Lap of the Gods © Clive Brooker 1986
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Publisher:- Mastertronic Year of publication:- 1986 Original Computer:- 48K Sinclair Spectrum Sales:- 10,000 Design & programming:- Clive Brooker Other formats:- None Background During my days of designing and writing games for the ZX Spectrum, I was working full time for Leay Ltd, a commercial aluminium window fabricator and installer. My role had been Company Secretary then Director, always with a close responsibility for purchasing and production, (hence the Autolaunch cutting optimiser software, which is also part of this website. Indeed, the first version was for the Spectrum, before upgraded it for PC's). The games I designed and wrote, were purely a hobby and usually took up to a year to complete. When I demonstrated this game to Mastertronic, they felt it was too similar to my previous game and declined to publish it. While I was pursing other publishers, Mastertronic had a change of heart and offered me a contract as they needed more Spectrum titles. However, they did not want to convert it to other popular formats. Sadly, the game did not sell very well, I felt that the the screenshots on the sleeve, were not chosen well and one was even duplicated. Also, I thought the sleeve was a little, uninteresting. All a bit of a shame really as the game is quite fun and in my opinion, better than One Man And His Droid. This was the last game of mine that Mastertronic published. Notwithstanding this, Mastertronic was a very professional and honest outfit, that always paid their programmers. A good bunch of trustworthy people to work with. Scenario At the dawn of time the 8 Gods of Zzarn ruled the universe... You are trapped in a comet's time vortex and only the Gods can return you to the future, if you deliver to them the buried Crystals of Zzarn-- this is your task; your future is in your own hands. The Crystals of Zzarn are buried in 16 vast chambers, each of which contains 3 effigies. Three of the effigies must be delivered to the Gods Receptor Pods who will then grant special tools and abilities to reach the crystals. - but beware - the devil incarnations constantly sapping your energy levels and will steal an effigy from you after touching you three times. You dare not risk the God's displeasure by sacrilegiously losing an effigy - if you do lose three effigies within a life so they will remove one of your powers. Enter the Receptor Pod Deposit the effigy Seek the Crystal HINTS Pressing fire whilst playing gives menu options. Look at the menu options after you have collected 3 effigies to see what extra powers you have been given. These are necessary to collect the crystals and the screen direction arrows turn white - assistance from the Gods to find the buried crystals. For example you will need Yellow Slab Acid to eat through the floor to get to the crystal in the first chamber. Teleport routes show the name of the chamber that a particular effigy will take you to, also shown is a crystal if it hasn't already been collected The only way to drop an effigy is to either teleport, deposit it in the tiled Gods Receptor Pod or get hit three times and have it stolen from you. The Gods do not make your life an easy one. They do not allow entry to their Receptor Pods unless you are holding an effigy - once deposited, it's strictly one way traffic. Gameplay First, investigate the maze to learn where the green chamber chutes are, as well as the three effigies. Fly your trusty droid, looking for effigys to land on. (Whilst you are holding one, you can choose to teleport to the level that it is locked to.) The objrct of the game is to drop through the green chutes landing on the chamber floor before you get hit three time by the guardians. (Three times then, they snatch it, but graciously reset all three of them.) Collecting all three of them awards you a special power to weild in the maze. Each maze awards its own power and the direction arrows become emergised to help to find the hidden cystals, not to mention the critical extra energy to continue your quest. The first Important one is, yellow slab acid, that lets you (you must turn it on) recover the cystal. See Seek the Crystal above. Beware though, lose three effigies and the gods will snatch one of your hard fought for powers!!!!! There is a brilliant YouTube video of someone completeing the game, that I will put a link to at some point. Collect all the cystals (one from each level) then you have completed the game. Keyboard Controls By default, Lap of the Gods tests to see if a Kempston joystick is attached. If it is then whatever keys your emulator uses for a Kempston joystick are the ones to use. However, if the emulator does not recognise a Kempston joystick, then both of the two following strategies are adopted. Sinclair joystick emulation:- using the keys 6 - 0 Keyboard controls if a Kempston joystick is not detected LEFT X,V,N RIGHT C,B,M UP Q,W,E,R,T,Y,U,I,O,P DOWN A,S,D,F,G,H,J,K,L FIRE 1,2,3,4,5 If the Keys are not working, this is because the Emulator has inadvertently met the test my program makes for a Kempston Joystick connected. When I designed my games I wrote a single input routine that runs a test to see if a Kempston Joystick is connected and if that it true, then it disregards the keyboard. In this case, you need to select a Kempston joystick in your Emulators settings, so it can actually use the joystick. Hints Tips & Cheats Lap of the Gods features an in built cheat mode that turns on all the special powers. Start playing a game, insert just one effigy, then choose quit game. For your high score name reply with CHEAT which enables one further game menu item. CHEAT MODE! The CHEAT MODE menu item acts as a toggle to turn everything on then everything off, ad infinitum. Pokes kindly reproduced from Hackers Anonymous Description Poke Infinite Lives 54421,0 References kindly reproduced from The World of Spectrum Magazine Issue Type Crash 10.86 page 124 Edition 33 Review Sinclair User 10.86 page 55 Review Your Sinclair 10.86 page 78 Review ZX Computing 10.86 page 40 Review Crash 11.86 page 85 Tip Crash 11.86 page 88 Hack Sinclair User 12.86 page 50 Tips and Hack Your Sinclair 12.86 page 26 Tips Your Sinclair 1.87 page 92 Hack No elements of this web site may be reproduced without the prior consent of the author. © Clive Brooker 2001-2012, 2020