The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

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PeteProdge
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The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by PeteProdge »

Still on page 9 of the first edition of Crash, and here's a prolific label I'm sure I covered before, but no, it hasn't happened yet.

It's Quicksilva, who have been around in the days of the ZX81. Into the Speccy era, they would then be picked up by Argus Press and rebranded as Grandslam, but here, we're only concentrating on their original (not any re-releases) ZX Spectrum games under the Quicksilva brand.

My proposed list is this...

3D Strategy
Ant Attack
Aquaplane
Astro Blaster
Battlezone
Blood 'n' Guts
Bugaboo The Flea
Captain Kelly
Chess Player, The
Death Wake
DefCom
Dragonsbane
Elevator Action
Eric Bristow's Pro-Darts
Fantastic Voyage
Frenzy
Gatecrasher
Glass
Glider Rider
Gridrunner
Hocus Focus
Laser Zone
Mastermind
Max Headroom
Meteor Storm
Mighty Magus
Mined-Out
Pontoon
Red Scorpion
Rupert And The Toymaker's Party
Sabotage
Schizofrenia
Sector 90
Smuggler's Cove
Snowman, The
Space Intruders
Strontium: The Killing
Tantalus
Thompson Twins Adventure, The
Time-Gate
Traxx
Tube, The
Xadom
Yabba Dabba Doo!

I think Ant Attack could clear up here.

But hey, before I start the 14-day-long poll in a week from now, do tell me if I've missed off anything, or if any of these games shouldn't be here, or whatever...
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by StooB »

Power Pyramids and Pac-Land are Quicksilva rather than GrandSlam.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by PeteProdge »

StooB wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 12:43 pm Power Pyramids and Pac-Land are Quicksilva rather than GrandSlam.
Ah, but Pac-Land was eventually issued as a GrandSlam title.

It's a bit murky with Power Pyramids, I haven't found an original release inlay yet.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by StooB »

PeteProdge wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 1:45 pm
StooB wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 12:43 pm Power Pyramids and Pac-Land are Quicksilva rather than GrandSlam.
It's a bit murky with Power Pyramids, I haven't found an original release inlay yet.
It was missing from WoS, but it's here: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=3855
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Cosmium »

I'm going to go with Time-Gate. Still remember seeing it at the Quicksilva stand at an early ZX Microfair. They'd set up a TV high up and there was a huge crowd around it, quite a few people deep. I think there was an additional amplifier and speaker blasting out the thunderous engine roar, which was considered quite an innovative feat at the time. Apparently, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time-Gate the sound effects caused some early Spectrums to crash!?

Time-Gate reminded me of Intellivision's Space Battle, but more affordable and was enough to convince me to part ways with my cash there and then! (My Spectrum didn't crash, and I happily whiled away quite a few hours with the game).
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by PeteProdge »

StooB wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 1:57 pm
PeteProdge wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 1:45 pm It's a bit murky with Power Pyramids, I haven't found an original release inlay yet.
It was missing from WoS, but it's here: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 96&id=3855
Ah, lovely. That's definitely Quicksilva. Power Pyramids will be in this poll then, not Grandslam.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by uglifruit »

Shouldn't Zombie Zombie (Sandy White's Ant Attack sequel) be on the list?
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Juan F. Ramirez »

There are some interesting titles along with some mediocrity. Ant Attack being the best and most notorious (and I bet it will win) we have also Bugaboo, Astro Blaster, Battle Zone, Fantastic Voyage, Tantalus,... I prefer the early years when the company seemed to be more prolific. From the last years, only Glider Rider is worth playing it, in my opinion.

By the way, Blood 'n' Guts & Fantastic Voyage are the same game (I don't remember the story behind it) so I think they should be considered the same game as to voting.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by WhatHoSnorkers »

Ant Attack is just a marvel, and I met the guy who did the cover art.
2nd would be Fantastic Voyage which inspired my sister and I to say "Aor-TA! Aor-TA! I screwed ya DOR-ta!" for some reason.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Vampyre »

Ant Attack will probably win, but it's by no means a dead-cert as other favourites in these polls have shown. I never enjoyed playing it all that much, my young brain couldn't cope with the spatial awareness when rotating the view so I never gave it as much time as it deserved.

I did put a lot of time into Time Gate when I first had my Speccy and a few months later I enjoyed Aquaplane. I think my vote may well go to Aquaplane as it was such a playable little number.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by uglifruit »

Vampyre wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 10:09 am Ant Attack ... brain couldn't cope with the spatial awareness when rotating the view so I never gave it as much time as it deserved.
There's a hacked version with directional (rather than rotational) controls helps this enormously, and is now definitely my Ant Attack of choice.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by PeteProdge »

uglifruit wrote: Mon Feb 17, 2020 1:00 am Shouldn't Zombie Zombie (Sandy White's Ant Attack sequel) be on the list?
You are quite right! It's now in my list.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Morpheus »

I really liked Fred and Bugaboo was pretty good and Glass was a decent shoot em up as well. I liked Ant Attack but I just feel there were other good games released by Quicksilva aside from Sandy White’s game.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by StooB »

PeteProdge wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 1:45 pm
StooB wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 12:43 pm Power Pyramids and Pac-Land are Quicksilva rather than GrandSlam.
Ah, but Pac-Land was eventually issued as a GrandSlam title.
Quicksllva all over this inlay!

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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by PeteProdge »

StooB wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2020 11:52 am
PeteProdge wrote: Sun Feb 16, 2020 1:45 pm Ah, but Pac-Land was eventually issued as a GrandSlam title.
Quicksllva all over this inlay!

Image
Aaaargh! The curse of dual branding! Now I'm not sure if it's Quicksilva or Grandslam... Grrr...

I'm 100% confident it's a terrible game, as it's a flip-screen atrocity that ruined the originally fantastic scrolling game.

But is it Quicksilva or Grandslam? :-\
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Morkin »

Just stick it in both, I doubt I'll get any votes.. :lol:

And even if it does, it won't be on the same complaint scale as 'Deathchasegate'... :P
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Hank Scorpio »

I'm guessing that by this time Grandslam was the new name for Argus Press and was the parent company to Quicksilva. Also, if you look closely at the advert and inlay for Power Pyramids it lists Quicksilva as a division of Grandslam Entertainments, so I would definitely keep Pacland in this poll.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by PeteProdge »

Hank Scorpio wrote: Tue Feb 18, 2020 5:19 pm I'm guessing that by this time Grandslam was the new name for Argus Press and was the parent company to Quicksilva. Also, if you look closely at the advert and inlay for Power Pyramids it lists Quicksilva as a division of Grandslam Entertainments, so I would definitely keep Pacland in this poll.
Okay, cheers! On that reasoning, I'm saying Pac-Land came out on Quicksilva (although it's barely acknowledged).

Ah, if only it had been anything like the arcade original, it could have given Ant Attack a challenge in this poll.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Turtle_Quality »

The Chess Player - I still remember me and my friend Robert looking shocked when someone had said "THIS IS THE CHESS PLAYER", we were alone in the room and it was neither of us. First time I head speech on the Spectrum. It also had an unnerving tendency to say "Good move" when you played some simple defensive move due to lack of viable alternative.

Meteor Storm was supposed to have speech but it was just some garbled white noise. And character movement for an Asteroids clone is not good. I remember vaguely that Quicksilva advertised conversions of various arcade classics in the press that never materialised - Defender and Centipede... this was still before Spectrums were easily available and they even offered to by mine at a Microfair... no way !

Time Gate was impressive though not as engrossing as Elite, I think I read Jon Hollis never understood SIN and COS at school but ended up having to write routines for them in assembly to write Time-Gate. And Aquaplane was also impressive with the first usage of the fixed border (that I knew of anyway) and few games used it during gameplay. I never got into playing Ant Attack of Zombie Zombie, though I did hack the latter to create a game called Andy Andy just to take the p*** out of a friend who shall remain nameless. And the 10 green bottles rendition of Andy Andy was stunning sound for the 48K spectrum

Astro Blaster was fun but I wasn't sure why I should shoot at corn flakes. Again Elevator Action and Bugaboo were not so technically impressive but fun to play.

Think I will vote for
1 Elevator Action
2 Time Gates
3 The Chess Player
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Nick »

While my vote will probably go to Ant Attack, there are quite a few of Quicksilva's early games that I really enjoyed. Mined Out, Fantastic Voyage, Fred, Dragons Bane, Zombie Zombie, Mighty Magus and Strontium Dog all stick out in my memory. Of their later games only Elevator Action grabbed my attention.

I might have to have a Quicksilva themed games playing session at some point in the next week or so.
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Re: The best Speccy game by Quicksilva: discussion

Post by Morkin »

Turtle_Quality wrote: Fri Feb 21, 2020 4:05 pmMeteor Storm was supposed to have speech but it was just some garbled white noise.
"Meteor alert..! Meteor alert..!"

I liked the speech and the screechy sound effects in that game.

At the time I'd also played Planetoids which has much slicker/smoother movement but is a bit quiet. Would have been nice to have some more in-game shouting and screeching... :lol:
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