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BigBang and Revolver classic games set free By Chris Williams. Published: 6th Nov 2005, 15:05:43 | Permalink | PrintableMy eyes, they protest at this 256 colour onslaught To help while away the approaching dark winter nights, Acorn Arcade have netted two classic games and released them for free online. The coup came about after Andy Thomas recognised the name of Miles Visman, a programmer for indie games outfit Pompom. Miles was involved in Pyscore, the North London based group that developed BigBang and Revolver, and agreed to allow the software to be redistributed as freeware.
Revolver is actually quite a gem in terms of graphics and gameplay, given its age. Released in the mid-1990s, the player must guide a small rotating blade around a maze collecting tokens, breaking through walls, solving puzzles and avoiding obstacles - all of which is against the clock. Your field of view is rather limited and distorted by a fish-eye type lens. The effects are fairly colourful and explode around the screen like glitter; the designer clearly decided that there's no such thing as too much special effects. The game is bound to leave you screaming in pained anguish if you just can't quite reach the level of dexterity required to grab all the jewels and race to the goal box in time for a particular level. It's definitely for people who enjoy entertainment and torment at the same time and don't mind retro-charged MODE 9 pixellated textures.
BigBang makes clowns-on-LSD-fest Cycloids look tame. It's a platformer that's been on a drip feed of morphine and pure lunancy for far too long, subjected to bootleg early-1990s techno at high volume, and then suddenly discharged from the hospital to run amok on the streets. Amusingly it has a background story, but essentially you're a wide eyed yellow person who is certainly not under the influence of any substances whatsoever and must stamp out tiny killer toys and collect teddy bear heads. Yes, teddy bear heads. As if by some almost random nod from the gaming Gods, the player can be transported to a vertical scrolling sideshow game that is fairly hilarious. You can also choose to play a red headed devil dude, but then there's the additional challenge of out running the computer controlled yellow guy, and there's nothing more terrifying that being chased by psychopathic clown who may want to retake his human dissection biology exam on you. It's fast paced and the scream when you die freaks me out.
Both games will run on RISC OS 3.1 to 5, although Aemulor believed to be necessary for both games on 32bit machines.
Revolver
Big Bang
Links
Free games on Acorn Arcade
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