Happy weekend everyone! Thanks to developer Adrian Longland and Retro Gamer magazine regular Paul Drury, we are pleased to present a complete and unreleased game for the ZX Spectrum called “Cloud Hopper”, as part of an upcoming interview with Adrian in Retro Gamer issue 172, due in a few weeks time.
The game was originally intended for release in Your Sinclair magazine in the 1980s, but was unfortunately rejected due to going over memory limits set. It was a machine code game that would have been printed as a type in, and would have taken too many pages up in the magazine. Below is the original rejection letter that Adrian and Paul have kindly supplied. With some minor tweaks made recently by Adrian, you can now play the game as once intended.
Adrian provides the following instructions for the game:
The keyboard controls are O = Left, P = Right, Q = Up ( when on a lift ) and A = Down ( again, on a lift ).
M = Summon lift.The goal is to assembly the airplane by picking up the parts and assembling them in the top left corner of the screen.
To pick up a part and to drop it, you just need to walk over that part of the screen. You can only carry 1 part at a time.
It’s much like how you assemble the rocket in Jetpac.Watch out for the sea gulls, and pay attention to the clouds which show which way, and how fast the wind is blowing.
Included in the download is a screenshot that Adrian provided with the parts numbered in the order that you need to pick them up.
Be sure to check out Adrian’s interview if you haven’t already and look out for issue 172 of Retro Gamer in shops or directly from their website.
Many thanks to Paul and Adrian for the submission. Hope you all enjoy it!
