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ADVANCED ADDING A TXT FILE TO
AN EPROM CARD FOR A Z88 EMULATOR SIMULATOR
by Lee Prince for the 128K and 16K Spectrums
With Digital Prawn's attempt to define a baseline for what is an acceptable CSSCGC entry back in 2008 as a starting point, I set out with a mantra of "maximum effort, minimum attainment" for those who would seek to win the Mucho Generoso Prize for Most Crap game Of The Year. After all my warnings that I'd give short shrift to anything that didn't measure up to this barely acceptable minimum, I'd always thought - hoped, even - that I'd be making the final decision between those entries that scored two voodoo-masks for attainment, on the ground that those who deliberately tried to make a one-mask game would make a pig's ear of it.
Lee is a CSSCGC veteran and former host (in 2015), so he presumably knew how to interpret my rules to maximum effect. So he was one of the most likely candidates to shatter my idealistic dreaming, when he sent me this... "I Can't Believe It's A Game" (because it really isn't), and I had no option but to give it only one mask. Where he secured the Mucho Generoso Prize was in the effort that went into it - or, should I say, ticking the boxes that I'd specifically asked for, to inflate the effort score far beyond where an entry such as this would otherwise deserve to be. Don't complain - you all knew how I chose to score it. There were two versions, one for the 16K Spectrum to generate the reports 0 OK to R Tape loading error, and a second 128K version to cover the extra reports d Too many brackets to the secret p © 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd (which I'd never known about up to that point), carefully sidesteeping those which aren't available on the +2A and +3. Both versions were given a thoroughly unnecessary loading screen. So, effort-wise, given the most thorough way of tacking the Cyan Challenge as well as the Magenta, I had to award it a four-Rick score, making this the only one-and-four in the competition.
From then on, Lee's prize was only under threat if anyone made a similarly ineffective entry but added even more unnecessary embellishments to it - meeting even more Challenges, giving it a custom character set, making a mock-up tape inlay, things like that. And, of course, demerits had to be avoided at all costs as getting even one would rule that entry out of this final judgement. I suppose that this "YOU'RE WINNER!" entry is symbolic of this competition as a whole - it was based on a lame and tired old joke that goes back to comp.sys.sinclair's heyday, but was only written due to the complexities of getting another entry for a much more obscure computer (that would never have had a chance to shine in those early days) to work on an emulator that few people would consider their first choice due to its overall weirdness and position as the jack of all trades, master of none. It was not, as those who have been following this competition all the way through, the absolute worst entry of them all, but it is the one that best fit the criteria I set out in the first place.
Lee wins the £1.88 in Crown Dependency and Overseas Territory coins, four packets of Rolos, and some tapes - one featuring a Cassette 50-style round-up of as many of these Crap Games as I can fit on a C90, the other a tape Corona Capers - which secured my tenure of this competition in the first place - and the excellent Bullseye Bonus game, The Ring Of The Inka, on the B-side. Hope you've got a 128K model in your collection, Lee!
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