When I first heard about Review A Bad Game Day I just knew I had to write a review, but a review of what exactly? I have played so many bad games in my 42 years of life that I barely knew where to begin. The platform was obvious. I have an extensive Sinclair collection, my first ever home micro was produced by the bespectacled genius (ZX81) and I love playing ZX81, Spectrum and QL games to this day so I knew it had to be for a Sinclair computer. The choice of which one was easy, with around 6000 software titles in my collection to choose from I just had to pick the Spectrum.
Choosing which bad title was the hardest bit. There are just so many. So I thought long and hard and tried to recall my most disappointing first-play of a game. A few sprang to mind but one in particular. A £1.99 title by Scorpio Software called Decor Wreckers.
Now, this game was £1.99 back in 1984, when most good Spectrum titles retailed from between £5.00 and £8.00. The warning signs were there. I ignored the fact it was cheap and bought it anyway, my pocket money didn’t run to much so I had to be frugal. Oh how I regretted spending that money and not saving for something better…
So with my copy of Decor Wreckers, a ZX Spectrum +2 and a 1 lb lump-hammer (just in case), I set to work.
Playing the game
In Decor Wreckers you control a paint roller. The screen is blue and the aim is to paint the screen yellow. So using the keyboard or a Kempston Joystick you go up, down, left and right. Big, blocky blue graphics replacing big blocky yellow graphics. Once all is yellow you return to the green square to move on to another blue screen. To make things a little more difficult a timer is running and barely recognisable creepy crawlies (Sid Spider, Freddie Fly, Bertie Bug and Sammy Snail) appear randomly and try and spoil your efforts of getting a yellow screen by turning areas blue again or sitting there on your yellow ‘paint’. Thats it. Over and over and over again you do the same thing, move around the screen turning blue to yellow with some of the worst low-res graphics I have seen on the ZX Spectrum. Aaarrgh. Where’s that f***ing lump-hammer*?
In summary
It is easy to pick an early Spectrum game up today and laugh at its graphics and poor sound but I’m not looking at this game through 2012 glasses. This game was bad even for a cheap game in 1984. When you consider what else people were producing at the time and that games like JetPac had been released the previous year, it beggars belief that the author anyone could have thought this was even fit for release. Some games make you want to cry, give up on society and join a suicide cult. This is one of them. There are links below to the WOS page and .TAP / .TZX files for this game. I beg you not to download.
Review Video Hammer Test
Links
Decor Wreckers on World of Spectrum
See more (can they possibly be worse?) entries at ReviewABadGameDay.com
Health & Safety
* Software was harmed during the making of this review.
Remember kids – I smash games so you don’t have to. Don’t try this at home.
UPDATE: Since this was posted, Mr. Reed the author has been in contact with me and a jolly nice fellow he is too. He recognised that this article was just for a laugh and has obviously got a great sense of humour. So do I feel really bad about doing this now? No, actually I f**king don’t.
Nice to see someone else chose a ZX Spectrum game for Review a Bad Game Day, a fine choice 🙂
From the description it sounds a bit like Harvey Headbanger, minus the fun! Think I’ll give it a miss!
There was no other choice for me really. Had to be the Speccy. Your Great Space Race review is fantastic, a game I do actually own and I can vouch for how terrible it really is. At least the GSR had *some* gameplay, something this particular POS lacks completely!
Cheers, Ant
Hello,
I was the original author of this game which I wrote when I was 15 years old.
The game was actually written and originally released in 1982 at a price of £6.95, when only a small number of games were available for the Spectrum
It was based on the Dragon 32 top selling game of the era ‘Painter’.
It was later re-released as part of the budget range 2 years later by Scorpio Software.
If you thought that was bad though you should have seen my other three games!
Still the money I made from them paid for my first house a few years later.
Thanks again for the trip down memory lane!
So you are the one responsible for the nervous twitch that I get to this day every time I go to buy new games?
Joking aside, thanks for the reply and for being such a good sport! I had not got any information on its previous release, I think the WOS database needs an update in that respect!
I will try out Codebook Caper, Ruby Runabout and Star Searcher when I get chance, perhaps one will make next years Review A Bad Game Day article (only joking!) 😀
All the best, Ant
I still vividly remember sitting in front of the tv as a kid and playing this. Dont think I ever managed to paint one screen – it drove me mad XD
couldnt remember it was called ‘Decor Wreckers’, though, so thanks for the info 🙂
Attic Attac, JetPsc (as you said) and Psst! were my go to games