Developed by Catalyst Coders.
Produced by David Wainwright.
Acorn BBC Micro and Electron versions written by David Wainwright and John Nixon.
Amstrad CPC version written by Tony Mack and Steve Lamb, with music by Gloryflow Ltd.
Commodore 64 version written by Mark "Dubree" Prosser, with music by Graham Davis and Rob Hartshorne as "Alphingwood".
Sinclair ZX Spectrum version written by Steve Lamb, Tony Mack and David Dew, with loading screen by Mark Alexander.
All the above four versions published by Melbourne House in 1985.
A version was also made for Apple II, with no credits known, and published by Melbourne House (?) in 1986.
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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS
Marble Madness is one of Atari's most recognizable arcade classics, and has easily earned its status with no less than 15 (if not more) conversions in addition to the original. Isometric 3D games were big in late 1984, so having an isometric ball-rolling game with a trackball as your controller in the arcades must have been something very unique back then. Because of such an enormous amount of versions available, though, Marble Madness is likely to never be featured in this blog as a comparison. So, I decided to go with the next best thing: Gyroscope, which was developed for the 8-bit computers before the first home conversions of Marble Madness started coming out. This proved to be a relatively wise move from Melbourne House, since they later got the rights to port Marble Madness to some of the home computers.
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DESCRIPTION & REVIEW
For myself, Gyroscope was the first one of the two that I played, although I do remember, even upon first playing Gyroscope, I realized it was an approximation of Marble Madness. Of course, this first experience happened a year or two after getting my own C64, so it must have been around 1989-1990, so I couldn't have escaped at least a mention of Marble Madness in some magazine or other. Despite the game being included in most of my C64 gaming friends' turbo tape compilations, and one Amiga friend having Marble Madness in his collection, not one of them claimed to have any particular enthusiasm about these games. Isometric 3D graphics wasn't really the most exciting thing to behold in 1990, so it's no wonder, and has always left me with the impression, that even Marble Madness was more of a product of its time, and perhaps not that much further.
As with Marble Madness, the idea is just to control your device through the downwards progressing levels, and reach the goal before the time runs out. There are some monsters and other obstacles and annoying features in each level, that require quite a bit of precision from your joystick/keyboard handling.
But there was always something mysterious about Gyroscope. For one, whoever thought a gyroscope would make a good figure to move around? Two, why make this game, when Marble Madness was already ready for a conversion job? And three, if beating the official conversion with a variation was such a good idea, why is the game so badly documented regarding its creators?
Perhaps the charm of Gyroscope lies exactly in its mystique and strangely forced concept. It works well enough as a placeholder, and if, like me, you're not too bothered about the original, Gyroscope can even be more nostalgic for you than Marble Madness. Perhaps Gyroscope will always remain something of a mystery to me, but let's at least try to see, which versions are more preferable.
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LOADING
With the vast majority of Gyroscope's versions having been released on computers using cassettes as their primary loading format, let's have a look at the tape loading times, where available.
BBC/Electron: 4 min 17 sec
C64 M.House: 3 min 49 sec
C64 Aackosoft: 3 min 20 sec
Amstrad CPC: 4 min 7 sec
ZX Spectrum: 4 min 52 sec
Nothing particularly exciting here, and nothing all that unexpected, either, apart from the Amstrad loader being the second quickest one. I'm not entirely sure how the two Acorn versions work, since I'm not that familiar with them, but it looks like either, 1) you can load the game on both BBC Micro and Electron, and get an appropriately optimized version, or 2) the loader is exactly the same length on both sides of the tape, with one side holding the BBC Micro version and the other holding the Electron version. Whatever the case, it's not important.
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| Loading screens. Top row, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro/Electron, Commodore 64, Apple II. Bottom left: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Bottom right: Amstrad CPC. |
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PLAYABILITY
To be frank, I haven't been able to play the APPLE version of Gyroscope, thanks to its only possible controller being a trackball, which cannot be emulated with AppleWin. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you view it, there is a demo mode in the Apple version, showing the game in action, and it seems to have some gameplay elements that aren't available in any of the other versions, such as jumping over chasms and, if the demo is an accurate display of entire levels, they are only a single screen long; so I'm not too keen on even calling it the same game. Also, I'm not completely sure it even is an official Melbourne House product, since the title screen says "MELBOURNE HOUSE GAME 1986" at the bottom, so any firm information on this version's legitimacy would be muchly appreciated.
Now, onto the other four or five versions, however you prefer to count. If the credits are anything to make guesses upon, I would say the original version of Gyroscope was made for the ACORN computers. On that account, I shall be focusing on those two first. Basically, the game follows the design of Marble Madness in that the only thing you can do is move the titular object to your best ability. The BBC MICRO version will inform you of the correct keys to use in the game, but I will translate them for Scandinavian PC keyboard layouts. If you're playing the BBC MICRO version, the controls are Z and X for left and right, * for up and ? for down. If you are attempting to play the game using the BeebEm emulator, you need to switch on the "Default Keyboard Mapping", in order to even find both the * and ? keys, which are located at Ö and *, respectively. I have no idea how these are mapped in any other keyboard, but on my keyboard, they are located at the right end of the ASDF-line, between L and Enter. The ELECTRON version is much simpler, since you don't need to change any settings in the ElectrEm emulator - the keys are Z and X for left and right again, and Ä and - for up and down in the Scandinavian keyboard.
According to the mid-loading instructions screen, there are five types of obstacles in your way: steep slopes (which I cannot honestly call an obstacle), slippery glass, directional magnet, aliens and narrow ledges. What I suppose the instructions call directional magnets are the little slabs on the ground that have a small arrow pointing towards a given direction, upon which your gyroscope is being pulled into the pointed direction. There are various kinds of aliens roaming around in the game, none of which do anything more than move around in an assortment of mildly threatening manners. The instructions also point out, that "when you reach the end of the course, you must move onto the character square which appears as a diamond across 12 tiles", although you can more easily identify this spot with the large circular hole in the middle of it. You start with seven lives, and get an extra life for every 10,000 points.
The way the ACORN versions play is, there's no other word for it: sluggish. You try to steer your gyroscope into any direction, and it takes a couple of seconds to fully come to terms with its new objective. Perhaps all for the better, the collision detection isn't all that exacting, so while you might get kind of stuck bumping into obstacles too close to each other, or even get killed by an enemy a clear few pixels away, you can also often run more than a bit out of flooring underneath, and still not explode. The ACORN versions use sequential push-scrolling, which clearly show that each of the levels are made of four screens, but happily, the levels are built in such a way, that the push-scrolling method never bothers that much, even while you're only just learning the level layouts. The ELECTRON version differs from the BBC MICRO version by being generally even slower, and some of the transition animations between levels are different and take a different amount of time, but that's pretty much it.
The ZX SPECTRUM version allows you to use any controller from four given options: keyboard (Q, Z, I and P), Kempston, Cursor and Interface 2. Here, you get much more fluid movement with barely any slowdown at all, apart from your respawning, which could also be considered a design choice. Of course, the gyroscope is still not very agile, but that's the way gyroscopes are in the Melbourne House universe. The scrolling method used here is still push-scrolling, but here, the screen moves an entire screen's length at a time, instead of half a screen, like it does in the ACORN versions. The levels are redesigned somewhat to accommodate this scrolling method. What's best about it is, that the game starts very quickly, as it only takes less than two seconds for the screen to scroll up to the starting point. Perhaps the biggest design difference is how the goal areas look, since they can appear in different ways. For example, the first level has a checkered area with different colours, and the second level has a smaller area the size of four blocks with a rectangular hole in the middle of it. All in all, it's a much more playable version than what you get on the two ACORN computers. Just make sure you're playing it on a 48k Spectrum or a Sinclair-period 128k Spectrum, because the Amstrad-period Spectrums are incompatible with the game; OR, you can download an unofficial +2/+3-fixed version from Alessandro Grussu's excellent archive for +2/+3 fixes.
In the AMSTRAD version, you get two controller options: keyboard (Q, A, O and P) and joystick, which also translates straight to the cursor keys. Right off the bat, though, you will notice a running theme in the game's proceedings: choosing the controller will make you wait through a slow fade-out of the title screen, as well as the push-scroll of the first level starting area, all of which take 14.5 seconds, before you are free to play. Each of the screen scrolls take about 5 seconds, which takes a great deal away from the fluency of the game. On the plus side, the CPC version doesn't slow down when you're respawning, although it's really a matter of taste, whether you think it's a good thing or bad. Moving the gyroscope around is a bit uncomfortable, since the animation is a bit jerky, so you have to be really careful when aligning the gyroscope and moving through difficult passages - can't really trust your instincts as much here. The first level is similar enough to the SPECTRUM version, but from the end of level one onwards, the CPC version has largely redesigned levels. On the whole, it's not quite as uncomfortable as the ACORN versions, but it's certainly not quite as nice as the SPECTRUM version. At least all the goal areas look similar to each other here.
Finally, we get to the C64 version, which has its own fair share of problems. Good things first: it uses a smooth push-scrolling technique, activated at around half-way through the screen, and the speed of scrolling is entirely relative to your movements. Maneouvering the gyroscope is comparatively nice, as it doesn't take as long to steer it around. Also, the goal areas are similar to the original ACORN version, so they're easy to recognize. Now for the bad things: Starting the game is a bit on the slow side, since it takes 9 seconds for the level to scroll up to the point where you are allowed to start playing, but that's a design choice. Now, there are two vastly different versions of C64 Gyroscope, of which the original Melbourne House version is much buggier. There, you get a rather unpleasant bug, where you might get stuck into a crashing loop, depending on where you crash, because unlike in all the other versions, the C64 version respawns you onto the exact same spot you lost a life. The Aackosoft version has somehow fixed this problem, although there is an odd automatic starting push in level two, which often costs you a life, if you're not alert. Luckily, the collision detection is notably more accurate than in any other version, but that still means that if you lost a life at a spot with a magnet towards an edge, you will very likely lose all your remaining lives at the same spot. Speaking of magnets, the magnet blocks are much more powerful in the C64 version than in any other version, making it next to impossible to steer through them without any mishaps.
From here on, I need to do a separate paragraph, because this is an important issue. In the original Melbourne House release, the third level cuts off before you see the goal, and you need to make a guess as to where the goal is. The Aackosoft release adds three or four more levels before we get to the one that appeared as the third level in the Melbourne House version, which itself has been fixed and extended quite a bit. The fourth level in the Melbourne House version - if you manage to get past the superbly annoying magnet lane in level 3 - has a design fault, which makes you unable to continue from the starting point. Either that, or the Melbourne version was released unfinished. For the Aackosoft release, this unfinished level doesn't exist, and the game loops to the beginning instead. Thanks to all these problems, the original C64 version is one of the more impossible versions to play, which is superbly unfortunate, but you can get a fully working C64 version by hunting down the Aackosoft release.
As is only proper, FRGCB only deals with the original versions of games, so we have to take all the bugs and other problems into consideration, since these were the commercial releases, and were officially only available as such back in the day. I cannot help it, but the two C64 releases must be considered as two separate releases here. The Aackosoft re-release is practically as perfect as you can get, while the Melbourne House original is broken to the point of being unplayable. To be blunt, even the ACORN versions can be completed with some practice, even if they are the least playable ones - the ELECTRON version even more particularly. The AMSTRAD version is a bit cumbersome and slow, but ultimately is playable enough to make it to number three, only to be beaten quite clearly by the SPECTRUM version. Shocking? Well, to make matters even more interesting, I have grown to appreciate the SPECTRUM version to such extent that I believe it equal to the fully working C64 version, but they're both different enough from each other not to be considered better or worse than the other.
1. SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM / COMMODORE 64 re-release
2. AMSTRAD CPC
3. ACORN BBC MICRO
4. ACORN ELECTRON
5. COMMODORE 64 original
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GRAPHICS
As you already saw from the variety of loading screens, and what you can gather from the hinted graphical elements in the previous section, there are some vast differences to be found in all the versions of Gyroscope. Yes, there are some notable differences even between the two ACORN versions, but let's start with the usual way: title screens.
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| Title screens. Top row, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro/Electron, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC. Bottom row: Commodore 64 (Melbourne House - left, Aackosoft - right) |
The assumed original ACORN versions have the same title screen - dark blue background with black text on it, which is a bit uncomfortable, but certainly moody. The SPECTRUM title screen shows a completely redesigned black-and-white game logo slightly above the middle of the otherwise black screen, along with the high score entry on top and control options below in a similar, but smaller font and plenty of colour. The AMSTRAD version is the only one to actually use the same title logo as the cover art, only with the scaling being a bit wonky, but not too much; and you also get control options and high score below the logo in a less imaginative font. The C64 version is an interesting one, as you can basically see from the background graphics, whether you're playing the original unfinished Melbourne House version or the bugfixed version. The C64 title logo itself is another redesign, with a glowing motion changing between black and white, and almost the entire bottom half of the screen is taken by large green slab with PETSCII text on it.
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| Screenshots from the level entrance animations. Top row, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Bottom left: Commodore 64. Bottom right: Amstrad CPC. |
The first notable difference in the in-game graphics is the way you enter a new level. In the BBC MICRO version, the first screen of the level is painted in three layers before the sprites are thrown in unceremoniously. In the ELECTRON version, you see the first screen flashing in multiple colours for a while before the screen settles into what it's supposed to be, and you start the game. All the other versions have the starting area pulled in from the bottom of the screen - the C64 and AMSTRAD versions do it slower, while the SPECTRUM version does it rather quickly and in some sort of a negatively coloured view, until the pulling is finished and the level switches to its proper colouring. Singularly, the C64 version has no info panel until the game starts properly.
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| Level 1 map differences, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro, Acorn Electron, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64. |
Although the basic style of the game is much the same across all the versions, apart from perhaps the APPLE II version, the level designs are vastly different. The first level is where you see the biggest similarities, and still, none of the versions are exactly the same, apart from the two ACORN versions, which differ by their colouring. Speaking of colours, the two ACORN versions only have four colours at a time on the screen, which makes it a bit odd, that they use different colours; and the gyroscope itself uses two colours. The SPECTRUM version, at least in the first level, features six colours in the same screen at most, but all the moving things are monochrome, as usual. The AMSTRAD version is easily the most colourful of the lot, already by having three colours in the info panel and two more colours in the gyroscope; the level graphics you see here feature up to four more colours at a time, which combined add up to nine colours on the screen. The C64 version seems to only have six colours on the screen, at least if the first level is anything to judge by, and all the sprites are monochrome, albeit in different colours.
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| Level end bonus messages, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 |
Completing a level will display a bonus message, which in most versions is just a large slab in the middle of the screen with a message on how the bonuses are counted. The C64 version differs, as it does with the info bits in general, by only showing the timer running down in its usual spot, and a score counter below it with no slab surrounding it.
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| Screenshots from level 2, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64. |
Level 2 is where we start seeing more notable level design differences. For example, the ACORN versions feature some sort of strange pinball elements and a diamond-shaped terrain element near the end of the level, which give some nice visual variety into the game, but work peculiarly. The other versions take it easier on the ornamental front, particularly the C64 version, which has a lot slower difficulty progression.
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| Death animations. Top row: Commodore 64. Middle left: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Middle right: Amstrad CPC. Bottom row: Acorn. |
I haven't done one of these animation sequence comparisons in a while, because they often take way too much work. This time, I wanted to do a comparison on the animation of your gyroscope's death sequence, which always seemed a bit much on the C64. Sure enough, the C64 death animation contains no less than seventeen (17!) frames, keeping still on the last frame for a second before respawning. In the two ACORN versions, the death animation is less visible, as it displays barely visible particles flying into four directions, each of them flashing in such a way that taking screenshots of them feels like a silly thing to even try to do, but there you go. The SPECTRUM and AMSTRAD death animations are similar to each other, in that the main animation loops three frames for maybe six times before ending with a frame that says "POOF". I tried to clean all of the animations as much as I could, where possible, so you can see them in their pure form.
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| Screenshots from level 3, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64. |
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| Game Over messages, left to right: Acorn BBC Micro, Sinclair ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64. |
The inevitable Game Over message is in most cases a similar large slab in the middle of the screen with some text on it, as we saw in the bonus counting screen. The C64 version again does it a bit differently, which is only logical, since the large slab was missing in the other instance as well: there, you get two smaller white slabs with the messages "Game Over" and "Press Space to restart" in them, written in black basic PETSCII font.
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| Commodore 64: level 4 differences between noted releases. |
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| Screenshots from the Apple II version (demo mode). |
Usually, the system of origin is the one that others' looks are based on, but I suspect with Gyroscope, what any of the teams responsible for each of the versions attempted was to approximate Marble Madness to their best abilities. In that sense, the ACORN versions of Gyroscope got the closest to the source material, including the first level's design and the diamond-shaped element at the end of level 2. But then, Gyroscope doesn't work on exactly the same principles as Marble Madness does, which is probably why the other versions went with vastly different level designs.
The thing is, though, the SPECTRUM, AMSTRAD and C64 versions all went their own way, because firstly, there was no absolute blueprint to work by, and secondly, they all HAD to be done a bit differently. The ACORN versions are flawed, because that was the first attempt. The SPECTRUM and AMSTRAD versions did some optimizing into the map design and overall graphics - both in their own way due to different screen restrictions; and the C64 version focused on better animations and fluent scrolling. Perhaps the AMSTRAD version is more overall pleasant and interesting to look at, and the SPECTRUM version has the best sense of speed, but the C64 version feels the most technically advanced. Therefore, the usual threesome is going to have to share the top spot. The ELECTRON version is the slowest of the lot, while still looking as primitive as the BBC MICRO version.
1. AMSTRAD CPC / SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM / COMMODORE 64
2. ACORN BBC MICRO
3. ACORN ELECTRON
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SOUNDS
Let's get the easy ones out of the way first: neither of the ACORN versions have any music. As for the sound effects, I have come across three different sound effects: bounce, death and reaching the goal, none of them really being much more than beeps and an ascending whistle. Not exactly encouraging.
Conversely, the C64 version has no sound effects - only music. It's a sad little mid-tempo tune that lasts for 1 minute 12 seconds, and then it restarts. Not sad in the sense of being horrible, but rather melancholic. It's well-made, having many different wave-types in use, and an alternating bass and drum line, so it never gets to feel uninteresting, rather just over-exposed, since it plays constantly as you play. The only real trick it does is, when the game drags in a new level, the music plays half-speed. Initially, the title screen has no sounds, but once you have played the game once, the in-game music continues into the title screen, unless you experience some sort of a freak bug, which breaks the music from mid-note and leaves it hanging. It's not a common occurrence, but I have had it happen every now and then.
The SPECTRUM version does the unexpected, and features three different variations of the main theme tune (which is different from the C64 tune), all of which are played in turns in the title screen, with a level map demo in between each of the tune variations. What's even more interesting, all of the music is coded in such a way as to make them sound multi-channeled on the single-channel beeper, and all simultaneous notes are loud and clear, instead of the usual tinny and thin. Although not instantly apparent, there are also many more sound effects in the SPECTRUM version than in the ACORN versions, including a few different screeches when going over certain special slabs on the ground, two different death effects depending on whether you drop out of the map or collide in an enemy, and a respawning sound effect. Finishing a level starts playing one of the theme tune variations, and will play until you press the fire button to proceed.
Then, we have the AMSTRAD version, which again features only music. The good thing is, there's a new tune for each level. The less good thing is, the sound chip isn't utilised to its advantage, as the music all sounds much like you hear them on the ZX SPECTRUM. The bad thing is, the music has been programmed very badly, with one of the channels being programmed at a slightly slower tempo, so it's constantly increasingly out of sync with the other channels, regardless of the level/tune, so to my musician's ears, the C64 version is vastly less unpleasant even with its repetition. But on the whole, the SPECTRUM version is the clear winner here.
1. SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM
2. COMMODORE 64
3. AMSTRAD CPC
4. ACORN BBC MICRO / ELECTRON
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OVERALL + VIDEO
Gyroscope is a game that has a peculiar place in history, and it really shows in how unbelievably different all the versions are. Doing a comparison hasn't been quite this interesting in a long while, and I would hazard a guess, even doing a comparison of Marble Madness itself wouldn't be this interesting. And now, the traditional stupidly mathematical overall results are as follows:
1. SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM: Playability 5, Graphics 3, Sounds 4 = TOTAL 12
2. COMMODORE 64 re-release: Playability 5, Graphics 3, Sounds 3 = TOTAL 11
3. AMSTRAD CPC: Playability 4, Graphics 3, Sounds 2 = TOTAL 9
4. COMMODORE 64 original: Playability 1, Graphics 3, Sounds 3 = TOTAL 7
5. ACORN BBC MICRO: Playability 3, Graphics 2, Sounds 1 = TOTAL 6
6. ACORN ELECTRON: Playability 2, Graphics 1, Sounds 1 = TOTAL 4
Well, obviously, the original C64 release is impossible, so it shouldn't even count here, but that's not exactly unrepresentative of how badly the original ACORN versions compare to all the rest, particularly the ELECTRON version. Make no mistake, though - all versions of Gyroscope have their own problems with either instadeath bugs or harsh collision detection problems, which are not surprising considering the isometric 3D style. The SPECTRUM version is, all in all, surprisingly good, and certainly earns its place as a good alternative to Marble Madness - and the C64 version, if you have the re-release, isn't too shabby, either. Now, all we have left to investigate further is the mysterious APPLE II version, which, with my available equipment, is impossible to do.
And there we have the accompanying video, as usual. Hope you enjoyed this one, thanks for reading!
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