Program Pitstop

Program Pitstop

Advanced Lawnmower Simulator!

Dan Whitehead

It is a game spoken of only in hushed tones and guarded whispers. A game so intricate, so lifelike, so boundless in its possibilities that there are forces in the world who would rather it remained lost to history than risk loosing it on mankind once again.
    The game, dear child, is Advanced Lawnmower Simulator - an artefact of YS history that is surely on a par with the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Guttenberg Bible or the Hale & Pace Christmas Special as a defining totem of our enlightened age. The game was, of course, the work of famed taxidermist and jazz dancer Duncan MacDonald - himself no stranger to the world of lawnmowing, having purchased one from an advert in the post office window in 1987. Though many have tried, none have been able to replicate Duncan's feat of software alchemy. Until now.
    Thanks to decades of NASA science, the full and unexpurgated program listing for Advanced Lawnmower Simulator is here. Type it in at your discretion, but be warned - some who have attempted this feat claim to have suffered convulsions and spasms of the buttocks as the last vestiges of MacDonald's genius dance from their synapses and out through their fingertips, a wisp of a madman's dream lost in the virtual ether. Yet more have been driven utterly mad by the arcane workings of this infernal code, with the runes of GOSUB and INKEY opening portals to gibbering, hellish dimensions beyond mortal ken. Even more, it is said, have typed it all in only to find it doesn't work properly because they missed out a semicolon somewhere. What does your destiny hold? Your journey awaits. Will you take the first step?

It is 1804, and a small boy revels in the giddy joys of primitive lawnmowing. What would he think of Advanced Lawnmower Simulator? Evil sorcery, that's what.

Early on in the game, things look deceptively easy

Getting closer, but what perils lie ahead for our brave mower?
Listing - yes, you have to type it in yourself!

Many thanks to the YS94 crew and Imagine Publishing for providing tons of original material!

Published in the 2004 Special issue of Your Sinclair

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