Top 100 ZX Spectrum Games

[blucey]

I don't remember ever playing Wriggler before. Just gave it a quick go on here - http://torinak.com/qaop#!wriggler

The worm animation is really smooth. Great death animation too. Worm with a skeleton... very odd.

The most confusing thing is the main menu. It offers you four keyboard control schemes of which three are terrible and one is great. How odd. Why not just redefineable keys?

Anyway, it seems good. What, vaguely, am I meant to be doing though.

EDIT: ARRRGHHH! That spider animation!

[jdanddiet]

If anyone ever compiled a list of most horrible creatures from Speccy games, the spider in Wriggler would surely be in the top ten!

[jdanddiet]

no. 42

[blucey]

R-Type is an odd one.

The first level is great. I completely fell in love with the demo when that came out.

Level 2 is a bit average but okay.

Level 3 is amazing, especially on the Speccy. One of the coolest things I ever saw the Speccy do.

But after that the game stops being fun and some levels require too much memorisation. Also, losing your weapons when you lose a life really ruins it.

[jdanddiet]

R-Type is an odd one.

The first level is great. I completely fell in love with the demo when that came out.

Level 2 is a bit average but okay.

Level 3 is amazing, especially on the Speccy. One of the coolest things I ever saw the Speccy do.

But after that the game stops being fun and some levels require too much memorisation. Also, losing your weapons when you lose a life really ruins it.

Hence it's low placement on my list, despite its status as one of the finest arcade conversions of all time on the Speccy.
I much prefer a certain other horizontally scrolling game which is coming soon

[blucey]

I'll wager it isn't Tanium by Players Software.

[jdanddiet]

I'll wager it isn't Tanium by Players Software.

As I've never even heard of it, I think you're right!

BTW, I've just realised something: I have omitted Light Force from my list.
I may have to do a list of games that just missed out.

[blucey]

Light Force is perfectly placed if it is out of the top 100!

[Matt_B]

I'd have Zynaps down as a slightly better sideways scroller but that's also got the problem that the first level is far better than the rest of the game.

The most impressive things about Lightforce are the visual tricks it uses to keep colour clash to a bare minimum. I enjoyed it too but it's way more of a memory test than a seat-of-the-pants shooter.

[jdanddiet]

Number 41 yesterday was Elite's Commando

Into the top 40 today!

[blucey]

Commando is a solid choice. Certainly pretty playable.

[Morkin]

Yeah, I'd probably have expected Commando to be in there somewhere.

Until we played it in our recent high score competition I'd forgotten how much of a 'bullet hell' type game it could be.

Fortunately enemy bullets are slowed down to a nice speed that gives you a fighting chance of avoiding them.

[jdanddiet]

Into the top 40 with

[cmal]

You just jogged my memory with this game. I haven't played Spy Hunter for years and was meaning to give it another go the other day but forgot. Now I have to play it. Thanks!

BTW: Commando is a good choice. I still want to go back to this game and try to get further than I did in the HSC competition.

[RWAC]

Into the top 40 with

Probably my favourite US Gold game.

Most US Gold games did tend to be a bit meh though.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Spy Hunter is great, even better than the arcade game.

[Matt_B]

Most US Gold releases were good on the C64 but it was a bit of a lottery with the Spectrum depending on who did the conversion.

Denton Designs did Spy Hunter.

[blucey]

Yeah I loved Spy Hunter back in the day and was shocked at how much I didn't like the arcade version when I finally got to try it.

US Gold's biggest problem was Tiertex who always seemed to do the bare minimum on their games.

[toot_toot]

Most US Gold releases were good on the C64 but it was a bit of a lottery with the Spectrum depending on who did the conversion.

Denton Designs did Spy Hunter.

The directors at Ocean owned a percentage of US Gold when it was setup and helped them with the early Spectrum conversions (Denton Designs were ex Imagine staff, so had a strong relationship with Ocean). Interestingly, US Gold created the Go! Label to try and prevent Ocean getting any royalties, claiming it was a completely different label to US Gold, but in the end US Gold had to pay out anyway.

Supposedly they also made a fortune when US Gold was eventually bought out by Eidos. But it was quite strange that the two biggest publishers were so intertwined - Ocean used US Gold’s mastering and distribution facilities (CentreSoft) and also owned a percentage of US Gold!

But yes, I’d say the Spectrum versions were very much hit and miss, whereas the original C64 versions were usually superior. I’d say the C64 version of Spy Hunter is also better, but the Speccy version is still good. Pity there isn’t an AY hack to give us the Peter Gunn theme!

[blucey]

I gave the C64 version a go. The keyboard controls are a nightmare. Other than that it seemed pretty smooth. I feel like the Speccy version had more enemies on screen at any given time though and the colour scheme made it easier to identify what type of cars they were.

[clebin]

The directors at Ocean owned a percentage of US Gold when it was setup and helped them with the early Spectrum conversions (Denton Designs were ex Imagine staff, so had a strong relationship with Ocean). Interestingly, US Gold created the Go! Label to try and prevent Ocean getting any royalties, claiming it was a completely different label to US Gold, but in the end US Gold had to pay out anyway.

Interesting, I didn't know that. I'm really not a fan of US Gold - most of their games are incredibly mediocre and one-dimensional. I used to wonder why they never made it big on the 16-bits, but looking back it's because they just weren't good enough.

One of US Gold's better games, Gauntlet, was developed by Gremlin of course, who were eventually bought by Infogrames along with Ocean. How Infogrames ended up bigger than both Ocean and Gremlin is still a mystery to me. It must've been that mega-hit Stir Crazy Featuring Bobo...

(*edit: I’m exaggerating for effect with Stir Crazy - they did have some good games, but I never saw them as being in the top division)

[jdanddiet]

Along that theme, number 39 today is...

[Matt_B]

Beach Head is a bit of a mixed bag to me. I liked the idea of a collection of strung together minigames but the overall quality varies a lot. The air and sea battles are good, as is the tank drive up the beach, but the minefield and the fortress both let the side down. I suppose you can just skip the former entirely though.

The C64 version feels slicker overall, but the Spectrum port was OK and kept the gameplay mostly intact.

[Morkin]

Beach Head never grabbed me at all, but Spy Hunter was decent fairly simple game but enjoyable fast action.

[toot_toot]

I loved Beach Head! Although it reminded me of the risk of buying games in 84/85, the reviews were always a month or two after the games were in the shops and you’d buy a game based on either the interesting looking cover, or the fact it was from the same label as a game that you really liked. Somehow, I thought that if Beach Head and Bruce Lee were good, then all games from US Gold must be good, right?

Wrong! Buck Rogers was really dire and the Spectrum version of Blue Max was nowhere near as good as the C64 one they had on demonstration in the shop!!!

But Tapper, Raid Over Moscow and Spy Hunter were brilliant, yet Flak was really poor. Just goes to show how hit and miss they were with the early conversions. I wish someone would do those games justice and make new ones!