YET ANOTHER HANGMAN by John Stroebel

 

YET ANOTHER HANGMAN by John Stroebel for Lambda 8300 16K with Lambda Colour

"It's yet another entirely unnecessary Hangman game."

    I completely disagree. As I am in charge here, 

I am delighted to have received this game, which, moreover, 

comes from another journey from the past, 

mutating from the ZX81 to the Lambda 8300 with colour.

"a ... port of an original program I wrote on my ZX81, 
complete with wobbly 16k RAM pack, in 1982" 

Wonderful.

"This dangerously unhealthy program also supports 
The Parrot voice synthesizer, providing nonessential, ... , 
language prompts in a voice resembling Stephen Hawking's wheelchair."

What is he talking about?

   Fire up the EightOne emulator and type 'LOAD" and "RUN' in the beautiful Sinclair font.

   It is a pleasure to see how the gallows are drawn. And the layout of the screen. (Thanks for centring the title.)

   Recall that the Lambda designers, after a serious tequila-splashed meeting, decided to change the question mark in the character set to a graphic character that would be used 0.00003% of the time. So the questions are visually finished by our expert gap-filling brains. One player please.

   We all know how this game works. This particular game of hangman is no different. But just look how nicely it tells us what it will draw each time we fail to guess:

   Although screen space is limited, the author has achieved an attractive layout that displays all the necessary information. And the colors match nicely, too. Bravo!

   Given the speed of BASIC, drawing is done at a leisurely pace that is enjoyable until the very end:

(Note the cruel detail that the stool that keeps the prisoner alive is removed-disintegrated)

   Or... the other end:

   Even if we leave the game, it bids us a polite farewell. I suspect that some engineer from that fashionable thing with the letters ‘A’ and ‘I’ has been spying on our contestant's 1982 creations and has used them to train the interactions of his machiavellian invention.

    Added to all this, spoken phrases via The Parrot voice synthesiser add an extra dimension to the game. The future is here... or was.

   We must add another detail of excellence to this game: the possibility of playing against another human being. Another human being present. Another human being with whom to share real fun. Another human being who will emit his laughter in the same cave. Another human being who might even bring a snack to share a good time. Real gaming. 

   There is a more than sufficient dictionary that houses 400 entries. And, if you are “curious” like me, you will find that the author has cleverly hidden it in the listing to avoid cheating...

Beat that, AES-256-GCM crypto encoding method.

   Combining all the words: For the first time, I have to disagree with almost everything the author says about his game. I like the presentation and the slow gameplay. I love seeing the graphics being drawn and the voice synthesis is a fantastic detail. If I had to find a downside, under threat of a whip, it would only be the lack of originality. I would love to see another game of this quality from him.

   

Scrambled Smile: 8/10

Broccoli and Squid Yoghourt: 2/10

Deep Fried Ice Cream: 7/10

Strawberry Monosodium Glutamate: 8/10

Affable Hot Chocolate Sauce: 8/10

Technical note: To enjoy the game, you need to use version 1.41 of the EightyOne emulator and select 'The Parrot' from the 'Sound' menu.