Pazzman (QBasic)

Pazzman was a character my friend Karl and I invented. We used to make “Pazzman magazines” where Pazzman did terrible things, and we’d laugh ourselves sick.

You will need QBASIC.exe to run this game. I’ve not bundled it ‘cos I don’t know if that would be legal. QBasic runs just fine under DoxBox, even on a mac :-)

Download pazzman-1.zip

My 90s games were pretty juvenile, I’ve tried to keep them as-is but for the sake of conscience, I’ve sanitised the language a bit.

The preceeding game, Pub, used a fixed action list, but in Pazzman I implemented a basic verb-noun interface here, although still not a generic text parser. I always thought a generic text parser would be better, but it was beyond my programming skills at the time (and possibly now!). However, now I’m glad I didn’t (“you can’t get ye flask!”), Pazzman’s interface is actually quite good in my estimation, except needing to hit enter after every action - I think I used a generic prompt to gather input. That said, the game engine is buggy, and it “forgets” some stuff you do.

The “animation” is at a rate of 1 frame per second, something that would be addressed in the sequel Pazzman 2 and an incomplete follow-up, Pazzman 4…

Pazzman gets bored in lessons, which triggers his… “quest”

Pazzman menaces the toilet

Pazzman causes trouble in class

Pazzman’s status screen

Handstands were a big feature of Pazzman comics