Lazy Jones

Lazy Jones
Developer(s)	David Whittaker
Publisher(s)	Terminal Software
Designer(s)	David Whittaker
Engine	proprietary
Platform(s)	C64, ZX Spectrum, MSX, Tatung Einstein
Release	1984
Genre(s)	Platform game
Mode(s)	Single-player

Lazy Jones is a computer game for the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, MSX and Tatung Einstein. It was written by David Whittaker and released by Terminal Software in 1984. The Spectrum version was ported by Simon Cobb.

Lazy Jones is essentially a collection of fifteen smaller sub-games. The game takes place inside a hotel with three floors, connected by an elevator. The character is a lazy hotel employee who does not much care for his work, but prefers to sneak into the rooms to play video games instead.

The main screen in Lazy Jones is the hotel interior. There, the character can use the elevator to travel freely between the three floors, but he must watch out for enemies: the current hotel manager on the top floor, the ghost of the previous manager on the bottom floor, and a haunted cleaning cart on the middle floor. The enemies only walk around and do not pursue the character, but contact with them is fatal.

Each floor has six rooms, three on each side of the elevator. Each room can be entered once. Inside most rooms is a video game, which the character immediately begins playing. As well as the video games, there is the hotel bar, a bed, a cleaning closet and a toilet. The bar works like a video game, but the bed, the cleaning closet and the toilet are useless decorations (intentionally added, because David had run out of ideas for new games).

When all rooms have been visited, the game starts over again, but increasingly faster, each time.

Sub-games

The plot of the game is simple- a hotel care taker named Jones is bored and decides to go in the rooms and play games.

The various sub-games are generally simplified versions of famous 1970s and 1980s video games, such as Space Invaders, Frogger, Snake or Chuckie Egg. Their plots and gameplay are very simple, and in most of them the player simply must avoid incoming enemies long enough to score many points. In some, the player must shoot enemies to score points.

Each sub-game has a time limit. In some sub-games it is possible to "die", thus ending the sub-game prematurely, while others only end after the time limit expires.

The fourteen video games are as follows:

• 99 Red Balloons: Red balloons continuously fly towards the top of the screen. You have to grab hold of two balloons to fly upwards, to get to kiss a woman. Then you need to grab hold of one balloon to fly back down to kiss another woman. A bow tries to shoot arrows to puncture your balloons.
• Eggie Chuck: A simplified Chuckie Egg clone.
• Jay Walk: A simplified Frogger clone. You have to cross a street without hitting any of the cars, to get to kiss a woman. Then you cross the street back to kiss another woman.
• Laser Jones: A Space Invaders clone where the aliens do not shoot back.
• Outland: A very simple shoot 'em up. Spaceships descend from the skies and you can shoot them to score points.
• Res Q: A simplified H.E.R.O. clone. A game of skill where you have to rescue men trapped in a cave without touching the cave walls.
• Scoot: A game of skill where you have to steer some kind of hovercraft in a cave.
• Star Dust: A shoot 'em up where you can shoot balls of dust.
• The Hills Are Alive: A shoot 'em up very similar to Outland except this time the spaceships fly horizontally.
• The Reflex: Bones fly down from the top of the screen and you have to bounce them back up.
• The Turk: One of the strangest settings. Roast turkeys slide on a conveyor belt and you have to fire a fork at them to score points. A telephone flies diagonally around the screen, getting in the way of your fork.
• The Wall: A simplified Snake clone. You must steer a continuously growing garden wall without hitting yourself, the screen boundaries, or any of the plants.
• Wild Wafers: A shoot 'em up where you can shoot spinning wafers.
• Wipeout: A simplified Breakout clone.

In the hotel bar, your character stands in front of the (rather wide) bar. The barman and the only other patron, hopelessly drunk, are both moving back and forth across the bar, at different speeds. Pressing the fire button while standing in front of both a drink and the barman at the same time earns you points. The drunk patron bars your movement but can be jumped over.

The sub-games where it is possible to "die" prematurely are Eggie Chuck, Jay Walk, Res Q and The Wall.
The sub-games that only end when the time limit runs out are 99 Red Balloons, Laser Jones, Outland, Scoot, Star Dust, The Hills Are Alive, The Reflex, The Turk, Wild Wafers, Wipeout and the hotel bar.

Music references in the sub-game names

• "99 Red Balloons" is a 1983 pop music song by the singer Nena. During game play, the song can be noticed in the background music.
• "The hills are alive" are the first words in the title song from the Rodgers/Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music.
• The Wall is a famous album by Pink Floyd.
• Excerpts from "Fade To Grey" by Visage and "Living on the Ceiling" by Blancmange can be heard in two of the sub tunes.
• The first 5 tones from subtune 16 are originally from the 1977 movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
• "The Reflex" is a 1983 pop song by the band Duran Duran.
• "Wipe Out" is a 1963 instrumental by the The Surfaris.

Music

The game's chiptune music has a very characteristic sound that is distinct from many other C64 games. Each of the 21 subtunes is using only two voices of the SID chip which in turn use the same sawtooth sound. One voice plays a simple octave bassline for the most part, while the other one is adding the melody. All the tunes share the same tempo as well and they change seamlessly when playing another sub game.

Subtune 21, named "Star Dust", was remixed by the German producer team Zombie Nation (initially unlicensed, which caused the producers to pay an undisclosed amount of money to Whittaker.) in their song Kernkraft 400. The remixed version became immensely popular around the world hitting number 1 in charts of many places, especially in the United States, where spectators chant to the music at sporting events. "Star Dust" was later also covered by Dutch hardcore production duo Roland & Sherman as "Jonge Edammer".

External links

• Lazy Jones at MobyGames
• Lazy Jones at SpectrumComputing.co.uk