Crime Time
| Crime Time | |
|---|---|
| Studio | Byteriders |
| Publisher | Starbyte |
| Senior Developer | Sebastian Broghammer, Steve Kups |
| composer | Stefan Hartwig |
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
1990 |
| platform | Atari ST , Commodore 64 , Commodore Amiga , MS-DOS |
| genre | Adventure |
| medium | diskette |
| language | German English |
Crime Time is a computer game from the independent German game developer Byteriders . The humorous crime adventure was published in 1990 by the Bochum publisher Starbyte for the home computers Commodore 64 , Commodore Amiga and Atari ST, as well as for PCs with the MS-DOS operating system .
action
The nameless player hitchhikes through Europe with his friend Rainer. In Switzerland, the two are surprised by a storm and settle in a nearby hotel. The player gets drunk at the hotel bar in the evening and then ends up in the wrong hotel room, which he breaks into because the key doesn't fit and Rainer doesn't respond to his knock. In the dark room he is knocked down by an unknown person. When he wakes up there is a male corpse in the room; the man had been shot. The other hotel guests consider the player to be the perpetrator. The aim of the game is to prove your innocence before the storm subsides and the police can reach the hotel. After extensive investigative work, the player finds out that he was a pawn in an argument between two warring intelligence services over a stolen formula.
Game principle and technology
Crime Time is a hybrid of a text adventure and a graphic adventure . The user interface is graphical and it is controlled completely via mouse or joystick (depending on the system) , but input and output of the game are largely text-based. Control is via lists of commands and available objects from which the player can choose. The commands available are eight directions symbolized by a compass rose and the following verbs:
| Examine | Use | Press | take |
| Open | Talk to | Close | Show |
In addition to the list with the eight verbs, there are two smaller lists with objects with which the player can interact: One list for objects that are in the immediate vicinity of the game and one for objects that the player carries with him. With the help of the input device (mouse or joystick), the player can combine a verb and at least one object into one command (e.g. "Open kitchen door" or "Use coins with a jukebox"), whereupon the program examines whether and, if so, how the command affects the game. The result is displayed in text form on the screen. At least 152 such command combinations are required to solve the game. The upper half of the screen is reserved for a static, hand-drawn image of the respective game environment and the text output. The player cannot interact with the image of the game environment, which distinguishes Crime Time from a classic graphic adventure.
Production notes
The Byteriders studio, which primarily consisted of Sebastian "Basti" Broghammer and Steve "König" Kups, created a total of six adventure games. Of these, Crime Time is the first that was completely controllable by joystick. It's also the only one that came out through a regular publisher - the other games were published through print publishers as well as a non-profit organization. The lyrics of Crime Time were written entirely by Steve Kups, both for the German and for the English version. In later years, Kups worked as a translator for comics for Panini- Verlag and DC Comics and died in 2015 at the age of 45. Co-author Broghammer, responsible for the technical background at Crime Time , is now the head of software development for a CRM software company. The music for the game comes from Stefan Hartwig, who began his music career in the C64 demo scene and whose most famous work was the background music on the loading screen of the C64 version of Turrican .
Crime Time was first released in Germany at the end of 1990 for the C64 and Atari ST. Versions for Amiga and MS-DOS were created by external programmers and graphic artists who were hired by Starbyte. The version translated into English by Kups was published the following year. The game contains a password query as copy protection : At one point at the beginning of the game, it asks for a word from the printed instructions for the game, specifying the page and paragraph. Owners of a pirated copy, in which this query was not removed, could not continue the game at this point due to a lack of instructions.
reception
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The Amiga Joker emphasized the unusual perspectives of the game - many of the stand graphics are drawn from a perspective from above, which the magazine considered to be appropriate to the physical condition of the protagonist. Reviewer Carsten Borgmeier rated the game's humor as "pretty tough stuff" and criticized the graphics as "pretty bleak affair". All in all , the Amiga Joker saw a "user-friendly adventure full of weird humor". The ASM noted the graphics of the game negatively; Perspective and level of detail left a lot to be desired and every single image had to be reloaded, which was laborious. Reviewer Bernd Zimmermann continued to criticize the limited scope for action, sexist humor and the game's price is clearly too high. The Power Play criticized "playful simplicity", "slightly crooked graphics" and "slowed down tension factor". For the British Amiga Power , editor Rich Pelley recognized that the game's plot had a certain depth, but otherwise found primarily criticism. Any expectations that one would have of an adventure game from 1991 would be disappointed: The graphics are not interactive, the characters have no depth, the translation damages the humor of the game and the gameplay is completely out of date. The Amiga Power evaluated Finally, the game was "to avoid at all costs".
Web links
- Crime Time at MobyGames (English)
- Crime Time in the C64 Wiki
Individual evidence
- ↑ Comicecke.de: In Memoriam Steve Kups (1970-2015). Retrieved May 26, 2019 .
- ↑ MobyGames.com: Stefan Hartwig. Retrieved May 26, 2019 .
- ↑ Kups.de: The A- (dventure) -Team ( Memento from March 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ A b Carsten Borgmeier: Crime Time . In: Amiga Joker . January 1991, p. 56.
- ↑ a b Bernd Zimmermann: We'd better save ourselves that! . In: Current software market . January 1991, p. 84.
- ↑ a b Volker Weitz: Crime Time . In: PowerPlay . February 1991, p. 55.
- ↑ Rich Pelley: Crime Time . In: Amiga Power . No. 9, January 1992, p. 95.