The best Speccy game by the two eras of Imagine: discussion

[PeteProdge]

Yes, I did a poll on ALL ZX Spectrum games originally released under the Imagine brand, but as any Speccy historian can tell you, there are two phases to Imagine's life. And I've always wanted to cover this...

1) The plunky arrogant and ultimately complacent up-start created by former Bug-Byte folk over in Liverpool in 1982, which famously had bailiffs coming in to recover assets as the BBC covered what was meant to be their success story.

2) The Ocean-owned era, taking the label and a few people for what's ostensibly an imprint to release Konami coin-op licenses.

When we did the poll, the top five was dominated by the Ocean-owned era, Target Renegade winning it, and as for the Liverpool era, Jumping Jack came highest, tying with (Ocean-owned era) Movie.

Of course, separating these two eras, which really is kind of like two companies when you think about it, we'll have two polls running concurrently and we may have different outcomes now we have the full freedom to pick from each.

These are the 12 games I've got lined up for the Liverpool era poll:

Ah Diddums
Alchemist
Arcadia
B.C. Bill
Cosmic Cruiser
Jumping Jack
Molar Maul
Pedro
Schizoids
Stonkers
Zip-Zap
Zzoom

And these 32 Imagine games are from the time it was run by Ocean, which will be the other poll:

Arkanoid
Arkanoid - Revenge Of Doh
Athena
Dragon Ninja
Galivan - Cosmo Police
Green Beret
Guerrilla War
Hyper Sports
Konami's Golf
Konami's Tennis
Legend Of Kage
Mag Max
Mikie
Movie
Ping Pong
Play For Your Life
Psycho Soldier
Rastan
Renegade
Renegade III
Slap Fight
Super Soccer
Target: Renegade
Terra Cresta
Typhoon
Victory Road
Vindicator, The
WEC Le Mans
World Series Baseball
World Series Basketball
Yie Ar Kung-Fu
Yie Ar Kung-Fu II

Pedants could point out that World Series Baseball and World Series Basketball were kind of a product of the Liverpool era, being the last two games developed by the OG incarnation of Imagine which actually became properly tangible (sorry, Bandersnatch fans). But I defer to the time of release, therefore these are viewed by me as Ocean-owned Imagine games.

Then there's the anaomly of Gryzor, an official Konami coin-op license acquired by the guys at 6 Central Street, which by logic, should have had the Imagine logo slapped on it, but became an Ocean game. And so it can't be in here. Oh, and even more of an anomaly coming out of that place, the Speccy got Konami's Hyper Rally with Ocean branding, albeit not really officially, as Ocean called it Road Race (no idea if they paid for the license). That's not a coin-op conversion either officially or unofficially, because Hyper Rally was an MSX game made by Konami, so you wouldn't have seen that in the arcades.

Phew.

I think I've got this right, but of course, I'm fallible, so let me know before Sunday (yeah, much shorter time than usual, I know), when I run these two polls simultaneously!