Day 56 - e-Bay-gum - that's a Shock

Remember my plans, earlier in the piece?  Where I said I was going to sell some stuff on eBay to raise the money to buy some Adobe software for this book?  It was a good plan... until I got hit with hundreds of pounds' worth of unexpected (non-book related) expenses this month.  Now I just have to sell that stuff to stay afloat!  Bah.


Oh well, if anyone's interested in any gaming-related tat, I'll have it up on eBay by tomorrow night, having spent most of my free time day taking pictures for that purpose.  There'll even be other assorted stuff too.  Bah, again.


All is not lost, though.  I said I wouldn't need a crowdfunding website until much nearer the end date.  That remains true... I need to pull together as much content as possible before I start to format it.  But that prospect became much easier earlier in the week, with the announcement that Kickstarter will open in the UK this autumn.

I'm selling this.  Yes, really.

I know it's maligned in some quarters, but for genuine projects it's a great way to help to get them off the ground.  And if the time should ever come where I need to raise money for printing, software or trips around the country for interviews (hopefully not, for that one!), then Kickstarter is the most high-profile and successful of these websites.  Having it available for UK residents can only be a good thing for anyone working independently on a creative project, I think.


I fancied playing something a bit obscure today, so I trawled the depths of my mind for something really weird.  And what I came up with was Shockway Rider.


I remember buying this from the second-hand bookshop on the market, for four pounds.  I knew it had been pretty well reviewed, and in those days it was commonplace that I'd pop in there on a weekend and see what new games had been traded in.  Yes folks, the pre-owned games market has been thriving for more than twenty-five years.

Bradley Wiggins was starting to rue that puncture.

It was pretty much impossible to know what to expect from the game, but it turned out to be as simple as it looked.  You had to ride along moving pathways to get to your destination, but this was made difficult by gangs of muggers who would leap at you at every opportunity.  To defend yourself, you could hop off the pathway and pick up piles of bricks, which you could throw at the muggers.  A fast-moving brick can stop anything in its tracks.


It's completely mad and a lot of fun, if a bit on the repetitive side.  There's a really nice Rob Hubbard tune, too, on the C64 version.  It was published by Faster Than Light, who also released the vertically-scrolling shooter Lightforce.  Unfortunately, I've got no idea who programmed those games!  I know who was responsible for the Speccy versions, and they're already on my list of "must-haves".  But sadly, the C64 versions may be forever shrouded in anonymity...