Spectrum Computing

This is the 'cool' imprint from D&H Software. A much better identity than its parent and a slightly broader remit. Yeah, heavily rooted in sports management, but hey, there are interesting outliers like Kemshu, Soccer Q and Software House. And a bit of a 'Harry S Price' situation with The Boxer....

You know the score, you have seven days to pick your fave... Boxing Manager 2 https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=pub/sinclair/screens/load/b/scr/BoxingManager2.scr&border=0 https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=/conv_scr/b/BoxingManager2.scr&border=0 Cham...

More Tea Vicar was a great game, but did it really demo on a covertape? It's a 2004 era game, so I can only assume it was some sort of revival magazine if it did. It's from Your Sinclair issue 94 - which is canon or non-canon depending how you interpret its existence. Issue 94 is a Retro Gamer crea...

For 21st March 2024: Playable demo (of MIA games) You'll have deja vu as you read this list, as they're derived from the previous 'playable demo of a full price game' poll and one's from the 'playable demo of a budget game' poll: Armalyte (playable demo) by Thalamus Atomic Robo-Kid (playable demo) b...

1) Dizzy - Crash Special Edition I have a love/hate relationship with the pixelated ovoid. I did play the original game for weeks, no, months! And then it came back with a sequel. And again. And again. A cash cow that got milked with diminishing returns (although Kwik Snax and Fast Food were interes...

Right, fingers crossed all 30 entries here are valid! You have seven days to pick the best playable demo of a budget game that was given away on a covertape on the front of one of the three major UK Speccy mags. (The usual caveat about the links/screenshots being based on the full game, so you may s...

Right then, I stand by my conclusion that this is a flawed poll and yes, I'll re-run this later in the year, but for now, it's been an interesting 'dress rehearsal' anyway, and the winner of this is one of the entries that legitimately meets the criteria. That being... Ikari Warriors as the winner, ...

Well, Cricket Challenge and The Racing Game have tied for first place in the phpBB poll, with two votes each. What we have left, with one vote, is Football Fever. Can we expect a breakthrough in the proportional results? Football Fever 6 Racing Game, The 3 Rugby Fifteen 2 Cricket Challenge 1 Erm... ...

SteveSmith wrote: ↑Fri Apr 12, 2024 3:42 pm It might be quite good fun to try and identify a Speccy game for each one.

I reckon the entire softography of John George Jones would do. There's even an actual book about the impact of these largely unknown games.

Let's fix that awful BBcoding I did and show you the full four... Cricket Challenge https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=/conv_scr/c/CricketChallenge.scr&border=0 Football Fever https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=/conv_scr/f/FootballFever.scr&border=0 Ra...

I don't see R-Type on the list though - was that a C+VG Spectrum/C64 dual tape? I can't remember if I played it or not; I got the real game as soon as it was available. Yes, it was a C&VG covertape, and the Commodore 64 demo is really quite different to the game that was eventually released . A...

equinox wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 9:01 pm So she masculinized herself in order to be accepted. Progress?

I've not heard of Dane McLellan and can't find anything on Google about that name and a connection to any gaming magazine, but I'm reminded of the irony (well, alright, hypocrisy) surrounding the writer 'Robert Galbraith'.

goodboy wrote: ↑Mon Apr 08, 2024 5:30 pm the shadow of the beast also belongs to this category, she's not playable

Oops! You are indeed right!

No wonder I'll re-run this poll at a later date. Consider this a dress rehearsal!

My suggestion is that, if you have very specific definitions for your categories, then you'll have to play and categorise the games yourself. Because while I can play the games and give my opinions on them, I can't never be as specific as you are. The problem is that... I'm not really a good games ...

As you wish. I find that when the list is so long I lose track. By the time I get to the bottom, I've forgotten what's at the top. I feel that way with my own polls which are very very long, such as this one. The way I mustered up my choices for this one was have Notepad open in a window and I scro...

oh, so it's different from RexDemo.tap i see but how to find all those covertape versions here to download? is there a way to search for a specific title? Back when I was doing the Covertape Wars polls, I relied on PDFs of all the major three UK Speccy magazines (thanks to archive.org) really helpe...

Randomly or alphabetically order them, run 4 polls, then a final with the winners of the 4. I've never been keen on the 'World cup tournament' way of finding a winner. I mean, it does usually lead to a worthy winner, but it also has a strong probability that mediocre entries get towards the top. My...

but IIRC Rex demo isn't actually playable , it's just an animation (~rzx) Right, I've loaded up a .tzx of YS Smash Tape 10 to check my memory isn't cheating me. I'm not great at Rex, but so far I've decided to define keys (not a fan of joysticks). It's very much playable! And I'm still crap at it! ...

StooB wrote: ↑Sun Apr 07, 2024 4:01 pm International Manager is missing.

Well spotted! I've rectified that now, thanks!

Poll's too big. Break it up into a series. Ironically enough, it has been! My first thought was to throw in every playable demo from a YS/Crash/SU covertape, but that - at 138 entries - goes above the phpBB poll limits, so I've broken it into full price and budget. And yeah, it is still quite huge ...

Didn't we had the Cybernoid II conversation a while ago? I thought it was related to that thread. Ah, probably during the Covertape Wars polls. Which feels like an eon ago. PS. Also it was very hard to decipher what kind of games you actually wanted. I was reading the first post of this page and ag...

Ridiculously happy with this Dixons pack-in for my 128K +2 in late 1987. I genuinely don't think there's been a better pack-in selection, and that's even counting the Tynesoft duffers and Harry S Price plagiarism. (Alright, maybe if you count a bunch of games from a second-hand seller and/or some C9...

I don't have any evidence but personally would assume a real staffer who was just assigned tips as her remit. There were plenty of women working on magazines, but but women with any interest in home computing prior to the WWW — particularly technical interest — seem to have been extremely rare. Kat...

Cybernoid II: A lovely demo that I've played a long time, not as much as the main game, but that's because Dustin was really good as well. Did I mention this demo is an exclusive level? [...] Rex: Another exclusive level demo, which is nice. Rats. I did have a discussion phase on this, and nobody b...

Is this really still going? She is real. Crash's Nick Roberts was a guest on Maximum Power Up's podcast in 2019, when they had their Top 10 Games Magazines episode (actually spanned across two episodes) and talked of his time taking over from her tips section and making it his own. https://maximumpo...