Pobtastic pobtastic

Bob Pape talks a little about how the monster AI was done in his book. A single routine which deals with fetching “random numbers” deals with a lot of how it works - and seeing what it actually does is fascinating!

There’s lots of elegant code in Rampage, here’s a neat example of how the monsters are printed to the screen using the same draw routine.

I didn’t appreciate Rampage when I first bought it for my ZX Spectrum with my paper round money. I can tell you exactly why, it just isn’t especially fun when played with only one player.

It wasn’t until I bought an arcade machine that I thought I’d give it another go, and what I found surprised me. It’s incredible how much of the arcade game they managed to fit into a 48k ZX Spectrum. It’s a bright and colourful game and works great as a multiplayer.

I love a road trip, and travelling across Europe is my absolute favourite thing to do - especially when I’m picking up arcade machines!