Spectrum Computing

I'm off for a few days. And the next game is The Forest. I want to give it justice. C'est beau, mais ce n'est pas un jeu.

Seeing someone else Kokotoni Wilf. The giant dinosaur sprites; the actual loading screen was the game itself.

Bowls An unashamedly Basic game next. Bowls. The 'I for Instructions' pages all politely progress with scales of beeps and very basic animated text. And then it launches into an typical angle/velocity game, only its crown green bowling rather than artillery duels. Its... basic. The review doesn't e...

Fire Hawks The first true basic game. When needing input to advance the instructions, you can delete the key prompt quotes and enter a STOP command instead. L33t hacker stuff in 1984. Its a shooter of a vague space invaders/ phoenix variety. Its not nice to play and the firehawks can loiter at the ...

Pobulous wrote: ↑Thu May 23, 2024 4:28 pm The Spy Who Loved Me?

That's it. A very empty Spy Hunter clone.

Spectron needs an issue 2 keyboard selecting. Well done that man! It does indeed work with the issue 2 option. Spewing out hot full-stops of death. It only mildly improves the game, it still feels like a Your Computer type-in. I can't find the poll, but I'm sure that back in the day we had a poll a...

A view to a kill.

Spectron Got a bit of SQIJ going on. The instructions state the keys are QAVB, but trying both the TAP and TZX files in numerous emulators give no movement. And you only have seconds to respond before the baddies kill you off. It seems to be some sort of compiled basic single screen Robotron, with ...

Ant Attack Oooh now this is controversial. I really enjoyed playing Ant Attack. More so than any game so far. I enjoyed playing properly and rescuing your hapless partner, and I enjoyed just going offplan and exploring the city. Now the reviews all sing the praise of the graphics (even giving a gra...

I have one question. Are you just doing the reviews, or the games covered in the Living Guide as well? That way surely lies madness. No, just sticking to fully reviewed games. Even so, the issue of Crash is from Feb 84. I suspect a lot of the games in the full reviews have already been available fo...

Bugaboo the Flea Back into familiar territory. Theres a peculiar little story before the Bugaboo and following Ant Attack review about how well Crash were hosted by Quicksilva at their press launch. Apparently they were served (Bought with?) a champagne breakfast. I'm not sure why they needed to in...

Barreldrop A premium Cassette 50 entry. Hit space at the right time to drop barrels onto points. Beep beep a-beep. After the barrel screen is a surprise shooter screen with all of one UFO on it, to be shot 10 times. Ten UFOs at once would probably stress the basic pace of the game too much. Then it...

Mission Impossible A one screen lunar lander. Not much to say, just like Crash. The keys provide left/ right and very very gently thrust. It only generates two speeds of descent, so no momentum balancing going on. Theres rows of sprites and UFOs to dodge through, but the difficulty seems to be base...

Gotcha! Another two screen wonder. Crash again provides the keys so I don't need to read the instructions. The first screen is easy enough and rather pointless. The second screen is where the game really begins. It plays like one of the Amoebatron levels in Manic Miner where the sprites move vertic...

Zaxxan A UDG version of Zaxxon which isn't actually terrible. Jerky scrolling and movement as one would expect, but considering that Zaxxon requires all the screen to scroll down, it does a reasonable job. Plinky plonk beeps. Crash pulls it up on the jerky scrolling and small aircraft sprite rather...

The Warlock Of Firetop Mountain What should be the happy intersection of my two favourite things from the early 80s : Fighting Fantasy and the greatest Spectrum game of all : Halls Of The Things. But its not quite how one would hope. Its a very empty maze game. HotT is very much about fighting the ...

As a youngster I'd always imagined gleaming towers of industry. Most of these, especially number 5, are the sort of place when you find an especially cheap bit of kit of ebay, look up the posting address, and backoff cos it looks like a dodgy untraceable address.

ODYSSEY 1 Now this is the dumpster diving I came for. Never played it, never heard of it. A long pause to begin suggests compiled basic. Again the Crash review comes to my aid by telling me the controls without having to read the instructions. Caps left, Z right, H thrust, top row to shoot. It will...

Many years ago, on the other site, there was a fun thread of replaying all the games in order of review from the first copy of Crash. I thought Id do the same and bore you all with my thoughts. First up is : Deathchase It’s a surprise that the first game reviewed is the very familiar and comfortable...

Really odd that there's minimal call back to the 8 bit era. And in the honourable mention section there is :

Sinclair User (some of the best cover designs of the era),

Which probably means Crash surely. Unless they really did like Kamikaze Bear

BiNMaN wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2024 8:53 pm my first thought was Catch 23, and joefish beat me to it

There might also be Cholo, but no one is sure. There was a remake knocking about where the authors thought it a hidden gem.

It needs a bit of beard stroking about what an FPS is.... Theres no shooting in 3D Monster Maze, but what about Zigzag from 1984? Plus it had a great death animation when you catch up with the baddies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K7L7kevtok&ab_channel=zxspectrumgames4&t=187 And I like t...

Michael Sheard, I think his name was. Thats the one. Legend! Uboat captain in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and Hitler himself in Last Crusade. Admiral Ozzel in Empire Strikes Back. And most of all, Mr Bronson in Grange Hill. He seems to have played a Hitler character five times in his career. Probably ...

The CCS game Vulcan was the highlight of traditional wargames on the Spectrum (Admittedly a limited field, unlike the C64). https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=/conv_scr/v/Vulcan.scr&border=0 But that was definitely ripped off by other games from the same publisher, none of which ...