The album « The Bop Won’t Stop » by Shakin’ Stevens contains a game in its cassette version. It’s called The Shaky Game, as indicated on the cover.
Instead of repeating all the previous articles each time, I’ll refer you to the dedicated page, which explains what I do with vinyl records and lists all the pages containing programs, explanations, etc.
There’s an interesting point to address regarding this game. If you search online, you’ll come across pages stating that the title is found on the cassette of The Bop Won’t Stop (which is true), but also often on others indicating that the game is also on the vinyl This Ole House, on the B-side of the single. However, this is false (at least from what I’ve seen). Firstly, I haven’t seen any evidence of the presence of this game on the vinyl. This isn’t absolute proof, but for practically everything I’ve presented, I had found images before. Secondly, the single in question dates from 1981, whereas the ZX Spectrum was released in 1982, and the album containing the game dates from 1983. So from what I could verify, it only exists on cassette and not on vinyl. I also checked if it was released on the album The Ole House, but it dates from 1980 (so even earlier), and the few later reissues don’t indicate the presence of the game.
The cover and its band
The « manual »
There’s a brief intro before the data
A game ad (from here)
Otherwise, the vinyl version of the album The Bop Won’t Stop does indicate the presence of the game… on the cassette version.
The vinyl cover indicates the game exists
And the game, then? Well, I had a bit of trouble retrieving the data, even using the usually effective scripts on cassettes. Here, I had about a dozen tries and four different recordings before getting a file without errors. The game itself is awful. Truly. It’s some sort of dumb maze where you have to avoid vehicles by changing lanes at the right moment to reach the center. It took me a while to grasp the first thing: you really have to keep the key pressed to move from one lane to another, not just press the key quickly. And – most importantly – it’s horribly repetitive: the enemies move in a predefined way. You won’t train your reflexes or try to improve by finding the best technique, just try to remember the pattern and the order of movements. And so, there are no clues: it’s pure die and retry. Moreover, the sound is (really) annoying, you’ll see it in the video.
The instructions
Difficulty 1 is… tense
The game
You lost
