The first version was not made for the Spectrum I think.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!)
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.