War is not healthy for fancy chickens and other living things.
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I’m not sure that anyone has ever really wished for a text-based racing game, but all the same, that’s what we’ve been given. Frankly, nothing can excuse this fetid little pile of frass. Nothing perhaps, other than pathological misanthropy on the part of the authors. They really must hate all humanity, since this game really has nothing going for it, nor is there any tenable reason to subject others to this flavor of torture, which is reminiscent of nothing so much as a warm loogie drifting through the inner reaches of the ear canal.
When you first start a new game, the screen is black. You can’t even see your bullet-representing-race-car. Instead you must figure out that the down arrow, and only the down arrow begins the race. Of course, I use the word “race” in a rather loose sense, as there’s no possibility for more than one car on this ASCII-faux-track. Furthering the crap-factor even more, this particular race car accelerates and decelerates in 25 MPH increments. By designing my own straight track, I was able to get my car to go 850 MPH. Insanely great, Danicsoft, insanely great! Big ups to you!
The last time I’ve seen software this nauseatingly bad, it was running on a Timex-Sinclair 1000. What makes this particularly agonizing is that I’ve even used better textual racing games on the Apple IIe. Textual racing games that simulated a 3D effect, and perhaps tried to vary the landscape a bit more than pure asterisks. If one more bearded codger tries to foist this variety of bullshit ASCII art crap on me, I’m going to throw a jar of lingonberries at their head.
Danicsoft, for rehashing the very worst of old software in an unimaginative way, and taking two megabytes to do so, I supply you, free-of-charge, with a shiny new 9.7!
Posted by ladd at February 26, 2003 07:28 PM | TrackBackyo this is like those calculator games from high school, sweeeeeeet
Posted by: tom on February 26, 2003 08:09 PM2 MB?!? Does RealBasic export to ascii apps now?
Posted by: jim on February 26, 2003 08:33 PMI think someone forgot to run 'strip' before releasing...
Posted by: Feanor on February 26, 2003 09:45 PMSomebody should write a review of Rb 5 itself?
Posted by: on February 26, 2003 09:46 PMYea, REALly BASIC is a steeming piece of crap, since it even allowed such a "pile o' smeg" to be compiled in the first placed.
"DOWN WITH REAL BASIC"
Posted by: TEG on February 26, 2003 10:17 PMWait a second... Danicsoft... I recognize that. One of my friends owns that. I shall go and make fun of him
Posted by: Feanor on February 26, 2003 11:01 PM2 megs? I guess THIS is why we need more than 640K.
Posted by: Gill Bates on February 27, 2003 01:52 AMNow this takes me back.
This is a re-creation of "Formula" for the TRS-80. Somehow Tandy managed to write this in about 4K of Z-80 machine code instead of 2Meg.
Boy! The OSX Version displays only in a window, no full screen, and no, there is nothing happening! Nothing, just a black screen telling me that I am going fast, until *BOOM* ( Even worse - people, do not start the OS9 version in classic unless you like fancy display errors.
Posted by: Newton MP2100 on February 27, 2003 03:35 AMCan anyone verify if this guys site really is "Powered by Mac OS X Server"
I somehow doubt it?
Posted by: on February 27, 2003 09:19 AMYep, he is:
http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?mode_u=off&mode_w=on&site=http%3A%2F%2Fdanicsoft.com%2F&submit=Examine
Posted by: chad on February 27, 2003 11:20 AMhey, that's pretty cool. I'm surprised. At *least* he's got that going... ;-)
Posted by: on February 27, 2003 12:09 PMHeh, I made a straight course like the reviewer.....car handles pretty well at 2000 mph...=)
Posted by: Zeal on February 27, 2003 12:58 PMwhoa! just change teh background color to see whats happening and the down arrow isnt the only thing that starts the race
Posted by: localhost on February 27, 2003 02:28 PM> If one more bearded codger tries to foist this
> variety of bullshit ASCII art crap on me,
Ahahahahahahahahhaha! That is priceless. "Bearded codger" -cackle-
Posted by: Dan Warne on February 27, 2003 04:13 PMSheesh... a little harsh. I found the game rather amusing, in a difficult sort of way. :) Fun to play around with for an hour if you're bored, at least.
...Take a look at his other software though... Copernicus is amazing!
Posted by: Andy Van Ness on February 27, 2003 08:43 PMThe webpage is broken. Here's the direct download link:
http://danicsoft.com/files/osx/ApexOSX.sit
I am amazed at the diction used on this website. Do you use those words in casual conversation, or do you have too many vocabulary enhancing as-seen-on-tv board games?
Shouldn't "a jar of lingonberries at their head" be "his head" since you are referring to one person?
Posted by: reader on March 5, 2003 07:25 PMWe really do talk like this, although obviously the written form gives one compositional opportunities that might not be available in conversation.
In the case of "their," it's a sloppy gender neutral possessive, since English does not have an appropriate singular term. I was trying to include codgers who happen to be bearded ladies in the equation.
See the usage note at:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=they
(you'll have to scroll down a bit)
While 82% of bearded codgers on the usage panel would disagree with my sentence, W.M. Thackeray is on my side. And a little Thackeray is all you need. OK, perhaps a little Thackeray, and a fast Internet connection. And some butter.
Posted by: Ladd on March 6, 2003 10:11 AM