So important to the Speccy scene that he has his own Wikipedia page, we're talking about Jon Ritman's tangible ZX Spectrum output in this new series of polls about game developers. Sorry ZX81 fans, no mention of Namtir Raiders here. (Er, apart from just then - Ed.) His later work was a lot more polished and I think it's right to honour the late great Bernie Drummond here, who was the accompanying artist on the Ocean releases.
Anyway, you have seven days to select what you think is Jon Ritman's finest tangible ZX Spectrum game, from this list:
I don't have anything cool to put here, so i'll just be off now to see a priest with yeast stuck between his teeth and his friend called Keith who's a hairpiece thief...
This was an easy one. Head Over Heels by a huge distance.
I don't like any of the Match Day games and it bothers me that the seem to have used the sprites from.Bear Bovver.
HoH for me as it’s an out and out classic. Yes some people say ‘but it’s just another isometric game’, but it’s so much more than your average iso game. The fact that the game doesn’t even start properly until you’ve hooked Head and Heals up is testament to the beauty of this game. Even playing it on my 48k was a huge amount of fun but when I upgraded to a +2 the 128 version blew me away. No more multi-load and the music, oh that sweet sweet music. Nearly 40 years later I can still remember each ditty.
1 - Head over Heals
2 - Batman
3 - Bear Bovver ( one of the first games I played on a speccy)
While I know Head over Heels was Jon’s best game, Match Day holds a special place in my heart. I remember my best friend getting a copy of it and we spent hours playing against each other. It felt like it was the greatest football game ever made and I loved the clam case it came in, it made the game feel very “premium”. Happy days!
1) Head over Heels. I'm not very sure about if I like the game, but there is a lot of technical marvel there, while having so many rooms and puzzles, and so many great looking graphics.
2) Batman. I feel like this game is easier, but it's still too hard for me. But back then I like the wide, masked Batman a lot.
1) Match Day - The one I played most by a wide margin. A terrific football game, with multiplayer. I considered putting MD2 here for some tactical voting, but with HoH at 70%, what would be the point?
2) Head over Heels - Best in Class.
3) Batman - As one of the 1% of non-crap isometic games, this really stood out visually from the pack and plays well.
Was there a reason (e.g. licensing costs) why Batman didn't feature more suitable themed enemies? Even if they weren't all full-height human characters walking around, incorporating villains like Penguin or Mad Hatter could have then led to related smaller enemy sprites.
Also, I find some of the background scenery in that game quite rough and off-putting. Not as clean and sharply designed as Head Over Heels.
Joefish wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 5:38 pm
Was there a reason (e.g. licensing costs) why Batman didn't feature more suitable themed enemies? Even if they weren't all full-height human characters walking around, incorporating villains like Penguin or Mad Hatter could have then led to related smaller enemy sprites.
Also, I find some of the background scenery in that game quite rough and off-putting. Not as clean and sharply designed as Head Over Heels.
We then discussed the fact that we could actually work together and do this and tried to think about what to actually do and at some point I kind of randomly suggested Batman. Bernie did a little character and I took it up to Ocean. The engine wasn’t written at this stage and we just had Batman running around in an environment similar to the Knight Lore screens. Anyway we showed it to David Ward and he immediately started singing the theme tune and Ocean set to work getting the rights
Sounds like they’d come up with a Batman sprite and then Ocean got the licence, but that’s about all of the Batman themed stuff in it, I guess!
I don’t think the licence would have been that expensive, Batman at this point was still really well known for the 60s TV shows, which were often repeated when Good Morning Britain staff went on strike.
toot_toot wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 8:57 pm
I don’t think the licence would have been that expensive, Batman at this point was still really well known for the 60s TV shows, which were often repeated when Good Morning Britain staff went on strike.
Sure, but the licensing of other characters might have been an issue as some of these things were more complicated than might be expected. Although they certainly managed for the next Batman game so maybe not.
I played MatchDay II far more than the other two, and I was never very good at those isometric games, but they are great and I really ought to try and beat them with save states one day.
toot_toot wrote: ↑Wed Sep 06, 2023 8:57 pm
I don’t think the licence would have been that expensive, Batman at this point was still really well known for the 60s TV shows, which were often repeated when Good Morning Britain staff went on strike.
True - before the Jack Nicholson movie it was probably not considered all that valuable. Cheap enough that DC likely weren't even bothered about what sort of game it was either; just another bit of random Bat-merch like all the party napkins and cheap nylon underpants they'd licensed before! Though they wouldn't have been at the point of demanding separate licenses for any of the villains either.
The rest of the graphics and sprites in the game could have been more Batman-themed though.
