This month's Software Competition was surprisingly rewarding to judge. There were fewer entries than usual, probably due to the exam season and all the budding programmers being away on holiday, the entries we did have turned out to be very good. First prize goes to K. N. Khaleque who submitted a first rate ladders and platforms game called “Miner Mania". In this you have to guide ‘Miner Tim' through thirty caverns, this may sound familiar to ‘Manic Miner' fans and the game does bear more than a passing resemblance to the Software Projects game. This, however, was the best entry we have had for the competition so Mr Khaleque wins £1000. Miner Mania is technically very good, there are some beautiful sprites and continuous music. All the speed-critical bits are written in machine code with the general dressing and instructions in Basic. Even more impressive is that the author wrote the game without an assembler, instead he wrote and used his own monitor. ACU #8510 |
