Interesting software discovery

[MikeDHalliday]

Trawling the web for more/new Einstein related material i came across this;

In 1987 Mastertronic created a game for the ZX Spectrum called Rescue. Never seen it, but caught this easter egg on a page describing the game.

Rescue_Coverart.png (173.31 KiB) Viewed 14499 times

On the main title screen, which I assume this is what they mean

Main Screen.png (2.73 KiB) Viewed 14499 times

If you press BREAK, you get the following screen

rescue - easter egg.png (1.95 KiB) Viewed 14499 times

I am assuming that this is because Mastertronic used the Einstein as a tool to program the ZX Spectrum games, like other software houses of the 80s! The programmers either had some spare bytes left to mess with and pay homage, or this is some sort of worm hole into their development environment

Gonna have to fire up my speccy emulator and run the TZX/TAP file and see if it is true!

Mike.

[vanpeebles]

Haha, thats cool. It's a superb game too. I spent a lot of time on it as a kid. There is a Tatung version with a different name.

[vanpeebles]

Tatung version is called Starbase, I wonder if that's the original? Ah no!

"What do you think of your games? Which is your personal favourite?

I think they're fairly playable, well, the ones I had development control over anyway, not the contract ones (which were awful). Several times I'd find people playing my games after hours or during dinner breaks at A&F and Icon..... which was nice <g>.

My personal favourite is easily Rescue, it got loads of letters in magazines, and sold quite well (around 35,000 copies). I later ported it to the MSX and Einstein computers under the name Starbase, with the permission of Virgin who'd taken over Mastertronic by then"

[MikeDHalliday]

Is Starbase avaiable on Mario's site? I don't seem to have it in my collection.

It is not in the TOSEC archive either!

@vanpeebles Have you got it as a .DSK image?

Mike.

[vanpeebles]

Is Starbase avaiable on Mario's site? I don't seem to have it in my collection.

It is not in the TOSEC archive either!

@vanpeebles Have you got it as a .DSK image?

Mike.

I'll have a look!

[MikeDHalliday]

OMG! this is mint!

Main screen.png (161.52 KiB) Viewed 14482 times

gameplay.png (181.55 KiB) Viewed 14482 times

The music is different and the screen transitions are present on the speccy version, but gameplay is spot on!

Happy days!

[MikeDHalliday]

Extra screen grab of the speccy game play.

The Einstein's colour palette is muted compared to the speccy

Fuze - Speccy gameplay.png (16.49 KiB) Viewed 14481 times

[MikeDHalliday]

And in FUZE emulator, SHIFT and SPACE acts like the Break key!

Pressing Break.gif (946.04 KiB) Viewed 14479 times

[vanpeebles]

I like how it had a sand box element to it and you can destroy things you need, if you are wreckless. You can shoot all the walls, pickups etc

[arcadesy]

Excellent I need to fire this up and give it a go