If you thought 2023 was crap, think again!

 When an email dropped in my box on Valentine's Day I got all excited by the contents, not because it was a secret declaration of love, for it said this " Here is my entry called: "The Dutch Art Of Doing Nothing A.K.A. 'NIKSEN'-simulator"" I hadn't heard of NIKSEN and had to look it up and here is when I got excited Niksen “literally means to do nothing, to be idle or doing something without any use,” I was born to play a game like this. I have lost track of the number of times my wife has asked what I'm thinking as I gaze steadfastly into space. I'm sure when we were dating she thought I was dreaming up grand philosophies, by now she has realised sadly that I'm just sitting there blankly letting time pass. But now is not the time to be idle, now is the time to load up the NIKSEN simulator. The loading screen further improves my mood, this promises to fulfill my every idle desire. The quality of workmanship in the image makes me wonder if...

This is invariably going to end up being a review about remakes. On one hand, we have a game that is a vastly enhanced version of an earlier C.S.S.C.G.C entry and on the other, it is made for the ZX Spectrum Next. Sadly I don't have a Next which is a great pity since I think it is a beautiful modernisation of the system. It is instantly recognizable as a Spectrum, but those curves are a beautiful touch that enhances the original design. If/when there is a Kickstarter 3 I'm going to need a good reason not to join it. In the meantime, I can enjoy some of the enhancements using CSpect or ZEsarUX.  Jim very kindly provided me with very details instructions on how to get CSpect up and running. Once I installed OpenAL the first hurdle was overcome, but there were more from downloading the SD card image, importing files onto the SD card image, and starting CSpect with various switches. Being pushed for time I tried looking for shortcuts. The general rule about shortcuts is they take l...

 Reading the accompanying email this is clearly going to be a challenge "I trust you aren't dyslexic and can read backwards, otherwise your brain might wilt and die. instructions are in the game, have "fun"" Since I do suffer from a level of dyslexia (the worst possible name for a condition for people who have issues with spelling) I am immediately in the risk category of brain wilt and death. I bravely face the challenge and load up the accompanying TZX file.  The game starts with a by-now, well-known flourish the need to RUN to start. Instantly I enter a world of spelling differences. I soon grasp that my kingdom is under attack by a mad wizard and I need to kill him. A strong start to an adventure.  I'm asked if I want instructions and I type Y and indeed my brain wilts a little trying to work out what "strunctoins: splick glacj oakaoapalalaladimadingdong" means. I am so busy trying to fathom this out I have missed the message at the bottom of t...

Often I find the emails that accompany the games to be as/more amazing as/than the games they accompany. "I was going to ask god to bless this one but even he has standards so I guess you'll have to do." The inference is that I have no standards and that I am likely to bless this program. One of those two things is wrong. From the start this heads on to my not a game pile, in this case not a utility either. The program opens by needing me to type RUN. After that, I am greeted with the screen below. Points are given for the attempt to center the text and removed for the random vowel usage. With no further instructions, I press enter and get greeted with the word SCORE:. A second press draws a circle on the screen. A final press tells me I bit the bagel 3.3874512times. Extra point for the lack of spacing. Pressing Space and Enter to restart results in a dismal beeping, anything else spares you the beeps. After this 0 OK, 81:1 Fortunately, it doesn't look like I need to ...

I'm beginning to think there should be an award for the tersest email accompanying an entry. If so this entry would be a serious contender. "Enjoy the game. Have a colorful 2024" Attached to the email was a TZX file called Level Up 48K. So far not too much to go on, so I loaded it up. One blink later and it was done, so fairly short. Even better the screen looked like this So no autorun. At this point there are only two real options LIST or RUN. Naturally, I listed the contents, 11 lines of basic. Normally I would hesitate to show the code here to avoid ruining the pleasure of listing it yourself. But the content will be easy enough to guess from the rest of this review. Bonus points will be awarded for not turning off the green paper. The game (can it be called a game?) seems to be a sad reflection of mankind's current progress. At least with the first crap game you got to press M, there was a goal of sorts to mow a lawn. There was even some level of graphics. Not so...