ZX Spectrum products that are not what they seem...

[PeterJ]

I have been looking at a lot of Spectrum books recently, and have found a couple of examples where things don't appear to be as described.

The first one is 'Sixty Programs for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum'. On the front cover is what looks like a clone of 'Phoenix'. I have been through all sixty programs, and I can't find it listed. Am I missing it?



The second one is 'ZX Spectrum Games Code Club'. On the website there is an image of a very nice looking game. Again, its not actually in the book:

http://spectrumcode.club/#portfolio



Any more examples?

[druellan]

Timex boxed games are quite interesting. The screenshots most of the time never match the actual game.
Androids look like a colorized version of the loading screen



And there are some that are clearly drawn, and not even generated by a computer

[MarkRJones1970]

The 'Perils of Bear George' advert has supposed screenshot shown with the caption '(Graphics shown above are as on the Spectrum 48k version)' and it's clearly drawn by hand!

[toot_toot]

The early batch of SEGA releases from US Gold took a lot of liberties in how the game actually looked, they were clearly hand drawn versions of the original games. I suppose they were designed to give an impression of what they looked like. But Zaxxon looked like this on the back cover



And the game actually looks like this:



Quite a bit different from the "screenshot" on the back!

Same with Buck Rogers, it looks brilliant on the back cover



But you got this instead



US Gold weren't the only ones, the early Activision games again had hand drawn screenshots on the back, I remember buying Pitfall II based on the screenshots on the back, but at least the game turned out good enough. I'd have been really upset if I'd bought Enduro





Or River Raid!!!

[PaulJ]

The game on the cover of the Sixty Programs is Firebirds from Softek. A nice little shooter, but definitely not in the book!

[PeterJ]

Thanks for the identification [mention]PaulJ[/mention]