Cats 'N' Dogs (Compute's Gazette)
It truly rains cats and dogs in this captivating logic game for children. Players take turns dropping animals onto a 7 by 7 grid in an attempt to get four cats or dogs in a row. A pesky dogcatcher keeps things lively. You can play against a friend or the computer. Combining strategy with appealing graphics, "Cats 'n' Dogs' is both challenging and entertaining.
The article for this game can be found on page 50 of Compute's Gazette Issue 55 (January 1988)
Why TAS This Game?
The continuation of TASing games from my all-time favorite magazine, Compute's Gazette. This makes my 81st TAS from this series.
This was an issue that I never had. Too bad...this was an excellent game which I foresee would have provided many hours of replay-a-bility.
Game Difficulty and Ending
This game has no direct level selection, but only a "Dog Catcher" option. By selecting this, you make the game harder, as in having an obstacle to get around. The ending is very clear, as you must get "4 In a Row", as with the game I did early this year...[5817] C64 Slots by nymx in 01:21.47. The game is almost identical, except for the dog catcher, which is a nice touch. The only other difference, is that Slots...was way harder to manage for optimization. Unlike Cats 'n' Dogs, Slots was BOTed...where as this one wasn't.
Effort In TASing (Not BOTed)
Because of my experience with the C64 Compute!'s Gazette games, this one was probably the easiest game I've ever done. The control of RNG, when the AI has multiple choices to make, was so easy to control...that I quickly capitalized on some bad moves and then went in for the kill.
Human Comparison
This player will demonstrate the game nicely.
eien86: Claiming for judging.
eien86: An interesting turn on the classic 4-in-a-row (a.k.a slots, a.k.a etc), with the addition of the dog/cat catcher. Here the author manages to manpulate the RNG in such a way that the winning moves (four cats in the bottom row) can be made in the minimal number of turns.
Accepting to Standard
Encoder: I managed to sync this with this file
Compute!'s Gazette #045 88-01 (1988)(Compute!)\[a\].d64
despoa: Processing...