Reviews

A multi player beat-em-up with nice music, nice graphics and perfect playability. Possibly it's best multiplayer beat'emup of zx spectrum.

I don't know why this game has always been forgotten by speccy users. it's in my top10, because of it's great playability and fun. Not to mention multicolor graphic effects.

it's a cooperative game, while computer controls the hero, you need to help the guy along the way to the hostages, protecting him.

The only downside of the game is that it does not end. it simply loops to the start after playing some levels. But beside this, it's a great game.

Zx has many more platformers, many of them is better than this.

But manic miner is unique, it's a part of spectrum's subculture, it has e-groups, countless remakes, addons and it brings back nostalgia every time.

I remember my friends playing this endlessly. I was an Elite player trading over the space, but when I return to earth, damn water closets was impossible to jump over. They still are.

If it wasn't manic miner it could only get 2 point from me, but this is manic miner, a classic.

A nice platformer from the indiana jones era.

You guide a treasure hunter in a pyramid. it's an easy game compared to others from 80's, and it offers pure fun.

Downside is that it is very short/small game, you can easily finish it and go back to playing chuckie egg.

I don't know why, but Chase HQ is regarded as one of the best games of zx spectrum. Ok, it's better than competing 8bit ports of the same game, it's fast and very close to arcade version.

Definitely not in my top 10 but it's one of the finest creations of ocean software for sure.

"La Abadia del Crimen" is a very famous game. But, It's hard to follow what's going on in the game because it's in Spanish.

Although there is an English (hacked) version lurking around, I didn't try it yet.

By the looks of it, it's a nice adventure game, with an actual, "ongoing" story, so you get instructions while playing.

And it's a shame that I'm the first to review it while there are many fans out there.

My vote is based on gfx and playability (which I found it very hard to play).

Well, everyone agrees this game is too easy, but everyone accepts that the game has a replayability value. Even though I finished it plenty of times, I kept loading that game to play it again. it's a small easy game, especially when you are 30+ years old video game veteran, but I was playing this game when I was 10 and while it gave me a nice challenge, I was able to finish it without frustration.

Graphics of the game are also nice, every room has a nice variety, different obstacles appear as you progress. It can be playable by two player, while the other player chooses to stop bruce *or* to stop the ninja (or both).

And it got a big boss at the end of the game so you got your reward playing the game to the end. While the boss is only shown for 5 seconds before you finish the last screen, if you want to see it again, you gotta play the game from the start.

Well, it's more close to "excellent" than a plain "good", so my vote is 5.

Well, this game defines what "playability" is. Chuckie Egg was most played, most discussed game in my neighborhood. Every day somebody found a new move to jump one platform to another, find shortcuts to get 5 egg at one jump, and how to get pass thru platforms using jumps from ladders to ladders. Everybody was a master at playing Chuckie Egg, and speccy's rubber keys were well suited to play it actually.

The game does not require to be pixel perfect, even you can touch birds without losing a life, you can hit a elevator and bounce back to a platform, you can use screen borders to bounce around and make big jumps. if you are a master chuckie player there is no stopping for you, it's not a "stop and plan your move" game, it's a fast paced, non-stop running-jumping fun.

if you complete the game the game restarts but with mother duck released from his cage to chase you, so you can't stop anyway.

Excellent platformer, even today.

I like almost all of Vortex's games, and cyclone came second in my top 5 vortex list.

Cyclone's engine is improved T.L.L. engine, bigger map, and it can rotate view 180 degree to see backside of the obects and locations. This is where the fun begins.

in Cyclone, you use a helicopter to find 5 Crates hidden along the islands, and rescue people as much as you can. After finding all 5 crates you return to base island and game restarts. It looks simple but you have to avoid Cyclone (which is randomly wandering around) and you have to mind your fuel and you have to check every part of every island including rotated view as crates can be hidden behind a tree or a high hill. Also you need to collect all of them in a limited time.

Graphics and playability is almost perfect, it's not a hard game, when you get hold of controls your only enemy is the bad cyclone sitting on you, not leaving an inch.

This game always made me feel about there is always more, bigger thing to find out.

The graphics were quite nice, even I liked the beeper music with subtitled lyrics. It was like karaoke fun, we sing the song with my sister (That was the only game my sister ever interested in).

The game always promises "do that, now do that, you don't have to, but you better do that now and if you do, there is a different quest in the end, but first you have to do this 10 more time! Look, you have money, go buy new gear, even a new car, you got an actual bank account, I give you the number, hide it, use it, keep your money, sing the song! Here is a key and a hole, a jumping mushroom man. And if you destroy him 10 times, you're gonna meet another thing but I won't tell you" kind of thing.

In the end, it's a uniqe game. Ghostbusters may not be a hit for everyone, but it was still a nice change for manicminerized minds.

I met jetpac at the end of my zx spectrum days. Somehow, I couldn't get a hold of a working copy of it for a long time.

I met it after I've played Moon Alert, Arkanoid, Cobra, maybe even R-type and Target Renegade. But it was good. I played it every now and then, just for a quick challange. I played it like a Flash/Office game, when I need a little bit of fun but in a limited time. It was a small game, but if you put time into it, it also rewards you with different objects and goals so it was also a big game.

In that context, it was better than knightlore and atic atac. I still play it a lot, and it deserves a good score just because of replayability.

Elite.. Now, what can I say, well, it's the game that defined space-trading-combat genre.

I was so ignorant about this game at first, and so naive to play it successfully. Only years after I learned it's value. Nowadays I'm a frontier player, and now I can see elite is the part of "elite universe" storyline, and still holds very important placemark in elite trilogy. You cannot judge this game based on playability/gfx only, because it's a full experience with books, maps, stories etc.

Spectrum version is still a nice implementation despite fact that it's a cut-down version, but the game itself is very simple by "concept", and speccy version does the job very well.

So, because it's a classic I have no choice but giving this game a full, much earned, "excellent" rating. it is *the* game. And congrats, you found it.

To excersise English (which obviously I'm not very successful on it) I was playing and still been playing adventure games on zx spectrum. I've tried so many text adventures, and I've learned that generally text adventures need a special skill to play them, sometimes they have almost impossible to solve puzzles, too much dying and save-load tape operations, you need to try every combination of items to solve a riddle.

Rebel planet is adapted from a roleplaying gamebook written by Robin Waterfield. The game is the one of the rare adventure games which make sense, highly playable because it's not so hard. Your inventory won't be filled with items with you don't have a clue what are they, puzzles won't make you pull your hair out and rush to walkthrough.

Game is tecnichally impressive too. You can use ram save option to quickly restore your last checkpoint. Graphics are in high-res, very detailed and fast (sometimes animated). I don't know what kind of adventure engine are they using but Adventuresoft's engine is one of the best.

By the way, Adventuresoft is not a small company, they become Horrorsoft later and produce Elvira, Simon the Sorcerer and Wax Works.

Top Gun came out from the hand of Mike Lamb, the author of the known titles, such as arcanoid, batman, robocop, wec lemans, Regenade series and (with kizza's help) steve davis snooker.

This game is like Counter Strike, it's pointless to fight against stupid bots. This game designed specially for two players. And it offers great fun, especially if there are two good pilots playing.

OK, spectrum's gfx capabilities isn't enough for this kind of job but game is not sluggish, it only lacks detail on gfx. Lamb favor playability over gfx detail. The game is not complicated also: this is not a simultaion, this is a fast arcade game, where you try to shot down your friend, make fun of it, and then let him try again to shoot you. There is no story and no goal other than dog fighting. It's like Quake 3 Areana on a empty landscape.

It's running on plain 48k with full sound effects, nice enough graphics and really nice title music.

I accept, this game didn't age well due to current position of 3d games, but if you were living in 1988 and you got a wannabe pilot friend, there was no alternative to this game. You gotta fly and fire those missiles to your friends on Top Gun! Before playing, don't forget to read instructions. There are pre configured keys to control your speed and weapons.

Actually, I'm not a fan of ping pong, but it seems, Doug Burns' game created a quite hype when it was being marketed.

The game somehow has Joffa's footprint. The title music was coded by joffa, and he even persuaded Burns to change his name into "Bernie Duggggs" on the title screen. Very Joffa style.

The playability is very nice, it's kind of easy to play, yet there is still space for mastering at the game.Actually, it's a nice arcade conversion. It will give you what you expect from a ping-pong game for sure. Looking at the reviews, Burns is very content about his game too.

it's hard to give a ping pong game a 5, but it is prime quality 48k game, so here it is: a 5.

Arcadia!

According to wikipedia, Arcadia is the best selling game of Christmas 1982. It should be true because Arcadia is really fast, fun game.

There is not much information about David Lawson on the web apart from his succesful venture into Amiga games until late 80's, and in the Arcadia, he managed to do the job very well done.

I remember this game when we are playing with my father. It is a fast game, unpredictable movements,no sinuses or velocity accelaration etc. Collision detection is dodgy sometimes, and occasional "fullerbox bug" makes you pull your hair out , but the game itself is extremely fun, with colourful graphics, good sound effects, nice variation through the total of 8 levels (and it's an 16k game). Ofcourse there is a loong title screen effect, like many of the earliest games had.

It's a winner, I still play it sometimes.

Awful!

No one actually solved the puzzle of Caps-lock bug, and how this game managed to find it's way to Your Sinclair's "News" page *and* market shelves.

The game was written in Laser Basic, and distributed with laser basic binaries in memory, which is not legal. So you got full price LaserBasic with squij at budget price!

If you break and check the basic program, you will see the most interesting IF-goto list ever. I'm sure the game's current situation can be explained by spagetti code, and you can see the autor's mental situation in it too: "Well done old bean! You've done it! But for me, it means another 2 months in a dark dank bedroom (which badly needs decorating) writeing a followup. Oh well"

So it's a state of the art creation of carefree people, from it's author to the publisher. But because it brings fun and joy to the scene (read DigitalPrawn's review for a good laugh please) it needs a higher score then "1". But I don't want to ruin its success of "unsuccesfulness", so Sqij will have another "1" from me.

wait... "sqij?" what's that?

Full screen playing area, biggest sprite you've ever seen on speccy and still playable?

You can crush buildings of two screens high, eat people and breath fire (when you run out of fuel, just eat some fuel trucks) and destroy tanks with your tail.

"The muncher" has nice graphics, great playability and acceptable plot, but it's also a short, hard game with repetitive play.

Still it looks and play great, another game to play on zx spectrum.

One big and colorful game but playability is very bad, especially after playing out the arcade game and it flows like water, spectrum version is looks like a sluggish lump.

But still, they maganed to cram every aspect of the original arcade game into zx spectrum. The multiload is almost bad as Fiendish Freddy's, so be sure to grab +3 disk version.

I don't know what's special with this Snooker game, except that it was written by mike lamb. But this game is not "another" snooker game, it is actually very good.

There are many, many snooker games on zx spectrum, but none of them this famous. It's famous not only because it's very well advertised (notice "Steve Davis" label) also very good programmed too. I remeber having fun with this game for days. It is very playable and collisions are realist enough to be played scientifically :)

I give it a 5 points because of clean interface, quick and actually entertaining gameplay.

It's not comperable with today's 3d snooker games, but it's still playable if you can cope with 8bit graphics.

A handy companion for a basic programmer might be a good compiler. There are plenty of compilers in spectrum scene but most of them needs special syntax, limited variable set, or integer math only. When I come upon that kind of compilers, I felt like using another dialect of basic, instead of Sinclair basic.

MCODER III is not one of those compilers. It feels like sinclair's natural extension to basic, to speed up your programs. The gained speed is not great like other compilers, and compiled programs take a lot of space, but you can expect 4 to 10x speed gain depending on your program, and it compiles lots of thing(48k) out of the box.

It's not a tool for professional needs, but it will compile your crap game to a less crap one.

Jonny Quest. Strangest sprite engine I've ever seen on speccy. Sprites big enough and perfectly animated, 1pixel scrolled, scene graphics are very good, game itself is more than average.

The game itself is based on hanna barbara's oldest cartoon Jonny Quest, and for a budget game it's good enough. Not perfect, but good.

So it is good.

Peak of zx spectrum basic programming.

I remember playing this game with my best friend, and having fun all day long. Then I got old and I begin to understand how to play properly :)

It's a simple game, but they got the balance very well. Everything in this game makes sense.

Balanced, clean, playable game play, and animated(!) graphics too.. What else do you want from a managing game?

a Solid 5.

This was my first adventure game, and this game made me to buy an english dictionary (I'm not an English).

The game has nice graphics, roaming npc characters, average parser, and the dwarf thorin sings about gold (as a background music I imagine). Ah, and you can kill Elrond (he likes to get the map from you ocassionally), take his body, and throw the body to the goblins to kill them.

Thorin is with you almost always, and you can command him too, it's not a plain adventure game, it's something between gobliiins (on the amiga) and magnetic scrolls adventures.

At the end, great game with very good atmosphere.

I wish there was a single load version for 128k. But, even though you have to fiddle with the tape to find the level position, this game is still avesome.

Graphics are detailed and big. Whole game is reimagined for zx spectrum, and it works wonderful.

Beeper is used in a proper way to produce sound effects and even music, but best of all game has great playability while being challenging.

R-type is a very important game for zx spectrum, and it is very successful being important.

Chaos is a game designed by the man behind X-Com (UFO:E.U.), Laser Squad and Rebel Star: Julian Gollop.

30 years later, the game is still holding up really great, and revamped mobile version is almost out (2014).

Simple but equally great game, a true zx spectrum classic.

What an underrated gem.

This game, made in 1990, is the pinnacle product of zx spectrum gaming endustry.

As soon as game opens, the legends, follin brothers greets us with a music with ultimate quality.

Not only music, every aspect of the game is very polished.

It's not an important improvement as a part of gauntlet series. The problem is the concept is so high for zx spectrum hardware. But listen:
I met with this game after I played both diablo I and II, and my total suprise, I can easily say that this game is very close to the spirit of diablo. I mean the game aged very well. I played and managed to pass many levels and enjoyed it very much to this day. Only If this game had a tiny litle bit of rpg elements in it, then it would be a masterpiece.

it's a must have for every spectrum user, for all the qualities.