. Here is a video of the original:
Ah well. We're all screwed anyway. The UN is talking about European army's fighting Russia. USA sabber rattling at China's door step. Neo liberalism was supposed to prevent world war 3 but now it's driving it.
The second existential threat to humanity is climate change. The land and seas are hotter than ever, Canada is on fire and New York is shrouded in a blanket of Orange Smog - literally resembling post apocalyptic distopias such as Blade Runner and Fist of the North Star. While I sit here wondering why the carrier bag tax hasn't saved us yet, the government's of the world have taken swift action to ensure anyone who wants to warn us of an impending doom is swiftly imprisoned.
Such is the lobbying power of the oil giants. Such is the passivity of us, the electorate. We sit and watch as our own lives are pushed off a cliff edge, with a grim and stoic fatality.
"Mass extinction of all life on earth? It would have been worse under Jeremy Corbyn." - we coo into blackest oblivion.
Exactly as Stanley Kubrick predicted, just as AI starts getting a bit good, Humans annihilate their own race, and all life on earth to boot.
So is it any wonder then, we might find ourselves looking upward toward the stars, to dream of escaping earth, for a less complicated life far away?
This appears to be what ZXKerl may have been dreaming of*, and has even decided to model the difficulties of the actual journey, with his game: Race in to Space.
The first game ZXKerl sent was written in BASIC, and has no loading screen, does not auto run, and there is no sound. (He then sent a second game I'll talk about later).
Once the game starts there is a brief menu, that explains the keys, and then the game begins....
The asteroids are generated. This takes a minute or so.
Then the game starts.
We are treated to quite a nice asteroid field moving from right to left.
We can go forwards and backwards.
The goal is to get to the top of the screen without being struck.
There is a timer, and the goal is to see which player can make it across the screen the most before the times runs out.
Here is the listing:
As you would expect with a game like this, the controls are terrible and so is the collision detection. Although, this is more the limits of basic than any of ZXKerl's coding decisions.
I had fun just holding down the buttons and noticing that the ships make it to the other side about 1 in 7. It's glorious to see the successful ships magically miss every obstacle.
The Second Game
You'll notice that in the first screen shot at the top of the review, the ships are RED and GREEN. This is because the screen shot is from the second game.
In ZXKerl's own words:
"Hopefully it is more of a racing game as diagonals are allowed, also there are a little bit more asteroids to dodge. Let me know if you want me to compile this version with MCODER3.
Cheers"
MCODER3, I can't find much about it. But it is a compiled basic capable of some pretty smooth animation, as the example above shows.
This new version of Race in to Space is even harder than the first. I think ZXKerl could reduce the asteroid field and make the game more playable.
Final thoughts
This is a nicely made simple game. I can see ZXKerl developing this into a full remake of the Atari game, if he chose too. I hope he does.
As for all my earlier doom and gloom, well, forget all that. Just have some fun in the sun, or if it is raining, why not grab this game, and a friend, and give it a blast.
*Probably
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