in which Al drags the waters of his collection of recent Spectrum titles and has a nosey at the oddest he can find...
KLASS OF '99
(James McKay, 2012)
What a great idea, giving the world that follow-up to classics Skool Daze and Back To Skool which never quite happened in the glorious '80s. Take my money now, Kickstarter! James McKay bravely attempted this in 2012, and impressively finished it on the PC. He admits his Speccy version isn't quite complete, but let's see just how far he managed to get.
Serial underachiever Eric has had another shocker of a term, and again he has to ensure his dreadful report doesn't see the light of day, or his parents' eyes at least. No safe to crack this time, he merely has to find the password for the secretary's PC instead. Very modern! And the school has expanded somewhat, with a curtained area for amateurish dramatics, plus a few more new staff, who are now out in force to stop any uncivilised behaviour.
First impressions are it's got a nice tune playing courtesy of Matthew Westcott, aka The Gasman (best we don't know). And it's slow, but run it on insane speed on an emulator and all is groovy. Apart from the music then, but never mind. It's good fun to bounce your catapult pellets off hapless teachers' heads as ever, writing rude words on the boards all the while.
When you've racked up the inevitable 10,000 lines, a teacher comes and harasses you, but a bug means you can carry on anyway, they just follow you round! Schools are generally pretty ineffectual when it comes to discipline these days, so maybe that's deliberate. Wonder if James might finish it off one fine day, as it's definitely pretty klass thus far.
LETHARGY: THE APATHETIC DREAM
(Studio Stall, 2003)
I was gonna dig around to find the plot for this one but... aaahhh, I just couldn't be arsed, it's too haaaaaard. And I wasn't that bothered about it anyway. Lame joking aside, I actually can't find anything for it anywhere, it being Russian and obscure. You know me, if it's lurking on the internet and in English, I'd dig it out. Sadly my income from this site doesn't quite add up to enough to afford me Russian lessons. I could set up a Patreon I guess, but I kinda feel that's cheating people really. Retro Spectral enjoyment should be free, free I tell you!
The game, ah yes. Clearly it owes a fair amount to that mythical game Legend, no sorry, legendary game Myth. It may well be legendary but I still haven't played it properly myself, I couldn't quite get it going properly on my emulator. So this is all new to me. You play a cheeky little skeleton, who is rather cute. On the menu screen he walks and climbs around the writing like he's got ants in his non-existent pants. Reminds me of that Scotch VHS tape advert, that's still on isn't it?
You go round kicking everything like you play for Undead United ("They're by far the deadest team... the world has ever seen"). Booting chests open reveals such treasures as a fairly ineffective sword and a clock, which I couldn't fathom how to use. There are far too many annoying little thrip creatures which eat away your health while you try to master the fiddly controls.
It looks great but is very tricky to get anywhere in. And for some reason there's great music before the game and when you die, but it's silent as the grave during the game. Maybe this game's niceties are lost in translation. Back to sleep zzzz.
