Dickie Brickie jumps from 8-bits to 32

A brand new version of an old game has made its way to !Store, where it can be downloaded free of charge, thanks to the efforts of Jeroen Vermeulen.

Originally published as a type-in listing in volume 8, issue 1 of The Micro User, which hit newsagents’ shelves in 1990, Dickie Brickie was written by Mike Goldberg – one of six that he had published in the magazine. Twenty eight years on, Jeroen has released a RISC OS remake of the game, written using the AMCOG Development Kit by Tony Bartram – and Tony himself helped out by dealing with the sound conversion.

One of Dickie Brickie's seventeen levels
One of Dickie Brickie’s seventeen levels – click to enlarge

The objective in the game is to control Dickie – a building contractor – and guide him to the “To Let” signs. Dickie has been contracted to put up new buildings on these sites, but as a modern builder he doesn’t do the work himself; he has a robot builder for that. To get the job underway, Dickie must drop a brick at these sites, then lay a trail to lead the robot to them – the robot will then do the work.

Unfortunately, there are baddies who want to obstruct any building work – they will try to stop Dickie from getting to the signs in the first place, and they’ll try to wipe out the trail and so stop the robot from getting to them.

One of Dickie Brickie's seventeen levels
One of Dickie Brickie’s seventeen levels – click to enlarge

Once all of the signs has been replace by a building, play moves on to the next level – and there are seventeen levels in all; the sixteen original levels, and one new one.

Having been written using the AMCOG Development Kit, the game is expected to be able to run on most if not all platforms that run RISC OS 5 – but it has only been tested on a Raspberry Pi 2B and RPCEmu 0.9.0 with RISC OS 5.24. Feedback of its performance on other platforms is therefore welcome (and here in the RISCOSitory bunker it has been run perfectly happily on an ARMX6).

The original BBC Micro version of the game – without the ordeal of typing it in – is also available online (and can be played in a capable web browser, or downloaded for use in a BBC Micro emulator) at the Complete BBC  Games Archive.

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