Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by spider »

Chuckie Egg would likely be my second choice now its been mentioned, after MM. I can see it reasonably suited to an 'arcade'

Third choice might have to be something like BruceLee perhaps, a simple platformy type game again.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by PeteProdge »

spider wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 6:33 pmThird choice might have to be something like BruceLee perhaps, a simple platformy type game again.
Arcade owners would hate you for that, because every player could be on it for ages on just one credit.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Turtle_Quality »

So no Penetrator, Wildwest Heroes or Invasion of the Body Snatchas ? Then I'd go for

Lunar Jetman
Cyber Zone
Space Zombies
Stop the Express
Deathchase

there's probably more I can't think of now
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by spider »

PeteProdge wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 6:46 pm Arcade owners would hate you for that, because every player could be on it for ages on just one credit.
Maybe yes. To be fair it was so easy 'back then' even I did not have much trouble with it. I should say the BBC and Amstrad versions are a bit harder actually, the former moreso imo. I think that was not intentional though.

If it was to become an arcade game the difficulty would need ramping up quite a lot (its a rare thing for me to make a statement like that!) :D
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by RMartins »

There are a lot of games that would be nice on an Arcade, but where the gameplay although good wouldn't suit an Arcade commercial adventure.
Strategy games like:

Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=894
Chaos

and
Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=2813
Laser Squad come to mind.

However, more suitable to an Arcade would be something like:

For single player:
Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=1628
"Enduro Racer" (maybe it was a port from an Arcade, but not sure).

Or
Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=127
Airwolf

Or
Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=96&id=77
Action Force II

Or
Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=3261
Moon Alert, for a more early title, but I think that was a re-interpretation of another early Arcade (Moon Patrol ?).


For multiplayer:
Image
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=4904
3D Stock Car Championship would be quite nice.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by PeteProdge »

I'm a very very enthusiastic fan of Chaos - a game I regard as the all-time greatest on any platform - yet I wouldn't have it in an arcade, it's not that kind of game. It's very much aimed at home playing, to take an hour or two and letting you pause for thought.

To put Chaos or Laser Squad in an arcade would be like turning up to the Olympics with a chess board.

The only type of game that would be even more inappropriate for the arcade, would be a text adventure.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by ZXDunny »

You need any games that are quick to play.

Don't require any prior knowledge (no manual). Intuitive gameplay. Can't last for hours - you're talking about half an hour or twenty minutes tops for an expert player.

It should be somewhat unfair past the first minute or so - need those coins to keep coming in.

Colourful and noisy to attract attention. Good attract mode sequence.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by RMartins »

PeteProdge wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 12:03 am I'm a very very enthusiastic fan of Chaos - a game I regard as the all-time greatest on any platform - yet I wouldn't have it in an arcade, it's not that kind of game. It's very much aimed at home playing, to take an hour or two and letting you pause for thought.

To put Chaos or Laser Squad in an arcade would be like turning up to the Olympics with a chess board.

The only type of game that would be even more inappropriate for the arcade, would be a text adventure.
The problem of using pictures, is that most readers skip the text !!!
RMartins wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 11:09 pm There are a lot of games that would be nice on an Arcade, but where the gameplay although good wouldn't suit an Arcade commercial adventure.
...
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Hank Scorpio »

If I had to choose just one game then Ant Attack would get my vote.

Would games like Halls Of The Things and Out Of The Shadows work as arcade games?
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by AndyC »

Pretty much any Dinamic game. Instant coin munchers
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by SteveSmith »

Dan Dare 3? I never played it, but it has to be one of the best looking games on the Speccy.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by DenisGrachev »

You'll be surprised but there are WAS arcades with Speccy games in USSR even in my little city. As far i remember there was a Harrier Attack and Crazy Cars 2 cabinets i played at 1990-1991. There was another speccy cabinets all around USSR with different games we discussed it some time ago at zx.pk.ru
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by hikoki »

I quite enjoyed playing Tourmaline. Colourful and apparently easy to play but you have to die many times.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by PeteProdge »

DenisGrachev wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:05 pm You'll be surprised but there are WAS arcades with Speccy games in USSR even in my little city. As far i remember there was a Harrier Attack and Crazy Cars 2 cabinets i played at 1990-1991. There was another speccy cabinets all around USSR with different games we discussed it some time ago at zx.pk.ru
How did that all work then? Has my hypothetical situation actually happened!? This is astonishing!

I remember Nintendo having a few cabinets that would let you play a few NES games, you put in a coin and you'd have a timer clock counting down ten minutes. Insert coins for more time on the game.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

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DenisGrachev wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:05 pm You'll be surprised but there are WAS arcades with Speccy games in USSR even in my little city. As far i remember there was a Harrier Attack and Crazy Cars 2 cabinets i played at 1990-1991. There was another speccy cabinets all around USSR with different games we discussed it some time ago at zx.pk.ru
I know a few of these - they're all in MAME.
  • Brodjaga
    This is 'Inspector Gadget and the Circus of Fear (Melbourne House 1987)'.
  • Czernyj Korabl
    This is Black Beard (Topo Soft 1988).
  • Povar, Sobrat' Buran and Agroprom.
    These are Cookie, Jetpac and Pssst (Ultimate 1983).
I think there's a few more, but these are the ones I can remember.
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My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation & Sqij.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by PeteProdge »

Well, the revelations from Russia have truly dropped my jaw.

I thought the closest we'd ever have of getting a ZX Spectrum in the arcade would be Sega's 1980 game Carnival, which although isn't running on any ZX Spectrum hardware, visually it really does have that feel...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7X0iCGCv0Y

...same colour palette (minus the BRIGHT 0 set) and even has the colour clash.

Yeah, it's in portrait mode instead of landscape, and the resolution is 224 x 256, so it's kind of like adding another four rows of cells to a Speccy display and turning it 90 degrees.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

Turtle_Quality wrote: Sun Jul 14, 2019 7:09 pm
Stop the Express
I've always thought this game was a conversion of an arcade game, it looks very arcade-ish, and curiously I came across next game by chance some days ago: Challenger for the Famicom (the japanese NES, if I'm not wrong).

https://youtu.be/zVlqGs2-yXY

I made some research and it was released in Japan in 1985 (Stop the Express was published in 1983) and both were coded by Hudson Soft, from Japan.

So the first version was made for the Spectrum. In the japanese console version the character goes from left to right (the opposite in Stop the Express). The rest are similar.

Checking other Hudson Soft games I see all are games that must have been converted to arcades (Eric and the Floaters is just great!)
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

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Cookie. But you'd have to modify it somehow to disable the boring method of winning/cheating.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

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And Horace Goes Skiing.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Hank Scorpio »

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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by PQR »

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:34 pm I've always thought this game was a conversion of an arcade game, it looks very arcade-ish, and curiously I came across next game by chance some days ago: Challenger for the Famicom (the japanese NES, if I'm not wrong).

I made some research and it was released in Japan in 1985 (Stop the Express was published in 1983) and both were coded by Hudson Soft, from Japan.

So the first version was made for the Spectrum. In the japanese console version the character goes from left to right (the opposite in Stop the Express). The rest are similar.

Checking other Hudson Soft games I see all are games that must have been converted to arcades (Eric and the Floaters is just great!)
The first version was not made for the Spectrum I think.

According to Wikipedia the game was programmed for the Sharp X1 first. Which makes sense because Hudson Soft is a Japanese developer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_the_Express wrote: Stop the Express (also known as Bousou Tokkyuu SOS (暴走特急SOS, "Runaway Express SOS")in Japan) is a video game created by Hudson Soft in 1983 . It was made for Sharp X1 first, and later ported to the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and the MSX.

It was remade for Nintendo Family Computer as Challenger(チャレンジャー) in 1985.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

Yep, it makes sense now as it was strange a japanese developer making a game for the Spectrum originally.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Joefish »

DenisGrachev wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 2:05 pm You'll be surprised but there are WAS arcades with Speccy games in USSR even in my little city. As far i remember there was a Harrier Attack and Crazy Cars 2 cabinets i played at 1990-1991. There was another speccy cabinets all around USSR with different games we discussed it some time ago at zx.pk.ru
Sokurah wrote: Mon Jul 15, 2019 4:33 pm I know a few of these - they're all in MAME.
  • Brodjaga
    This is 'Inspector Gadget and the Circus of Fear (Melbourne House 1987)'.
  • Czernyj Korabl
    This is Black Beard (Topo Soft 1988).
  • Povar, Sobrat' Buran and Agroprom.
    These are Cookie, Jetpac and Pssst (Ultimate 1983).
I think there's a few more, but these are the ones I can remember.
I had no idea - these are fascinating!

They're the only games that seem to show up here:
http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame. ... ade_only=0

Interesting that screenshots for Inspector Gadget and the Cookie multi-game seem to show an overlaid timer in the bottom-left corner, bit in-game and on the 'Game Over' screen. Did these work like the SEGA multi-play cabinets and just give you a limited playing time?

I'm guessing that "1 MOHETA - 1:00" on the instructions screen of that Cookie game means '1 Rouble for 1 Minute'..?

I can't see the same timer on the Black Beard screen, but it says the same on its title screen.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by DouglasReynholm »

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: Thu Aug 01, 2019 11:34 pm Checking other Hudson Soft games I see all are games that must have been converted to arcades (Eric and the Floaters is just great!)
Eric and the floaters was a sort of proto-Bomberman (not sure what I mean by that!) wasn't it? Renamed apparently for the UK due to the IRA activity of the 80's..? Dunno, maybe I dreamt it.
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Re: Which Speccy game would you put in an arcade?

Post by Foxbat_25 »

Joefish wrote: Fri Aug 02, 2019 4:20 pm
I had no idea - these are fascinating!

They're the only games that seem to show up here:
http://adb.arcadeitalia.net/lista_mame. ... ade_only=0

Interesting that screenshots for Inspector Gadget and the Cookie multi-game seem to show an overlaid timer in the bottom-left corner, bit in-game and on the 'Game Over' screen. Did these work like the SEGA multi-play cabinets and just give you a limited playing time?

I'm guessing that "1 MOHETA - 1:00" on the instructions screen of that Cookie game means '1 Rouble for 1 Minute'..?

I can't see the same timer on the Black Beard screen, but it says the same on its title screen.
"Монета" means "coin" in Russian, I'd say the price would be a 10 kopek coin, as it seems to be the standard coin for Soviet arcade games. I mean, there's a museum for arcade games of the USSR in Moscow, and you buy a little packet of 10 kopek coins that you use to play the games, so it sound like it's the most realistic scenario to me. 1 rouble in the USSR was quite a big deal, you could buy a whole meal (a basic one, but still a whole meal) for that sort of money.
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