If you could ask any established Speccy game programmer to implement a game idea...

[PeteProdge]

A daft fantasy question! Applies to any programmer living or dead.

Jon Ritman? Don Priestly? Mike Singleton? Joffa? The Stampers? Julian Gollop? The Oliver Twins? I mean... anyone who is anyone in ZX Spectrum gaming history really.

What gaming idea of yours would you hypothetically hire them to create on the Speccy?

Could be any original idea of yours, maybe an unrealised TV/film license or an coin-op conversion that hasn't officially been done yet or, if you're a homebrew hero maybe you'd like one of your games refined by these people?

I'd quite like the Pickford Bros to handle a Red Dwarf TV license. I just think it would be ace, in my mind's eye. I bet you lot have far better ideas though...

[animaal]

I'd love to have seen a better version of Double Dragon. I know there was an attempt at a re-implementation in recent years, but progress seems to have halted.

So who could have done it? The obvious answer might be the guys who did Target Renegade - Mike Lamb, Simon Butler.

I wonder what Jonathan Smith might have been able to do with it? Cobra was a different sort of game, but showed what he could do with many large sprites and a scrolling background.

[Lee Bee]

Frankly I'd just love any decent programmer to connect with Grongy and/or Adam (HelpComputer0) and start churning out games based on all those wonderful concepts like the ones on this thread.

[R-Tape]

I'd like to see a Cadfael game made by the great John Heap. The TV series was made in the 1990s, but the books go back to the late 70s. I know we already have Albadia del Crimen, but surely there's room for two crime solving monks in the speccy canon?

I picture a game made with The Great Escape engine, and with a similar oppressive feel that you probably also get with cloisters. There's a large back catalogue of book plots to work from. They are rather complicated and might be hard to translate to a game, so if John was pushed for time I'd settle for a game where you go around collected herbs.

With that outline and this loading screen, the game's practically oven ready.

[uglifruit]

If ask David Reidy and Keith Warrington to revisit education and their Back2Skool world, to reflect my experiences these days. "Sweet F.E." would have my playing an overworked underpaid F.E. lecturer, with more and more paperwork to do, and less and less time to do it in. After going to lessons and taking registers, you'd have to regularly visit I.T. dept - to find the note to see where the IT team are - to find them to get the tech working for a lesson. You'd phone missing student, and note their excuses, and never give out lines. You'd rush to the end of a class to do a miniscule amount of teaching. And then try to hide from students and other staff members (especially management) in between lessons to do marking. Each term would have more ancillary paperwork to do. And every so often you'd get an Ofsted event, and have to pretend the place ran flawlessly.

[R-Tape]

..."Sweet F.E." would have my playing an overworked underpaid F.E. lecturer, ...

Heh I could hear your teeth grinding from a different county!

[bluespikey]

Another Skool Daze game where you were a teacher would be ace. You dash about discipline the pupils and escorting the to class. Meanwhile there's a Couple of Ofsted inspectors wondering about and you've got to have everything in order when they pass. Then the buggers mark you as needing improvement because the pupils are only carrying blue pens and not black ones.

[blucey]

Gallop using the Rebelstar 2 engine to do a zombie game. So anyone who dies in your squad turns against you.

[Matt_B]

Gallop using the Rebelstar 2 engine to do a zombie game. So anyone who dies in your squad turns against you.

That sounds almost exactly like the Chyrssalids in X-Com.

Still, there you go, he's already done it for you. Now that's what I call a top dev.

[PeteProdge]

Gallop using the Rebelstar 2 engine to do a zombie game. So anyone who dies in your squad turns against you.

Rebelstar 3!

[blucey]

That sounds almost exactly like the Chyrssalids in X-Com.

Still, there you go, he's already done it for you. Now that's what I call a top dev.

I've owned a bunch of X-Com games but can never bring myself to play them for some reason. Probably should.