How to make names appear as links?
Submitted by ascii on Mon, 2006-01-02 22:39. FAQPlease put two square brackets around people’s names, or companies, in product page fields.
e.g. [[Andrew Collier]]
This makes the name appear as a link, (even if the corresponding article hasn’t been written yet).
TurboMON
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Mon, 2006-01-02 21:15. Utility
1994
TurboMON is a Z80 monitor and toolkit for the SAM Coupé. It provides a controlled execution environment for SAM programs, supporting single-stepping, tracing, breakpoints, as well as a selection of utility functions.
Load at any free 16K page boundary and CALL the loading address. e.g. LOAD "TurboMON" CODE 32768 : CALL 32768
A full manual is available on the author’s TurboMON page.
SAM Juggler
Submitted by Simon Owen on Mon, 2006-01-02 20:45. Demo
Codigo Software
Rafael Hornos
Juan C. Martin
1992
Demo showing a ray-traced Sam robot juggling.
Escape From the Planet of the Robot Monsters
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Mon, 2006-01-02 04:40. Game
One of the few major commercial title conversions from the Spectrum. While the intro screens were not changed, the game itself was updated to use the SAM sound chip and mode 4 graphics.
Control system remained the same as the Spectrum (sadly!) and not the 16 bit versions.
A fun-packed shooter for up to two-players.
Crash review courtesy of worldofspectrum.org
Review by Steven Pick from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
Yes! At last, Escape comes to the SAM, and boy is it tasty! The story revolves around a Lost In Space plot, about two hardened soldiers, JAKE and DUKE. They are briefed, and must go to PLANET X, where they must rescue the lovely Professor Sarah Bellum, or else the evil Reptilians get to destroy the Earth!! So, you, or another Samster (it’s 2 player), must rampage round the 3D screens and destroy the robots, and rescue a few billion fair madiens!
As the game progresses, you meet a giant End of Level Reptilian! Yikes… Well, I must admit, the graphics on the SAM for this are BRILLIANT! The music which plays throughout is also toe-tapping, and the control method, though quirky to begin with gets a lot better with practice! The game is full of neat animations as well - like if you fall off a platform, you hang for a short wait until you leap up! Though I was a little disappointed at the intro from the Spectrum, but the rest - BRILLIANT! Get it NOW…
| Area | Score |
|---|---|
| Graphics | 93% |
| Sound | 91% |
| Instant Appeal | 84% |
| Lastability | 96% |
| Overall | 91% |
Wop Gamma
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Mon, 2006-01-02 04:15. Game
Revelation Software (Software Direction by FRED Publishing)
1993
Every platform has a Boulder clone, and Wop Gamma is the enjoyable conversion for the Sam. Colourful, smooth, fast and with some great background tracks.
Your Sinclair review, courtesy of The YS Rock ‘n’ Roll Years.
Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
Wop Gamma was the SAM’s answer to such hits as Rockfall, Rockford, Boulderdash and all the others. But for me, it really didn’t do the magic of Rockford’s Riot, or have the skill of Earth Shaker. But I am going to review it objectively as a damn good game in it’s own right…
Why it’s own right? Well, because the rocks (or pnuematic hammers, or whatever they are are on the level) and other falling items do not respond in the same way as EVERY other version of the game.
As you might know, in your standard Boulderdash type game, a Rock (or gem etc) will fall off of a surface (ie, a rock or platform (though not earth)) if there is a free space down/left or down/right of it and a gap to the left or right allowing it to get there. I will illustrate my point, with a pointless diagram:
O = Boulder = Earth
1. Boulder resting on another boulder…
..O
..OO*
*****
2. Clear space to down/left and left, so boulder moves left…
.O.
..OO
*****
3. Boulder becomes familiar with concept of gravity and drops…
...
.OOO*
*****
Where-as in Wop Gamma:
Splat !
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Mon, 2006-01-02 04:10. Game
Colin Jordan (Conversion)
I. Andrew & I. Morgan (Original Game Design)
Frantisek Fuka & Colin Jordan (Music)
Edwin Blink (Digitised Speech)
1991
Originally released on the Spectrum, Splat! was another of the addictive SAM game conversions.
The aim of the game was to control Zippy (via up / down / left / right) and eat the grass growing around the maze. The catch being, the maze itself moves randomly. If you get trapped against a wall, you’re dead!
Due to it’s random nature, each play was never the same as the previous one.
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
Aha! A game I can review and explain in about one paragraph. Hurrah!
You play the part of a little green blob that has to eat all the greenery and food that he can on a largish map. You can move about the screen as you wish, but impacting on any walls or water results in your immediate death.
Meanwhile the screen scrolls away in a set pattern, meaning that you can get trapped in innaccessable places quite easily and you will often have to make speed retreats when the screen suddenly decides to change direction.
And that is it. Okay then, 2 paragraphs.
| Area | Score | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Graphics | 14% | Terrible, but they don’t need to be good. Hardly an improvement on the Speccy original. |
| Addictivity | 75% | Soooo simple, and playable to boot. But may not last that long. |
| Instant Appeal | 93% | Easier to get into than a pair of greased pyjamas. |
| Sound | 86% | Nice tune, and a sampled ‘Yippee!’ at the end of every stage. |
| Overall | 78% | Easy to become addicted to, but it won’t offer long-term gaming. But at around 4 quid, who cares? |
SAM Paint
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Mon, 2006-01-02 04:03. Utility
Ron Stirling - Title Screen Logo
The successor to Flash!, the original art program. SAM Paint was much more advanced than anything before it and offered many features that the 16bit packages had.
Animated brushes, gradient fills, simple filters (outline / shadow etc), multiple screens, undo.
Review by Tim Paveley from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
Let me state this now. I like SAM Paint, and I never really liked Flash! so basically I’m going to tell you to buy SAM Paint.
So what’s so good about SAM Paint?
Lot’s of things, most of which I’ll probably miss out. For a start it is designed to be used with a mouse, (though not necessary), it has a lot nicer front end, and lots more features, which I’ll try and list.
- Gradient Fills. (Horizontal, Vertical, Angled, Radial)
- Anti-aliasing.
- Brushes / Blocks / Shapes. (All can be used to draw with)
- Various Fill Modes.
- Various Designers. (Brushes, Fills, Lines)
- Zoom Modes.
- Block / Shape Manipulation. (Rescale, Rotate, Distort, Skew, etc.)
- Smearing / Blending / Bluring.
- Brush Modifying tools. (Lock out colours from being over drawn,
mirror in axis, lock to a grid, cycle colours) - 4 Work Screens, with option to use a work screen as the pen
‘colour’, and using other screens as a reference for functions. - ‘Window’ operations. (clear, flip, scroll, blur, rotate, merge,
outline, shadow, etc.) - Bezier Curves / Curve fitting.
- Plasma Effect.
- Rectangles, Squares, Circles, Ellipses, Polygons, Parallelograms,
Triangles. - Screen Compression.
- Airbrush / Stipple Effects.
- Perspective Effect.
- Bending of Blocks / Screens / Gradient Fill.
- Squeezing of Blocks / Screens into a shape.
- Animation.
- Animated Brushes.
- Various Printing Options.
- Screen Mode Conversion.
How can you tell I quoted some of those without really knowing what they do?
Lemmings
Submitted by siostrzonek on Sat, 2005-12-31 18:23. Game
1993
Yes, that Lemmings.
A UNIQUE MINDBOGGLING GAME OF MULTIPLE SKILL LEVELS. Take command of the wackiest collection of misdirected rodents ever seen on your screen.
Review by Tim Paveley from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
I really don’t see why I should bother to explain about Lemmings, since it is available on most popular systems. Oh well here goes!
The object of Lemmings is to help guide a pack of cute but dumb lemmings across a series of different landscapes. Your basic lemming is rather dumb. It just keeps walking forwards until it either can’t go any furthur and it turns around, or it dies by ie falling into some water.
However, you are allowed to give some of these Lemmings, carefully selected skills, ie to dig through scenery, or fall great heights. Though the number of skills you may give out are strictly limited.
The aim is simply to use these skills to get a percentage of lemmings across each level to thier ‘home’. You have loads of levels, of varying difficulties, and occasionally get unusual traps and things to get past.
Lemmings is a great game, the animation is wonderfully smooth and cute, and the tunes are perfect lift muzak. So how does it compare to other versions? Well, naturally it is slightly slower than some versions. But then the Sam is slightly less powerful than an ARM 3! It is however still perfectly playable. There is quite a bit of disk access, which can get slightly tedious between levels, but it’s not that bad, and is all on one disk, so at least there is no disk swapping.
Review by Steven Pick and Lee Willis from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
Floppy Disk Formats
Submitted by Dan Dooré on Sat, 2005-12-31 10:31. FAQAs part of the ‘NVG DSKification Project’ all the disk images on NVG have been converted to a common acceptable format.
In an attempt to be consistant and to tidy up the myriad of disk formats please take the following into account when uploading.
Acceptable Formats
- DSK/MGT - Raw Disk image created by Sam Disk V2.0
- EDSK - Extended Disk format (coming soon).
- TAP - For tape-only media.
Disk images should be compressed with ZIP compression - please do not use other compression algorithms.
Legacy Formats
Please avoid using these formats and convert any images before uploading.
- SDF - Si Owen’s custom disk format.
- SAD - Aley Keprt’s Disk format.
- TD0 - Teledisk format.
- PAK - Rumsoft PAK archive, not a disk format.
- LIB/LCB - Library Archive, not a disk format.
- BAS - Tokenised BASIC file, not a disk format.
Conversion Tools
- Real SAM disk -> DSK W2K/XP Sam Disk v2.0
- SAD->DSK W9x/2K/XP Aley’s 2SAD
- SAD->DSK W9x Edwin’s Disk Manager
Sophistry
Submitted by Stefan Drissen on Sat, 2005-12-31 00:00. Game
1994
Escape from this puzzly world via the highest level. Collect or buy keys to open up passages to get higher. Various types of level with blocks that decrease in value and disappear when left, timed attempts and more.
Review by Graham Goring from the Sam Coupé Scrapbook
Sophistry is a game that leaked out from CRL in about 1986. It didn’t have much hype, and it had bland, if pleasant, graphics and wobbly sound. The game-play revolved around your character (a bouncing spinning top sort of thing. Odd) opening up a giant structure, consisting of platforms floating in space.
It started 20% open, and by collecting keys, and buying keys you could finally get a 100% open structure. Sounds easy? Well, no, it ain’t. Each board is one of many types. Such as FREEWAY, where you can bouncer till your hearts content. Others have time limits, or point limits, or many other features.
Each screen also has 3 other variables. DEC, TRACK and LOCK. If DEC is set then each time you bounce over a square it’s value is decreased, until finally it dissapears (this can be counter acted by the UPPERS, which increase every square on the board’s value by 1. You’ll need to save these for dire straights later). If TRACK is on, then jumping over a square makes it drop down flat, and you may not jump on it again until it has risen to a normal level. And the only way you get them back up is by jumping onto a target square. Which then re-appear on another part of the screen. Now, there are 3 different states for the LOCK variable, no LOCK means you may exit from the screen at any time. SCORELOCKED means you have to score a set number of points before the exits start opening up, and TIMELOCKED means you’ll have to wait around until the exits open up of there own accord.
