THE COMMONS
(very early demo)
by A.R.G. of the Pilsbry Corporation
The Commons is the first and only (as far as I know) 16 bit Virtua Fighter
style 3D beat 'em up. At least, it was going to be. As it was, my ST died,
and anyway, I couldn't really be arsed. Anyway, three or so years after it
was written, here's the demo. It runs okay under PacifiST, although the
music doesn't seem to work for some reason. It runs very nicely in MAX SPEED
mode :^)
In ST SPEED mode it is a little bit slow to say the least. Well, what do you
expect - it's written using STOS 3D... I think everyone should be proud that
the ST could run this game using an interpreted language, and it was still
almost playable...
The controls:
The right hand player ('Tony') is controlled using the joystick. The only
controls implemented are up (jump), left and right.
The left hand player ('John') is controlled by a few of the keys on the left
hand side of the keyboard. I'm not sure which keys they are, and they're
very unresponsive, so they're not much fun to use.
The only thing you can do is jump around and move from left to right. However,
you can also see what it looks like when you eliminate your opponent by
pressing 'P'. When you press this key, it will be as if 'Tony' had defeated
'John', and you can watch as Tony's leg suddenly moves into a kicking position,
and John is catapulted into the distance.
(If you press SPACE, the effect will be reversed, i.e. John will kill Tony.)
The game lasts for 3 rounds before returning to GEM.
So, the vital question: If I had actually finished it, would it have been as
good as Virtua Fighter?
Erm... no. Of course not. Let's face it, the frame rate is a bit too slow.
And there would probably only have been one or two different attacks. I only
wrote it as a graphical showcase for the ST - to show that this kind of game
was possible on a 16 bit machine. I was very pleased with the results. If
someone had made their own version of the game using the No Second Prize
engine, I have no doubt that all the people who had long since turned their
backs on the ST would have been surprised, and maybe even a bit impressed...
Anyway, I hope you have a bit of fun with this demo. There's not exactly much
to it in terms of gameplay - or to be more accurate, there's not ANYTHING in
terms of gameplay - so just sit back and watch as the camera follows the
action in a way seen in few ST games...
By the way, if you hadn't already guessed, John and Tony are John Major and
Tony Blair (that's why it's called 'The Commons'). Non-British people might
not understand all this (it's to do with British politics, okay?).
(C)Crapright Andrew R. Gillett 1995 - 1997