Spectrum Computing

I was just watching some vids of upcoming PS4 games and, as expected with a console being in the twilight phase of it's life, developers are really squeezing the most out of the system. So this got me thinking about which games really pushed the good old Speccy with regards to squeezing the most from the available CPU and memory? My first guess would be some of the Freescape games such as Driller, Castle Master, Total Eclipse etc etc but i wondered if there were some others that just squeezed every lasy drop from the 48 or even 128 beauties.

Rex by Martech was simply astonishing.
R-Type by Electric Dreams; Rainbow Islands and Chase HQ by Ocean - faithful coin-op conversions that you wouldn't have thought possible on the Speccy.

What is it about Rex that makes it so impressive? I've heard a lot of people praise it, but, I thought it was just a platformer.

I suppose Myth was pretty impressive as well.

What is it about Rex that makes it so impressive?

Rex has quite a lot of sprites on screen plus bullets,explosions effects, particles from explosion so it's definitely more advanced than typical platformer.
Just play it and decide yourself if it pushes Spectrum to the limit

stupidget wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:47 am I suppose Myth was pretty impressive as well.

The skeletons slowly moving as you pass close is just stunnig.

Technically Myth isn't ground breaking in any way.
I suppose it's total experience: gameplay + graphics + climate which makes it special.

Micronaut One was pretty spectacular. Robocob 2 was also impressive. Cobra had some wicked parallax scrolling going on and tons of sprites as well.

And what about FPS games like Doom? Really good works in only 128K.

I can add Carrier Command by Realtime Software, a 128k only game that was BIG, full of details and good compromises to make it actually playable on the Spectrum.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1vts4wvw60

And don't forget Lords of Midnight by Mike Singleton. The game can't be restarted (you need to reset and reload), because all memory was exhausted just to bring up the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXAB1ZI44Hc

Starstrike II with it's filled 3d objects

https://youtu.be/_qrDU04TeCc

druellan wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 12:47 pm I can add Carrier Command by Realtime Software

Oh, yeah, that’s a good one. Spent many a day playing it. Quite complex, too.

Starglider and Carrier Command - astonishingly both are as good, if not better, than the 16-bit originals.

Popeye and Trapdoor - Shunting those massive, colourful sprites around must have been pushing the Speccy to its limits.

Chase H.Q. - how on earth he made it that playable still boggles my mind today. Out of all the home versions I've played, even the mighty PC Engine, don't come anywhere near it. It is by a massive margin the best home version available.

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:51 am

What is it about Rex that makes it so impressive?

Rex has quite a lot of sprites on screen plus bullets,explosions effects, particles from explosion so it's definitely more advanced than typical platformer.
Just play it and decide yourself if it pushes Spectrum to the limit

The simply beautiful graphics. Richly defined, the best I've seen in that 256x192 space. The 128K sound effects set up a really creepy atmosphere.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 3:03 pm

Ralf wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 9:51 am Rex has quite a lot of sprites on screen plus bullets,explosions effects, particles from explosion so it's definitely more advanced than typical platformer.
Just play it and decide yourself if it pushes Spectrum to the limit

The simply beautiful graphics. Richly defined, the best I've seen in that 256x192 space. The 128K sound effects set up a really creepy atmosphere.

I can't even get off the second screen, but, it does indeed look very pretty

stupidget wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 4:08 pm

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 3:03 pm The simply beautiful graphics. Richly defined, the best I've seen in that 256x192 space. The 128K sound effects set up a really creepy atmosphere.

I can't even get off the second screen, but, it does indeed look very pretty

Yeah, I'm also bad at it, but it's technically impressive.

This will sound odd, but I was always really impressed with the Addams Family game.. it looked, and still looks great IMHO compared to other similar titles of the time. It almost looked like an Amiga title.

A lot of good suggestions. I'd add StarFox to the list, which blew me away when I first played it.

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.p ... 6&id=18910

Space Harrier really pushed the ZX Spectrum screen fill rate, and it was very faithfull to the Arcade version.

RMartins wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 12:33 pmSpace Harrier really pushed the ZX Spectrum screen fill rate, and it was very faithfull to the Arcade version.

I was discussing the other day with [mention]Audionautas[/mention] about Keith Burkhill, and how underrated his work for the ZX Spectrum is. I think he was always pretty consistent on finding a good balance on his conversions.

Dynamite Dan II, for me.
Eight massive levels, with a great number of beautifully animated sprites and different ingame melodies, are truly impressive.

btw, has anyone already mentioned Knight Lore?
He always has to be on the list, when we talk about this topic.

Pegaz wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 8:46 pm btw, has anyone already mentioned Knight Lore?
He always has to be on the list, when we talk about this topic.

Did Knightlore really push the Spectrum hardware? I mean, really? No, it did not. It pushed back the boundaries of what was considered possible, yes, but games like HoH and Batman came later that expanded the genre massively - hence proving that KL did not push anything anywhere.

It only really deserves an accolade for being the first of its type, nothing more than that.

As far as graphics, and it looks like they haven't been mentioned in this topic yet: Savage, Extreme, Dandare 3
As far as blowing people away: Thanatos?

I thought Voice Chess was pretty impressive, but I know I'm alone on that one. I was easily impressed back in the day I even liked Final Fight.

ZXDunny wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:39 pm

Pegaz wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 8:46 pm btw, has anyone already mentioned Knight Lore?
He always has to be on the list, when we talk about this topic.

Did Knightlore really push the Spectrum hardware? I mean, really? No, it did not. It pushed back the boundaries of what was considered possible, yes, but games like HoH and Batman came later that expanded the genre massively - hence proving that KL did not push anything anywhere.

It only really deserves an accolade for being the first of its type, nothing more than that.

Yes, I think it definitely is, especially at the time of the release.
Making such a game in 1983 or four years later is not the same thing.
Does "pushed to the limits" means, that we just need to list titles from the late Spectrum period, when the games were technically superior?
If we look at it that way, then freescape games are at the top of each list, because they have brought a full solid 3d world in first person.
I think that all the circumstances need to be considered and taking all this into account, KL cant be ignored, in any way...

ZXDunny wrote: ↑Sat Jul 07, 2018 11:39 pm It only really deserves an accolade for being the first of its type, nothing more than that.

Well, I agree that there’s an inherent ambiguity in the way the title of the thread is phrased. But then, how do we define “pushing the limits” in this context? Knight Lore, Rex, and a great many other visually impressive titles used off-screen buffering; their frame rates dropped as more objects moved in a scene. Indeed, they weren’t really pushing the Speccy in any technical sense of the word. Should we then only count games that drew directly to the screen? Limit those even further to only include the titles that ran at a steady 50 fps? These would be objective criteria, but they’d hardly measure the actual quality or novelty or impact of a game.

I think it’s safe to broaden the criteria to include the more subjective “blew my socks off when I first saw it” definition of “pushing the limits.”

Surely that was pushing the limits of what the public expected, not what the Speccy was capable of. After all, the Speccy was capable of running Freescape games as soon as the 48kb version was released, and it was certainly capable of running games with multicolour engines that we have today. The fact that nobody really bothered to push the limits back when KL was released doesn't mean that KL actually did that.

After all, we're almost at the edge of what an unenhanced Speccy can do right now - I doubt we're going to see Quake with full texturing at 50fps now, are we?

So no, KL was... possibly... innovative (isometric 3D was nothing new, and I recall being pretty unimpressed when it came out) but nothing more than that.