Game Review: 180 (Amstrad, MAD)

My first years of the CPC

My late mother (died 2016) was against my father buying me my original Amstrad CPC464 forty years ago, but it didn’t stop her playing on it, especially when I was at school. In 1986 or 1987 (I can’t remember exactly when), she brought 180 and played it a lot.

There isn’t really a plot to the game – you’re just taking part in a pub darts tournament, the aim being to reach the final and beat Jammy Jim.

This would be my first encounter with a game from Binary Design, although I didn’t think anything of them at the time. But looking back in my adult days, I can admire the work they did more.

On The Oche

When loading the game from tape, you are greeted with a nice colourful loading screen showing part of a dart board with “DARTS 180” written using the dart board wiring which is usually used to divide the sections of the board.

The thing that amazed me the most was that as soon as loading was finished, there was this digitised voice shouting “ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!” and the title tune would start, and eventually finish.

On the title screen, you are presented with several options – the first is ‘tune up’, the second is single player tournament, the third being two player mode, the fourth shows your ranking while the final option (well, you press one of three buttons for it) is to change the colours. This is particularly useful if you have a green screen so you can adjust it to look right, but also if you have a colour monitor and hate the hideous default setting.

Gameplay

The first option is to play ‘tune up’, otherwise known as practice. You are given 99 seconds to go around the board, starting with 20 and finishing with 1. It doesn’t matter if you hit the treble or double in this mode, as it counts as that specific number. If you hit the wrong number, there is no penalty, just have to keep going until you hit it.

However, that is easier said than done, your hand shakes as if you’ve been drinking. It takes a while to get the hang of the controls and is best to use a good joystick, not a joypad.

The second option is ‘Game On’ and you’re presented with a randomly selected computer player among Mega Mick, Beer Belly Bill, Delboy Des, Sure Shot Sidney, Limp Wrist Larry and Tactical Ted. You face one of these in a quarter final, then a different one for the semi-final, always in a best of three, where you start at 501 and have to make it to 0 before your opponent does.

The same controls apply as in the practice mode. As in real darts, you throw three darts per turn. After your turn, you get to see your opponent take their turn in a nicely animated sequence and it tells you what they’re aiming for and what they get.

As the score reaches 0, the rules of darts apply, where the finishing throw has to hit a double. For instance, if you have 84 to go, you would hit SINGLE 4, DOUBLE 20 and DOUBLE 20 or SINGLE 4, TREBLE 20 and DOUBLE 10. If you don’t hit your target, the game carries on, but if you hit a treble, double or single number that exceeds the target number of points, it will say BUST! and you will have to wait until the computer has taken it’s turn before you can continue, and hope they don’t win in the meantime. It helps that the game inlay has a table of combinations from 170 down to 2, although it doesn’t give you every possible combination. For instance, I mentioned two combinations for 84 – the inlay recommends TREBLE 20 and DOUBLE 12.

Once a player reaches 0, they are awarded a game point and we move onto the second game. It finishes if said player wins again otherwise it’s a tie-break and the third game decides the victory.

When you reach the semi-final, another character is randomly selected and you go through it all again, but at a slightly hard difficulty session. If you win this, you will go on to face Jammy Jim in the final.

Jammy Jim

Once you’ve reached Jammy Jim, the difficulty level goes up big time. In order to beat him, until you reach the final go, you will need to get treble 20’s on EVERY go as he gets them every go also. Thankfully, to win, you will need to just get the final score in the usual way.

Once you beat him, you just get told YOU WIN and go back to the menu screen.

The Feel Of The Pub

The graphics are a bit hit and miss here. You’re greeted with a picture of each opponent when they’re selected and the gameplay area shows a nice dartboard, looking authentic. To the left hand side, you get the scores, looking like they’re written in chalk. A very well designed hand is shown holding a dart – I heard one of the Pickford brothers drew their real hand and it goes through the motions. Once you hit a target on the board, the score from that shot is written down on the side as if it’s being written with chalk.

When the opponent takes his turn, we go to a sideways view showing them in the pub. We can see the bar and the drinks behind, but besides your opponent, unlike the Spectrum version, the pub is practically empty. The head of your opponent is put on the body of the same opponent, making the animations of moving their hand back and forth, then throwing.

I mentioned earlier about choosing your colours. The default colour scheme is mainly yellow and looks garish! The second and third options are a red colour scheme which is more pleasing on the eye.  However, the colour of the numbers and wire on the board are different – one has it all white while the second has it yellow.

Two Players

If you’re lucky and have someone who can play with you, you can try the two player mode. This is just a standard single round game, first to get 501 wins the game. There isn’t anything particularly special about this round, each player keeps alternating until the game is won. Despite this being a game my mother would play a lot, this mode was very rarely played as she was a very sore loser.

One Hundred And Eighty!

I mentioned speech once the game loaded. If you get 180 during the gameplay, the speech is repeated, along with what is supposed to be a digitised applause. At  the time, I though it was great, but when playing the game now, it can get a bit repetitive. Thankfully, when the opponent gets 180, the speech isn’t repeated, which is a good thing as you would be hitting the volume dial during the Jammy Jim games. All the 8-bit games have the speech, but I have to say it’s better on the CPC (and Spectrum as it uses the same sample).

The title screen has a nice tune which is also repeated when the opponent takes their turn, which seems to be timed to the music. Once a game is won, there is a nice tune to mark it. Besides this, there is no other sound apart from the impact of the dart hitting the board.

How Did I Do?

There is a rating system, beginning at the bottom at VEGETABLE and ending at the top with INCREDIBLE. You get the top one for winning the game, but the rest of the ratings depend on how well you played – it’s a nice touch.

Overall

Presentation wise, it’s not very good although the graphics are well done in the 4 colour mode. You don’t get any fancy messages or graphics for winning. I later had the opportunity to play World Darts, which was a version of this for the Atari ST and Amiga, and I have to say, I prefer the CPC game!

The fact your opponent in the quarter and semi finals are completely random is a nice touch as is the practice mode, which gives you a chance to get used to the controls.

There are a number of darts games on the CPC, including some type-in games written in BASIC, but I always come back to 180 (even though Codemasters’ Wacky Darts wins in presentation). Well worth playing. I just don’t get how Virgin Mastertronic chose the inferior Bullseye to adapt for the Magnum Light Phaser over 180 however.

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