World Of Sam - 16bit power at an 8bit price

Alan Miles

Fri, 03 May 2013 22:47:15 +0100

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Biography:

Alan Miles is the Miles bit of Miles Gordon Technology.

After SamCo went under he reportedly “went back to Saudi Arabia to teach”

SAM Revival 24 out now!

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:42:26 +0100

Story:

Yes, it’s back! Yes, it’s been a long time! But issue 24 of SAM Revival magazine is now finally out!

Some of the highlights from this issue:

- News from around the SAM Coupé Scene.

- What happened to Sandman’s Shadow - information, screenshots and sketches from
Gordon Wallis about the point-and-click adventure game he was developing back in 1992.

- Developer Diary - Lots of info from SAM developers featuring a Space Invaders Arcade
Machine Emulator (Simon Owen), Wubtris + more (Rob Evans).

- Coupe Correspondence - lots of readers letters.

- SAM Comment - kicking around some potential new projects for the SAM Coupe.

On The Coverdisk:

On the coverdisk you’ll find the full game ‘The Witching Hour’ by John Vincent (who also painted the fab cover artwork for the magazine too!) There’s also the preview demo ‘Minutes Before The Witching Hour’.

This issue of SAM Revival costs £4.99 with UK postage, or £6.99 including Airmail postage for Europe.

Sam Revival

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 22:35:47 +0100

Title image:

Publisher:

Colin Piggot / Quazar

Author:

Colin Piggot
+ other contributors

Artist:

Colin Piggot
+ other contributors

Description:

Paper & Disk based SAM Magazine. First issue launched in 2002, and still being produced.

Current issue: 24 (April 2013).

More information: http://www.samcoupe.com/

Prince of Persia

Fri, 05 Apr 2013 07:50:21 +0100

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Publisher:

Revelation

Author:

Chris White

Release Year:
1990

Description:

A port of the ground-breaking game of the same name. The original on other platforms was released by Brøderbund and designed by Jordan Mechner. Prince of Persia was released on a wide range of platforms, including the Amiga, Apple II, Apple Macintosh, DOS, NES, Game Boy, SNES and Sega Genesis.

The game was played in real time. You played the intrepid adventurer and had an hour to save the Princess from the evil Sultan before she was forced to marry him or die.

The animation was one of the first of it’s kind as Jordan had animated the movement of the characters as close to real life as was possible at that time.

Instructions:

Included temporarily, is the freeware demo that was released to promote the game.

Reviews:

Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.

Crash review, courtesy of worldofspectrum.org

Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

Well, Prince Of Persia was the surprise all formats hit of 1990 or so. So, unsurprisingly it only arrived on the SAM in about 1992. But this is typical and we SAM owners have come to expect things to be late.

It revolves round the plot of an evil Arabian bloke called Jaffar kidnapping a princess, and saying that he’ll kill her in an hours time or something, this, as with the plots of many games, is completely irrelevent and the game boils down to jumping over pits, dodging visciously sharp blades and stabbing various people to death. And as platformers go, it’s pretty playable. The thing that made it popular in the first place though was the animation.

It is SUPERB, the graphics for all versions where drawn from Arabian type films to give a really human fluidity to all the movements of the main character.

He skids, runs, jumps, and is impaled on spikes in a really humanoid manner. The game must have loads on animation, in fact it has twice as many frames as the Atari ST version.

In fact, rumour is, the graphics where converted from the PC version by copying them down, pixel by pixel, onto graph paper, then reassembling them on the SAM.

Don't take the lightbulbs

Tue, 19 Feb 2013 23:26:33 +0000

Title image:

Publisher:

Author:

Martijn Groen

Artist:

Robert van der Veeke

Musician:

Stefan Drissen

Description:

Demo

Balor Knight

Thu, 24 Jan 2013 17:36:28 +0000

Title image:

Biography:

Balor Knight, one half of Digital Reality, made his name in the Sam world by writing Astroball, a platform game which was picked up by Revelation and Dyzonium for FRED Publishing.

Astroball was also written for the Spectrum, as was a sequel “Turbulence” which appeared on a Your Sinclair cover tape.

Where are they now?:

Now a successful next-gen console programmer with a string of big-budget PC, PS2 and XBOX titles to his name - often in the multi-player genre of extreme racing simulation.

Has been the lead programmer on several high-end PC racing-game titles: “Re-Volt”, developed whilst Balor was at Acclaim Studios, London; and The Italian Job, developed at Climax Studios, Brighton - to name but two.

Recently (2004) seen as the lead programmer on the PS2 racing-game title “Crash ‘n’ Burn” - developed by Climax Studios, Brighton.

Have no contact information, but indications suggest he’s still programming high-end titles at Climax Studios, Brighton.

UPDATE 24/1/2013: Balor and a couple of his ex-Blackrock Studios colleagues now run their own games development company called Mad Atom Games Ltd, based in Brighton.

Trivia

Howard Price named his band The Balor Knights

Full Screen 50Hz Scroller Demo

Wed, 16 Jan 2013 22:20:28 +0000

Title image:

Publisher:

Thomas Harte

Release Year:
2005-

Description:

A quick demo that demonstrates a full-screen tile map scroller running at 50Hz with sprites on an unexpanded Sam.

Thu, 01 Jan 1970 01:00:00 +0100

n/a

Solar Flare

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 10:32:14 +0000

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Publisher:

Sam PD

Author:

Stefan Drissen

Description:

A Sam PD disk containing a number of Stefan’s demos and utilities, many of which were otherwise unreleased.

Some E-Tracker music in the player he contributed to FRED magazine.
A utility to reduce the 16-shade cyan-scale picture to a real 8-colour greyscale.
Some demos converted from the 128k spectrum, including ESI’s LYRA II.
Stefan’s contribution that would have become a part of Statues Of Ice
Prototype windowing system
Prototype Larry game
A few pieces of music (converted from MOD by Thorsten Gudmundsen)mixing samples with sound chip tones

Fred 46

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 02:51:32 +0000

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Description:

Issue 46

Item	Author	Description
Menu	Brian McConnell
Magazine
Letters
Screens
Mine	Tim Paveley	basic Mine game
SAMPaint Fonts	Andrew Collier
Digisynth	Stefan Drissen	converted Prisoner Speccy demo
Lemmings 2	Nicholas Bay	demo
The Net		humor from the Internet
E-Tunes	Lee Willis
Mods
Reversal	J.H. Bailey	puzzle game
Font Procs	Graham Tattersall	font utility
Adverts
Bits ‘n Bobs	P. Crompton	graphic converters: BMP to SAM and SAM to BMP

new user accounts

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 18:38:22 +0100

Story:

I’ve implemented a “reCAPTCHA” check on the new user registration page, and re-enabled autonomous creation of new accounts (I was getting tired of manually sifting through the new user registrations - currently about 50 bots a day try to sign up - and waiting for me to see the email is a rubbish experience for real new users, especially if I don’t immediately recognise their account is a genuine one). Please let me know if you have any additional issues with the login pages, and especially if you see any spam comments or articles managed to get through.

The Messenger

Sat, 18 Aug 2012 17:47:39 +0100

Title image:

Publisher:

SamCo

Release Year:
1991

Description:

The Messenger was an interface for the ZX Spectrum that allowed a PLUS-D/Multiface-type snapshot to be taken and then transferred via the MIDI/Network port to the Sam (with an additional card for NMI debounce)

Information by Andrew Thompson from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

‘The Messenger’ was Samco’s ultimate answer to spectrum compatibility. It consisted of an interface which plugged into the edge connector on the back of the spectrum and from this a cable ran to the SAM’s network port. There was also a very small card which plugged into the SAM’s EuroConnector and had a single button on it which generated an NMI. The third part was a disk that had the Messenger program itself on it.

Basically operation worked like this:

When you first bought the messenger you transfered the Spectrum’s rom down the network cable and stored it on the Messenger disk.

From then on, to get a new game onto the SAM you loaded the Messenger disk into the SAM and loaded the game that you wanted into the Spectrum from tape in the usual way.

Once the game was loaded into the Spectrum you pressed the button on the back of the Messenger interface (which is plugged into the Spectrum remember), and this ‘froze’ the machine at that point.

You then had a number of options that you could select from a menu on the SAM:

Instructions:

Here they are the typewritten instruction sheets that came with my Messenger (v1.1).

Reviews:

Information by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook

The Messenger is Bruce Gordon’s first Spectrum interface for over 2 years, but it seems that the old man hasn’t lost his touch on producing a fine piece of valuable hardware for any SAM-Spectrum owner.

The Messenger is a black box which hugs onto the Spectrum’s edge connector, and has a cable linking to the Coupe’s MIDI ports. From here, you can load up Spectrum stuff on your Spectrum, then once the game is loaded, “port” the code across to the SAM. A button on the Messenger itself freezes the action of the Spectrum - a lot like a Multiface, and with this, you can do the business and save it to disk.

Because you are loading stuff on the Spectrum itself, there is a very, very high compatibility rate of 99%. The other 1%, I think, is for a crap tape header, or something. There’s no buggering around with tape volume at all, and it’s all extremely friendly to use. In short, a worthwhile and essential purchase for any Spectrum-SAM owner!

SCPDU 2

Fri, 03 Aug 2012 00:02:39 +0100

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Description:

Issue 2 of SCPDU; contains reviews of Fred, Sam Supplement, Fastline, Impatience and Splat!, a slideshow, a joke scroller and a real scroller.

Fred '92

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:56:22 +0100

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Description:

As the scroller says, not so much a ‘best of’ as an effort to spread the word about all Fred’s releases up to the end of 1992. Includes demos of Waterworks, Bulgulators, Dyzonium, Spell Master, E-Tracker and Parallax.

Format's Demo Disc #1

Thu, 02 Aug 2012 23:55:41 +0100

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Publisher:

Format

Release Year:
1991

Description:

An early demo disc, showing what’s possible in SAM BASIC.