Search found 3521 matches

by PeteProdge
Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:31 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Starglider being used to gunge children on telly in 1987
Replies: 8
Views: 175

Re: Starglider being used to gunge children on telly in 1987

They’re using the Amiga or ST version of Starglider Oof! Well, that's a spectacular clanger from me then. I clocked the Spectrum ROM font and the low amount of colours, which felt quite Spectrum-ish, especially on the blurry resolution of a VHS recording - but yes, I very much stand corrected. And ...
by PeteProdge
Thu Mar 28, 2024 10:21 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The best YS/SU/Crash covertape item of a certain type
Replies: 0
Views: 41

The best YS/SU/Crash covertape item of a certain type

No, it's not actually Covertape Wars again, but I am delving back to that era. This time, I'm not portraying it as a YS vs SU vs Crash battle, but breaking it down into a 'best covertape [thing]' of a certain type. I do try to keep my polls objectively configured and there'll always be a few grey ar...
by PeteProdge
Thu Mar 28, 2024 9:04 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Starglider being used to gunge children on telly in 1987
Replies: 8
Views: 175

Starglider being used to gunge children on telly in 1987

I remember the Get Mucky segment on ITV Saturday morning show Get Fresh using Starglider in series 2, and then Xenon on some 16-bit platform for series 3. Not being a computer owner at the time, I couldn't distinguish which platform was used for Starglider, but someone's uploaded a nearly full editi...
by PeteProdge
Wed Mar 27, 2024 10:24 am
Forum: Sales/Commercial
Topic: The Horace Collection | Kickstarter
Replies: 8
Views: 584

Re: The Horace Collection | Kickstarter

Horace And The 10 Foot Bargepole Acting as Horace, you have to cross a busy road probably once used by a giant frog, to pick up a 10-foot bargepole. Once you are armed with it, navigate your way through a maze where cassettes from an ethically dubious 'IP rights holder' are floating about. You must...
by PeteProdge
Wed Mar 27, 2024 10:02 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

Using Vampyre 's prompt in Google's AI offering, Gemini, brings a result citing a shorter game list which will give you deja vu. The ZX Spectrum: A Spark That Ignited the UK Gaming Industry The arrival of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1982 wasn't just a moment in tech history, it was a revolution for ...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 2:13 pm
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

I'd go further and speculate that the author got AI to "write" most of it. The whole thing just seems like a lot of hot air to me. [chatGPT impersonation] The thing to remember about the popular 1980s ZX Sinclair Spectrum is that it was a captivating home microcomputer that was hugely in ...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:59 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

I'd make a special case for The Hobbit. It was well known amongst kids at the time, even if they never went on to play any other adventures. "Thorin sits down and sings about gold" seems to be well known meme, you can even get it on TShirts (https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/4334758-thori...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:56 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

At the end of the day, it feels like the author has gone for a list of things that - and I have to bring in television game shows here - would score you big points on Family Fortunes and get you almost nothing on Pointless, if the question was "name a ZX Spectrum game". Nothing wrong with ...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:19 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

So, wait, games like Chaos (plus all the other fare from JG), Stonkers, Nether Earth, Vulcan, or Lords Of Midnight are routinely ranked as pioneering and high on best-of lists, and yet the genre is supposed to be "minor" at the same time? Not minor by any means, but there's a chasm betwee...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:12 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

*YS Not just that it never got given away with SU, Chaos was first on YS's cover tape in 1990, and again in 1993. Yes, it was a fairly obscure and underrated game around the time of its release, no doubt about that, but it achieved cult status from that first appearance on YS's covertape. That's wh...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:07 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

A quick scan through any of the main mags 1983-1988 would indicate immediately that strategy and role-playing games were minor in comparison to arcade and arcade-adventure titles. Crash had a small section devoted to Strategy (Frontlines). Articles like this with these kind of inaccuracies are both...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 9:48 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

bluespikey wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2024 9:03 am If we are talking about iconic rather than best, I'd remove Chaos
DISBELIEVE
bluespikey wrote: Tue Mar 26, 2024 9:03 amI never saw it in the shops until the yellow SU coverdisk in 1991.
Eh!!?
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 26, 2024 8:01 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Devfinitive Edition (Fergus McNeil): discussion
Replies: 5
Views: 158

Re: Devfinitive Edition (Fergus McNeil): discussion

For the purposes of this I would probably suggest combining the Dragonstar entries. They're really multiple parts of the same game and when I asked Fergus I seem to remember that he thought the advert that suggests he was selling them separately may have just been badly worded. (They were only ever...
by PeteProdge
Mon Mar 25, 2024 4:30 pm
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum
Replies: 31
Views: 518

Re: DenOfGeek : The games that defined the Spectrum

It's an article spoilt by very dodgy assertions about the Spectrum's games library. Robocop: "While that [action-focused] genre was never really the platform’s bread and butter (that would probably be strategy and role-playing games)" WTF? The software charts for the Speccy were loaded wit...
by PeteProdge
Mon Mar 25, 2024 10:33 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: A 16K/48K/128K Spectrum game?
Replies: 5
Views: 194

Re: A 16K/48K/128K Spectrum game?

Honestly, I'd have thought the requirements for running in just 16K (tiny amount of RAM, can't use IM2 etc) would make such a thing extremely unlikely and little more than a proof of concept if it did exist. Ah, but a homebrew guy came up with a 16K version of Manic Miner (and that's for the ZX81, ...
by PeteProdge
Mon Mar 25, 2024 8:42 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: A 16K/48K/128K Spectrum game?
Replies: 5
Views: 194

A 16K/48K/128K Spectrum game?

We're used to the concept of a 48K/128K Spectrum game, like Renegade; Auf Wiedersehen Monty; Slightly Magic; Out Run, etc. Works on a 48K in a ~4 minute load, works on a 128K after a longer load and gives you AY music and possibly some extra 'bells and whistles'. But has there ever been a game that ...
by PeteProdge
Sun Mar 24, 2024 11:26 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The best Speccy game by ERE Informatique: vote
Replies: 3
Views: 169

Re: The best Speccy game by ERE Informatique: vote

Macadam Bumper is the runaway winner here, with 11 votes.

In a distant second place is Intercepteur Cobalt, with 2 votes.

Then joint third is Awari and Painting Joe.

Only one proportional vote and so the result is this:

Painting Joe 3
Macadam Bumper 2
Lombrix 1
by PeteProdge
Sun Mar 24, 2024 11:19 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Devfinitive Edition (Clive Townsend): vote
Replies: 15
Views: 413

Re: Devfinitive Edition (Clive Townsend): vote

Firstly, thanks to all those who caught on to the errata, ignoring the games I shouldn't have included! Saboteur! has hugely won this, a result I thoroughly agree with. 28 votes! A distant second place goes to its sequel, Saboteur II, with 7 votes. (Almost) everything else gets one vote each, puttin...
by PeteProdge
Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:45 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The best Speccy game by Rossware: discussion
Replies: 0
Views: 55

The best Speccy game by Rossware: discussion

We've hit the dregs here as I'm now into the classifieds section of YS #19, starting at page 93. It's the kind of mail order software labels that don't really get their stuff in shops. Quite a few of these are obscure and so we begin with Essex-based Rossware. They specialist in a certain type of ga...
by PeteProdge
Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:24 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: The best Speccy game by Accolade: vote
Replies: 2
Views: 110

The best Speccy game by Accolade: vote

Here are the five tangible ZX Spectrum games from Accolade: Cycles, The https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=pub/sinclair/screens/load/c/scr/CyclesThe.scr&border=0 https://www.spectrumcomputing.co.uk/SCRtoImage.php?SCR=/conv_scr/c/CyclesThe.scr&border=0 Duel, The: Test Driv...
by PeteProdge
Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:17 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Devfinitive Edition (Fergus McNeil): discussion
Replies: 5
Views: 158

Devfinitive Edition (Fergus McNeil): discussion

Okay, this one's gonna be the final Devfinitive Edition for a while. That's not to say it's not coming back, it certainly will, but heading into Spring, I'm going to turn attention for my Sunday poll over to something I have heavily covered before, but it'll be in a format different enough to be wor...
by PeteProdge
Sun Mar 24, 2024 10:10 am
Forum: Games/Software
Topic: Devfinitive Edition (Steve Crow): vote
Replies: 25
Views: 432

Devfinitive Edition (Steve Crow): vote

Thanks to those in the discussion phase this past week who weeded out the games I assigned to Steve Crow but turned out to be rather tenuous. I guess you could say you guys were the Eliminator! Get it? Eliminator. Because you elimin... um... and Eliminator itself was eliminated... er... well... *tap...
by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 19, 2024 8:05 pm
Forum: Preservation
Topic: Fake history
Replies: 16
Views: 712

Re: Fake history

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Tue Mar 19, 2024 12:44 pm As to Giana Sisters, it even got a Crash Smash!
Um... yeah... and the guy who gave it that, later admitted he was pressured by the software company AND Crash's advertising department to do so. Which has tainted Crash's legacy somewhat!

by PeteProdge
Tue Mar 19, 2024 9:36 am
Forum: Preservation
Topic: Fake history
Replies: 16
Views: 712

Re: Fake history

While you could do it, the thing is, it's the era's magazines, adverts and catalogues out there that won't exactly back up your fake history. Now sure, you could point out it's an obscure game. A REALLY obscure game. Something that did the rounds in your town and all the magazines missed out on. Pro...
by PeteProdge
Mon Mar 18, 2024 10:23 am
Forum: Sinclair Miscellaneous
Topic: Sinclair-related Cambridge sights?
Replies: 8
Views: 222

Re: Sinclair-related Cambridge sights?

The last (and well, only) time I was in the Baron Of Beef, it was quite dull, albeit there was a barman in drag, what with it being Halloween weekend. Thankfully, it didn't feel like a soulless chain pub, but it certainly wasn't a stand-out 'must see' place. Just a very generic old pub that I visite...