ERG: LAST CUE
Read the lane lamps, beat five champions, and lift the Turning Cup.
Loading the cartridge (256 KiB)…
Saved states last for this visit. Sound starts with Power.
ERG: LAST CUE needs a keyboard or a game controller. On a phone or tablet without one you can read about the game here, but you can’t play it yet.
1
The cartridge · in the fiction
Avenell Playhouse's Christmas 1988 title: Erg, with a helmet lamp and lime work gloves, fights the five house champions of the Turning Cup in a dark ring hall. Before a champion strikes, the lamps swing a pool of light onto the lane he means to hit; flare into his face at the last moment to dazzle him.
- Developer
- Avenell Playhouse
- Year
- 1988
- Genre
- Duel
- Technique
- lantern
2
Controls
| Cyclorama pad | Keyboard | Game controller |
|---|---|---|
| D-pad | Arrow keys | D-pad or left stick |
| A | Z | Bottom face button |
| B | X | Right face button |
| C | C | Left or top face button |
| START | Enter | Start |
| Save state | F5 | — |
| Load state | F8 | — |
| Power off | Escape | — |
Saved states are kept for this visit only. Controllers use the standard layout (Xbox, PlayStation and most USB or Bluetooth pads). Press any button on the controller after powering on so the browser notices it.
3
How to play
After the Curtain Up splash, press Start (keyboard Enter, or a controller's Start button) on the title screen and again on the how-to-play page. Each of the five bouts opens with a card, then Erg stands in one of three lanes at the bottom of the ring, seen from behind. Slip one lane left or right with the D-pad (arrow keys, or a controller's d-pad or left stick) and hop with Up. A or C (keyboard Z or C) jabs; B (keyboard X) flares your helmet lamp and costs one lamp cell. Before every strike the ring lamps swing a pool of light onto the lane the champion means to hit: a round pool is a straight punch on one lane, a square pool covers two lanes, a band across the whole floor is a sweep. It swells and brightens until the strike lands, so slip out of it or, for a sweep, hop it. Jabs only land while the champion is open, which is after a strike has missed; a jab thrown at any other moment bounces off his guard and locks your hand for a moment. To do better than dodge, stand in the light and press B in the ten frames before the strike lands: the flare hits his eyes, the strike fails, he is dazzled and stays open a long time, your jabs count double, and your lamp gets two cells back for the one it cost. A flare with nothing to catch is wasted, a sweep cannot be dazzled, and a feint swings the lamp without a real wind-up. A champion's level is his own spotlight: it dims as you hurt him, and when it goes out you win the bout. Each strike that lands costs two or three lamp cells; with no cells left the lamp goes out, you lose one of your three lives and the bout starts again. Start pauses. After GAME OVER press Start to go back to the title; the win screen stays until the console is reset.
What is running
When you power on, your browser runs an emulator of the Cyclorama: its CPU, its video chip with the light field, and its Cue sound chip, at the real frame rate. The cartridge is the same 256 KiB ROM the project builds and tests, byte for byte.
erg-last-cue · 262,144 bytes · SHA-256 a75b1ffaee8f17326865e07092d84795f9cf0c53755dc53e4caf1fb4ea22337b
No account and no cookies. Apart from its own files, the page loads one script: Cloudflare Web Analytics, which counts visits and page speed without cookies. The hardware is documented in full: read the HED-0041 hardware and programmer’s manual and the SCRIM language specification. Or go back to the Cyclorama.