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Ghana Bwana
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This page was last updated on 09/4/2024. Total Pages: 744. Total Files: 994.
| Ghana Bwana | |
|---|---|
| |
| Year | 1984 |
| Publisher | Radio Shack/Tandy |
| Author | Steve Bjork (SRB Software) |
| Media | Disk/Tape |
| Requires | CoCo 1/2/3, 64K RAM, disk |
| Optional | Joystick, Speech-Sound Pak |
| Graphic mode | 256x192x2 |
Ghana Bwana is an original arcade game by Steve Bjork. He programmed this one under his own company, instead of Datasoft, as he did on most of his earlier games that were published through Radio Shack. If one takes a disk editor and goes through the original disks, one will discover a lot of messages from Steve, including a reference to Ghana Bwana II (which was never released...if Steve is reading this, did you ever get any of that done?)
The game itself came with a little comic book that described all the stages of the game, and the game actually adds some songs and speech if you have the Speech/Sound Cartridge. The game has 7 or 8 stages, of which 4 are pictured below. Basically, you have to collect map parts (designated by white squares), until you finish completing the map of the next level, after which you actually go to the next level. You face a variety of obstacles along the way, including sharks, natives shooting you with crossbows, boulders, pits, etc. The game itself plays in a pseudo 3-D landscape, similar to Steve's earlier smash Zaxxon. The ultimate goal is to escape aboard your outrigger canoe, with a hot air balloon attached.
Reviews
| Review | Author | Magazine | Y | M | P |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Action And Adventure With Ghana Bwana | Darren Nye | The Rainbow | 86 | 01 | 207 |
Review Rainbow January 1986
Action And Adventure With Ghana Bwana
Do you enjoy action games with a bit of an adventurous twist? If yes, give Ghana Bwana a try. You will join Professor Chance, better known as "Ghana Bwana," on his hazardous quest for the Great Secret of the legendary Erebus Island. If your luck holds out, you can make it to the treasure site.
This game is Steve Bjork's (Zaxxon) latest creation. It requires a 64K CoCo with Color BASIC and one disk drive. A Speech-Sound Pak can be added to make the game a little more interesting. Either the keyboard or joystick can be used for game play. I found the latter to be easier to use.
Ghana Bwana takes up one full disk. However, it is not copy protected and can be backed up with the BACKUP command. If you do a DIR, all you see is a loader program called'*'. Simply RUN"*" to start. Your screen should turn blue, for the most part, after the graphics screen appears. If it's not, press Reset until it is. Pressing the ENTER key at this point takes you to an options screen. Here the number of players, controller type and difficulty levels can be selected. When all set, just hit the joystick button or space bar to play.
There are a total of nine screens. I only got to the fourth. On the first, Professor Chance is in a small boat (outrigger). It is up to you to steer the boat and pick up pieces of a map, Which are represented as small square dots. For each piece of paper collected, a small map is drawn in the upper left corner. When enough pieces are found, the map is complete and you go on to the next level. To my knowledge, the object is to pick up the map, score bonus points by collecting things such as keys and bow and arrows, and get to the treasure on the final screen. Players must also avoid the obstacles, such as enemies who fire at you, potholes, rolling rocks, sharks and waterfalls. Each screen gets progressively more difficult. To gain some hints and tips, it's a good idea to read the small manual, which is written as a cartoon.
Ghana Bwana has an appealing look, but game play can be tedious. All the menus are formatted nicely, and there's a scoreboard hall of fame that's updated and saved to disk when the game is over. I was content playing for about half an hour, but began to get disgusted when I kept having to start over. If the time runs out or you get killed at a certain screen, you must start over on that screen and collect the entire map again.
If you have a Y-cable or Multi-Pak and Radio Shack's Speech-Sound Pak, you can add voice and a few more sounds to the game. However, the speech is hard to understand. I get better quality speech with my Voice-Pak and a text-to-speech program. There is not much added sound when using the Pak, but what's there does make it more interesting and sounds neat. (It may be interesting to know that this is the first arcade game Radio Shack is selling that uses the Speech-Sound Pak.)
Ghana Bwana is a nice game, even though it can make one feel frustrated after an hour or so. But don't fret, if you 'rea good game player you can probably get farther and go faster than I did. Try it out at Radio Shack; it's worth the look.
(Radio Shack stores nationwide, 64K disk, $29.95) -Darren Nye
DOWNLOAD AND RUN
In COCO 1 and 2 with 64K use RUN"*" or DOS, in COCO 3 Use NewBoot or DOS
File:Ghana Bwana Bug Fix (Rainbow).DSK, USE NEWBOOT.BAS (Put in Drive 1 And RUN, with Ghana Bwana in Drive 0)
The problem is, it boots up similar to OS-9 Level 1, version 1. The "*" program is the same program used to boot OS-9 on DISK BASIC 1.0 & 2.0 (it simulates the DOS command). The DOS command and the "*" program both read TRACK 34 into CoCo memory starting at Address &H2600 and EXEC's it at &H2602. The older versions of OS-9 and probably the GHANA BWANA loader, will not work on the CoCo 3 because the boot program block moves itself over the 256 bytes at &HFE00 through &HFEFF, thereby trashing the interrupt vectors of the CoCo 3 and causing a system crash.
Author Steve Bjork's "NEWBOOT" patch for early CoCo 1 and 2 games - GHANA BWANA, PITFALL II, DESERT RIDER, and ONE ON ONE - for CoCo 3 use. This patch is listed on DELPHI, and in RAINBOW, May '91, pg. 74. The one in RAINBOW has SYNTAX ERRORs in it. A space is need after the colons in lines 150, and 220 through 250 (The latter is not true)