The idea of the game is to collect as many pieces of the treasure as you can in a sunken ship… But be careful not to run out of air! You swim down to the treasure in the centre of the wreck, carry it back to the front of your boat on the surface to bank it, and touch the back of the boat to refill your tank. The screen shows score, air (counting down from 999) and three lives.
Control is by Q, A, O and P, or a Kempston, Cursor or ZX Interface II joystick (Spectrum), and the keys can be redefined, including fire and pause keys. Written by Kristian Boisvert, ©1987 Byte Power. Loading name SCUBA. Published on the Fall 1987 (Issue 8) tape of Byte Power.
Program Analysis
The game is machine code; the BASIC is a loader. Line 5 loads a 3,105-byte block at 27988 and calls it at once, line 10 sets the character set pointer (CHARS) to 64479 and loads the 18,300-byte main block at 34950, and line 20 starts it with PRINT USR 34950. If PEEK 23681 is 0 (the Byte Power backup method), the program lists its save line instead. The menu offers redefine keys, keyboard or TS2068/Kempston joystick, ZX Interface II and Cursor joystick.
Notable Techniques
- Three-part load: BASIC, a small code block that is run before the main block arrives, then the game.
- Starting the game with
PRINT USRrather thanRANDOMIZE USR.
Image Gallery
Note: Type-in program listings on this website use ZMAKEBAS notation for graphics characters.