Etch A Sketch - Jamie Bradbury

When is a game, not a game? When it is a toy! I remember the Etch A Sketch, I remember wandering down the toy aisle in Woolworths and twiddling the dials on this marvel of technology. But never in my remotest imagination would I have classified it as a game. It was a toy, just like the spirograph and other wonderful ways to spend time until the Spectrum came along.

Hence when Jamie tells me that he has "made a game and an application" and then presents me with Etch A Sketch I'm dubious about its game qualifications. We will leave that until later along with the other dubious claims this entry makes.

The Etch A Sketch is a marvel in hands other than mine. Wikipedia has a wonderful example of an Etch A Sketch drawing.

By Etcha - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5395785

This was always the promise of Etch A Sketch that you too could produce an image like the above. However much I twiddled those dials nothing remotely like the above appeared. It was this device that dashed my early dreams of becoming the next Dali. Being asked to review a digital clone of the dasher of my dreams was not a good start to my day.

Things got worse once the game was loaded. I was instantly greeted with a loading screen of the sort of image I would see on the packaging for the Etch A Sketch.



Katsushika Hokusai himself would have been impressed, in fact, he probably would have sold his brushes to buy a Speecy and a copy of JBizzle's Etch-A-Sketch Dulux!

Along with the screen, there is very pleasing intro music. It is subjective whether music makes the Etch A Sketch experience any better, but it does add a Delux feature to the bog standard original. Pressing any key takes us into the program proper.


Instantly there are more 'Delux' features, gone are those twiddly little dials, and in their place are keys to go up, down, left, and right. Like the original, you can clear the screen. Unlike the original, you can change the colour you draw with and you can add text to the screen without trying to maneuver around drawing it.

I feel inspired, that image of the Taj Mahal can't be too difficult to draw, right? Especially with an application described as "a quite powerful and feature rich graphics application.", right?

Wrong!



Is it all me? Can a bad workman blame his tools? I certainly can! To compare let's look at the demo screen provided with this art package.


Okay, it is better than my Taj Mahal, it is at least recognizable. But that roofline demonstrates my biggest issue, moving up appears quite easy, for some reason going right or left is almost impossible to do in pixel-sized steps without the lightest of taps. 

Jamie's challenge now is to use his new 3D printer to design a Spectrum interface complete with dial controls to run his application, plus the added feature of being able to shake your Spectrum to clear the screen.

Technical Ability - 35.3%

This application (I can't call it a game) wears its crap colours on its sleeve. The opening screen proudly boasts it is a full ASM game, the author confesses "I did make an ASM version, but the basic one turned out better, so I used that.". I can only hope the ASM version doesn't arrive in my inbox. The basic is pretty basic, with no clever tricks going on. However, it is lifted from a score of 5.3% due to the opening screen and the music both of which promise far more than the rest delivers.




A sure sign of programming excellence. Don't go too close to the edges.

Achievement - 12%

I'm going to judge the level of achievement by the marketing blurb that came with the product.

"It is both fun to play, but also a quite powerful and feature rich graphics application.

You could make an important graph for your business. Or entertain yourself by drawing your own house, of the house of a friend or colleague.

And the fun is not limited to drawing houses. Let your imagination run wild! "

I'll deal with the fun aspect in the next section. Could I use this to make an important graph for my business?


NO!

Could I draw my own house?


My wife doesn't recognise it, so that is a NO!

Even if I have managed it suffers from one of the great downsides of the Etch A Sketch, there is no way to save your masterpiece. First powercut and that important graph for your boss is lost forever along with your job.

However it has improved on the basic Etch A Sketch, it has added colour, text, and a draw-over feature.

Fun - 5%

I'm willing to confess this might be my own bias, but I've had more fun in a dentist's chair.

Crap Factor - 85%

It suffers from all the downsides of the original device, the upsides of colour and text drag it up a little. It gains points for using QAOP as the movement keys and not WASD. It gains points for having an onscreen help function.

Roundup

Pros -
  • Loading screen
  • Music
  • QAOP Keys

Cons -
  • No desire to replay/reuse.
  • It is Etch A Sketch
  • Inability to save your creation.

Am I being unduly unfair? Could you draw a picture that makes your mum proud? Download Etch A Sketch Delux from here and post your creations to the forum.

Keys:

H - toggles help on and off.
C = CLS
W prints a word on the screen
T/Y toggles OVER
0-7 controls ink.




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