The Games That Time Forgot: 1985 Edition

Shift Shaft - can you dig it?

Can't think why this didn't sell well with such an exciting cover

SHIFT SHAFT

(C.C.S.)

And so we come to the winner of this little contest between some of the most unsung games which graced our Spectral screens back in 1985. It's kinda nice to dish out a prestigious award like this, and I'm sure the recipients will enjoy the swish gala which will be held in their honour this weekend in London. But who will it be who will be dusting off their tuxedos and getting their dates organised for the biggest and most glamorous affair of the season?

Some famous names grace the high score table. Ian Humphreys is the author btw

Well let's face it, you know already, as the title above has well and truly removed any anticipation and excitement there may or may not have been around the issue. The glorious winners this time round are those rather serious chappies Cases Computer Simulations, more sexily known as C.C.S. They didn't half release a lot of games y'know, most of which were war games, like their big hits Arnhem and Vulcan (Mr. Spock's fave). But they also had some oddball simulations such as Corn Cropper and Brewery, or games which can loosely be classified as "other".

I've got one guy home (in blue) and am whupping the CPU at this point

Shift Shaft is certainly one from the "other" category. It was released on budget, one of their Charlie Charlie Sugar range, games made specifically for police radio operators. It's a board gamey type affair in which two players battle to reach the opposite side of a building via no less than six lift shafts - talk about a nightmare commute. They have to get their little men, who look like Mr. Benn, across five times in total to claim victory, and fill up the five spaces on the side, much like a humanoid, considerably slower, version of Frogger.

Uh oh, player 2 is about to get a very black spray tan

Each player has a go at rolling the Pop-o-Matic dice , then gets to move any of the lifts by that number of turns. Each fellow can only progress across the lifts as long as their next platform is the same colour as they are. There are nasties afoot as you'd expect, such as the shaft monsters who squash you if you're the same colour as them, and wizards who zap you regardless of colour, as they're not racists. Big spray cans are also hanging around just waiting to turn you magenta or whatever garish colour the Spectrum's palette can throw at you. But let's face it, magenta will always be king of the garish colours.

The magenta guys are wizards. The little red head is someone who has just met a wizard

There's also a time limit of 500 seconds for each player, so if it's taking you ages to get across, the odds are you'll be inches away from your goal, and suddenly you'll be teleported back to the start again. Hilarious when it happens to the other player though! So knuckle down and strap yourselves in for quite a lengthy playing experience. Which to be fair is a novely for most Spectrum games.

Magenta CPU is about to win, cheating varmint that he is

The CPU Mr. Benn is pretty hard to beat actually. And what makes it worse is that when you do choose a one player game, the computer arrogantly makes itself Player One. So it goes first and relegates you, the feeble hooman, to being Player Two. Rude! And surely contrary to the laws of robotics... or prime directives or something. Wait, was that RoboCop? Near enough.

Hang on, this isn't Shift Shaft, it's Nifty Lifty by Visions! A simple mistake...

As far as I'm aware, this is quite an original idea for a game and it would certainly work well in two player mode, where shafting (sorry) your opponent would always take priority over getting your own guys across. But even as a one player game it's quite an absorbing experience, if a little slow to get through. Great replay value for a cheap game too. Probably leave yourself at least half an hour for a decent game of it, five minutes won't get you very far. But certainly give this game a try despite its ups and downs - it might just give your day a lift. Ouch.

Ha, Brewery by CCS looks a right larf. No payrise for you, Blocky Ron!

SHIFTY SCORE

72%

THE GAMES THAT TIME FORGOT: 1985 EDITION

1st place! The winner!