Remember games that relied on ASCII? You’ll look at them in a whole new way after playing LumASCII on Spectrum Next.
Programming games from books back in the 1980s usually meant games relying on ASCII characters, rather than sprites. The recently resurfaced LumASCII is a wonderful callback to those days, and while not a brand new game it is worth checking out.
LumASCII features the character ChiChi Skyrocket and is by a guy called Bob. You can find LumASCII at Bob’s Itch.io page.
Join Chi-Chi Skyrocket on her quest to keep the multiverse safe from invaders, taking the fight to the stars, underwater, and inside the machine.
Bob writes how he’d never written a side-scrolling shooter, and believes this is the only “one for the Spectrum which only uses ASCII characters throughout instead of pixel-based high-res graphics.” Taking nine months to code – those ASCII characters had to be programmed in – Bob considers the game akin to “a launch title from a mythical ZX82 machine which kept the character display of the ZX81 but added colour and sound to it.”
Available for ZX Spectrum and Spectrum Next, head to the LumASCII Itch.io page to learn more and get your copy.
Gaming since 1984, retro gaming since 2004. Contributes to Linux Format magazine, TechRadar.com, and other publications.
