Game Review: Ball Crazy (ZX Spectrum, Mastertronic)

Bouncing Along

You play as Erik, who is a bouncing ball.  His mission is to change the colour of the blocks beneath him to the same colour as the one shown near the middle of the screen, a little bit higher up.

There are five blocks (platforms) to bounce across the screen.  When Erik bounces, on them they change colour (this is in the same order as the ink colours on the top row of the Spectrum keyboard – dark blue to white).  There are, however, two exceptions to that rule.  The first is if you decided to stay down to stop when you land, then block colour won’t change.  The other is if you collide with a chaser, before landing, the colour doesn’t change either.

Each time you get the five coloured blocks completed, they move one row higher up the screen.  This makes it a bit of a harder challenge as you have less space to bounce around.  More precise timing is required here.  Once you have done this four times, you move on the next of the eight levels with a different pattern and coloured background.

Oi, Hop It!

So that all sounds too simple.  So, to make Erik’s mission more difficult, Chasers appear from a funnel which is a little bit higher up the screen.  Before they make an appearance, the number 3 starts to countdown.  Once counted down, a chaser appears and starts moving diagonally across the screen.  Each time a chaser either hits a block or side of the screen, they bounce in the opposite direction.  Timing a jump is the key to the game as collision with a chaser means that you lose a life when you land back down again.

Bonus Objects

You begin the game with 10 lives but collecting an air tank will give you an extra life. Also, to aid you on your mission, useful objects descend vertically from the top of the screen.  You can collect these by jumping across to them or if you are fortunate enough, they can come down above where you are at times.  This is random so no game every plays the same.

You can gain more points by collecting £5 notes or bullets (which can be fired upwards by Erik), a satellite which acts as a hard hat giving you immunity for a few seconds (very handy) and a Tick which changes all the five blocks to the correct colour (extremely useful too!)

One thing I did notice in the inlay instruction is that it mentions bonus objects are orange and silver.  Perhaps this maybe the case on for the Amstrad version but on the Spectrum, they are black (obviously to avoid any colour clash).

Playability

The controls respond exactly as they should do, and the collision detection is accurate in many cases.  If you lose a life, then it’s usually down to the player making either a mistimed bounce or staying still in the wrong place.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not perfect collision detection but more than acceptable, say 90% of the time.  So, no throwing the joystick (or computer) against the wall in anger here because of some dodgy programming.  It’s more a case of kicking yourself for making a mistake!  As this all works very well, it adds to the addictiveness of playing Ball Crazy because it’s fun and not frustrating for the wrong reasons.

Pressing left or right bounces across the screen.  If, however, you do try and bounce of the screen, Erik will just bounce vertically up and down).  Bouncing vertically is the least risky and quickest way to change the colour of the boxes.

When you have five blocks the same, the Chasers vanish, clearing the screen of them.  Some thought has gone into that as otherwise you’d really be up a creak without a paddle if that didn’t happen!

Firing bullets is a slightly awkward as they only fire directly upwards.  You cannot fire sideways when jumping left of right which would have been a nice to have in the game.  So once again timing and position here is key to success.  A little tip I found was staying underneath the funnel before the enemies appeared as the always move diagonally so being underneath, meant being safe for a short while.

The one very slight criticism that I would have is when there is a lot moving on the screen, the game does slightly lag in pace.  It’s not a showstopper by any sense of the imagination but perhaps, shorter trampoline beeping noises may have helped this issue by freeing up the Z80 processor.

Graphics and Loading Screen

Throughout the game, there are some nicely animated graphics.  Erik has a big smile on his face as he jumps left and right but the most amusing animation though must be when you lose a life  and get deflated.  Erik turns into a flattened ball with PS S above his head.  Yes, the gap there is intentional “PS S”.

The Chasers are rotating 3D objects such as cubes, four-way diagonal arrows, connected smaller balls and other objects.

The loading screen is outstanding in my view with an excellently drawn Erik and blocks.  The use of colour and detail is great to see and you can just tell the quality is of high standard.  As mentioned in the Authors section above, Darren Mott has done a superb job here on the loading screen art.

Sound Effects, But No Sound of Music

Whilst playing the game, you’ll hear short beeps (in the style of bouncing on a trampoline) as you bounce around.  In fact, it sounds like someone being cold and “Brrrrr!” being heard repeatedly.

Collision with one a Chaser, collecting goodies and firing bullets all make very short beeping sound effects too.

Unfortunately, there is no music to be heard at any time, which is a pity as this is about the only notable thing that the Ball Crazy lacks.

Interesting To Note

On the text screens before beginning to play the game, it mentions how the graphics were created quickly from the Amstrad version and that they had many issues with Spectrums and crashes making the game.

On the back of the Spectrum inlay cassette, the screenshots are from the Amstrad version.

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