BASIC Concentration

You don't need Hugh Downs to help you play Concentration, a speedy GFA BASIC version of the well-known television game. BASIC Concentration is written by the authors of Deduction (Antic, December 1986), Super Trek (January 1987), Antic Towers (May 1987) and Maze (March 1988).

Concentration runs only in medium resolution, so a color monitor is required. When you start the game, you'll be asked to choose either the one-player or two-player version. Then eight rows of eight dots apiece will be drawn on the screen.

Click on two of the dots. This turns up two icons-for example, a butterfly and a disk. Well, your icons don't match, so the next player gets a chance and turns up two briefcases. Whoa! A match! The briefcase icon appears in your opponent's column, while a letter or space appears where those dots were.

If your opponent can guess the famous saying hidden by the dots, the game is over and you lose. If not, it's your turn again. This continues until one of you guesses the saying.

To make a guess, just click where the screen says you should click, and then type your guess (which the program will automatically put in all capital letters). If nobody guesses correctly nobody wins-but this only happens when all icons are removed from the board without a correct guess. If you're playing the one-person version, you'll just keep clicking and guessing until you either win or lose, as above.

It's easy to add your own sayings to the puzzle. The sayings are stored in Data statements at the bottom of the program. Use these lines as a guide for creating and adding your own Data statements. Remember, though, that you cannot use any commas in your Data statements.

In this example, we'll add the famous saying, "BUY ANTIC MAGAZINE". When written into a Data statement in GFA BASIC, the saying looks like this:

Data BUY ANTIC MAGAZINE

All you need to do is add this sample statement to the other Data statements at the bottom of the program. Of course, you must remember to Save your new version of the program before you Run it.

Listing 1: CONCENTR.BAS Download

On Disk: CONCENTR.PRG Download