Nah, sorry, I can't agree with that assertion. I'd insist that the "intelligent" (for the lack of better word) fare made up at least half of Spectrum's DNA. And there were plenty of successful not-so-simple franchises which prove that point. From Gollop, through Durell, to Level 9 - these people were making money, otherwise they'd quit and fold. Of course, just like with any other media, the sales of pop-oriented hits, potboilers, and blockbusters might dwarf other stuff, but it doesn't make it insignificant overall, even from financial point of view, no just cultural.PeteProdge wrote: ↑Tue Mar 26, 2024 11:19 am Not minor by any means, but there's a chasm between us hardcore Speccy fans still using the platform to this day, and what the mass market of Speccy owners were doing back in the day.
The reality is that most Speccy users were there for Robocop, Batman, Out Run, Platoon, Match Day, etc. I witnessed that from kids at school, barely any of them would enthuse over anything as cerebral as a text adventure or a strategy game. The vast majority wanted coin-op conversions, never gave a toss about programming or utilities, and so treated their Spectrum as a bedroom-based arcade machine.
There were some outliers, like the Dizzy series being really popular, and of course, Ultimate games are spoken with huge respect, as are classics like Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Chuckie Egg.
In retrospect, you can see why games consoles took over.
If you wanted to make money from making and selling Speccy games back in the day, you provide coin-op conversions, movie licenses and keep it all simple. Nothing deep! Sad but true.
I mention this here because it's a little pet peeve of mine, that modern impression that micro/computer users were just interested in playing arcade games. People seem to forget it wasn't just little kids (with 0 spending power) who played games, and how massively popular genres such as flight sims, strategy, CRPG, adventure, and yes - even IF! - were back in the day. Spectrum was a little underpowered to cater for the biggest hits from these genres, but even so you can just look at the top 100 lists to see it's not all about just simple fare. And that's what I also remember from my own experience - me and my mates would love to play stuff as varied as Renegade one minute and Movie or Mercenary the next.
It's also the reason why consoles didn't really "take over" - more like PCs did. And PC games have the roots in the more cerberal stuff, which also bleed to console zone (though even there it wasn't alwas all so actioney). One can just look at the modern charts to see that - how many "simple" STGs or platformers will you find there?
WMM was never particularly on my radar (none of the MM games were, and I still haven't played them) nor particularly mentioned by any friends BITD. Sure enough, WMM was never even reviewed in SU (for better or worse, the mag I read) although it got great scores in the others. So I'm guessing a lot of it depends which mag(s) someone subscribed to.
