Devfinitive Edition (Paul Owens): vote

1) Dragon Ninja, loved this in the arcade and the conversion is pretty solid

2) Gryzor, another classic but not quite as good. It's one where I'd go to the CPC version over the Speccy one.

3) DT Decathlon, another stone cold classic. If I were more of a sporty person this might have ranked higher. Deserves a mention just in memory of a the fallen joysticks lost to the relentless waggling.

Nick · Post by **Nick** » Fri Feb 23, 2024 9:52 pm

1. DT Decathlon
2. Dragon Ninja
3. DT Supertest

worcestersource · Post by **worcestersource** » Fri Feb 23, 2024 10:16 pm

1 Cavelon
2 Wimpy
3 DT Decathlon

Timmy · Post by **Timmy** » Sat Feb 24, 2024 1:54 am

1. DTST
2. Bad Dudes
3. Vindicator. Not very good but I liked the 3D view back then.

J. Pirés · Post by **J. Pirés** » Sat Feb 24, 2024 3:37 am

1.- Daley Thompson's Decathlon, 1984, newly purchased ZX Spectrum 48K. The year of the L.A. Olympics
For me, it means having many friends playing at my house, talking daily about the records we were achieving with our classmates. Competitiveness, laughter, occasional swearing and minor disagreements, and getting a new keyboard membrane soon after

2.- Daley Thompson's Supertest. The same reasons I mentioned earlier, but now with my friends and myself being calmer

Competitiveness, laughter, occasional swearing and occasional disagreements are still present.

3.- Cavelon. Cool, challenging, addictive.

toot_toot · Post by **toot_toot** » Sat Feb 24, 2024 1:33 pm

Tough one… Probably Daley Thompson’s Decathlon because it’s probably the best version out of all the platforms, but I also like Mr Wimpy (if you remove the annoying Frogger type screen at the start, otherwise it’s a pretty decent Burger Time clone). The rest of the early Ocean games are similarly good rip offs of Arcade games, sometimes with an original take on it. Hunchback II is an interesting take on Donkey Kong Jr (I guess they went with the Hunchback licence instead of making Kong Jr…

). Unfortunately it’s let down by fiddly controls which are hard to go back to from a modern gaming approach. If there were some pokes or hacks to make it a bit more controllable, especially when jumping, then it could be more of a classic. Gryzor is a great conversion but it’s been superseded by the NES version, or even being able to play the arcade original.

Daley Thompson’s Supertest, especially the 128k version, is probably the best. But the 128k version suffers from you having to play through all of the events with the lives you are given at the start, which makes it more challenging. Still, I remember playing it on a brand new 128K Spectrum (not mine) and being blown away by the Chariots of Fire soundtrack. It’s not a near total rip off of Track and Field, like Daley Thompson’s Decathlon, so I’ll plop for that one.

MarkRJones1970 · Post by **MarkRJones1970** » Sun Feb 25, 2024 9:07 am

I think it's shame Paul stopped developing games for the Spectrum after Dragonninja, which was was his last title. He worked at Ocean for a good few years after but concentrated on developing the ST to Spectrum coding software so that Spectrum programmers didn't have to use Tatung Einstein's to write their Z80 code on anymore.

PeteProdge · Post by **PeteProdge** » Sun Feb 25, 2024 10:14 am

Decathlon is by far the winner here, with 14 votes.

Also from the Daley Thompson canon is Supertest, second-placed here, with five votes.

Gryzor and Short Circuit are tied for third place, with 4 votes each.

In fifth place: Cavelon, Dragon Ninja and Mr Wimpy - 2 votes each.

Finally, sixth place goes to Street Hawk - 1 vote.

Here are the proportional results:

Daley Thompson's Decathlon by Ocean 14
Daley Thompson's Supertest by Ocean 13
Dragon Ninja by Imagine 9
Cavelon by Ocean 5
Gryzor by Ocean 3
Mr Wimpy by Ocean 3
Vindicator, The by Imagine 1

Spectrum Computing