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Farmer Jack
and the Hedge Monkeys!
(2008)
Story
Never one to turn
down the offer of
a holiday, Jack made his way down the M1, M42, and M5 to visit his
cousin Farmer Jon in deepest Somerset. The journey took a
while, but
everybody seemed friendly - all the cars sounded their horns and waved
their arms at him as they overtook his tractor. Jack was
happy to be
off the motorway in the end, and along the scenic, familiar winding
lanes through the badlands before he got to Jon's farm.
Farmer Jon wasn't
in such a good mood when Jack finally arrived
though. "Them buggers", he cried, "every June they come
roaming round
me fields, looking for a festival. Eavis' farm's not another
20 miles
away from 'ere in Pilton, but they're all too stoned to notice,
pillocks! Ravers, Hippies and Hedge-Monkeys, same time every
year.
Just as I sow my crops they come trampling around, treading in the
seeds and ruining it all - 'elp me Jack". "Eee, that's
trouble at'mill
and no mistake", mused Jack, "but m'tractors pretty nippy - I'll belt
round and get them seeds up for you" offered Jack. Jon gladly accepted,
tired-out by chasing the hippies, monkeys and ravers across the levels
all day. "I've no cows on them fields no more after that
blue-tongue
trouble, so you can move the gates all you need - that'll really
confuse 'em! Thanks Jack". "No trouble", said Jack,
"I'll start in
morning".
"Proper Job!"
said Jon, smiling at last."
Reviews
MicroMart -
"...Lee du-Caine's superb AY beeps and tones for
128K variants ... everything is slickly executed, colourful and cute."
- 8/10
RGCD
- "Hedge Monkeys is an excellent version of Lady Bug - a game that did
not see an official conversion to the Spectrum. ...This is a really
phenomenal version of the game with all the
addictiveness (and difficulty) of the game that inspired it. Playing
this game has even improved my skills on the arcade original. Now
there's a testimonial for the box art!" - 85% (combined with Treasure
Trove)
Notes
After writing
Stranded 2.5, which with its 48 levels took a while to
complete, I needed to do something quick & fun to get back into
the
swing of things again, and so Farmer Jack returned with
another
conversion of an 80's arcade game missing from the Spectrum - this time
with "Ladybug" - written as a thank you to Simon who runs Cronosoft and
has always wanted a Spectrum version of it.
Using the first
Farmer Jack game as a base for the code I also tried to
address some of the criticisms of the first and so locked the game to a
constant frame-rate and improved the controls, but this time did a
pretty straight conversion of the arcade - albeit with Jack &
Hedge
Monkeys instead of the insect theme of the original.
("Hedge Monkeys",
as the internet will tell you if you ask it, is a
west-country term for hippies as they tend to look as if they live in
hedges. Living in Somerset as a child the game's story is
loosely based
on the annual invasion of them for the Glastonbury festival, when you
could still jump the fence and it wasn't in the least bit trendy!) |
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