Amandas Diary
We've gone Bat and Ball crazy this week. I managed to get hold of the original Binatone 'Home entertainment system' - Electronic Ping Pong to you and me (or football if you have two bats each). After the nostalgia was wiped away (although I was pretending in the retro-weeping stakes) I realised there was only one controller. The strange hand of fate was at er, hand. Strangely enough... Over to our resident Slot-car hill-climbing house champion.
Being on the dole means you have to turn your hand to a bit of canabalisation to keep your belongings working. When your ordinary Scalextric fun starts to wane why not lay your track up the stairs... You can then play head to head drag hill racing. The fun comes with souping up your car with extra traction and a heavy duty motor. Well to cut a long story short, one of Fudgepackers controllers was a Binatone games one! The reason being it didn't give him a shock when he increased the voltage to the track! ... be like me kids, just don't ask. He really should get a job y'know. He used to send his Mum cups of tea on top of his Flying Scotsman Hornby train-set tender. Anyway, a bit of solder later and we were up and running. Good game, lovely shade of bright pink for the score. The reason I mention this is the fact that I've been playing Spec Bat'n'Ball games since. You've probably all got the one on the Horizons tape - very good for customizing that one! Anyone wanting my 'hit the West Ham fan with a brick' PD version can do so for `5 and a family bag of ready salted.
ARKANOID is probably the slickest version around, the 128k sound on Revenge of Doh is blinding. KRAKOUT from Gremlin is good too, played on its side (if you get my meaning), but obviously a low key game for them in the scheme of things. BATTY was featured on a magazine covertape but don't let that deceive you. It's bloody difficult though; a skill level system would have been nice! A new angle on things was presented with CRL's BALLBREAKER - sort of like playing the basic game on the set of Knight Lore! This game is bloody addictive and irritating as the bastard game slows down when bits of the wall are falling down. That aside, any game that has a bat that looks like a midi hi-fi is alright by me. The most interesting version though has to be HOTSHOT by Addictive, better known for the Footy Manager series. It's essentially a two player game quite similar to BOUNCES. You can catch and fire the ball to hit either the wall of bricks above you or deflect it to knock the other bloke stupid. Great fun. I like to think that you will all now go out and track down a copy of this elusive little classic. I mean, I really would like your trust on this one! I forgot to mention that I'm not very good at these games. And someone must have Arkanoid on +3 disk for our Jeff? He'll give you money for it and everything...
I've been having a look through my lists and such and there are some games that are proving a bugger to track down. I'm sure the more priviliged of you have squirted some of your games onto disk, so you don't really need the cassettes anymore do you? There is a little girl here in Nottingham that is desperate to play these games and you can make a good bit of beer money out of it too. She is ever so sweet and loves her Speccy. Oh alright, it's me but don't let that put you off. So, does anyone have: Addams Family, Adidas Champ Footy 128 and Tie Break, The Archers!, Asterix, Battle Command, Beatle Quest, Biff, Bismarck, The Biz (Virgin 1985), Bobs Full House, Brian Bloodaxe, Captain America, Chips Challenge, Cluedo, Dan Dare 2+3, Dark Side, Darkman, Dick Tracy, Doctor Who, Edd the Duck, Extreme, Game Over 2, Garfield Winters Tail, Gauntlet 3, Grange Hill, Great Space Race.... and that's just the first 7 letters! Oh well, it's worth a try. Keep collecting or whatever you do when it gets cold at night. See you soon.
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