Spectrum Computing

Now that ZXDB has the ZXSR data from [mention]Vampyre[/mention], we have made some changes to our website so you can view the scores.

Find a 'classic' game, and expand the 'magazine refefences' section. For each review you will now see the appropriate score displayed.

Enjoy.

First of all, thanks for the new feature.

But I find it a bit confused as the mag scores are 'diluted' among so much magazine info.

What if all the available scores were summarised in their own section?, something like this:

Magazine scores
---------------------------
Crash 93%
SU 82%
YS 7/10
etc etc

And the 'original wos score' might be removed and be included in this section.

I know the hard work you all are doing and as I've said sometimes before, I have no idea of databases and coding in general, so what I'm proposing might be almost hard or impossible to implement.

One of the issues you would probably need to address, to make a summary, is the fact that many games were reviewed more than once by each magazine. It does make sense having the scores alongside the corresponding reviews in the magazine section, I think.

Hi [mention]Juan F. Ramirez[/mention] ,

Thanks for the feedback. It's certainly something we can look at. What do others think?

8BitAG wrote: ↑Sun Jun 02, 2019 12:49 pm One of the issues you would probably need to address, to make a summary, is the fact that many games were reviewed more than once by each magazine. It does make sense having the scores alongside the corresponding reviews in the magazine section, I think.

Good point.

We have added a new section called Magazine Reviews on the game details pages, which looks like this:



Sinclair User giving a very good review to the original Dizzy!

Let us know what you think.

Looks better.

Now all the available scores in the same place (and the corresponding mag reviews). Thanks!

This is awesome and exactly like I envisaged it. Just so everyone knows I'm still rifling through the magazines and if the review exists in the PDF's I'm using then eventually it will be added. ZXSR has all the reviews for Crash, Your Sinclair, Your Spectrum, Sinclair User, C&VG, The Games Machine, Ace and Big K. I'm currently in the process of adding Personal Computer Games.

Later on we could even think of adding the other scores (Graphics, Sound, Playability, etc). They're all present in ZXSR as separate entities (each score is it's own record I mean). Then some score-mining/comparing could really go on

Well done Peter and the dev team! Excellent work.

Getting a bit over-excited with this now!

What I also have in the ZXSR database is the review award (Crash Smash, YS Megagame, C+VG Game of the Month) flagged that might be nice as a small image next to the score. Whilst much of the time these were obvious (anything 90% or greater in Crash for example was a Crash Smash), not all of them were. C&VG Game of the Month Speccy titles were quite rare (Cyclone was definitely one, but Knight Lore wasn't even though it received almost perfect marks) and Crash even gave Smashes to sub-90% games (Tapper and Spy Hunter spring to mind).

Just throwing thoughts out there - let me know if I'm getting ahead of myself!

Vampyre wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 5:00 pm Getting a bit over-excited with this now!

What I also have in the ZXSR database is the review award (Crash Smash, YS Megagame, C+VG Game of the Month) flagged that might be nice as a small image next to the score. Whilst much of the time these were obvious (anything 90% or greater in Crash for example was a Crash Smash), not all of them were. C&VG Game of the Month Speccy titles were quite rate (Cyclone was definitely one, but Knight Lore wasn't even though it received almost perfect marks) and Crash even gave Smashes to sub-90% games (Tapper and Spy Hunter spring to mind).

Great idea, and certainly something we could look at.

Nice one chaps...!

I didn't realise that ACE scored their games out of 1000...

Morkin wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:17 pm Nice one chaps...!

I didn't realise that ACE scored their games out of 1000...

I was surprised by that too.

How about including scores of reviews from Spanish magazine Micro Hobby? It was arguably the most important Spectrum-related magazine outside of the UK, with lots of excellent technical and programming articles as well as game coverage, and it also reviewed a number titles that were not released there.

Alessandro wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 7:55 pm How about including scores of reviews from Spanish magazine Micro Hobby? It was arguably the most important Spectrum-related magazine outside of the UK, with lots of excellent technical and programming articles as well as game coverage, and it also reviewed a number titles that were not released there.

Hi [mention]Alessandro[/mention]

I for one love Micro Hobby, and I wish we had something like it in the UK.

The magazines are available as scans for quite a few reviews but the indexes are incomplete, and ZXSR focuses on English magazines.

As an example take a look at Herbert's Dummy Run in the magazine references section, you will see reviews and tips from Micro Hobby included and links to the scans

If anyone would be interested in collating the information I'm sure [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention] would be happy to include it. It's a big task but would be great to have all the information, including as as you suggest scores included.

I still think it would be a great idea to have our own Spectrum computing scores in each entry, making available to the registered members of SC vote for the games

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:47 pm I still think it would be a great idea to have our own Spectrum computing scores in each entry, making available to the registered members of SC vote for the games

That's still on the cards [mention]Ivanzx[/mention]. Just trying to find the right solution.

PeterJ wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:53 pm

Ivanzx wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:47 pm I still think it would be a great idea to have our own Spectrum computing scores in each entry, making available to the registered members of SC vote for the games

That's still on the cards @Ivanzx. Just trying to find the right solution.

That is Marvellous news, thanks for your effort, Peter

Morkin wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 6:17 pm Nice one chaps...!

I didn't realise that ACE scored their games out of 1000...

Yup, I'm willing to bet a few people looked at the scans to find the mistake

PeterJ wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:30 pm

Alessandro wrote: ↑Mon Jun 03, 2019 7:55 pm How about including scores of reviews from Spanish magazine Micro Hobby? It was arguably the most important Spectrum-related magazine outside of the UK, with lots of excellent technical and programming articles as well as game coverage, and it also reviewed a number titles that were not released there.

Hi @Alessandro

I for one love Micro Hobby, and I wish we had something like it in the UK.

The magazines are available as scans for quite a few reviews but the indexes are incomplete, and ZXSR focuses on English magazines.

As an example take a look at Herbert's Dummy Run in the magazine references section, you will see reviews and tips from Micro Hobby included and links to the scans

If anyone would be interested in collating the information I'm sure @Einar Saukas would be happy to include it. It's a big task but would be great to have all the information, including as as you suggest scores included.

To be honest I never even thought about non-English magazines. I'm quite happy to add them to ZXSR as long as the scans are available. They'll probably be full of spelling errors though - the OCRing is never perfect and I usually mop up the errors - but English is my only language...

Don't hold your breath though (I've been doing this about 15 years to give some perspective, but have vastly improved my processes). There's still Personal Computer Games to finish off, then: Micro Adventurer, Personal Computer News, Sinclair Programs and Your Computer to do first. Those are just the mags I have as OCR'd PDF's (thanks to the god that is @KenD), there's loads more listed in ZXDB that I don't have scans of yet.

I've not seen [mention]KenD[/mention] around for ages, and his site was last updated in 2017. He his indeed a legend. Anyone know if he is OK?

Apologies for reviving an old thread, and for the lack of updates to RetroPDFs; I took a bit of a break after getting far too angry with a certain owner of a well-known Spectrum website. The hopefully good news is I should have an update to the site before the end of 2020, and I'm still seeding all the torrents (6Tb so far!). Thanks for the kind words, I'm still here!

Great to see you back Ken! ZXSR would be nothing, absolutely nothing, without your amazing work on RetroPDF's.

Here, here! Your PDFs have been much appreciated on many long train or plane journeys. Thanks [mention]KenD[/mention]!