AMERICAN 3D POOL
Commodore 64 version:
Programming and graphics by Stephen Walters; Music by Thomas Mogensen. Published by Zeppelin Games in 1991.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum version:
Programming by Andrew J. Richards; Graphics by David "Tink" Taylor. Published by Zeppelin Games in 1992.
SLEEPWALKER
Commodore 64 version:
Programming by David Sowerby; Graphics by Neil Hislop; Music by Andrew Rodger. Published by Zeppelin Games in 1991.
Sinclair ZX Spectrum version:
Programming by John Carlyle and Steven Turner; Graphics by Clive Thompson. Published by Zeppelin Games in 1992.
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INTRODUCTION & GAME STATUS, PLURAL
To bring some more 1990's games into the blog's archive, I had to think of something really out of the ordinary to make an interesting two-fer, and eventually came up with another publisher that had not been featured too many times on the blog. Eventually, I found two games from Zeppelin Games that were both released in 1991/92, that would fit a two-for-one comparison entry nicely, particularly as Sleepwalker and American 3D Pool couldn't be much more different from each other. Not a high profile publisher by any means, but they do have some interesting titles, these two included.
As for Sleepwalker, the Lemon64 rating is 6.58 from 12 votes, and Spectrum Computing score a round 7 from only 2 votes, whereas the archived WOS rating was 6.75 from 12 votes. Perhaps not exactly an overly enticing pair of ratings for these games to start with, but I have also been reading some comments, saying they're both rather underrated, which brings me hope. Let's see how things turn out here.
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DESCRIPTIONS & REVIEWS
There have been plenty enough of pool/billiards games before Zeppelin's 1991 effort, and Firebird's own 3D Pool, which was developed by Microprose and Aardvark Software two years prior, is its most immediate competition. The difference to that game is, AMERICAN 3D POOL is not actually a proper 3D game with filled polygons and all that, but rather one that you play from a top-down view, and change to a faux-3D end-of-table view to see the action. The advantage of this is, that A3DP plays much quicker and smoother than Firebird's game, making it more fit for 8-bit computers, particularly the C64.
In A3DP, you get to play a game of Pool or Billiards against a computer or up to seven other human players, if you choose to play either game in Tournament mode. Additionally, a Trick Shot mode is given for advanced ball-hitting enthusiasts. I just don't know, what is so specifically American about this game to earn the title, but my guess is, it has something to do with the rules. Despite of that odd little detail, it seems like one of the more playable and entertaining pool/billiards games for both available systems, and should be checked out, if you're looking for something of this sort for either the C64 or the ZX Spectrum.
SLEEPWALKER, which is the first of three similarly titled games available for the C64, but the only one of its kind for the ZX Spectrum, is a flip-screen arcade-action game with a twist not very often seen in computer and video games. You play as young Rory, whose uncle Silas has a tendency to sleepwalk around his dangerous mansion each night. Your mission is to follow old Silas around, and disable all the hazards from the mansion before he stumbles into any of them, whereupon you lose a life; and ultimately, lead him back to his bed for a restful night's sleep. Unluckily for you, the only way to disable the hazards is by walking into them yourself, so it's bound to be a world of hurt for the resilient, dear young nephew.
While the actual content doesn't actually add up to much of a game, SLEEPWALKER is a hilarious little game, which should attract fans of old Ultimate Play The Game titles, such as Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf. In that sense, Sleepwalker is a helplessly old-fashioned game for one from 1991, but I suppose, similarly to Zeppelin's other games I have come to know, it was never meant to be anything more than cheap, yet surprisingly good fun for a computer on a decline. I'd say it's one of the latter day cult classics for both C64 and ZX Spectrum, and certainly worth having a look.
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LOADING, PLURAL
It's head-to-head time for checking the loading times for two games from the 1990's for two computers that should have had their turbo loaders well under command by now. If the earlier games from Zeppelin featured on the blog are anything to base your bets on...
AMERICAN 3D POOL
Commodore 64: 6 minutes 12 seconds
ZX Spectrum: 3 minutes 32 seconds
SLEEPWALKER
Commodore 64: 6 minutes 54 seconds
ZX Spectrum: 5 minutes 59 seconds
...then you would have been right on both occasions - the SPECTRUM version loads both games considerably faster. The Speccy loading time for American 3D Pool is faster by a staggering amount of time, with the C64 version taking almost 3 minutes longer to load, while Sleepwalker only takes just under a minute longer.
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| Loading screens for American 3D Pool (leftmost - C64, 2nd left - Spectrum) and Sleepwalker (3rd - C64, rightmost - Spectrum). |
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AMERICAN 3D POOL: PLAYABILITY
First things first. The game boots up to a title screen with a view of the pool table, some indicators around it, and a basic text scroller at the bottom, displaying the game title, credits, and some of the keyboard controls. The C64 version gives you only the instruction to press fire to enter the menu, or F1/F3 for demonstrations of pool or billiards. The game is otherwise controlled with joystick in port 2, but there are some keyboard commands only mentioned in the manual: C= key shows an Action Replay of the last taken shot, C= key + fire button shows it in slow-motion, V changes camera angle to opposite ends of the pool table while in the 2D above-view, as well as while in the 3D view, and / key aborts the present game. The Trick Shot mode's keyboard commands are given to you while you're in the mode, and the same abort with / key works here, as well.
The SPECTRUM version doesn't have much of keyboard commands listed into the manual, so one would expect there to be none to worry about, then. However, the title screen's text scroller informs us of control options: pressing 2 will let you define keys, 3 will let you play using a Sinclair joystick, and 4 is for Kempston joystick. During play, pressing 1 will let you return to title screen, and R will show an instant replay. There seems to be no key for changing the camera angle, nor a slow-motion mode for the replays, so that's already some of the game's already meager attractiveness ripped off.
Of all three game modes, the Trick Shot mode might be the most intriguing part of the game, even though it has practically been a part of pool games since that old Billiards game by HAL Laboratories from 1983. In the C64 version, there are ten ready-built tricks to try out, and the SPECTRUM version has eight. Of course, you can design your own trick shots, too, but you can't really save them anywhere in either version, so it's not much more than a cheap gimmick in that sense.
If you're not familiar with the rules of either Pool or Billiards, it is hardly of any importance, since there are too many variants of these games with rules changing depending on your location. Setting aside the actual title of the game for now, here's a quick run-through of how they are presented in this particular game. The white one is the cue ball, which you will be hitting at any given time in any game played on a pool table, with the intention of aiming to get one or more of the other balls in the pockets around the table.
In Pool, you have six coloured balls to get into pockets, one of which is black, which you must not get down until last. If you pocket your cue ball, or fail to hit any of the other balls, it's the other player's turn. Oddly enough, the manual says the aim is to pocket three balls of the same colour, but it appears as if the writer(s) of the manual mixed Pool with Snooker.
In Billiards, you only have one red ball to focus on. The white and yellow balls are both cue balls - the yellow is your opponent's. The rules of scoring are a bit more complex in Billiards. Because the manual doesn't say the actual aim of Billiards, I had to try and find it out for myself. Digging through Wikipedia, it appears as if you're actually playing English billiards in this game, so if there is anything American about this game, it's probably either in the Pool part of it, or just the title, for marketing purposes. Anyway, because the rules are so convoluted, I figured it is best to just link the Wikipedia page here, so you can read all about it for yourselves. It's basically how the Billiards part of A3DP works.
Apart from the lack of camera angles in the SPECTRUM version, there are two major differences to the C64 version, which I qualify as hindrances. Since the aiming cross-hair thing is a black circular object with a cross in the middle, the colour clash is so distracting on the SPECTRUM, that it's hard to properly aim at anything. Secondly, the balls don't move quite as much as they do in the C64 version, and all the balls' movement feels very forced and unnatural, which eats up much of any little realism you might have expected from an 8-bit pool game. The only advantage the SPECTRUM version has against the C64 version, at least in my opinion, is that you can define the spin put on the cue ball on the same screen as you define the power you put into hitting, while in the C64 version, you define the spin after the screen changes to the 3D view, which can be confusing. So, it's an easy win for the C64 here.
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM: 1 - 0
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AMERICAN 3D POOL: GRAPHICS
Comparing graphics in a type of game that used to be strictly from a single point of view on the 8-bits is a bit dull, and very likely over relatively quickly, but what has to be done, it shall. At least American 3D Pool has more than one point of view in it, but what else is there, really?
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| Screenshots from the Commodore 64 version of American 3D Pool. |
Once you start to play, the first view you get is the one you see at the bottom right corner of the screenshots - a straight top-down view with the cue area and ball storage at the bottom of the screen. The camera angle can be changed with the letter V, which merely flips the view 180 degrees. When you have taken your aim with the black inverted crosshair, the view switches to the one we saw in the title screen, which is also possible to switched to a view from the opposite end. Oddly, though, there is another ball storage at the other end of the table, which isn't visible in the top-down view. The "FOUL SHOT" indicator is only shown on one end of the table, which makes it funny to see it flipped over when you switch the camera angle.
The ball moving action is smooth and clear, but somewhat cheap-looking, because there is no real ball-rolling animation as such. It's just some sort of in and out movement of two-dimensional ball-like sprites in a decidedly faux-3D manner. To be fair, this makes the game much more playable and enjoyable than most proper 3D pool/billiards games on the C64, thanks to the lack of processing power.
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| Screenshots from the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version of American 3D Pool. |
Although the ZX SPECTRUM is usually better in 3D graphics than the C64, I suppose the problem here lies in the fact that it's not actually 3D. All the animations are choppy and flickery as anything, which is only accenuated by the horrible colour clash, so you can barely even see what you're aiming at, and how the balls move around. To make this all even more pitiful, there are no mirrored views of the pool table - just one from both angles. Perhaps if they had gone proper 3D in both versions, the results would have been very different.
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM: 1 - 0
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AMERICAN 3D POOL: SOUNDS
I could start and end this one just by saying that the C64 version features an incredibly happy and well-crafted piece of shuffle music in the title screen, and the SPECTRUM version has no music at all. Even if that were not the case, just the sound effects would be a matter of no contest between the two versions, as it is a classic case of what people were able to do with the SID chip in 1991 compared to what was absolutely a bare minimum to have with a SPECTRUM beeper in 1992. That is basically the situation here, since playing the game in 128k mode adds nothing.
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM: 1 - 0
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SLEEPWALKER: PLAYABILITY
The opening sequences and/or lack thereof aside, which might or might not help with the atmosphere, the C64 version is to be played with a joystick in port 2, and the SPECTRUM version allows the player to choose controls from four options: Kempston, Sinclair or Cursor joystick, or keyboard, for which the keys are Q and A for up and down, M and comma (,) for left and right. To my knowledge, the fire button does nothing more than start the game, and even that is only in the C64 version; the SPECTRUM version prompts you to press the 0 key to start.
Playing Sleepwalker is really rather simple in theory. Firstly, you need to keep Uncle Silas away from anything that would alarm him, which is basically anything that can move, drop or make noise. In general, the best way to deal with this is to trigger every trap yourself by walking into them, but because you start each night from a different room than Uncle Silas, it's next to impossible to avoid his triggering at least one trap before you find him due to his random way of sleepwalking. At least the SPECTRUM version makes him bump into a cat within the first ten seconds every time you start a new game, which makes it impossible to prevent this from happening. Luckily, you do have five spare lives. The goal is really to lead Silas back to his bed to get a restful night's sleep, which is going to be a bit more difficult, because for that, you have to be aware, where his bed is in the first place.
There are also some considerable differences in the game's map - that is, Uncle Silas' mansion. Both versions have 50 screens to run around in, but the mansion's structure is very different. In the C64 version, you get basically three floors - basement, ground floor and top floor, none of which are particularly logical in their structure; and Silas' bed is located at a distant corner on the top floor. The SPECTRUM version's mansion is much more realistically organized, with a cellar and attic both having only two screens each, and the three floors between them having an almost equal amount of screens between themselves. Silas' bedroom is located on the first floor (not ground floor, rather the middle one), just next to the staircase.
The two versions of Sleepwalker differ in three rather fundamental ways. Firstly, our protagonist, Rory, walks around notably slower in the SPECTRUM version, which makes the beginning of the game particularly impossible, so you can practically consider there being one less life to lose by default; however, you can move Rory diagonally in the SPECTRUM version, but not in the C64. Secondly, Rory and Silas start their journeys from immediately connecting rooms in the C64 version, while the SPECTRUM version has two rooms between Rory's and Silas's starting rooms, so the C64 version has a clear advantage. Finally, the structure of the house and the setup of each room differs quite drastically, with the SPECTRUM version having a lot more furniture, less room (due to the smaller screen size) and the stairs, doors and trapdoors being more dynamically placed than the C64's straight placement style.
Because of the sheer amount of different traps/gags, at first, it is difficult to say, which of them actually works best in the context. In essence, there is no real difference between the traps - they're there and work in a similar manner in both versions. The only real difference they make in terms of gameplay is how interested the game is able to keep you, really, and the more immediately affected area is graphical, sometimes even sonic, but some of the traps in the SPECTRUM version are slightly less obvious than pretty much everything in the C64 version. Does it make the SPECTRUM version any better for it? Hard to say, because the C64 version also has skateboards lying around, which can be used for faster traveling between rooms.
I do feel like the SPECTRUM version's more realistic approach to the mansion's structure and furnishing, as well as the diagonal walking, goes a long way in making the game feel more logical and comfortable to play. It's just that controlling Silas to get where he's supposed to go is superbly awkward since he doesn't seem to want to be controlled. You're supposed to stand in his way in order for him to change directions, but sometimes he just walks through you. The C64 version at least has the chance that Silas sleepwalks to his bed on his own accord, as long as nothing bothers him on the way. So, both versions are good, but have their own equally bad problems, which forces me to give both of them a point.
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM: 1 - 1
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SLEEPWALKER: GRAPHICS
I had to write this section the last, because it took me a long while to figure out, what was actually graphically important in Sleepwalker. The thing is, there is nothing particularly scary about this game for it to really need a spooky theme, unless you consider the mansion itself spooky in some way. Then, what also had to be taken into consideration was the mansion's interior design, the structure of the mansion, the traps and the two human characters, and of course, the animations. For such a simplistic game, there's a lot to take in, which I didn't really expect.
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| Sleepwalker: title screens and high score tables. Left: Commodore 64. Right: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. |
In the SPECTRUM version, you get control options for the actual title screen, with the game title and the highlighted controller flashing. The high scores table only holds five entries, but has more colours. The bottom area of the screen features a properly designed title logo with a bit of graphics around it, and on the right edge of the screen, we see an animated grandfather clock with the pendulum swinging back and forth, and the clock hands moving very fast. It sets up the mood nicely, too, but isn't quite as visually impressive as the stuff you get on the C64.
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| In-game screenshots from the Commodore 64 version of Sleepwalker. |
Each night begins with a "Get Ready" type screen, which says "Monday night", "Tuesday night", etcetera, and Rory can be seen sitting at the left edge of the day word. When the text fades out, Rory falls down through the endless bottom of the screen, and the game begins.
Once you're in the game, you see the screen divided into two parts. At the right edge, you have a score counter (at the top), the nicely animated grandfather clock below it taking the rest of the space, and a lives indicator at the bottom of that area, inside the foot of the clock. The other 4/5 of the screen's width left of the info panel is taken by the action screen.
The way the action is viewed in the C64 version is from a somewhat odd angle, in which you can only see the floor and the back wall of each room, and thin lines on the sides depicting vertically inclined walls, where available. In a way, we also see a part of the front wall, because the doorways and staircases are always very visible, when they are there; it's just that the wall itself is out of your visibility range. The ceiling is completely out of the viewpoint's boundaries.
All the rooms/screens are similarly designed, in that the exits are always in the exact middle point of the top and bottom walls, and if there are left and right exits, the walls are completely open into that direction. This makes the C64 version look rather flat and cheap, even though you do get plenty enough of different colours and patterns in the walls and the floors all over the mansion.
What really makes the C64 version shine is the vast amount of different gag animations for when Rory triggers any trap or other item. He can get blown up in different ways, get his head spinning, get electrocuted, and he can also step on nails and start hopping on one foot. There are also skateboards in the mansion, which can make him skate to one direction until he hits a wall, and holes in the floor will make him do a Wile E. Coyote impression before falling through the hole. By contrast, Uncle Silas only screams when he stumbles upon any item.
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| In-game screenshots from the Sinclair ZX Spectrum version of Sleepwalker. |
One considerable upgrade in the SPECTRUM version is, that the point of view gives a slightly better depth effect for the rooms. The left and right walls, when available, are angled so that they're actually visible, even though you never really get anything of ornamental value in them. The ceilings are still not exactly visible for the most part, until you reach the attic, where the ceiling does have a diagonal feel to it, so that's a minor upgrade. Probably my favourite visual upgrade is the staircase, which is not just a doorway replacement, but actual stairs you walk diagonally. Also, the doors are now more variably situated, instead of always in the middle of the screen's horizontal walls.
I mentioned the more logical structure of the mansion in the earlier section, which I do like a lot in the SPECTRUM version. Unfortunately, most of the main areas use the same wall papers/patterns, and the monochromatic yellow-and-black style throughout the game can get you lost rather easily, if you haven't noticed the ceiling lamps on each floor looking different. Only the cellar has the advantage of having no floor and wall patterns at all, and only the bedrooms and washrooms in the 1st and 2nd floors, along with the attic, have different wall patterns. At least the curtains, lamp shades, alarm clocks, flowers, books, vases, couches, chests and paintings come in different colours, so it's not all black, yellow and white, and the details are extremely nice.
The animations aren't bad, either, it's just that there's very little of them by comparison. You don't get the gag animations that are so prevalent in the C64 version, but rather a visual sound effect for each triggered item, the cats getting scared and running off, and when Uncle Silas triggers a trap, he spins on his heels for a few times, which is an odd reflex.
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| Sleepwalker: Game Over screens. Left: Commodore 64. Right: Sinclair ZX Spectrum. |
All things considered, the C64 version just offers a lot more of graphical content, no matter how much cheaper and blockier it all looks. The humour is so much more present with all the visual gags, upon which the game was originally built upon almost entirely. The SPECTRUM version works very well in its own way, as the focus is much more on the details than colours and animations, but the samey look all over can be a bit disorienting. Unfortunately, because the SPECTRUM version was designed first and foremost to be playable on the more common 48k machines, there is clearly less graphical content there, which really is a pity, because in a way, I like the SPECTRUM version's style.
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM : 1 - 0
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SLEEPWALKER: SOUNDS
Unfortunately for the SPECTRUM users, I have to repeat myself from the other game, since you get no music in this one, either, and the amount of sound effects you get are pathetic. Basically, it's just a tapping noise for your walking, and when you go through a hidden passage, you get a long, descending beep, or series of short connected beeps. That's all I have managed to hear, at any rate. Again, no 128k mode available, or at least, playing the game in 128k mode doesn't add anything to it.
By comparison, the C64 version starts off with a spooky theme tune, and then there's a "get ready" sort of a spooky jingle before the game/night begins. During play, there is no background music as such, although if you happen to stumble upon a skateboard, you get to hear some rock music for the duration of your time on the skateboard while it's heading for the next wall in the direction you were heading to. As if that weren't enough, all the traps and items have their own amazingly crafted sound effects, and there's even a "scream" from Silas when his sleepwalking gets disturbed by some object or another. There really is no contest here.
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM: 1 - 0
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OVERALL, PLURAL + VIDEO
Once again, the point is proven, that the original version of a game is most likely to be the one to take the trophy, and here we have two examples of this claim being proven right - one much more so than the other.
AMERICAN 3D POOL:
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM : 3 - 0
SLEEPWALKER:
COMMODORE 64 vs ZX SPECTRUM : 3 - 1
In the case of American 3D Pool, the ZX Spectrum version really took the plunge in all manners possible, but with Sleepwalker, things aren't quite as clear. While the graphics aren't quite as interesting on the long run, it does offer things that the C64 original doesn't, which can be considered better, and the gameplay is equally good to the C64 in its own way; the sounds are unfortunately rather pitiful. So, I would recommend both versions of Sleepwalker to be checked out for their own merits, but if you're looking for a good 3D pool game, you could easily do much better than go with American 3D Pool in either case. To give you further proof, here's a two-fer video accompaniment a la FRGCB.
While this two-fer comparison certainly didn't help balancing out things away from the C64, it did bring in some more 90's games. Not ideal, but there you go. Maybe next time, things will have a different outcome, so until then, thanks for reading/watching; see you later!
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