Spectrum Computing

Well, if Martianoids and Bubbler were deemed fit by US Gold to be placed under the Ultimate Play The Game brand, what existing non-Ultimate ZX Spectrum games would you say closely aligned with the 'feel' of the proper Ultimate games and wouldn't ruin the name?

Off the top of my head, I think these three would be fine to be 'surrogate' Ultimate games...

Starquake


Robin Of The Wood


Firelord

I think many of us have these three games in mind too.

I'd add Nodes of Yesod or Equinox.

Wizard's Lair is basically Atic Atac+

I was going to say Melkhior’s Mansion but then realised that a Speccy version was never released, only the NEXT, Win & Linux versions were released

Stop the Express would fit in well with the earlier pre-Sabre Wulf games.

I'm not really an Ultimate connoisseur, but what about Bomb Jack?

BombJack

When I read the thread title, my first thought was Starquake.

Starquake!

Glug Glug fits nicely together with Pssst, Jetpac and Cookie:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... /Glug_Glug

Lee Bee wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 3:46 pm I'm not really an Ultimate connoisseur, but what about Bomb Jack?

BombJack

Nooo, that's an arcade conversion. Ultimate never put out coin-op licenses, it's seen as this pure engine of original creativity before full price labels latched onto the huge commercial attraction of coin-op/movie/TV licenses. (Yes, I know that Ultimate itself came from a background of literally making arcade games and would, in later incarnations, work with Nintendo's arcade mascots, I know, I know.)

Granted, if Bomb Jack was an original home computer game, yeah, it is very Ultimate-esque. You could imagine a primitive slightly-flickery 16K version of it in 1982 or 1983!

Mpk wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 9:50 am Wizard's Lair is basically Atic Atac+

Which Stephen Crow cut his teeth on, before then writing StarQuake and Firelord. Wouldn't surprise me if the sprite and sound routines are very similar.

I'm guessing maybe Sweevo's World and Head Over Heels would be the natural progression from Alien 8/Knightlore, while The Great Escape is slightly similar to Gunfright and Nightshade in that there is more of an open scrolling area to walk around rather than just interlocking rooms.

I'll throw in Factory Breakout from Stephen Crow as well. It's more of a Cookie than a Sabre Wulf, but that's no bad thing.



There are a heck of a lot more games that'd get in if you set the bar at Martianoids/Bubbler, but I'd think that most of us would agree that they weren't good enough to be Ultimate games. Even Pentagram and Cyberun aren't that great for me.

In an alternative universe, let’s imagine that the Stamper brothers decided that they wanted to make Ultimate the “Ultimate Spectrum Publisher” and invited other games developers that could make games that were up to the calibre of Ultimate, plus had a bit of the Ultimate look and feel.

After the success of TLL and Cyclone, Costa Panayi took his next game, Highway Encounter, to Ultimate Play the Game. With a mix of strategy and arcade shoot em up in an isometric viewpoint, it would have been perfect for Ultimate.



Despite having no previously published games, Bo Jangeborg submitted his first game, which Ultimate snapped up. Having retooled the game slightly to now include Sabreman as the main character, Fairlight: Knight Lore 2,gathered rave reviews In the gaming press.



After initial feedback that it was too much like a reskin of Knight Lore, the Stampers jumped at bringing Steve Turner to Ultimate. With a bit of a graphical touch up by the Stampers, followed by a completely incomprehensible manual in the style of a medieval poem, Alien 8: Mission To Quazatron, brought the Ultimate label back on top.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Sun Apr 30, 2023 7:33 pm Nooo, that's an arcade conversion.

Oh yeah, I stand corrected. Bomb Jack is one of the few arcade conversions I never once saw in any arcade anywhere, so I always mistakenly think of it as an 8-bit original.

Thinking of the good Ultimate games pre-Martianoids, they tend to have :

Very responsive gameplay
48K games have a map to explore
Likeable cartoonish graphics, with well chosen colours in static areas.
Sound. Lots of sound. The sprite running produces clicky footsteps. The entrance of baddies is announced by a small explosion. If theres nothing currently going on, then the game often purrs at you anyway.

Starquake certainly ticks all those boxes. I'd say that Fred mostly does too, though going back to it now, its more sluggish than I remember. (Close your eyes, you can certainly remember what a game of Cookie, Jetpac or Starquake sounds like. But Fred?)

Worrabout Dimbo?
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... trum/Dingo

If you didn't know any different could it pass as one? We tried to do it in their style.

bluespikey wrote: ↑Tue May 02, 2023 1:41 pm Thinking of the good Ultimate games pre-Martianoids, they tend to have :
Very responsive gameplay
48K games have a map to explore
Likeable cartoonish graphics, with well chosen colours in static areas.
Sound. Lots of sound. The sprite running produces clicky footsteps. The entrance of baddies is announced by a small explosion. If theres nothing currently going on, then the game often purrs at you anyway.

Just about all those boxes ticked for Feud!


I've said it before that it's an Ultimate-esque game that arrived a few years too late. Turns out the people behind it - the Pickford Brothers - were selected by The Stampers for game design/development as Ultimate transitioned from 8-bit to the Rare era of consoles.

Fully agree with Pete's original list and I'd add Nodes Of Yesod to the mix.

I'm sure I read somewhere, probably in one of those internet interviews in the mid-to-late 90's, that they were trying to replicate Ultimate as much as possible with Nodes.

Vampyre wrote: ↑Tue May 02, 2023 2:13 pm Fully agree with Pete's original list and I'd add Nodes Of Yesod to the mix.

I'm sure I read somewhere, probably in one of those internet interviews in the mid-to-late 90's, that they were trying to replicate Ultimate as much as possible with Nodes.

Including the box it came in!

They even called themselves Odin Computer Graphics which was most probably a nod to Ashby Computer Graphics, Ultimate's parent company.

Is there such a thing as jumping the shark in terms of thread ideas..? Because it does seem like you guys are getting there. )) A good number of these games are perfectly fine on their own, and are much better than Ultimate's output anyway (better gameplay, balance, content etc).

In terms of similarity ... Let's see, they are Spectrum games, they have sprites and beeper fx in it ... Ok, seems pretty similar if we put it that way

↑ Ultimate's heyday was before I got my Speccy, so I had never played any of those games back in the day, and I'm certainly not enamored with them. But even I can see that they have a strong house style and a level of quality (for the time) which deservedly earned them widespread affection.

As for this thread being kind of a stupid and ridiculous: Yeah, this entire community is kind of stupid and ridiculous. We're obsessed with an ancient, low-fi games machine that has some of the most limited graphics capabilities imaginable in this day and age. It's all pretty absurd, really. Your Sinclair boasted the ironic slogan "It's crap!" and I think that's a sentiment we Speccy fans can all proudly associate with.

As Speccy fans, we're always just happy to be talking about the Speccy, no matter how pointless the topic. So hats off to Pete Prodge for being part of the life-blood of this community, generating so much content, and coming up with so many interesting topics of conversation.

Any game with decent graphics and mediocre gameplay would count as being good enough for Ultimate.

Firelord for example.

I must admit that when I look back, quite a few of the Ultimate games were, dare I say it, style over substance. Dont get me wrong Jetpac was, and still is, an excellent game, but Psst and Cookie were very similar games, Underwurlde was thoroughly annoying, Sabre Wulf was another game that looked great but was essentially yet another maze game. I loved Knight Lore but Alien 8 and Pentagram just seemed more of the same. Gunfright added something a bit different and I loved the shootout element, but Nightshade was incredibly dull. The less said about Cyberun, Lunar Jetman, Bubbler & Martianoids the better.

For me Ultimate were the M. Night Shyamalan of Speccy games.