The best Speccy game by US Gold: discussion

[PeteProdge]

The most prolific games publishers thread made me wonder what happened to my US Gold poll, as that'd be my answer for the software brand with most ZX Spectrum games, I could have sworn I nearly hit the poll limit. (Of course, it's beaten by Zenobi Software, and yeah, they're not exactly a high street retail concern, being largely mail order, but they were definitely around in the commercial era... and beyond.)

Thing is, doing an advanced forum search on my own posts reveals no trace of such a poll, nor of a discussion phrase thread. Did it get lost in a forum server mishap? Or is a Mandela Effect thing, that I simply never made one? I mean, I know I've done all the biggies - Ocean; Imagine; Ultimate; Elite; Hewson; Gremlin; Firebird, etc... and US Gold has to be up there, but nope, no trace.

Now, I'm meant to return to that 1987 copy of Your Sinclair I've been using to come up with more untouched software brands, but there's no way I can leave US Gold untouched.

I've done my research and come up with 118 titles that I believe to be the complete list of tangible ZX Spectrum games originally published by US Gold:

10th Frame
4x4 Off-Road Racing
720°
Ace Of Aces
Acro Jet
Alien Storm
Australian Games
Beach-Head
Beach-Head II
Black Magic
Black Tiger
Blue Max
Bonanza Bros
Bounty Bob Strikes Back
Breakthru
Bruce Lee
Buck Rogers: Planet Of Zoom
Buckaroo Banzai
California Games
Chicago's 30
Chip's Challenge
Crack Down
Crystal Castles
Dam Busters, The
Deep, The
Desolator
Dragons Of Flame
Dream Warrior
Dynasty Wars
E-Motion
E-Swat
Echelon
Express Raider
Final Assault
Final Fight
Flak
Forgotten Worlds
Fort Apocalypse
G-Loc
Games, The - Summer Edition
Games, The - Winter Edition
Gauntlet
Gauntlet II
Gauntlet III: The Final Quest
Ghouls 'N' Ghosts
Goonies, The
Gunslinger
Heavy Metal
Heroes Of The Lance
Human Killing Machine
Impossible Mission
Impossible Mission II
Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade
Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom
Infiltrator
Infiltrator II: The Next Day
Italy 1990
Italy 1990 - Winners Edition
Kayleth
Killed Until Dead
Kung-Fu Master
Last Mission
Law Of The West
Leader Board
Leader Board Tournament
Legend Of The Amazon
Line Of Fire
Mad Mix Game
Masters Of The Universe - The Arcade Game
Masters Of The Universe - The Super Adventure
Mega Twins
Mercs
Metro-Cross
Moonwalker
Night Shift
Out Run
Out Run Europa
PSI-5 Trading Company
Psycho Pigs UXB
Raid Over Moscow
Rebel Planet
Return To Oz
Revolution
Road Blasters
Road Runner
Rolling Thunder
Rygar
Saracen
Shackled
Shadow Dancer
Silent Service
Snowstrike
Solomon's Key
Spy Hunter
Starring Charlie Chaplin
Street Fighter II
Street Sports Basketball
Strider
Strider II
Summer Games
Summer Games II
Super Cycle
Super Monaco GP
Survivor
Tapper
Temple Of Terror
Thunder Blade
Turbo Out Run
UN Squadron
Vigilante
Winter Games
World Class Leader Board
World Cup Carnival
World Games
Xevious
Zaxxon
Zorro

Naturally, could be some mistakes in there, could be some omissions. As usual, this discussion thread is your chance to correct me before I launch the poll properly next week.

[LouEnPointe]

I have a soft spot for Killed Until Dead.
However the Beach Head games, Gauntlet, and Spy Hunter are all ones I have fond memories of.

[hitm4n]

Some fine games here... a tough poll choice.

[Andre Leao]

Far from being one of my fave publishers. Some fine gems, like Bruce Lee, Gauntlet trilogy, Killed Until Dead, Leader Board, Mad Mix (original from Topo Soft), Raid Over Moscow or Solomon's Key, but loads of turkeys...

[Chris23235]

I have not looked at every game on the list, but at least these games weren't published for the Spectrum:

Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

[Andre Leao]

Both were published for the ZX Spectrum.

[StooB]

I have not looked at every game on the list, but at least these games weren't published for the Spectrum:

Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis
Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade

Both were published for the ZX Spectrum.

In fact, there are two versions of both games, so you're both correct. The Spectrum only got the "Action Games" not the "Adventure Games".

[Chris23235]

In fact, there are two versions of both games, so you're both correct. The Spectrum only got the "Action Games" not the "Adventure Games".

Yes, I should have been more specific. The games for the Spectrum had "The Action Game" in the title. The games just called "Indiana Jones And The Fate Of Atlantis" and "Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade" were both point and click adventures on the SCUMM engine.

[StooB]

Mega Twins, Infiltrator II and Australian Games shouldn't be here.

[Swainy]

Out of that lot I enjoyed:

Alien Storm
Bruce Lee
Gauntlet
Gauntlet II
Gauntlet III: The Final Quest
Ghouls 'N' Ghosts
Impossible Mission
Metro-Cross
Road Blasters
Rolling Thunder
Shadow Dancer
Spy Hunter
Zoro

If we were including Go releases then I’d add L.E.D Storm to that but we are not so I’ll shut up.

[PeteProdge]

Mega Twins, Infiltrator II and Australian Games shouldn't be here.

Thank you! Just looked them up, and yeah, that all makes sense.

Nice to see something of Mega Twins actually exists. Enough to be a playable demo on a covertape, but sad there's not more.

[PeteProdge]

If we were including Go releases then I’d add L.E.D Storm to that but we are not so I’ll shut up.

I've just remembered that I did do a poll on Go! (which is kind of like US Gold doing an 'Imagine'). Bionic Commando won it, narrowly beating Trantor.

(Still can't suss out why US Gold got missed until now!)

[Pegaz]

Far from being one of my fave publishers. Some fine gems, like Bruce Lee, Gauntlet trilogy, Killed Until Dead, Leader Board, Mad Mix (original from Topo Soft), Raid Over Moscow or Solomon's Key, but loads of turkeys...

My thoughts exactly.
For some reason, I've never been able to get seriously hooked on any of the US Gold games.
However, it will not be easy to choose only three of them.
I remember playing Zorro, Blue Max, Spy Hunter, Xevious, Bounty Bob, Metro Cross and Bruce Lee the most.
Still, it's too far from my favorite publishers: Odin, Ultimate, Beyond, Hewson, Virgin, MIrrorsoft...

[Timmy]

Can you check if these titles should be in the list of not?

Fort Apocalypse
Law Of The West
People from Sirius

[PeteProdge]

Can you check if these titles should be in the list of not?

Sure!

Fort Apocalypse[/quote]

Doesn't exist for the Speccy. I only do tangible ZX Spectrum releases in these polls, so the closest you'll get to playing this is to fire up a C64 or Atari 8-bit emulator.

Law Of The West

Another Speccy game that sadly does not exist, it's just out for the C64.

People from Sirius

Ooh! Famously a magazine-covertape-only release. Well, I forgot how I handled these. I've just searched for my Ocean and Imagine polls, and sure enough I've included Road Race, Quandam and Play For Your Life on those, so really, I should include People From Sirius on this one! And I will!

Thanks for your input!

[blucey]

So many games that'd be better if US Gold didn't win the license and give it to Tiertex or someone equally drab.

[PeteProdge]

So many games that'd be better if US Gold didn't win the license and give it to Tiertex or someone equally drab.

[Timmy]

Another Speccy game that sadly does not exist, it's just out for the C64.

Just in case, Fort Apocalypse and Law Of The West were in your list on the first post. You can probably exclude them from the votes.

[toot_toot]

What would be interesting (and maybe a way of dividing the voting up) is to have a list of original games that were exclusively developed by US Gold, i.e. they weren’t just converted from games that were already published by someone else in the US (E.g. Beach Head by Access, Bruce Lee by Datasoft, California Games by Epyx etc) or arcade game conversions.

I’m struggling to think what original games US Gold published. E-Motion? Dream Warrior? Human Killing Machine? Revolution? Italy 1990? Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis and The Last Crusade? There’s probably a few more, but for a publisher that was so prominent, they didn’t publish many original games, unlike say Ocean.

Maybe three voting lists might make it interesting, the above mentioned “original games”, “arcade conversions” and “games that were converted by US Gold but originally published by someone else”. It might give some of the games a chance! Lol

[LouEnPointe]

Wasn't US Gold set up to republish software from the US? So original titles would be few and far between?

[worcestersource]

Wasn't US Gold set up to republish software from the US? So original titles would be few and far between?

I always thought so. And co-owned by Ocean? Or something.

[toot_toot]

Wasn't US Gold set up to republish software from the US? So original titles would be few and far between?

Yes, thats right. It was set up to import US titles that originated (mostly) on the C64 and Atari 800/XL, they also converted some of those games to the Spectrum, but not all. There were a few games advertised that never got converted (Up n Down, Congo Bongo, as mentioned before Fort Apocalypse).

But they did make some original titles, but yes, they were very few and far between. It wasn’t until the 16 bit era that they started making more original games, I guess down to a bit of the original US publishers like Access and Microprose setting up their own European operations.

I think the original (as in, not converted from previously published US games or arcade conversion) games published by US Gold were:

Dream Warriors
E-Motion
Gauntlet III
Gauntlet The Deeper Dungeons (Not sure if that counts)
Human Killing Machine
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Italy 1990
Italy 1990 Winners Edition
Kayleth
Masters of the Universe the Arcade Game
Masters of the Universe the Adventure
Moonwalker
Outrun Europa
People from Sirius (this was a YS Cover tape game, so I’m not sure it counts)
Rebel Planet
Return to Oz
Revolution (the packaging states it’s “manufactured and distributed by US Gold”, which they did a lot for other publishers like Gremlin, so I’m not sure it should go down as a Vortex published game)
Starring Charlie Chaplin
Strider II
Temple of Terror
World Cup Carnival (although this is just a reskin of Artic’s World Cup, so I’m not sure it counts)

Not many there, but quite a high percentage of adventures which is surprising.

[Matt_B]

I'd think that most of what U.S. Gold released was good because they were licensing existing games from American publishers, and they could cherry pick the hits, at least if you were playing them on the C64, Atari 8-bit or whatever native system they'd originated on.

Ports to the Spectrum could be a bit of a lottery though. While many were competent and a few even exceptional, a lot more lost a lot of their shine in the conversion and more than a handful were flat out botched.

[equinox]

Un-vote-able, since this covers at least 10 years and about 100 games, I mean what do you expect us to click here. In addition US Gold was (as far as I remember) basically a re-release label, well, not like Kixx, but an "import" label.
They weren't quite creating new ideas, were they? CentreGold/CentreSoft probably still exists and has a user account on here, trying to work out which specific user they can sue for our detailed piracy archives. (Hint: it's Stuart Campbell, that awful "terf".)

If we were doing the desert-island thing (which game would you want to spend 100 hours with): then probably
Gauntlet II (tons of fun levels*), Ghouls 'n' Ghosts (YOU KNOW WHY), and Metro Cross (very cute action coin-op).

I'm going to make a quirky vote for E-Motion because it's a genuinely weird, interesting and fun game (play it right now if you haven't) that combines action and puzzle. I'd also recommend Chip's Challenge (excellent grid puzzle game: contact me if you like it, 'cause I have more), Solomon's Key (ditto but with gravity), and Killed Until Dead (very strange and funny murder mystery). However, I don't feel it's fair because US Gold probably contracted somebody to port these, and didn't do it "in house".

P.S. Games you thought were good, which are actually sh*t: Breakthru (you can literally win this by just moving right, like one of those Sonic the Hedgehog games by Dimps); Crystal Castles (yeah yeah it was a big hit on the Atari or something, but it's actually like Tim Tyler's BBC fever dream); E-SWAT and G-LOC (hey I can put a hyphen after a letter too: Hungry Horace starring in H-INKEY$); Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (brilliant point-and-click adventure, maybe one of the best games on the Speccy -- oh wait, just kidding, it's a piece of isometric sh*t that even Ultimate wouldn't have released in 1984).

Runner-up: Dream Warrior. Worth a lot of time, but deeply flawed. No, I was thinking of that something Dream something post-nuclear text adventure, um, oops. I can't remember the name.

Second runner-up: Psycho Pigs UXB. Weird Japanese coin-op, like Bomberman without the maze. Surprisingly playable.

love -- equinox.

* Chip's Challenge has more levels, and is frankly a better bet, if we're stuck on the desert island, but I have anger management problems.

[catmeows]

Yeah, while idea of voting for single game can less or more work for a smaller publisher, it feels so unfair in case of big houses.

Anyway, I like:

Bruce Lee
Tapper
U.N.Squadron
Kayleth
Shadow Dancer
Beach Head 1+2
Silent Service
Rolling Thunder
E-Motion
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade