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[MSXdev04] - Let's Quickly Play Dioniso's Gniffel (2004)

166 views · Published 14 July 2011 · 7:28 · Indexed 24 October 2026

Channel: FiXato · 2011 · Gaming

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Let's Quickly Play Dioniso's Gniffel, a German version of the well-known Yahtzee dice game, which is Alfonso D. C. aka Dioniso's entry for the MSXdev04 programming contest.
This is the third Yahtzee game I've played and recorded for the MSX so far, and while it has some more audio, it's controls are also one of the worst in my humble opinion. Even though the German names for Three/Four of a Kind, K/G Strasse, etc are explained in the manual, it also puts me off a bit. If you release a game in an international contest, would it be that much work to translate those in-game?
But enough ranting... The music actually is quite okay, the scoring and rolling of the dice goes pretty fast, and not having to re-select the dice you keep every throw is handy. If you want, you can even choose to claim your score at the first or second throw. It also allows for extra bonus points if you manage to throw 2 'gniffels' (yahtzees, aka 5 the same dice) in 1 game.
According to the accompanying instructions, the game was written in Chaos Assembler 3.
It can be played by just 1 or 2 players.

The controls are as follows, according to the instructions:
Use cursors UP and DOWN for the arrows, and RIGHT to choose between 'SHAKE IT', 'SCORE POINTS' and 'DICE ARROW'.
Use SPACE to 'SHAKE IT', score, and choose the dice you do/don't want to roll. The dice which are on the right will be rolled.
Use M or N (recommended) to roll the dice when you are choosing dice or scoring, to avoid using RIGHT all the time.

So far I still prefer dvik's version. The music in Gniffel was a nice extra, but dvik's Yahtzee was easier to control.
A feature that still seems to be unique to Breetveld's Yathzee is showing what kind of combination is currently possible/shown.

As usual, this recording was made using the cross-platform open source MSX emulator openMSX. For more information, see the official openMSX project page at http://openmsx.sourceforge.net/
This recording was made with 0.8.1 Development Build 12178, available from http://openmsx.fixato.net, home of the unofficial development builds of openMSX for Mac OS X and Windows x86 & x64.
I used the Toshiba HX-10 configuration for this recording.

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