If you thought 2023 was crap, think again!

To prove I can follow instructions I turned off fast load for this one. "Do not fail to load this at normal speed, though, because I had to use some interesting trickery to get the loading screen to appear in the way I did! And, the chances are, it'll take longer to load overall than it will to see everything in the game." Even at normal speed, it is necessary not to blink. For a brief second a screen with A O P S appears Before blending into the image from the cover of A Spy in Isengard which spawned a multitude of memes around orb pondering. The email promised me "You'll play it once to lose, once again to win, that's your lot.". Since I only read the email before loading I wasn't sure what to do at this point. I poked around at various keys with no result. Maybe this was after all a genuine Niksen simulator? I left it running in the background while performing a couple of chores, suddenly there was a fuzzy crackling and the emulator reset. What th...

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...