Timmy wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 10:25 amGreet Beret was always too hard for me.
Me too..! I always thought it looked and played really well, but when we tried playing it recently for the High Score Comp* I didn't get off the first level.
There are just too many flippin' enemies coming at you from all directions...
* talking of which, I think it might be time for another one perhaps?
PeteProdge wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 8:50 am
That'd be a tricky one. What would be the rationale between putting, say, 10 Great Games 2 up against the In Crowd? Full price compilations were quite random, not many of them had a set theme and I feel we need some connection between the competitors.
The closest I've got was the Covertape Wars series, although that has the rule that all 3 (or 2) compilations were battling it out in the marketplace at roughly the same time.
Sorry, going a bit off-topic, but I’d propose by software house first and then the winner of each software house would be in one final. And then Magnificent 7 wins.
Edit: or by year of release? Then a winner of winners? I appreciate theme is unworkable as many were quite random!
worcestersource wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 8:05 amI may be the only person that votes for Batman here. BITD I only got to play it a few times and if I had the time now, it’d be the game I’d want to play. Absolutely fascinating game and unique in its presentation.
i'd like to vote for Batman too… if only i played it back then. i mean, these votings are mostly about "games we loved to death" (at least that's how i see them). but at that time i barely knew English enough even to read item descriptions, i knew almost nothing about Batman, and always thought that the game is just a boring crap. now Batman is prolly second to Firefly in my list… no, it's really 3rd, first two places still occupied by Firefly. ;-)
worcestersource wrote: ↑Mon Sep 11, 2023 12:02 pm
Sorry, going a bit off-topic, but I’d propose by software house first and then the winner of each software house would be in one final.
There's something to love in all of Joffa's games, but often spoiled by some aspect of the gameplay like the extreme difficulty of Cobra or that bloody random thumbs up/down game in Firefly. Green Beret and Terra Cresta are hard, but not so much to put me off playing. Not saying I could complete them though.
R-Tape wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2023 8:59 am
. . . or that bloody random thumbs up/down game in Firefly.
It’s not random, strictly speaking; but it’s much easier to bean on real hardware than in an emulator, because of the video/audio/input lag the latter exhibits.
I remember I got pretty good at it back in the day; didn’t even think it was too hard.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2023 8:05 pm
It’s not random, strictly speaking; but it’s much easier to bean on real hardware than in an emulator, because of the video/audio/input lag the latter exhibits.
I remember I got pretty good at it back in the day; didn’t even think it was too hard.
That's fair enough. I am basing my experience on emulator.
The reviews are mixed - Sinclair User and Your Sinclair don't mention it and only say how good the game is, so obviously not a problem. Crash on the other hand is more of a mixed bag:
with luck
a shade too fast
even though success in the rather silly reaction games is so vital to progress
...but it does temper it with:
"they start off quite easy but soon become 'close your eyes and hope' situations, which might put off the impatient. But Firefly's addictive challenge would soon entice them back.
Ast A. Moore wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2023 8:05 pm
It’s not random, strictly speaking; but it’s much easier to bean on real hardware than in an emulator, because of the video/audio/input lag the latter exhibits.
I remember I got pretty good at it back in the day; didn’t even think it was too hard.
I'd say that it's much easier on an emulator, because you can slow it down or savescum if you mess up.
R-Tape wrote: ↑Wed Sep 13, 2023 8:38 pm
Crash on the other hand is more of a mixed bag:
Well, I see where they’re coming from, but I kind of got “in the zone” with those mini games. Similarly, I got very good at the bomb defusing sequence in Deviants.
Every man should plant a tree, build a house, and write a ZX Spectrum game.
i haven't had much problems with both reaction games in Firefly on the real hardware too. but i must admit that i was a child, and had much faster reflexes back then. today i simply POKE both things out. ;-)
Another wildly popular poll, even surpassing the John Ritman one in terms of votes! I wonder what the late Joffa would make of it all?
Hyper Sports is the winner here, although it's been rather tight for the top four places anyway. 16 votes makes it the winner.
In second place, with 13 votes, it's Green Beret.
10 votes puts Cobra in third place, a game far more popular and enjoyable than its source material!
The highest of the Special FX games now - Firefly gained 8 votes to be in fourth place.
The others to fall rather behind, so the ones with 2 votes each I'm considering to be in joint fifth place: Daley Thompson's Supertest and the Sinclair-User-exclusive Hyper Active.
And for what I consider to be in joint sixth place (and maths pedants can point out it really should be joint seventh, but I can never be arsed with any extra work on clarifying the exact joint positions), 1 vote each for Batman: The Caped Crusader; Hysteria; Mikie and Terra Cresta.
Here are the proportional results:
Hyper Sports by Imagine 47
Green Beret by Imagine 28
Cobra by Ocean 21
Daley Thompson's Supertest by Ocean 14
Mikie by Imagine 13
Terra Cresta by Imagine 9
Firefly by Ocean 8
Batman: The Caped Crusader by Ocean 5
Hyper Active by Special FX 3
Hysteria by Software Projects 1
Pud Pud by Ocean 1
Quite surprising in the proportional vote to see where Firefly and Supertest are placed. Never played Firefly myself but it's been talked about in glowing terms on forums over the years so I expected it to be much higher, certainly higher than Supertest.
Very pleased to see Hypersports winning both My favourite arcade conversion on the Speccy.
My biggest surprise is that Green Beret got so many votes, more than Cobra and FireFly.
I never really liked this game on any platform, too stressful and frustrating, in many ways...
spider wrote: ↑Wed Sep 20, 2023 4:29 pm
My surprise was to see Hyper Sports so far ahead of a few of the others by such a large margin.
It's pretty highly regarded I think.
I remember yonks ago that WoS world-cup-knockout-style Best Speccy Game Ever series of polls.
Hypersports got all the way to the semi final, knocked out by (eventual winner) Skool Daze. The other semi finalists were Manic Miner and Atic Atac IIRC.
I remember yonks ago that WoS world-cup-knockout-style Best Speccy Game Ever series of polls.
Hypersports got all the way to the semi final, knocked out by (eventual winner) Skool Daze. The other semi finalists were Manic Miner and Atic Atac IIRC.
Ah OK.
I think because I saw and played (was an xmas gift) Daley Thompson's (it was Decathlon then not Supertest) maybe a year or two before I actually saw HyperSports, I may of been a bit biased, I suppose my thinking was "more events" in the former two games compared to the latter, although yes I know its not always about quantity.
It might well of been the BBC version of HyperSports I saw first too, I'm not 100% sure on that point, possibly my imagination, as I thought I'd done a "Across the formats, lets play ..... " with HyperSports too. Obviously not.
Obviously not. 
