Spectrum Computing

Yes, it's the reader games on the three major Speccy magazine covertapes. One common type was the Boulderdash 'inspiration' (and frankly, Earth Shaker is a very strong contender for this poll's winner), going where no commercial software house dared to tread, lest First Star's lawyers step in with a threat. Interesting puzzle games, plus some bland vertical shmups are also here and unfortunately some downright dreadful Operation Wolf clones too. Plus there's Jonathan Cauldwell being the only reader to have games published on ALL THREE major Speccy magazines' covertapes.

A.T.A.C. by Gadtek Games


Ano Gaia by Simon Tillson/Andy Mills


Bite The Dust by John Armstrong


Block-Dizzy by Arno van der Hulst


Bomb Ed by Theo Develegas


Brain Sport by Arno van der Hulst


Captain Pytron by New Breed Developments


Ceasefire by Divide By Zero


Ceasefire 2: Night Run by Divide By Zero


Chiron by Lee Briggs


Church Of Death by Guy Palmer/Larry Horsfield


Confused by Simon Everest


Cosmic Chaos by Michael and Craig Holdstock


Countdown To The Death by Mario de Paula Leite Gouvea


Cricket Coach by Robert McSherry


Death Zone by Paul Breed/G Howard


Deja Vu by Andrew Daly/Huw Bucknell


Deja Vu: The Remix by Andew Mark Daly


Demon Slayer by Psychaedelic Hedgehog


Destrux by David Alderson


Doomskulle by Richard Hutchison


Earth Shaker by Michael Batty


Egghead by Grafix Wizards


Egghead To The Rescue by Jonathan Cauldwell


Ethnipod by Paul Angel


Exiled by Andrew Hall


Gunhed by Theo Develegas


Haunted House by Jonathan Cauldwell


Head The Ball by Cybadyne


Hexcellent by Nigel Grange


Hunter by Scope Design


International Kickboxing by Brian Cross


Liberator by Psychadelic Hedgehog


Logo: Part 1 by Rainbow Dreams


Lost City, The by Martin Page


Mango Jones by Psychadelic Hedgehog


Manic Mower by Brendan Alford


Master Blaster by Cybadyne


Master Brain by Eric Auterith


Megablast! by Jonathan Cauldwell


Mental Block by Mark Hutchings


Mission Fallout by Mark Thompson


Monster Munch by Psychadelic Hedgehog Software


Non Compos Mentis by Nigel Grange


Non Compos Mentis II: Pleasure Beyond Pain by Nigel Grange


Nous by Theo Develegas


Olympus (AKA Gods) by Simon and Julia Barnsley


Omega Zone, The by Peter G Curtis


Peking by Dave Sanders


Pieces Of Eight by Mike Westlake


Piggy Punks by Theo Develegas


Pipework by Jonathan Cauldwell


Pixy The Microdot 2 by David Box


Pizza Bar by Redwood Designs


Pop Stars by Hellenic Software


Portals of P'Thaal by Martin Page


Qarx by Greg Jackson


Rikosphere by Tim Blacklock


Riptoff by Rick O'Neill


Rockfall by Ian M Collier


Rockfall II by Ian Collier


S.A.S. Combat Assault by Mike Westlake


Seven Parchments of Kandos, The by Martin Page


Shuriken by Xplosive


Snare by Enigma Software Developments


Soccer Cup Quizmaster by The Shaw Brothers


Solaris by Theo Develegas


Space 7 by Graham D Shaw


Specimen by Andy Remic


Specimen II: The Apple Quest by Psychaedelic Hedgehog


Spirit Of Ninja, The by Mark Crumby


Star Trip by Thundersoft


Starburst by Jim Gardner


Stars & Stripes by Ceri Williams


Super Fruit Machine by Jonathan Cauldwell


Surface Tension by Paul and Damian Scattergood


Talisman by Terry Stygall


Talking Hedz by Theo Develegas


Termination by Psychaedelic Hedgehog


Tetroid by Paul Markham


SU Crew, The by Theo Develegas


Top Fruitmachine, The by Arno van der Hulst


Trailer 2 by IQ Software


Twinz! by Theo Develegas


Ultimate Warrior by Airline Software


Venturama by Graham Shaw


Whole New Ball Game, A by Pete Cooke


YS Capers by Damian Scattergood


Zanthrax by W.A.S.P.

1) Earth Shaker. Oh, it's Boulderdash but oh-so good looking! Visually delicious.
2) Brain Sport. I didn't know what Sokoban was, but this was a great way to find out, it's genius.
3) Egg Head. Yeah, it's Manic Miner but so much smoother.

Bubbling under: The Rex-like Ethnipod! A Whole New Ball Game being very clever. Peking being my first introduction to Mahjong! Riptoff being another good Boulderdash clone on a covertape, Bite The Dust having a brilliant editor and I guess Rockfall 1 and 2 weren't too bad. The genis that is Snare! Soccer Cup Quizmaster being a genuinely refreshing idea. Tetroid pretty much being so close to the real thing!

You didn't know what Sokoban was??? There's been about a bazillion versions on many platforms.

And that also means you've probably never played NetHack either!!! That has a few Sokoban levels in it (which are pretty hard IIRC) along one of the branching level paths. Nethack is another contender for best game ever

https://www.nethack.org/

1. Earth shaker - easily the most polished Boulderdash game on the Speccy.

2. Ethnipod - brilliant game, very Rex like, another one that could have easily been a commercial game

3. Gods - An enormously complex strategy game, which normally would've put me off, but somehow they got it just right and I lost hours to playing it over and over.

So many other great titles in there though, Ceasefire and Night run, Venturama, Brain Sport... honestly I could probably pick a top ten and still have some honourable mentions left over

1. Venturama
2. Gods
3. Rockfall

Too many great games to choose, so here's just a random top 3.

1. Riptoff. This is just such a brilliant game. Go play it if you've never played it before, now.

2. Peking. This is a simple puzzle game but I still played it lots. Great presentation, somehow. It's really hard to do a good game using a mouse pointer on the Speccy, but this one did really well.

3. Brain Sport. It was my first Sokoban and while it was very slow, I must have finished it, probably. But it might have been later when I had access to fast reloading of save states. And also because it was by a fellow Dutch person.

Too many other great games that I could highlight, but these 3 felt probably be more obsucre ones.
Venturama would probably also be on this Top 3 if it wasn't unavailable for download for years, for example.
Ethnipod is also great but I have recommended too many Cybernoid clones lately.
Portals of P'Thaal is also great, and he made a new sequel too that we discussed earlier. I forgot the link. Go play that too!
Jonathan's games are of course great too.
And last but not least, Gods, I've played that one a lot too back in the day.

We have four 'top three' comments, yet only three votes in the phpBB poll (at time of writing), that's strange!

1. Earthshaker
2. Zanthrax
3. Egghead

Just a note to say that Spot/Spex are talking nonsense; Church of Death should not have any credits for Larry Horsfield!

8BitAG wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 12:38 pm Just a note to say that Spot/Spex are talking nonsense; Church of Death should not have any credits for Larry Horsfield!

Oops! Well, I wouldn't have known about these things, but hey, a minor error that doesn't derail the poll. Thanks for the correction.

Would The Bobby Yazz Show not be included in this list along with the other Cubadyne games? It was supposed to be originally published by Destiny, but they went bust so it ended up on a Crash cover tape after being submitted by Cybadyne. Likewise, Head the Ball was originally to be published by Hewson on the 4th dimension compilation but wasn’t (replaced with Rollaround) and it ended up being on a Crash cover tape - although that is included in this list.

toot_toot wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 5:52 pm Would The Bobby Yazz Show not be included in this list along with the other Cubadyne games? It was supposed to be originally published by Destiny, but they went bust so it ended up on a Crash cover tape after being submitted by Cybadyne.

I feel that the game is one of those that had commercial backing (albeit, having not gone through the full journey of course), so it has a (small) professional advantage over what could be termed as a reader game.

toot_toot wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 5:52 pmLikewise, Head the Ball was originally to be published by Hewson on the 4th dimension compilation but wasn’t (replaced with Rollaround) and it ended up being on a Crash cover tape - although that is included in this list.

Gah! I did not know this.

Again, if people don't pick this up on the dedicated discussion thread then it leads to these situations where polls go live with mistakes in them.

I'm gonna have to declare any vote for Head The Ball null and void and wonder about rerunning the exclusive game poll... or not.

1 Earthshaker
2 Ethnipod
3 Logo

Bubbling under Non Compos Mentis, Rockfall and Whole New Ball Game.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 6:07 pm Again, if people don't pick this up on the dedicated discussion thread then it leads to these situations where polls go live with mistakes in them.

I'm gonna have to declare any vote for Head The Ball null and void and wonder about rerunning the exclusive game poll... or not.

Well, we've had similar discussions before. The main problem here is that we're not able to pick up your specific choices if you don't disclose them to us.

In the end you know about some of the games, and most of the times we cannot discern if you made a conscious choice or not, or that you had all the information. And if I had to supply every information for every game it would take us months, if not years (instead of you just making new voting choices every other week). There are like 100+ entries there in the covertapes.

And half the times we can only guess which cover game falls into your specific category after the previous poll is already underway. No point to redo older polls now.

So the conclusion is that because we never were able to found out _how_ you were placing games into categories, we are always guessing. And people don't like guessing for over 100 entries.

As for Head the Ball, it might have its own category, but in the end it's a very poorly made game that doesn't even have one finished level. It would not score in any sensible way in any of the categories.

Which is sad, because it is also one of the few technical demos that had a very good full colour horizontal scrolling.

Almost all of these were after my Speccy-owning years, so I've probably not given them enough play and concentrated on the ones that held my interest for more than five minutes.

1. Block-Dizzy. The sort of puzzle game I could play for hours.
2. A Whole New Ball Game. Ditto.
3. Pixy the Microdot 2. Enjoyed this one, nice little wander-around-em-up I'll be giving more time to.

Honourable mentions:

Earth Shaker was the best of the Boulder Dash clones, but I liked Riptoff too. All of them were decent.

Brain Sport is a nice version of Sobokan/BoxWorld.

Tetroid is Tetris, no bells or whistles but if you like Tetris (I do) you'll like it.

Starburst would've been a decent shooter for 1985, I wondered if there was something wrong with the game as it seemed very difficult to die!

In contrast, I couldn't get on with the Egghead games at all, not quite Dinamic levels of difficulty but quite frustrating.

A lot of the other games were too derivative of better games, or just seemed like demos, or flashy adverts for the programmer's own skills (most of Theo Develgas/Hellenic Software's games fall into this category, although at least they weren't boring - I quite liked Twinz and whichever of the other ones samples Tone-Loc's Wild Thing)

Timmy wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 8:46 pm Well, we've had similar discussions before. The main problem here is that we're not able to pick up your specific choices if you don't disclose them to us.

It's always disclosed a week before every poll. I try to sum up the category as much as possible in the title.

Timmy wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 8:46 pmSo the conclusion is that because we never were able to found out _how_ you were placing games into categories, we are always guessing. And people don't like guessing for over 100 entries.

Well, this is the longest list in this poll series (so far) and it's hit 89 entries - exactly the same ones cited a week earlier.

Yes, the inclusion of loading screens and screenshots does make it more palatable for people to identify the games from the previous week's text-only list, but coding all that takes considerable time, especially with this long poll.

Timmy wrote: ↑Mon May 13, 2024 8:46 pmAs for Head the Ball, it might have its own category, but in the end it's a very poorly made game that doesn't even have one finished level. It would not score in any sensible way in any of the categories.

Yeah, that is my feeling on the game too. I never found it remotely entertaining and I've felt like not re-running that poll because I reckon others feel the same way, it's not going to make a dent if it's included.

Earth Shaker for me.

For those interested I interviewed the author Michael Batty for my fanzine back in 1999:

https://archive.org/details/desert-island-disks/DID4/

Frankie wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 11:47 am Earth Shaker for me.

For those interested I interviewed the author Michael Batty for my fanzine back in 1999:

https://archive.org/details/desert-island-disks/DID4/

Wow! Only £100 payment and he had to haggle for that!? Gah!

Plus, its debut appearance as part of Crap Game Corner, it sits alongside another future covertape inclusion, Brain Sport, which is also superb.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Tue May 14, 2024 12:43 pm Wow! Only £100 payment and he had to haggle for that!? Gah!

Plus, its debut appearance as part of Crap Game Corner, it sits alongside another future covertape inclusion, Brain Sport, which is also superb.

Yeah, and he went on to create two great games to be officially released, especially Tai Chi Tortoise

1 Earth Shaker
2 Brain Sport
3 Non Compos Mentis

1. Peking
2. Earth Shaker
3. Haunted House

It was very close between the top two, but I do play Peking more than Earth Shaker.

1. Peking
2. Gods
3. Earth Shaker

Did the earth move for you? Why, of course, it's Earth Shaker winning this poll (deservedly so) as I predicted. Ten votes!

Three votes went to Peking, placing that second.

A Whole New Ball Game ends up third, with two votes.

And a few single votes go to: Block-Dizzy; Master Blaster; Portals of P'Thaal; Riptoff and Venturama.

Over to the proportional results:

Earth Shaker by Michael Batty 18
Peking by Dave Sanders 8
Brain Sport by Arno van der Hulst 5
Olympus (AKA Gods) by Simon and Julia Barnsley 5
Ethnipod by Paul Angel 4
Block-Dizzy by Arno van der Hulst 3
Riptoff by Rick O'Neill 3
Venturama by Graham Shaw 3
Egghead by Grafix Wizards 2
Whole New Ball Game, A by Pete Cooke 2
Zanthrax by W.A.S.P. 2
Haunted House by Jonathan Cauldwell 1
Logo: Part 1 by Rainbow Dreams 1
Non Compos Mentis by Nigel Grange 1
Pixy The Microdot 2 by David Box 1
Rockfall by Ian M Collier 1