Spectrum Computing

N.B. I assume that, as for the other thread, "update" is meant as irony and not in the literal meaning. When I was gifted my 48K in June 1984, the Spectrum was the most popular 8-bit computer in Italy. Software, magazines and books for it were easy to find and, like in other countries, the...

It was fun for a while, but after 10 minutes you had seen all there was to see and it became very repetitive. Not bad for its time though! I'm sure the woke generation would have a field day with this game :D Well at least it was not an epithome of bad taste like that Custer "game" on the ...

R-Tape wrote: ↑Mon Aug 14, 2023 1:53 pmLDd

Eh??

Pizza with pineapple is considered blasphemy here. I had the misfortune of experiencing it myself at a self-service eatery in Finland. I mistook the little yellow bits for potatoes. I can say it was one of the most disgusting things I ate during my travels abroad, second only to marmite (the horror,...

The colour clash like it is shown in the Wally Week series is just horrible. A good amount of Spanish games suffer from this, too. I find it much less offensive when the sprites take on the colours of the background instead. Again, I was never bothered that much by it back in the day, and continue ...

Italy as well, although they were very rare, coming well behind the C64, Spectrum and MSX.

Software for them was harder to find than the philosopher's stone here.

Not for me. Especially games like Cybernoid which manage to keep colour clash at a minimum.

Mind you, colour clash has never bothered me that much.

You must associate an emulator with the file format you wish to open first. For example: click on the first icon on the left and choose to create a simple TAP file. Select "no loader" (default) and click on "OK", then in the following window, enter a program name in the box on th...

I do not understand what is the point of loading a tape image file at normal speed off a memory card-based interface

Many new files for this update :dance ACE 2088 (48K) Ali Baba (from the fixed version by Metalbrain, +2A/+3 compatible) Battle Of Britain (Classic Conflicts release, +2A/+3 compatible) Bedlam (IBSA release, +2A/+3 compatible) Blasteroids (MCM release, +2A/+3 compatible) Bubble Bobble (Musical 1 rele...

Also consider ZX-Editor, part of the ZX-Modules suite: https://www.alessandrogrussu.it/zx-modules.html

You can run Taper in DOSBox, but in native Windows it won't have run since... Windows 98, most likely. Sergey Gordeev created a new version of Taper that will run under later Windows version. Download it at: http://sg-software.ru/taper/ (click on the black button with "Скачать Taper 3.1" ...

Thank you R-Tape :D I suspected it was a traditional tune in fact. Meanwhile, I found the version I most probably heard first. It was in Angelo Branduardi's musical score for State buoni se potete, a 1983 film by Luigi Magni broadcast on TV by RAI the following year. Which is actually earlier than 1...

Chords and rhythm of the first few bars sound vaguely similar. However I surely did not hear it there, I played the Monkey Island series up to the third chapter.

Lately I was wondering about the tune playing in the menu screen of The Ice Temple. I think I heard it somewhere else, not a long time ago, certainly not back in the day.

Does anyone know its title? Or is it an original composition?

CPC? What's that? Codice di Procedura Civile? (*) Seriously though, Amstrad was known in Italy mostly for rebranding low-end hi-fi and car stereo systems in the 1980s, so that their home computer range did never take off here. Neither did their business machine one, for the strong presence of Olivet...

Fantasy Zone Escape from the Pyramid only works without in-game music, perhaps there are multiple .TAP files of this one for that reason. Correct: you have to load the files marked as "128" in fact. EDIT: @Alessandro wrote both volumes...700+ pages all about speccy :shock: :o :o :shock: Y...

On other side, I don't understand why anyone is selling Spectrum games this days. Well it's not "anyone", the majority of contemporary authors (including yours truly) just encourage you to give a small optional donation. Anyway - I shall give my motivation for it. When I put Italia 1944 o...

I didnt realize DivMMC (which I got) adds even /more/ compatibility issues, lol. But hey, good excuse for me to look into tape loading the old fashioned way! Perhaps some indie devs do this on purpose to make people buy the tape? :shock: No, contemporary games usually come in TAP and sometimes TRD ...

Completely agree with @AndyC. No one in their right mind would ever think about making a profit out of Spectrum games - apart from the proverbial pack of Rolos (or whatever candies you fancy, Ricolas and Golias in my case).

Hi segasonicfan , if you wish to know everything about Spectrum file formats, I cannot but recommend you my Spectrumpedia. You will find all the information you need written in a concise and exhaustive way in Vol. 2, Chapter 2, pages 229-246. The link to download a free PDF copy is in my signature. ...

What for? There are lots of people here who cut their teeth on the keyboard, including yours truly

Welcome on the forum :) I must admit have a soft spot for the +2A, it is the only historical Spectrum (apart from the old rubber-keyed model) I hold more than one unit of in my collection. At least on my LED TV and VGA monitor, colours are much more vibrant than the previous models and beeper and AY...

Wizball was and still is one of my favourite games of its era on the Spectrum, and I never found its beginning that difficult. Just, as Jason wrote, bounce very slightly and acquire left-right movement, then full directional movement. The rest should be rather straightforward. On the other hand, Ka...