Spectrum Computing

All 48 Activision games for the ZX Spectrum!

Quite a lot to choose from. They did hoover up a fair amount of the Sega licenses, competing with US Gold for that kind of thing. There were also some Irem arcade games (although they kept the best - R-Type - for their Electric Dreams imprint) and a few titles from LucasArts/Lucasfilm.

Anyway, seven days from now, we'll hopefully discover what this forum's favourite Activision Speccy game is, out of these lot...

AfterBurner


Altered Beast


BallBlazer


Beamrider


Dragon Breed


Dynamite Dux


Eidolon, The


Enduro


Enduro Racer


Fighter Bomber


Fighting Soccer


Galactic Games


Galaxy Force


Geebee Air Rally


Ghostbusters


Ghostbusters II


Guadalcanal


H.E.R.O.


Hacker


Hacker II: The Doomsday Papers


Hammerfist


High Frontier


Hot Rod


Howard The Duck


Knightmare


Koronis Rift


Little Computer People


Mindshadow


Ninja Spirit


Pitfall II: Lost Caverns


Power Drift


Predator


Quartet


Rampage


Real Ghostbusters, The


Rescue On Fractalus


River Raid


S.D.I.


Sailing


Sonic Boom


Space Shuttle: A Journey Into Space


Super Wonder Boy


Time Machine


Time Scanner


Toy Bizarre


Wonder Boy


Xcel


Zenji

It's been a tough choice, but I think I'm going to go with Enduro Racer. It's one of the speediest racing games on the Spectrum, up there with W.E.C. Le Mans.

I had a lot of fun with Rampage, although, it's not exactly a progressive game in my eyes. It's just having fun destroying buildings and eating innocent civilians. I've never felt like it's a game as such, just a silly sandbox effort that really amused me. Same thing applies to the arcade original and any other version really. Utterly baffled as to why Hollywood put it out as a film starring Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.

Wonder Boy is not a bad conversion, but it's not quite up to the standard, being significantly slower than the arcade game. Still, a tremendous effort from the programmer, it's quite impressive to take on that conversion and get something playable.

1. Enduro Racer
2. Wonder Boy
3. Pitfall II: Lost Caverns

Pitfall II is just a very frustrating piece of software with matchstick graphics, but all the time I've spent playing it until the end when I was a kid (and all the suffering that the effort required) somehow makes me fond of it.

H.E.R.O. or Rampage and maybe even The Eidolon are better games that I don't dislike and that theoretically should have more right to be in the top three spots. But that's how it is.

Wonder Boy is not a great conversion, but I had good fun playing it.

I also had a lot of fun playing Ghostbusters with my little cousins, years ago.

My vote went to River Raid. So simply, so funny.

1 - River Raid
2 - Enduro Racer
3 - Time Machine

1. Ghostbusters (due to sheer amount of hours I put into enjoying it)
2. Enduro Racer (due to sheer quality, a better effort than Sega's own SMS version)
3. Rampage (due to sheer bloody mindedness)

Now the same individual who voted for Big Trouble in Litte China in the Electric Dreams poll is voting for Howard the Duck in this one.
Must have been a harsh childhood.

Going to have to go for Enduro Racer as it was just brilliant. Spent many hours playing Ghostbusters and really quite enjoyed Hacker as well.

1 - Enduro Racer
2 - Ghostbusters
3 - hacker

1 Enduro Racer
2 River Raid
3 Rampage

Enduro Racer is possibly one of the best conversions of one of the best arcade games. It also shows just what a pigs ear US Gold made of Outrun.

1 - Enduro Racer
2 - After Burner
3 - Wonder Boy

1. Enduro Racer
2. GhostBusters
3. RIver Raid

Although I have many memories of playing these games as a kid, those memories are only fondly recalled due to the guys I was hanging with at the time - the games were pretty unspectacular. Apart from Enduro Racer, that is. God that was a good conversion.

1. Enduro Racer
2. Ghostbusters
3. Power Drift

Enduro Racer was a magnificent conversion of a much more powerful coin-op. Along with Chase HQ it remains one of the best racing conversions on the Speccy. As someone already said, vastly superior to Sega's official Master System conversion.

Ghostbusters for the sheer amount of hours I put into it and enjoyed. Yes, the C64 version is waaay superior, but I got a lot out of it.

Power Drift back in the day was a pretty good conversion of, quite frankly, a very oddly laid out Racer, track-wise. It was massively overshadowed by the conversion of Chase HQ, but remains pretty playable.

The raised track sequences of Power Drift are a bit confusing.

I thought long and hard about it, then voted Ghostbusters as I always knew I would. Sure everyone thinks it's crap and they're probably right but I spent many an hour playing away on it catching ghosts and building up a long list of account codes so I could play again with more stuff.

The problem with Power Drift was the original was based on a 3D model of the entire track. Each bit of it was a sprite, but it was like an early voxel landscape engine - you could view the entire track from anywhere in 3D-space. The classic pseudo-3D bendy-road routine of 8-bit racing games just couldn't cope with showing anything like it. No more than it could replicate the tight twisty tracks of a Mode-7 Mario Kart type game.

I honestly barely remember more than a handful of these. The only one that I spent any kind of time on was Mindshadow, so that gets my vote. Adventure games could often be quite impenetrable in those days (especially as in most cases I only had tape-to-tape copies with no instructions) but Mindshadow was really easy to get into and actually make progress. It had a really well-considered level of difficulty (plus quite impressive detail, nice graphics and a great storyline, especially when you get into the second part). It's definitely one of my favourite adventures.

Can't really in good conscience do a top three though, given my ignorance of most of these. Seem to remember Hacker being quite good but honestly don't remember enough about it, really. And I'm kind of surprised that Ghostbusters is getting highly rated as it's one of the few I do remember, and I remember that it was awful.

1. Enduro Racer
2. Rampage
3. Ghostbusters

Only played very few of these games, I have to admit. But Enduro Racer is clearly the one stand out title in their catalogue. Thanks to Giga Games who also developed Nightmare Rally earlier.
I have fond memories of playing Ghostbusters although the game has not aged well.

1 :: Enduro Racer
2 :: Ghostbusters
3 :: H.E.R.O.

Blimey, Enduro Racer is smashing this poll, more than R Type dominated the Electric Dreams poll!

Yes, I have Enduro Racer down as my vote, but I did not expect it to be the lead, maybe somewhere 3rd or 4th. A pleasant surprise.

Most of their arcade conversions were far too ambitious for the Speccy and didn't play well at all.
As for the ports from other 8-bits, they suffered from all the limitations of the original machine plus the Spectrum's colour and sound issues, without any sort of optimisation for the Z80, not leaving you very much to play with at all.

Yeah, surprising results so far.

But more surprising is the vote Howard the Duck got

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:41 pm Yeah, surprising results so far.
But more surprising is the vote Howard the Duck got

That's just depressing.
As is the one for Altered Beast, for that matter...

What title did you expect to lead the poll.

I always liked Hacker so I went with that

WIWC wrote: ↑Tue Aug 13, 2019 8:56 pm What title did you expect to lead the poll.

Nothing specific in mind, but I thought Ghostbusters would be performing really strong. I don't like Ghostbusters - really dull and boring. It's got the feel of a BASIC game. What a missed opportunity.

Apparently, it was some car management game (on the C64, I believe) that was being developed just as Activision got the license for Ghostbusters, so they took what they had and retooled it to be Ghostbusters.

Commercially, it appears it might be the best selling ZX Spectrum game of all time (either that or Robocop). Surely must be the power of the license, because the game is so shoddy. (Robocop however, is a great game, even if you despise the film.)

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Wed Aug 14, 2019 7:27 am Robocop however, is a great game, even if you despise the film.)

Are there actually people out there that despise Robocop?!?! It's one of the best films to brilliantly take a stab at the whole 80's ethos of greed and power. Plus it's just a bloody (pun fully intended) good film.