Games that boasted about being written in machine code in the manual

[cwpab]

In 35 years of gaming, I had never seen a game boasting about being written in machine code in the manual... until yesterday, when I discovered that none other than Grand Prix Driver, one of the worst CPC games, says that it's written in "high speed machine code":



And now this seems to be a trend because coincidentally, a few hours ago I realized a much better game, Babaliba for the ZX Spectrum, says that it's written in "100% Código Máquina" ("100% Machine Code"):



I suspect using this for marketing purposes was not very useful, as I assume most kids playing this didn't even know what machine code was, but it's an interesting and peculiar idea.

(I just read the lines behind the machine code on the Babaliba manual and it looks like they didn't stop there, as they added "high resolution graphics", "130 screens" using "screen" in English, pretty rare in Spanish, and finally added "300 bauds accessible per program". So it's clear they were trying to make sound cool pretty normal programming and technical stuff, as the same company did later with "FX Doble Carga" or "FX Double Load" to simply describe games that loaded each part separatedly)

Do you know any other games that boasted about this?

[Gryzor]

I'm pretty sure I've seen machine code being being referenced in lots of game blurbs, or is it my idea?

[The Electric Monk]

I'm pretty sure I've seen machine code being being referenced in lots of game blurbs, or is it my idea?

I seem to remember the practice from a lot of games that weren't sold by major houses but by small publishers or private individuals who advertised their games via small ads in games magazines. I think it was usually meant to signify "this program runs a lot faster than the listings you type in from these pages".

[andycadley]

In the early days of the 8-bits, when a lot of "off the shelf" software was badly written BASIC code you would see the phrase "100% Machine Code" quite commonly. It was partly a boast that you wouldn't have the clunkiest, slow software imaginable, but also a strong suggestion it was written by "professionals" as BASIC quickly became known as something amateurs could dabble with and produce something just about usable.

Of course as time went on it became the defacto standard and boasting about it just made you look amateurish, so everyone stopped doing it.

[cwpab]

Interesting! So this was common. I find it quite funny, I wonder what kids thought when they read that?

[eto]

I wonder what kids thought when they read that?

Andycadley perfectly explained what I thought, when I read it as a kid:

it was written by "professionals" as BASIC quickly became known as something amateurs could dabble with and produce something just about usable.

Of course as time went on it became the defacto standard and boasting about it just made you look amateurish,

[dthrone]

So are there some examples of commercially released games that were written in 100% BASIC?

[genesis8]

Football Manager 1 the great classic is pure basic.

[Otto]

So are there some examples of commercially released games that were written in 100% BASIC?

Ocean's cool graphical text-adventure The Neverending Story (1985) is written in BASIC. If the music player during the title is BASIC, too, I don't know.

A year later Ocean published another graphical text-adventure with the same BASIC engine¹ : Hunchback the Adventure (1986).

Both adventures were programmed by Ocean's Ian Weatherburn (deceased unfortunately) with graphics by Simon Butler and music by Fred Gray.

(¹) Today any software needs to have an "engine", isn't it? And even if it's just some copy-pasted lines of BASIC. :-)

[The Electric Monk]

So are there some examples of commercially released games that were written in 100% BASIC?

Not 100%, but quite a lot of Sid Meier's Pirates! is actually written in BASIC.

[dodogildo]

BTW, we already have a very recent topic on games written in Basic: https://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/games/best-basic-game/

[eto]

So are there some examples of commercially released games that were written in 100% BASIC?

The Wild Bunch

[cwpab]

Just found this (cover art by Roberta Williams!):