Spectrum Computing

I agree Dave, this is perhaps jumping the gun a little. We haven't even had a vertical shooter like this yet - there's so much amazing, untapped potential to this incredible new phase of the Spectrum! The Bifrost engine (and derivatives) is just amazing!

Apparently there are games designed to be played on a TV turned on its side, for a more authentic arcade experience. For example, the Namco Museum series:

Some of the games, such as Galaga and Pac-Man, allow for an alternative screen mode to compensate for the lack of a vertical monitor, whereby the scoreboard is located on the left of the screen, or rotates the image 90 degrees if the user possesses a vertical monitor or is willing to risk placing the television/monitor on its side.

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:10 pm For years my Speccy was hooked up to the only color TV in the family. Rotating that behemoth would have required the muscle power of me and my older brother. Also, we’d have been grounded for several days and gotten a few good smacks in the back of the head for good measure.

Oh, and the TV wouldn’t have faired too well either.

I was thinking of a 'made for purpose TV'. Maybe even on a stand. By DKTronics! I know it would be niche, but there are plenty of weird peripherals out there!

Having said that, and I might be wrong, but I guess that most CRTs owned by real hardware fans these days are pretty small and square (mine is, and ditto in many videos I see).

Lee Bee wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:18 pm I agree Dave, this is perhaps jumping the gun a little.

There's no rule to say we should have one before the other though. Each case is a vertical multicolour shooter—whether the TV is rotated or not is just a detail. I guess it's down to the usual constraints of desire, energy and free time. It'd be fantastic to see any kind of multicolour scroller next year or sooner.

djnzx48 wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 9:56 pm Apparently there are games designed to be played on a TV turned on its side, for a more authentic arcade experience. For example, the Namco Museum series:

Case closed! It's not a cheat

Don't forget to degauss your tv!

R-Tape wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 10:39 pm

Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 5:10 pm For years my Speccy was hooked up to the only color TV in the family. Rotating that behemoth would have required the muscle power of me and my older brother. Also, we’d have been grounded for several days and gotten a few good smacks in the back of the head for good measure.

Oh, and the TV wouldn’t have faired too well either.

I was thinking of a 'made for purpose TV'. Maybe even on a stand. By DKTronics! I know it would be niche, but there are plenty of weird peripherals out there!

Having said that, and I might be wrong, but I guess that most CRTs owned by real hardware fans these days are pretty small and square (mine is, and ditto in many videos I see).

Yes, mine’s a 14-inch jobby and very lightweight. However, there are things to consider when rotating a CRT TV, including cooling and . . .

Kweepa wrote: ↑Wed Nov 27, 2019 10:40 pm Don't forget to degauss your tv!

It'd be a bad idea to turn a CRT telly on its side. The case would sag and put pressure on bits that weren't meant to take the weight. And those tubes are heavy. Arcade monitor CRTs were specially mounted when used vertically, and were mostly facing upwards anyway rather than forwards.
LCD screens are much lighter and easier to rotate. Again, it may not be ideal in a home TV, but several computer monitors come on stands that can be rotated to the vertical. You'd need one of those VGA or HDMI display replicator interfaces.

Come to think of it, can't you do this in windows running an emulator anyway? Set up two monitors and define one as vertical, then run an emulator on that screen.

Have anyone tried to use a test combination (!IORQ & !MREQ) on the original ULA where all the counters work 64x speed? This might help to scroll in both directions. As I see (I may be wrong), you only need a resistor between ULA MREQ and A6 (for example), so OUT to 0xDF (for example) will emit several 64x speed cycles.
NB: I never touched an original machine, so I don't even know if there is a smaller resistor between ULA MREQ and CPU MREQ, it's needed!

I mean, port 0xBF (A6=0).