Excalibur: Sword of Kings!

 There was a game that I played way back on my ZX Spectrum 48K, "Excalibur:Sword of Kings" that I never got far in. I recall it being hailed as an "easy" game, and I was probably aged 15 or 16 at the time and I struggled for a few hours with it then let it fall off the list,what with starting college in Southgate, the big storm of '87', and coping with new challenges, none the less it occupied a small segment of my mind after all these decades. Thus, I decided to tackle it again. This time however, I wanted to make sure I had a rough idea of the commands I could use, mostly with these old adventure games (or interactive fiction as its sometimes called) you are tackling the parser and trying to discover the correct set of verbs/nouns to use rather than actually tackling the puzzles. So I hacked the game in a disassembler and found these at memory location #43967. Since these games on the Spectrum would only parse the first 4 letters of a word they are truncated so have to guess the remainders. Luckily most of them are fairly typical actions and easy to work out.

The ones that I was unsure of are: 

XZXP (? Magic word?)

STRI (String?)

TIGH (Tight?)

REFL (Reflect?)

LUBR (Lubricate?)

WUFF (?)

CRIM (Crimp?)

None the less, it gives me something to work with now and I could tackle it anew. Initially I was stuck because I struggled with the parser. At one point you see a pile of logs, examining the logs doesn't yield anything, but after you "take logs" then "examine logs" you discover an axe. This took me sometime to get past that hurdle. Thanks to the words I had hacked out of the game at the start it made the whole thing pretty easy and completed in about 1 hour. There was perhaps one other tricky point where the evil witch Crania is casting a spell, I knew I probably had to use "reflect spell" and spent some time going over my tracks trying to locate a mirror until I realized you used another shiny item that you can picked up along the way to do this. 

There were some red herring items, one quite ironically was a "red fish" that you discover, and the other was a piece of string. They had no purpose in the game or ending. Otherwise a very short game but with great graphics (perhaps the graphics ate into most of the RAM?). The "XZXP" command that I had hacked out was interesting as it just showed the names of the programmers, one of which is Shaun McClure, an author of ZX Spectrum related book quite a few of which I owned. He's a text adventure expert and knows his stuff. A nice enjoyable trip down memory lane and a sense of achievement at having completed something that had thwarted me almost 4 decades ago! 

I spent a lot of time seeing this screen: 

The trickiest moment in the game was this character to overcome. 

Finally, I had reached my goal and my quest was over! 

Lynch

 I was saddened to read that David Lynch passed away last week. The papers since then have been filled with various people offering anecdotes and tributes to the man. He was a fantastic visionary and his movies are all worth watching as is the Twin Peaks series decades after conception. I have all of his movies and although I haven't rewatched many of them in some years I made a promise to myself to rewatch Eraserhead. I recall in the early 80s at school us kids would chat about movies in the playground and it was known to us back then as a horror movie, this was the peak of the "video nasties" hysteria and going to the video store to rent out of a movie was a highlight of our weekends. The collective chatter from the kids was this was a horror movie akin to Evil Dead, or Alien, but when I finally got around to viewingit, I realized it was something else and much more. The is a creeping sense of dread but it seemed to me to be more about parenthood and relationships, there was nothing demonic here, just how every day interactions can have a dark undertone. We've probably all had weird conversations struck with a stranger while waiting at a bus stop or a bar where things don't seem quite right and this movie seemed to capture an element of that. RIP Mr Lynch, your art will live on for generations to come. 

The Festive Season

 I didn't have any vacation days left so I worked on all days other than the two Christmas and Boxing Day bank holidays (but had to work New Years Day) so I didn't really get to relax or unwind much before having to be at the coalface again. I did however get to rewatch the Tarkovsky movie Solaris from the early 1970s. Its been hailed as a great movie but honestly on the rewatch I found it really drab and implausible. The only thing it really has going for it is the philosophical dialogue but even this I found very clunky. The editing it terrible also, I didn't see the need for the long 2 minute cut of stock footage of what I am guessing was a motorway in Korea. I guess in 1970 it was deemed as futuristic looking but nowadays very dull. On the whole I was underwhelmed with it, if I wanted better sharp deep think dialogue I will always be better off with My Dinner with Andre which has barely aged in comparison. 

Disappearing London

 I took half a day off work today. I wanted to pound the wet streets of London and randomly go down streets I haven't visited in many decades. I ended up in Carmelite Street, as I walked along it I had a vague memory that there used to be a grand building there and I recall someone telling me it was a shutdown girls school. I couldn't locate it after walking up and down the street until I spotted a blue plaque stating it was once there but shutdown in 1969. Yet I recalled seeing it in the mid 80s. I did some research and yes, although the school itself moved in the late 60s the building was there until the late 1980s when it was finally demolished. I felt a tad sad as in my memory it was an interesting looking building. I have placed a then and now still below. It was used briefly for a few scenes in a movie called Hidden London in 1987, which I recall seeing and well worth watching. It's a tad surreal but an interesting watch with shots of the now long gone interiors. 

 

domain name sale

I get the occasional message from people asking me if this domain name is for sale. I've had this domain since 1996 and all my emails route through so it would be a considerable undertaking for me to change all my various accounts where its logged. Plus it houses all this stuff you see before you, so its occupies quite a special place in my heart, having said that; I will entertain offers for $30,000 USD. If that's too much, then frankly I am not interested in giving up on it. 

 Working slowly but surely on transferring all my old content to here so its here forever. It will be my legacy! So am currently typing away on a very cold Saturday afternoon suffering a touch of the lurgy.  

Time to start!

 Decided I needed a permanent blog space and this one seems as good as any! Will try to update as and when but definitely semi-frequently!