Cosmic Space Attack 48K - Free Demo

[vintage-mike]

Save humanity from 8-bit alien invasion in this frantic shoot'em up for the 48K ZX Spectrum, emulators, or PC - complete with vintage CRT display simulation. There's no time to lose!

Cosmic Space Attack is a modern retro game for the 48K ZX Spectrum, suitable for use with original vintage machines, ZX Spectrum emulators on any operating system, or as a standalone application for PC. The PC version also features a CRT display simulation, complete with phosphor persistence, screen curvature and adjustable controls.

A free demo is now available from itch.io

The demo download contains only the .tap and .tzx files, time limited to approximately 60 seconds game play, to use with a 48K ZX Spectrum emulator of choice. The full version contains .tap and .tzx files, audio files for loading into original vintage ZX machines (and compatibles) together with standalone versions for Windows and Linux PCs including a CRT display simulation with phosphor persistence, screen curvature and adjustable controls.

(I realise that copy protection on ZX games - especially in the context of modern emulation - is hardly robust, but that's not really the point. However I would urge users to respect the license (especially with regard to redistribution), and the amount of hard work and sometimes personal expense which goes into creating the full versions, and most importantly, of making them available for people to enjoy).

[StanVanman]

Looks nice, smooth, sounds okay, inertia on your ship isn't too bad, but a delay of ELEVEN SECONDS from getting hit to being in action again kills the fun stone dead. (For comparison, Galaxian is five and Space Invaders and Astro Blaster are three.)

[Magnus]

Great work! Looks like a more polished version of Arcadia (a game I loved back in the day). I agree with [mention]StanVanman[/mention] that you want get back into the game faster after a hit though.

[MatGubbins]

Redefine key option please.
Slow restart grumblings here too.

[vintage-mike]

Thanks for the feedback,

Looks nice, smooth, sounds okay, inertia on your ship isn't too bad, but a delay of ELEVEN SECONDS from getting hit to being in action again kills the fun stone dead.

To be fair that time does include 'refuelling' the ship and the pixel shatter / materialisation / intro - so its not just twiddling your thumbs staring at a blank screen - but I accept the point. These things are also quite subjective - I actually spent several hours over several days fine tuning just how long the 'Player 1', 'Game Over' messages and other things spend on the screen in the full version, until it just felt 'right' to me (for some definition of 'right'). I find its also an incentive to avoiding getting hit too often

Redefine key option please.

That could be done - I have a tendency to want the presentation to be as simple as possible, by which I mean an aversion to extra configuration options, which I find distracting, so I just went with the 'Jetpac' keys (if I remember correctly) ? Because I guess that's what I was used to personally - and in fact when I play these games I mostly use an arcade stick, so I don't often play using the keyboard at all. All of which is a very verbose way of saying I might consider it, in a future update, maybe

[vintage-mike]

Free demos of all the current Vintage Software Systems releases are now also available on the company website -

https://www.vintagesoftwaresystems.co.uk/

Demos contain only the .tzx and .tap files and are time limited to approximately 60 seconds game play.

[spider]

I think (as you've done) having a demo of each game rather than just one of them is an excellent idea as you're' going to catch hopefully more of the market than just with one demo, as "person x" may not want to try the game offered but has seen another one you have but it lacked a demo.

The time limited is a slightly better idea imo than say restricting to first level / wave etc, as that way the player may see a bit more too.

I did purchase a few 'full price' games from their magazine cover tapes 'way back' and do occasionally purchase 'new' Speccy software too.

Thanks for the demo's I'll try them out tonight although I only have my eye on one actually I'll be honest.

[vintage-mike]

I think (as you've done) having a demo of each game rather than just one of them is an excellent idea...

I'll confess to being a little hesitant at releasing any free versions because I know from my involvement in other software businesses that once you do that you can't take it back - but it seemed to be the right decision, so I decided to put demos of all the games up on the site.

(Its not about DRM or anything, that's hardly practical - I just want people to enjoy the games (that's the whole point of them, after all) but I hope people will also respect the license and appreciate that while making games is enjoyable, this is a (small) business too, and a huge amount of work goes into trying to make it succeed - which is why I'm writing this at 11:00 on a Saturday night...) I hope what I've done is fair and that it gives a reasonable chance to evaluate before buying

The time limited is a slightly better idea imo than say restricting to first level / wave etc, as that way the player may see a bit more too.

That's the other reason I was hesitant about the idea - I tried a few different options but I wanted to find something that wasn't specific to each different game. If I limited it to number of levels, fewer lives or whatever I'd be spending time tailoring the demo mode to each individual game and just maintaining all the different options would expand exponentially. Only the game play time is limited, you can leave it running as long as you want and the attract screens, high-scores, game menu etc will continue to just loop around.

There are now also some online demos too - so you can play them in the browser. Just follow the link(s) in the game descriptions on my website. Performance can be slightly browser dependent - but is generally very good, all things considered. I found that Chrome was best, Firefox's frame rate ocasionallly stuttered in fullscreen mode and audio latency can be a bit unpredictable. As always, the best option is to get the full versions, and play on real hardware, or an emulator of choice, or using the standalone PC versions (but I suppose I'm bound to say that )