Spectrum Computing

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:32 pm**

You've got a magic wand, which MIA game for the ZX Spectrum game would you like to have in your hands and be put online as a TZX for us all to play?

I expect this...

...to be a popular choice.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:04 pm**

Great Giana Sisters.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:05 pm**

Although not strictly an MIA title, if Elite had managed to pull off the original Scooby Doo game that would have been something special.

In terms of actual MIA games the Super Thief ads intrigued me.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:30 pm**

Mire Mare, OBVIOUSLY!!!

Others as interesting as MM:

- Fairlight 3
- Saboteur 3
- Crystalis (the fourth Jonny Jones game: Saimazoom, Babaliba, Abu Simbel and this one).

By the way, the only pic of Saboteur 3 we have is this:

With those graphics I can't imagine it's a sequel of Saboteur & Saboteur 2!

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:37 pm**

Mire Mare
The Great Giana Sisters
Saboteur III
Judge Death
The Last Ninja I
The Last Ninja III
Bangkok Knights
Star Trek The Rebel Universe (played it a lot on the Atari ST and always wondered why a Spectrum version couldn't come around)
Iron Horse
Solar Jetman
Halo Jones
Re-Bounder

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:42 pm**

Three more I forgot to mention:

- Congo Bongo (I love the arcade game)
- Up 'n' Down
- High Noon:

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:46 pm**

I'd like to see Mire Mare and Great Giana Sisters fully recovered, but wonder if it would be a bit deflating because I think I can already picture them. I might be wrong of course, but I can't see them being that special. For this reason I've gone for one that's close to home, and another that I chanced upon when researching a possible entry for last year's ZXDev.

uMIA: YTS*. I've mentioned this before. It's a BASIC game my elder brother wrote during the 80s, and while some would see it as a quality CGC entry, in my mind he was a genius and my hero for being able to code it. It was a top down arcade game with 3 levels, and in one of them you carried buckets of pigswill from the left of the screen to the right. There might have been pigs to receive on the right, not sure. There were no moving enemies, but you had to avoid lumps of manure scattered RNDly around the screen. It had in-game BEEPER music and played at a good speed, for BASIC. He drew an inlay, and one of the characters was like Vivian from the young ones. It's almost definitely properly lost, but I would really love to see the inlay and game again.

MIA: Lapwing. It might be an absolute howler, but I chanced upon it and I liked the name. It's a text adventure that I considered remaking for the ZX-DevMIA comp. Even considered contacting the address in Brum from the magazine references for more info. Still might.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 6:32 pm ...and be put online as a TZX for us all to play?

Though to answer ^this^ question, my choices are probably only going to please me!

*Actually this should definitely have an ID. On the list.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:46 pm**

Swainy wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:04 pm Great Giana Sisters.

I've played it on the C64, I'm always pleased to play its inspiration, but I honestly don't understand why Great Giana Sisters is praised by the C64 scene. It'd be okay as a budget game or magazine covertape giveaway, but it's really not worth much more than that. Heavily overrated, and I imagine it would have been worse on the Speccy. Historically important though, I'll give it that.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:59 pm**

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:30 pm By the way, the only pic of Saboteur 3 we have is this:

With those graphics I can't imagine it's a sequel of Saboteur & Saboteur 2!

Seems very much like Impossible Mission!

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 8:56 pm**

Is this meant for games that were actually developed and/or released, or ones that 'could have been'? I thought that Potty Professor sounded interesting after reading the Sinclair User review. It's a shame the game has been lost to time.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:19 pm**

djnzx48 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 8:56 pm Is this meant for games that were actually developed and/or released, or ones that 'could have been'? I thought that Potty Professor sounded interesting after reading the Sinclair User review. It's a shame the game has been lost to time.

Pretty much anything that's listed as MIA, as long as it's not absolute fantasy stuff, like simply conjuring up an idea of 'Renegade 4: Now He's In Space', which is something I've just made up a minute ago.

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:27 pm**

djnzx48 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 8:56 pm Is this meant for games that were actually developed and/or released, or ones that 'could have been'? I thought that Potty Professor sounded interesting after reading the Sinclair User review. It's a shame the game has been lost to time.

Good call. If Mire Mare and Giana Sister count, then surely this does as well. The article suggests it was at least a nearly finalised demo for review.

Whatever happened to it, that's a massive shame because it would have been pretty groundbreaking wouldn't it? AFAIK the Speccy hasn't had a Heath Robinson type game before, and similar computer games didn't appear until the 90s (?).

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:31 pm**

According to the author:

There are only a few copies of ‘Potty Professor’ out there. I don’t even have one myself, so if anyone does they have a real collector’s item!

Posted: **Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:55 pm**

I was also intrigued by the idea behind the 'original' Scooby Doo, though I suppose as it materialised (just in a changed shape) some might say it's not really MIA.

Although I wasn't the biggest fan of Marsport, I would have liked to see how the sequel(s) - Fornax and Gath - turned out.

Posted: **Mon Dec 09, 2019 9:55 am**

Everything big that was announced but not released/completed like:

-Toki
-Mega Twins
-Thunderjaws

I would also like to see some games released only as demos from Russian scene. For example remakes of big games from early 90s: Mortal Combat, Warcraft, Civilisation, Worms, Legend of Kyrandia...

Personally I'm somehow less excited about Great Giana Sisters and Mire Mare.

Check Giana Sisters on CPC. It's terrribly slow and practically unplayable. I believe this version shares a lot of code with lost Spectrum version so
Speccy version would be sluggish as well.

And Mire Mare? It would either another Sabrewulf or another Knight Lore. At the end of their days Ulimate lost their "freshness". Again it's for me big, inflated expectations that wouldn't stand the reality check.

Posted: **Mon Dec 09, 2019 11:40 am**

I wrote a few BASIC games back in the day, and finished at least one in assembly. Sadly, only the BASIC prototype of Yankee (miraculously) has survived. It’s not so much the code that I’m missing; it’s the ideas. (I don’t think I’d have had the effrontery to rewrite Yankee in assembly, if I hadn’t dug up the bits and pieces of the original BASIC prototype.) Wish I could recover those.

Overall, I’d say if we’re using “MIA” in the strict sense of the term—games that were actually released but somehow haven’t been archived—then it seems that what’s worth preserving has been preserved already.

I was interested in a few unreleased IF 2 cartridge titles years ago, but I think they’ve all been recovered, so I’m good. Some (Gyruss) are surprisingly good, actually.

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 1:10 am**

-The Batman text adventure made by the same team that brought us Hunchback and The Neverending Story. This is reported to have been finished, but never released.

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/b ... adventure/

-2011 (aka Wondergirl) The "Girls" of St Bride's getting into the soper-heroic genre. This could have been, eer... weird, but probably never happened.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=12234

--

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:56 am**

rockersuke wrote: ↑Tue Dec 10, 2019 1:10 am -2011 (aka Wondergirl) The "Girls" of St Bride's getting into the soper-heroic genre. This could have been, eer... weird, but probably never happened.

The last "true" St. Bride's game as well, perhaps? Certainly sounded like it was being made by the minds behind the original games, rather than some of the later ones that felt more like an imprint of CRL.

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 7:33 am**

Of the games that I know were reviewed, Roly Poly Goes To Hospital from David Todd Software, which looked like a JSW type game, is one which I would like to have. There are also a number of adventure games, such as Sheerluck Holmes and Dr Witsend and a few by Topologika that remain MIA.

Of the games that were announced and/or previewed, Toki, Super Thief, James Pond 2: Robocod and the Heavy On The Magick follow-ups are ones that I would also liked to have seen.

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 7:42 am**

Wreckers by Denton Designs. Crashed Smashed and everything!

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 8:26 am**

Horace to the Rescue and Willy Meets the Taxman.

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 11:39 am**

Morkin wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 9:55 pm I was also intrigued by the idea behind the 'original' Scooby Doo, though I suppose as it materialised (just in a changed shape) some might say it's not really MIA.

Although I wasn't the biggest fan of Marsport, I would have liked to see how the sequel(s) - Fornax and Gath - turned out.

I remember seeing those original pics in Crash and thinking that the game would be amazing. When I look at the pics now you can see that they're just flat images in a graphics package like Artist or something similar. Does anybody know how much of that original concept was actually completed? From what I've heard it was going to be a similar game idea to Dragons Lair.

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 8:59 pm**

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Sun Dec 08, 2019 7:42 pm

Knowing Ocean back in the day the top should read :

"Advertise it now... worry about hiring some poor schmuck to write it in a week, later!".

On topic - the really obvious one to me is Mire Mare as Pete correctly expects, I just suspect that like any other late-stage Ultimate game you would have to expect some disappointment. Maybe best left as legend. Really can't think of any other Speccy 'vapourware' (that I would like to see anyway), what did we call the equivalent at the time?

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:31 pm**

Surprised nobody has said Mega Tree by Matthew Smith. I remember the dev disks being auctioned on eBay back in 2004, but I don't think anything was ever released from them:

https://www.avforums.com/threads/matthe ... ay.127827/

Mega tree was a separate game to Willy meets the tax man and was about 40% complete:

https://www.gamesthatwerent.com/gtw64/megatree-jsw3/

Posted: **Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:43 pm**

Another one that I would like to at least see in action is the original version of Outrun Europa.

I event went as far as starting a mock-up myself.

Spectrum Computing

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