Spectrum Computing

The eagle-eyed amongst you may notice this poll has started a day late. Sorry about that, will hopefully be back on track for 10am Mondays every other week as usual in future. (My long Easter weekend was somewhat disrupted by pulling an all-nighter so I could support and perform at the Longest Stand-Up Comedy Event World Record Attempt in Banbury, which was a success, thanks to energy drinks and outright enthusiasm.)

Anyway, on with the H poll, it'll run for 7 days and so concludes Tuesday next week just after 10am UK time...

Hacker by Activision


Hades Nebula by Nexus Productions


Halls Of The Things by Crystal Computing


Hammerfist by Activision


Happiest Days Of Your Life, The by Firebird


Harrier Attack! by Durell


H.A.T.E. by Gremlin Graphics


Head Over Heels by Ocean


Heartland by Odin Computer Graphics


Heavy On The Magick by Gargoyle Games


Henry's Hoard by Alternative Software


Herbert's Dummy Run by Mikro-Gen


Hero Quest by Gremlin


H.E.R.O. by Activision


Heroes Of The Lance by US Gold


Highway Encounter by Vortex


Hijack by Electric Dreams


Hobbit, The by Melbourne House


Hobgoblin by Atlantis


Horace And The Spiders by Sinclair Research


Horace Goes Skiing by Sinclair Research


How To Be A Complete Bas**rd by Virgin


Hudson Hawk by Ocean


Hunchback by Ocean


Hunchback II by Ocean


Hunchback - The Adventure by Ocean


Hungry Horace by Sinclair Research


Hydrofool by Faster Than Light


Hyperaction by Silversoft


Hyper Sports by Imagine


Hysteria by Software Projects

I know it's probable that Head Over Heels will win this eventually but I went for Hyper Sports. It's the best sports game on the Speccy IMO but there was nothing between it and Highway Encounter. It just pipped my vote because Joffa is no longer with us, but really I've voted for them both equally

Some interesting games here. But my vote went to Highway encounter. A great 3D game by the great Costa Panayi.

Hypersports and Head Over Heels in 2nd & 3th place.

I've gone for Hero Quest. I was recently playing this for several weeks as I wanted to complete it, then buggered up my save states. Gonna try all over again at some point. It's Chaos-like, albeit in a 3D isometric world. I doubt it'll come close to winning, mine will probably be the only vote.

Had to go with The Hobbit, such an innovative game for its time and still fun to play today. It's got 'physics', 'AI' and various random elements. Combined with player-defined-challenges, it lends a lot of replay value to the game and you don't get to say that about text adventures all that often.

True.
A tough choice heres for me, with a few games that are among my all-time favorites, but still my vote goes to Hobbit, without any doubt.
This is a game that defines Spectrum gaming, a programming masterpiece, a timeless hit...

I suppose that whoever has voted for Hades Nebula missed his real target.

Personally, I've voted for Highway Encounter, at least for now.

Head Over Heels in second place.

Silversoft's Hyperaction occupies the third spot.

WIWC wrote: ↑Tue Apr 03, 2018 12:19 pm Silversoft's Hyperaction occupies the third spot.

I love that game. That'd be my second choice. Beautifully simplistic, a lovely post-Pac-Man effort from the early 80s.

The Hobbit.

Some good games but the one I spent the most time on back in the day was The Hobbit. Plus it just had so many cool features. Later when I found out how they managed it - this was late 90s I was just floored how far ahead of its time it was. Just like how under the hood its essentially a database structure.

You can learn a lot from the hobbit. Just how they were able to create an illusion of AI, a rich environment. the tokenizer. They are all fabulous.

Sure it had its issues and bugs, but I figure when you push the envelope as hard as they did it was bound to happen. Considering it was done largely in isolation its a monumental achievement in spectrum coding.

What is sad is the lady that was most responsible for one of the most revolutionary features of the program (the use of a database) never knew till years later that the game was popular or people had such deep respect for her achievement. Still at least now she knows so I guess all well that ends well.

I hope Jon Ritman doesn't stumble on this poll.

His best game (IMHO) was in the B thread, that got a similar position. I presume he would hate us all.

I went with HoH even though I asked for The Hobbit to be added to the list

If I could I would have voted for both, but, for me HoH was just astounding. Even the 48k version was good, but, when I upgraded to a 128 the sound just added another level of brilliance to the game. Saying that, The Hobbit was a jaw-dropping moment for me as well. Prior to the speccy we'd had a Dragon 32 at home and the text adventures were pretty simple and text only. When the Dragon died (excuse the Hobbit related pun) and we got a Speccy, The Hobbit was one of the first games we played as a family and seeing that first screen still gives me that warm fuzzy feeling of us all sat around our rubber-keyed baby playing that brilliant game.

Went for The Hobbit, pipping Hypersports to a close second place.

As people have mentioned already, just from a games player it was a big leap from the adventure software that was available at the time. The 'quirks and features' of the game added some amusement and intrigue value at the time, and reflect the imaginative way it was designed and put together - the complexity of which I only recognised in latter years.

Hobbit. Without a second of hesitation.

Actually I didn't play it much in the 80ties. I'm not a native English speaker and my English was too poor then to truly enjoy text games.

But I can see now it was a great game. Truly groundbreaking. Nothing seen before.

There were some articles online about Hobbit parser. Find and read them if you didn't. It was really advanced, allowed to some very complex
commands. Many much later games were simpler in that area.

It was between The Hobbit and Hypersports for me too, but I decided on The Hobbit. To this day, it's still my favourite text adventure and, like Morkin said, it just seemed to do what no other text adventure had come close to doing by that point. Actually felt like a "living, breathing" game world that would keep ticking along even if you weren't doing anything.

The Hobbit for me too. Having been a big fan of text adventures before the Spectrum, it was incredible to see the leaps which this game made. It was so incredible to play this at the time it came out compared to what had come before.

What's up with the Heavy On The Magick loading screen? Somehow I don't think it's supposed to have that message at the bottom.

This poll running for only two days and we clearly have a winner!

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:07 am This poll running for only two days and we clearly have a winner!

Blimey, if I had to put money on this one before it started, I'd have said Head Over Heels by a long margin. It's currently languishing in fourth place. I'm stunned!

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:15 am

Juan F. Ramirez wrote: ↑Wed Apr 04, 2018 9:07 am This poll running for only two days and we clearly have a winner!

Blimey, if I had to put money on this one before it started, I'd have said Head Over Heels by a long margin. It's currently languishing in fourth place. I'm stunned!

Never bet on these threads, the winner is always susprising!

Still quite surprised at the number of votes for Highway Encounter.

Not that I don't think it's a good game, just that I wouldn't have expected it to surge into second place, with games like Hypersports, Head over Heels etc. in the mix.

I wouldn't have expected more than two votes for The Hobbit...

All great games (well it's a shortlist), Head over Heels, Hudson Hawk, Hysteria, HERO, Highway Encounter and Henry's Hoard especially, but for me it's a clear choice of:

-Horace or Hunchback?
-Which one of the series?

It may be a tarted up version of Frogger and a Type In bolted together, but I'm going to let go of the branch and get swept downstream in the whitewater of nostalgia:

Horace going Skiing.

Is Hudson Hawk that good? I've never played it...