Rough Justice
First appeared in Micro Mart issue 785 (Feb 2004)
Author: Jonathan Cauldwell
Publisher: Cronosoft (http://www.cronosoft.co.uk)
Once again we have a Spectrum release from Cronosoft, and once again it's by Jonathan Cauldwell, the embodiment of the 80s bedroom programmer updated for the 21st Century. And Rough Justice is something special in its own right: this is a brand new title written for the new Spectrum market (although I ask you to interpret that term loosely, please), rather than a previously unreleased game dusted down and given a new polish.
There's an element of cinematic tension built into Rough Justice, with its white-text-on-black-background intro that's reminiscent of the trailer to a big budget blockbuster. All that's missing is the gravely voice and a punchy, one line catchphrase: 'Justice is about to be served', or something of that ilk. In fact, the drama began with this particular title before even the first quantities of £2.99 changed hands for its shiny, cassette-encased being. Until the last minute, Rough Justice was shrouded in secrecy, and that last minute was its unveiling at the Norwich ORSAM show last November. Early versions even shipped with a bug that crashed the program at the end of every game. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Microsoft.
The plot? Rough Justice sees aggrieved niece Shipley - pilot's license fresh in her hands - taking on the nasty aliens that have kidnapped her uncle, intergalactic bounty hunter (and cyborg to boot) Mansfield Rough. The game is a screen-by-screen, no-going-back shoot 'em up in the style of the Cybernoid genre. It's a mayhem of missiles, aliens and crates to shoot at with your lasers (you also have an inexhaustible supply of bouncing bombs, which is rather handy) as you work your way through the many, many levels.
Rough Justice is a slick enough game, if you play it on a 48K Spectrum: Cauldwell's sprites bounce around the screen with their trademark smoothness, colour is used well with no hint of attribute clash, and you could ask no more from your ship in terms of its responsiveness. Load it into a Spectrum 128, however, and the game starts to rock. The soundtrack, by Polish AY enthusiast Yerzmyey, adds a whole new dimension - let me tell you, an evening with Rough Justice loaded into Spectaculator on my PC, with the volume turned up all the way, was the most fun I've had in ages. Yerz, incidentally, is the organizer of the AY Riders, a multinational group of musicians dedicated to squeezing every last drop of creativity out of the Spectrum 128's AY chip (you can download their 3 free MP3 albums at http://ayriders.zxdemo.org/), so the quality of this music should come as no surprise.
The collaboration doesn't end there either. Across the waters, Tommy Pereira has once again put his artistic talents to use in a simply superb loading screen that uses just about every trick there is to pack colour and detail in together. And Tommy is also responsible for the game's inlay card. I haven't got through to the end of Rough Justice yet. Quite simply, I don't know if I'll live long enough, as the game is so big. I will point out that the furthest I've managed so far was a cavern on level 3 or 4 which wouldn't let me exit - possibly a bug, but I was playing with an infinite lives cheat at the time, so I can't say I feel hard done by. The one gripe I do have is with the little "+1"s that appear when you blast certain crates. Plus one what? Precisely nothing appears to increment by one when you acquire them!
An enormous game at a considerably less than enormous price, Rough Justice is another landmark in Cronosoft's journey. If you're not bothered by the physical presence of an actual cassette, by the way, you can now purchase emulator tape files from their website at a reduced price. Head over to www.cronosoft.co.uk to find out more.
