Egghead

= Egghead in Space by Kees van Oss =

Licence
Freeware (source code available)

ZX Spectrum &copy; 2002 J.Cauldwell BBC/Electron &copy; 2004 C.Dewhurst Atomic Egghead by Kees van Oss, 2017

Introduction
This was to be a BBC/Electron conversion of the Spectrum platformer, Egghead In Space, and we all know it was completed in July 2004 because the afore mentioned Retro Gamer proudly carried a full page review, complete with colourful screenshots. But what on earth happened to this game? First of all, the "What's New" page of Cronosoft's web site apologised for the delay in its release, citing 'technical problems'. Then, in a Orwellian-1984-style rewriting of the "What's New" page, all mention of it ever even being in production disappeared from the site! Over at Stairway to Hell, Dave M's news page noted that "the game is now available, but only as a disc image for use on emulators at the reduced price of £1.99" for which you needed to write to Cronosoft for more information. Quite apart from seeming to be going out of its way to deliver a kiss of death to this project, what then, in the interim, had happened to Cronosoft's claim to only release its games on the original tape format, resplendent with paper inlays and artwork? And why didn't Cronosoft have an on-line ordering system at least for its own disc image, on its own web site?

A year on, no-one appears any closer to discovering the truth behind this. Chris Dewhurst states, "Cronosoft claimed that the tape version did not execute the main game code after loading it into memory. They said that, on their BBC, the game continued 'Searching' for another file and so the game would not run. I can't see how this could be possible and I suspect they must have had some rogue ROMs installed in their machine to cause this. I do not think the fault is in the game itself." Rogue ROMs or not though, this seems little justification for removing all reference to it from the company's web site or Cronosoft's sudden lack of interest in promoting the game at all. Let's Get Ready To Rhumble - The Opening Screen Of EGGHEAD IN SPACE Is Accompanied By A Little Rendition Of The Theme From The Great Escape Fortunately, one year on in this saga, Dewhurst has decided enough is enough and released the game to EUG for inclusion on the next disc (just as he did in the good ole days). Which means, not only that it is less likely to become the Elk equivalent of the C64 'gem lost forever' Daffy Duck, but we can all get our hands on it for free. This is what we did here a few months ago and, as the game doesn't come with instructions, we thought we'd take you on a tour of what should have been Cronosoft's second outing on the Elk to set the scene.

Retro Software is therefore proud to reveal a brand new Atom port by the Dutch coder Kees van Oss. This new release is an astonishingly accurate version of the original title. The conversion was interesting because it was originally ported from the ZX Spectrum so the resolution was 256x192 mono, ideal for the Atom CLEAR4.



Atom
Port by Kees van Oss

System Requirements

 * Standard Acorn Atom
 * 32 KB RAM (#0000-#7FFF)
 * 6 KB video RAM (#8000-#97FF)
 * Joystick connected to keyboard matrix (Optional)
 * Joystick connected to PORTB AtoMMC interface (Optional)

Keys:
Z - Move left X - Move right SPACE- Dump

RET- Toggle pause ESC- Restart game

Joystick Connections
An optional joystick can be connected parallel to the first row of the keyboard matrix according to the Dutch Atom Group standard:

row     column write     read   Joystick --  0   - PB0 - #01 - Jump 0  - PB1 - #02 - Left 0  - PB2 - #04 - Up   0   - PB3 - #08 - Right 0  - PB4 - #10 - Down
 * 1) B000    #B001

An optional joystick can be connected to PORTB of the AtoMMC interface with software version 2.9.

AtoMMC Joystick - PB0  -  Right PB1 -  Left PB2 -  Down PB3 -  Up  PB4  -  Jump PB5 -  nc  PB6  -  nc  PB7  -  nc  GND  -  GND

Downloads
[[Media:Egghead.zip|Egghead tape/disc/AtoMMC images]]

This image archive includes tape, disc and AtoMMC versions of the game. Read the included Readme.txt file for more info.

Tape version:


 * EGGHEAD.TAP, Tapefile for emulator Wouter Ras, to start the game, type: *RUN"EHRUN"
 * EGGHEAD.CSW, Tapefile for Atomulator, to start the game, type: *RUN"EHRUN"

Disk version:


 * EGGHEAD.DSK, Diskfile for emulators, to start the game, type *RUN"EHRUN"

AtoMMC version:


 * EHRUN, Basic introscreen
 * EHCODE, Gamecode

To start the game, type: *RUN"EHRUN"

The sourcefiles are included and have to be compiled with the CC65 cross compiler. Type MAKE EHCODE to compile the program. An assembler listing is created in the EHCODE.LST file.

Videos
Atomic Egghead by Kees van Oss Posted: Sat Jul 22.