PrinceWatercress plays Five In A Row - The Longplay

Well, I TRIED to make a longplay out of this.

Let's Play

Five In A Row is a game for the BBC Micro where two or three players place pieces on a board, with one of the players winning when they place four, five or six pieces in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

At the start of the game, you can name the players, although the game does not really do anything with this, now that I think about it. From here, you can pick whether someone has to win with four, five or six pieces in a row. After that you have three control configurations: moving over the board, moving on the axes or entering coordinates. You'll always move something around with the arrow keys on the BBC Micro and make your selections or place your pieces with the Return key, but there are three different ways to play, and they are pretty different from each other.

With "moving over the board," you'll move a red square along the board with the arrow keys. When the red square is where you want to place the piece, press Return.

With "moving on the axes," instead of a red square on the board, you'll have two white ones on the borders of the field. One will always be to the left, while the other will be at the bottom. You'll move the one on the left with Up and Down on the arrow keys, and the one on the bottom with Left and Right. You'll need to line both white squares up so they meet at the place where you want to place your piece, and this takes a little bit more thought as you have to mentally line the positions of the white squares up to see where they intersect, as you have to mentally move the square on the left to the right and the square on the bottom upwards and mentally intersect them to see where the piece will be placed.

With "entering coordinates," you'll have to set the X coordinate, followed by the Y coordinate. Use Up and Down on the arrow keys to make your selection for the X coordinate, followed by the Y coordinate. Remember that you have to move to the right first, then up, as if you were plotting something on a graph. Also, be sure that you have the right choice when you press Return, as you can't back out when you do.

When someone wins, press the ESC key to go back to the main menu to name the players again and start a new game with either the same options or different ones.

It's not a bad game, and it's pretty simple and there's not much to complain about except for one thing: all the players are human controlled, and there's no choice for any computer controlled opponents. Other than that, it's a fun game to play with friends, but you'll all eventually want to do something else. It's still fun while it lasts, and it's not a bad game for the BBC Micro collection.