{"id":1266,"date":"2013-12-28T15:56:24","date_gmt":"2013-12-28T14:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2015-06-28T07:07:20","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T06:07:20","slug":"christmas-games","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Games"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the family packed off an the turkey completely devoured, now’s the time to generally start getting stuck into the Christmas games. Hurrah!<\/p>\n

No no, not games set at Christmas (although there are some that were definitely worth a mention,<\/a>) this is about games received during the joyous Christmases of yesteryear. In this instance we’ll have a look at Hard Drivin on the ZX Spectrum (Christmas 1989) and E-Swat on the Master System (Christmas 1991.) So then,what connections are there between Sega’s answer to Robocop and Domark’s attempt to create an ultimate driving sim? Well, aside from both being based on incredibly awesome arcade machines, they were also games that shouldn’t really have been readily replicable on 8-bit hardware. Hard Drivin, in particular, is a technical masterpiece:<\/p>\n

\"christmas<\/a><\/p>\n

Yep, from a full-colour title screen through to the brutal crash replays, all of the Hard Drivin arcade experienced was somehow crunched down and squished into the Spectrum’s 128k memory pool: \u00a0Loop, bridge, banked curve and cracked windscreen \u00a0included.<\/p>\n

Sound a bit too good to be true? Well, it is clear that a number of sacrifices had to be made. The frame-rate chugs along at around 8fps, and drops if things get a bit busy. On top of that, The short draw distance and monochromatic blue colour scheme are also more reminiscent of a murky Welsh hillside than the sun-kissed vistas of the original. \u00a0As technical compromises go, that’s not bad mind you. It was streets ahead of the C64 version at least.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

So just how good was Hard Drivin? Actually it was terrible. Technical aspects aside, the actual game isn’t very good. The major problem, oddly enough, \u00a0seems to be be that they stayed too faithful to the arcade original.<\/p>\n

You see, The Hard Drivin’ cabinet was fitted with a chunky mechanical steering wheel and gear stick, which were spring loaded to act like the real thing. This means that the original Hard Drivin team didn’t need a software solution to make the wheel, pedals or steering wheel snap back to neutral in the way you’d expect when driving. As this code wasn’t in arcade Hard Drivin, the programmers didn’t think it belonged in the speccy either. Oops.\u00a0Consequently, this means that to stand any hope of completing a relatively gentle right turn, you have to turn had left to get the steering centred again. Oops.<\/p>\n

See a Vid with me trying to wrestle my way around the Hard Drivin’ stunt track here:[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=ybixCEAqqPg[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Eswat, meanwhile, is perhaps the quintessential Sega port. While it may have made logical sense for Sega to have given the Master System a cut-down version of the 16-Bit, the Master System version is actually a completely different game which is much more faithful to the arcade original. Hurrah!<\/p>\n

\"christmas<\/a><\/p>\n

Strongly reminiscent of the likes of Rolling Thunder and Robocop, Eswat is pretty tough. The designers may have not been able to include all the enemies \u00a0from the original arcade game, but the ones who made it attack in a relentless stream of knives and bullets. Weirdly, the game actually gets easier as you play through it: in the first two levels your character is just a regular policeman with a normal gun and about a fifth of the live provided with the fancy Eswat suit you are provided with for the rest of the game.<\/p>\n

I remember this definitely made Christmas afternoon a bit interesting that year – having been forced to repeatedly play through the first two stages, we suddenly broke through and almost completed it in one sitting. Definite flaw, that.<\/p>\n

\"christmas<\/a><\/p>\n

Mind you, despite glaring flaws, we loved and cherished both of these titles. Eswat may have been a tad uneven, but it was our first real glimpse of a console shooter and we loved it for that. Especially since it offered the kind of full-colour graphics we had so often lacked on the spectrum. Likewise, Hard Drivin’ may have been so ridiculously hard that we never had a remote chance of challenging the Phantom Photon, but it was the closest we could get to a bonafide arcade machine . Some games, it appears, are just better than the sum of their broken controller inputs and difficulty curves.<\/p>\n

To see a vid of the difficult bits of Eswat, look here:<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=foMXXdcEhQQ[\/youtube]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the family packed off an the turkey completely devoured, now’s the time to generally start getting stuck into the Christmas games. Hurrah! No no, not games set at Christmas (although there are some that were definitely worth a mention,) this is about games received Read More …<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1276,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,70],"tags":[351,158,101,28],"class_list":["post-1266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogposts","category-games","tag-games","tag-master-system","tag-retrospective","tag-zx-spectrum"],"yoast_head":"\nChristmas Games - Fatnick Industries<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hohoho! Lets look at some Christmas games of old\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\" \/>\n<link rel=\"next\" href=\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/2\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christmas Games - Fatnick Industries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Hohoho! Lets look at some Christmas games of old\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Fatnick Industries\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/FatNicK\/263103890390583\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/FatNicK\/263103890390583\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2013-12-28T14:56:24+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2015-06-28T06:07:20+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png?fit=374%2C282&ssl=1\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"374\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"282\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fatnick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@mechafatnick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@mechafatnick\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fatnick\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Fatnick\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699\"},\"headline\":\"Christmas Games\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-12-28T14:56:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-06-28T06:07:20+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\"},\"wordCount\":743,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png\",\"keywords\":[\"Games\",\"Master System\",\"Retrospective\",\"Zx Spectrum\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Blog Posts\",\"Games\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\",\"name\":\"Christmas Games - Fatnick Industries\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png\",\"datePublished\":\"2013-12-28T14:56:24+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2015-06-28T06:07:20+00:00\",\"description\":\"Hohoho! Lets look at some Christmas games of old\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png\",\"width\":374,\"height\":282},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/\",\"name\":\"Fatnick Industries\",\"description\":\"\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699\",\"name\":\"Fatnick\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/EllieAV.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/EllieAV.jpg\",\"width\":1000,\"height\":1000,\"caption\":\"Fatnick\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\"},\"sameAs\":[\"http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk\",\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/FatNicK\/263103890390583\",\"https:\/\/x.com\/mechafatnick\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/author\/fatnickadmin\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Christmas Games - Fatnick Industries","description":"Hohoho! Lets look at some Christmas games of old","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/","next":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/2\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Christmas Games - Fatnick Industries","og_description":"Hohoho! Lets look at some Christmas games of old","og_url":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/","og_site_name":"Fatnick Industries","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/FatNicK\/263103890390583","article_author":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/FatNicK\/263103890390583","article_published_time":"2013-12-28T14:56:24+00:00","article_modified_time":"2015-06-28T06:07:20+00:00","og_image":[{"width":374,"height":282,"url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png?fit=374%2C282&ssl=1","type":"image\/png"}],"author":"Fatnick","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@mechafatnick","twitter_site":"@mechafatnick","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fatnick","Estimated reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/"},"author":{"name":"Fatnick","@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699"},"headline":"Christmas Games","datePublished":"2013-12-28T14:56:24+00:00","dateModified":"2015-06-28T06:07:20+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/"},"wordCount":743,"commentCount":0,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png","keywords":["Games","Master System","Retrospective","Zx Spectrum"],"articleSection":["Blog Posts","Games"],"inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"CommentAction","name":"Comment","target":["https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#respond"]}]},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/","url":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/","name":"Christmas Games - Fatnick Industries","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png","datePublished":"2013-12-28T14:56:24+00:00","dateModified":"2015-06-28T06:07:20+00:00","description":"Hohoho! Lets look at some Christmas games of old","inLanguage":"en-GB","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/2013\/12\/28\/christmas-games\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png","contentUrl":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/Screen-Shot-2013-12-28-at-14.25.06.png","width":374,"height":282},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/","name":"Fatnick Industries","description":"","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-GB"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/45a5a0fee371fb96d50b141efcf4f699","name":"Fatnick","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-GB","@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/EllieAV.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/12\/EllieAV.jpg","width":1000,"height":1000,"caption":"Fatnick"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/"},"sameAs":["http:\/\/mechafatnick.co.uk","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/pages\/FatNicK\/263103890390583","https:\/\/x.com\/mechafatnick"],"url":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/author\/fatnickadmin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1276"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fatnickindustries.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}