The Nearlies

[cmal]

That's a pity. Looks like a great but difficult game.
This is an interesting topic. I'll need to give it some thought...

[clebin]

Really interesting topic. I'm sure others will have better examples than me, but:

Fairlight II. Possibly the first example of Tim Langdell's malevolent influence on the games industry. If only Bo Jangeborg had been able to complete it before it was pushed out. What's even sadder of course is the abrupt end to a promising series.

Treasure Island Dizzy. Arguably still a budget classic but this should've been the best Dizzy game. Of course, to fix another problem they rushed the game out with only one life. The original problem was less of a problem than the fix IMO.

[PQR]

I nominate Lunar Jetman.

It is pretty and could have been a worthy successor to the mighty Jetpac. But the difficulty is arcade level and the combination of using both keys and joystick in certain situations makes it unplayable to me.

[Morkin]

Agree with Lunar Jetman, and flippin' eck, I didn't quite appreciate just how hard Crosswize was, even the first level..!

Penetrator

Personally I think this is a cracking scramble game, and the 'design-your-own-landscape' option is a fantastic addition. But that fire/thrust key is the one single thing that turns a lot of players away. Redefinable keys with separate choices for laser/bomb would solve it and raise it a level above.

Movie

This was one of those games that I was very excited about, and quite enjoyed wandering around trying to solve it. But the control method is horrendous..! Why oh why was that horrible icon-driven control method chosen for this game..?? QAOP to move, and a few other action keys, and Bob's your uncle.

Knight Lore

Aside from the wonder at seeing it for the first time, there's been some later criticism of this game because it's essentially a "collect and return 'x' object, repeat x 14" game.

Personally I don't mind this - I always liked just trying to work out how to navigate the block puzzles and hazards in the various screens.

But why the time limit? The problem with this (and in fact most time limits in games) is if you start making progress, there comes a point where it's going to be impossible to finish in time, so you might as well quit. Keep the day/night man/wolf element, but scrap the time limit, I reckon*. I don't think you should have to know the map and object locations perfectly to have a chance at completing the game, I think it should depend on your skill.

[Edit] * or at least make it so when you run out of time you lose a life, rather than losing the game

Gyroscope

I used to quite like most of the the glut of Marble Madness clones that came out mid-to-late 80s. I really enjoyed Gyroscope, but the collision detection with the enemies/aliens is frustrating as hell. Sometimes you have to properly hit one to trigger the collision, but other times you're miles away from it. Just making the collision detection more forgiving would vastly improve this one.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

Express Raider for me, for the opposite reason about Lunar Jetman.



Graphically good, variety of enemies but too easy in my opinion. I remember the first time I played it I progress a lot through it.

[toot_toot]

I know that this might sound like heresy, but I think Jonathan Smith's later games would all have been elevated from 7/10 to 10/10 if they had some minor tweaks or gameplay focus.

Hyperactive is a good example, it was given away on a cover tape by Sinclair User (twice!) and was clearly inspired by Dropzone/Defender.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyBG77kdWDM

The problem with it is that, like Crosswize, the graphics are too big and with a lot of Jonathan's later games it feels like it's focusing too much on pushing the hardware of the Spectrum (lots and lots of sprites on screen) and as a result the gameplay suffers. The fact that the enemy sprites and bullets have very little impact on the large main sprite sort of implies that he knew there was too much going on and having the one hit death of Cobra would have made it too difficult. However, it is very fast and like Crosswize if the sprites were maybe a little smaller or if there was just less enemies, but with bigger punishment like one hit deaths then it could have been just as highly regarded as Cobra.

If want an even better example, Hysteria when it was released received really good reviews at the time but playing it now it just seems like there's far too much going on. Maybe it started as a sequel to Cobra as it not only has very similar gameplay, but the "engine" is also very similar, except it's a left to right scrolling level instead of a wrap around area like Defender and the main character uses his head to eliminate enemies and instead of a headbutt, instead he fires lightening out of his eyes. I think. But there's so much going on at the same time - lots of enemies, lots of bullets and again very little punishment in the form of a health meter. The setting of the main protagonist travelling through time to fight "classical" enemies is very similar to the theme used by Myth: History in the Making a couple of years later, but IMHO it doesn't work as well as Cobra. I'd love to have seen this as Cobra 2: The Revenge of Cobra, getting rid of the whole history setting, reducing the number of enemies on screen and having one hit deaths and then it would probably be more revered. Instead it's a bit forgotten, which is a real shame. It's also a reminder that the coders were rarely mentioned in the reviews or promotion of the games at this time. If Software Projects had screamed "from the developer of Cobra" then it would have definitely sold more!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btL2_Jzx0m0

[cmal]

Thanatos

This game looks good but feels unresponsive and controlling the dragon is awkward. It also feels like the dragon is overly huge and takes up too much of the screen area. I guess it looked good in the magazine adverts. Perhaps if the dragon was a bit smaller and easier to control this would have been a great game.

Abu Simbel Profanation

I'm all for a challenging game, but this one is insane. If the pixel-perfect timing were just a tad more lenient, this would be an awesome game. I have never made it past the second screen.

[toot_toot]

Another one came to mind, although it doesn't fulfil the original criteria of nearly being an amazing game. It's a game that's 5/10 at best - despite Your Sinclair giving it 8/10 at the time.

Miami Vice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrmrG3p4cN0

I got this with when I upgraded from the rubber key beermat to a +2 as part of the Screen Heroes dixon pack with other such delights as Knight Rider, Highlander or Street Hawk. The problem is that you can actually see the potential of the game. It's like an early version of the original GTA, an open world game where you drive around the city in an overhead view but it's bogged down by crippling bugs and the instructions showing how much potential but aren't realised.

Just read the intro instructions!

Crockett and Tubbs have heard; the word is on the street - a one million
dollar contraband shipment is due in town on Thursday morning, for collection
by Mr. 'J' - an old fashioned gangster with a respectable new image and
some influential friends.
These big deals usually go down under the cover of a waterfront warehouse
and as of Midnight Sunday that's as much as you know.
Just get out there and squeeze the network of dealers; starting with the
real low - life, the $10 wrap men who frequent the local bars. If you
handle them right you just might get to their suppliers, the next link in
the chain and eventually the slick businessmen who operate in the casinos -
they should have lots of information if you don't have to shoot them first!

The gameplay should consist of working your way up through the criminal underworld. Start off busting the lower guys and they give you a tip on where to go next and so on. Except the original had a bug where when the criminals told you the time of the next meet, the hour character was garbage so you had no idea what time that really was. At least that has since been fixed by a POKE, but how on earth did it pass that? You also had to physically write all the notes down, the game didn't store any of them making it a bit of a pain. Some kind of in-game notebook taking down the details of the next meet would have made so much better. Even an in game map like Turbo Esprit would have helped, when a crook says someone is meeting at a certain place, unless you had the map printed in Your Sinclair, you had little idea where to go to!

Your captain has provided you with sets of probable time schedules for all
the meetings which are expected on Monday.
There are two possible schedules for Monday a.m., and four on Monday p.m.
All meetings within each twelve hour period will follow the same schedule,
although you do not know which ones at the start.
To catch a crook at a meeting, arrive at the meeting between 4 and 8 minutes
after its scheduled start. To disturb a meeting in order to make the crook
flee, leaving his contraband behind, arrive between 0 and 4 minutes from
its start. To encounter a crook's car (the red car), enter and leave the
location of a meeting within 8 and 12 minutes from its start.

The problem in the game is that those 4 and 8 minutes work out in game as a few seconds - or else they had gone. You also couldn't sit in the same screen as the location, otherwise the crooks wouldn't turn up. Which doesn't make sense as the point of Miami Vice was Crockett and Tubbs were undercover as high rolling drugs middle men, so the crooks wouldn't be spooked! Giving more time available to meet someone and not having to wait on the adjacent screen would have fixed that one. I also don't think they even implemented the crooks car (red car), or I certainly never came across it. If they'd implemented some sort of high speed chase, in the game which I think was the intention but I don't think it was actually implemented.

At least the other cars all drive on the right side of the road making it easy to navigate (unlike the C64 version), but the fact that you explode if you hit anything - even grass - means that you end up driving your Ferrari Daytona at the equivalent of 20mph. Having some sort of energy bar for the car would have made it much more enjoyable and more like the TV series!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsnv8qhjrws

A few other polishing tweaks like getting rid of the ugly standard Spectrum font (why is there a K at the bottom left of the screen?) and a nice AY rendition of the Miami Vice theme would have improved things even more. Overall you can see what they were trying to achieve but I guess at this time nobody had really done anything like this. With a few tweaks, it could have been a brilliant game, instead it's really frustrating. Maybe it's made worse when playing Turbo Esprit and you see all the little things that make Turbo Esprit so good (the car chases, the map) and if those had been implemented in Miami Vice, you get a real feeling of a missed opportunity.

[Morkin]

Penetrator

Personally I think this is a cracking scramble game, and the 'design-your-own-landscape' option is a fantastic addition. But that fire/thrust key is the one single thing that turns a lot of players away. Redefinable keys with separate choices for laser/bomb would solve it and raise it a level above.

Totes. Mad decision, and makes it literally unplayable with a joystick on Retropie. Why not just have one button both fire and bomb?

Ideally I reckon you need separate keys - you can fire as many lasers as you can hammer the button but you can only have two bombs at once - there are some levels like the cyan level where you may need to fire forward a lot while being a bit more precise with your bombing. But redefinable keys would give you the choice, and joystick users could put them on the same fire button if they wanted.

[toot_toot]

Thanatos

This game looks good but feels unresponsive and controlling the dragon is awkward. It also feels like the dragon is overly huge and takes up too much of the screen area. I guess it looked good in the magazine adverts. Perhaps if the dragon was a bit smaller and easier to control this would have been a great game.

Durrell had a couple of other similar games that are mostly forgotten now that suffer again from the bigger graphics that Thanatos had.

Operation Hormuz

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5CmdX5j9v8

This was published by Again Again and it must have started off as a sequel to Harrier Attack. Ignore the "space aliens" guff that was added to the instructions to try and remove it from reality, it's Harrier Attack 2 that's set in the Middle East instead of the Falklands!

The problem is that the main sprite is now MASSIVE and the one hit kills of the original have now been replaced with an energy bar (must have been a common thing in the late 80s). Underneath it's the same game as Harrier Attack (shoot down planes with missiles, drop bombs on ground installations) but with your MASSIVE plane, it's impossible to see anything that's going on. Wings of Fury on the Amiga fixed this by zooming the screen out (or shrinking the sprites) when you climbed high up, but maybe the humble Speccy wasn't capable of doing this.

The other game is Spitfire, which came out on the Encore budget label after Elite bought out Durrell and didn't think it was good enough to release at full price.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWw11n_n7oQ

Same problems, massive sprite and little visibility. If they'd gone with the Harrier Attack size of sprites, it could have been much better fun with the focus on dog fights, but instead it's one of those games that looks great on the back of the cover but plays like dog dirt.

[akeley]

I'm usually up for some sacred cow slaying, but I can't agree about Movie & Knight Lore. The former was totally groundbreaking and while the icon-driven interface might be cumbersome at first, you can get used to it (well, I did) and it's definitely not game breaking. It's much more of an adventure than action game so it does work. An example of where it really messes up the gameplay is Barbarian from Psygnosis though.

Knight Lore's time limit is perhaps a bit on the hardcore side, but to be honest I've never even though about it because the whole game was always too difficult for me, so the time limit was the least of my worries. But it's still one of the greatest ZX games, if not THE greatest (no, wait, that'd be Movie ).

For the OP, I third the Penetrator, I still sometimes ponder what was the thought process behind binding both shoot and forward to the same key? It's just so thoroughly crazy, in an otherwise very competent game from an up-and-coming stellar codeshop.

Another HSC game which qualifies for me is Hunchback. That second screen rope jumping is one of the worst coded obbstacles I've ever seen in a videogame. Fixing it wouldn't make the game a hit (for me) but it'd be at least somewhat playable.
Other people seem to manage to achieve decent scores though, so it's probably just me.

[clebin]

Another HSC game which qualifies for me is Hunchback. That second screen rope jumping is one of the worst coded obbstacles I've ever seen in a videogame. Fixing it wouldn't make the game a hit (for me) but it'd be at least somewhat playable.
Other people seem to manage to achieve decent scores though, so it's probably just me.

I think I’ve got the current high score and I can say it is definitely not just you! The ropes are insane, no margin of error at all. It does spoil quite an enjoyable game.

Agree on Penetrator too.

Most companies had figured out a sensible difficulty by the time the 16-bits took over but if this was an Amiga site I would be nominating virtually every game Team 17 made. Potential classics like Project X or Assassin spoilt by crazy Spectrum levels of difficulty.

[akeley]

I don't mind "arcade" difficulty, where games are hard but controls super tight and obstacles well coded. But this rope thing, dying because you moved a pixel off a platform, collision detection is all over the place, or because somebody thought it a good idea to bind two important things to one key is just poor coding and design

This is why Chuckie Egg is so awesome - hard, but supremely playable, with great controls and very reasonable jump/platform relationship.

[5MinuteRetro]

I'll nominate Roller Coaster.

I *loved* that game -- or at least the promise it held -- but I only ever got to see a handful of screens, because it was so damned hard. Periodically now I find myself staring at the game's colourful, varied and generally just glorious map. and wondering why the developer made it all but impossible for mere mortals to have a hope of seeing it all.

[toot_toot]

I'll nominate Roller Coaster.

I *loved* that game -- or at least the promise it held -- but I only ever got to see a handful of screens, because it was so damned hard. Periodically now I find myself staring at the game's colourful, varied and generally just glorious map. and wondering why the developer made it all but impossible for mere mortals to have a hope of seeing it all.

You should definitely try the updated version on the Gameboy. Except Elite being the cheeky gits that they are, slapped the Dragon's Lair licence on it and re-skinned it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFnwGAqp8Mg

It always felt more forgiving than the Spectrum original (well it did when I played it 30 or so years ago!), although it does lose a bit of the charm by removing the whole theme park concept (replacing rides with fireballs doesn't make much sense, even in a Dragon's Lair theme!)

[Vampyre]

Spindizzy for me. I know I'm probably in a minority of one (back in the day all my mates loved it) but there's just something missing for me that makes it an average rather than a good game. Can't quite put my finger on what it is - just something about it doesn't float my boat.

[Morkin]

I'm usually up for some sacred cow slaying, but I can't agree about Movie & Knight Lore. The former was totally groundbreaking and while the icon-driven interface might be cumbersome at first, you can get used to it (well, I did) and it's definitely not game breaking. It's much more of an adventure than action game so it does work. An example of where it really messes up the gameplay is Barbarian from Psygnosis though.

Knight Lore's time limit is perhaps a bit on the hardcore side, but to be honest I've never even though about it because the whole game was always too difficult for me, so the time limit was the least of my worries. But it's still one of the greatest ZX games, if not THE greatest (no, wait, that'd be Movie ).

Haha, I wondered if someone would disagree on that..! Also I did think of Barbarian when I mentioned the Movie icon controls, but I found Movie a bit annoying in that it seemed to be a right pain just to get your gun out and fire in the direction you're facing.

[cmal]

Another HSC game which qualifies for me is Hunchback. That second screen rope jumping is one of the worst coded obbstacles I've ever seen in a videogame. Fixing it wouldn't make the game a hit (for me) but it'd be at least somewhat playable.
Other people seem to manage to achieve decent scores though, so it's probably just me.

I think I’ve got the current high score and I can say it is definitely not just you! The ropes are insane, no margin of error at all. It does spoil quite an enjoyable game.

Agree on Penetrator too.

Most companies had figured out a sensible difficulty by the time the 16-bits took over but if this was an Amiga site I would be nominating virtually every game Team 17 made. Potential classics like Project X or Assassin spoilt by crazy Spectrum levels of difficulty.

Agree with Hunchback and Penetrator. I had a HSC session with Hunchback last night and Kept on losing on the rope screen. Eventually I had a winning streak and made it past that point. But I bet next time I play it, the same thing will happen.

Ultimate's Underwurlde is another game that could have been a great classic in my books. It has all the key features that make 2D Ultimate games great (fast, good animated sprites, responsiveness, colorful etc). Except for the movement of Sabre-man. The way you get tossed around bouncing around the screen every time an enemy touches you. It gets really annoying after climbing up several screens only to get knocked down to the bottom.
I think a health bar would have been more suitable and made the game into a classic.

[Einar Saukas]

Colony is an awesome strategy/management game.

However aliens are unable to attack obstacles in another screen, therefore it's way too easy (accidentally or not) to build an impenetrable base.

[TMD2003]

Colony is an awesome strategy/management game.

However aliens are unable to attack obstacles in another screen, therefore it's way too easy (accidentally or not) to build an impenetrable base.

That's one of those case of "if only I'd worked that out when I was a nipper, I might have been able to complete it..." or at least, get as far as is possible to completion, i.e. make this impenetrable base.

See also: Nether Earth and the "Leeroy Jenkins" tactics. One phaser on anti-grav, Combat Mode, two your base are belong to us, and soon it'll be all of them. One of these days I'll crush the Insignians so hard that I'll own all the factories as well as the bases.

[toot_toot]

Spindizzy for me. I know I'm probably in a minority of one (back in the day all my mates loved it) but there's just something missing for me that makes it an average rather than a good game. Can't quite put my finger on what it is - just something about it doesn't float my boat.

Personally I think it's the best example of those faster isometric games (is that a genre!?) that were popular back then like Bobby Bearing, but going back to it now you can see a couple of features that would make it so much playable.

Like many games of the era, the first would be a save option, the complete walkthrough takes over 2 hours to complete!

https://youtu.be/_DBVdm0f9jI

It's fixed by emulators or SD storage devices allowing a saved snapshot, but still it would have been nicer to have an in-built save option for something that big. I think the sequel on the Amiga, Spindizzy Worlds, may have fixed that one.

The second "enhancement" would be to get a preview of each of the surrounding screens. Maybe a slightly shaded initial part of the four adjacent screens around the main playing screen. Like many of these games, you have no idea what's on the next screen and it's easy to just fall off into "nothing" getting an insta death. Playing it back in the 80s, you were focused enough to remember the screens and where you needed to go to next, but now there's no way I'm going to remember that!

Another game that came to mind is H.A.T.E. from Gremlin Graphics and written by Costa Panayi, the author of the amazing TLL, Cyclone and Highway Encounter, which it looks very similar to.

https://youtu.be/N59iKo-3v8I

It's a really nice 3D diagonal into the screen shoot em up like Zaxxon, it reviewed well in Your Sinclair - even getting a Megagame - although it was 70-80% in Crash and Sinclair User which is probably more appropriate. It's nice and smooth, lots of enemies (which does slow it down a little unfortunately) and even though it's monochrome it's still easy to see the bullets. The problem is that after the first couple of levels, it's more or less the same game. It doesn't get that much more difficult, the enemy sprites are still mostly the same, there's no end of level bosses, there's no power ups and there's little reason to go back to it once you've completed it. It's a real shame, if it had more of those shoot em up design blueprints that were common by the time it was released in 1989, it would have been still highly regarded. Instead while it's still good fun to have a blast today, with some of those shoot em up blueprints added to the game, it could have been like an early version of Viewpoint on the Neo Geo.

[bluespikey]

Backpackers Guide To The Universe.

A massive map, the interesting idea of keeping creatures fed, and all by the author of The Pyramid. It could have been like Starquake with a Jetpac.

But its boring and unfinished.

[clebin]

Backpackers Guide To The Universe.

A massive map, the interesting idea of keeping creatures fed, and all by the author of The Pyramid. It could have been like Starquake with a Jetpac.

But its boring and unfinished.

+1,000,000. I so wanted that game to be better than it was. You can see the work that put into the Guide thing on Side B, and it didn't really add very much. If only they'd put that time & ambition into the game itself, it could've been Exile and then some.

[akeley]

Well, I suppose most games (or at least platformers) featuring the endlessly respawning enemies mechanic. It automatically ruins the game for me and is the reason why I could never fathom the popularity of Starquake or Atic Atac.

[Nick]

Unless you were a joystick owner, any Ultimate games which had the QWERT controls were a devil to play. I wasn't a fan of any game which had the cursor keys (5678) either.