Reviews

Egghead is back in his fourth outing (as suggested in the title) and this adventure finds him cooking a meal for his missus, Shelly. As Egghead, you must travel through various screens/locales searching for the right ingredients, picking up items along the way to help you.

In terms of structure, Egghead Four is no different from its predecessor, Egghead In Space. However in terms of content it feels like a step up in almost every area. Whereas Egghead In Space had rather meek sound effects to fill the silence, Egghead Four has a stomping Eurovision-esque soundtrack, which although a bit too brash at times, overall adds to the anarchic air that so often permeates creator Jonathan Caudwell’s games. Graphically the game is a lot more colourful than its predecessor and the Spectrums arch-nemesis colour clash is kept firmly in the background allowing the screen to be filled with interesting backgrounds, providing a bit of eye candy to go with the object hunting.

The intro screen provides instructions, which is useful for the download version that as such has no real manual. Each screen also has its own title in the tradition of Jet Set Willy; another feature the game has over its predecessor, giving each location a bit more character. The game is littered with what are now becoming traditional ‘Caudwellisms’ including gravestones bearing the names ‘CPC’ and ‘C64’ and in-jokes snuck in amongst the locale names.

Overall the game is an enjoyable romp and scores well in every department. It’s difficult without being fiendishly so and the levels are well balanced and designed. Features such as the Burger Kong mini-game help make the game stand out from others of this genre, including Caudwell’s own previous releases. Available for free as a download from Cronosoft’s website, it’s well worth getting.

Rating: 82%

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

128k Music & Carols covers two sides of a Spectrum cassette. The first side covers various songs such as Imagine or When I'm 64 while the second side contains numerous much loved carols for you to sing along to.

Being a big fan of SID music on the C64 I was intrigued to see how the Speccy could handle Christmas carols. Now, I'm not going to suggest that 128k Music & Carols is the best the Spectrum has to offer but nonetheless I can comfortably say you're not going to be blown away by what's on offer.

Actually it feels a bit tragic that it does actually need a 128k Spectrum given the quality of tunes available on the C64 with half the RAM. In fairness, as the title came out in 1986 it serves as an early adopter of the 128k system, certainly within a few years the 128k capabilities were being much better utilised (I think), though not in all cases as you'll see below.

That said the carols aren't the worst thing you'll ever hear and they have the lyrics up on screen for you to sing along to. It's cute in it's own way and certainly better than the pretty pointless 'songs' side of the cassette.

If you have some fellow chiptune loving friends coming round for eggnog (for US readers), or mulled wine and mince pies to sing some carols, then you may get something out of 128k Music & Carols. Likewise if you have a well developed sense of irony and a social circle who'd get a kick out of sitting round a Speccy singing carols it may be worth a go.

Otherwise, while the carol section is cute in it's own way I'm not sure this will find much of an audience today. Despite that I think as a child I would have demanded my family gather round and sing along at some point. In fact, I might just inflict it on them again some day.

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

Christmas Tunes featured on the cover tape of Your Sinclair in 1992 and features eight different...errr...Christmas tunes for your delectation.

It requires a 128k Spectrum to play but frankly it is a good example if you were looking for one of how limited the Spectrum sometimes seems musically compared to the SID-chip powered Commodore 64.

Listening to the tunes, I was surprised to realise it was 128k only, which I can only presume is because there are two, count 'em, two different melody lines playing at once.

It would be cruel, and flat out wrong to suggest this was the best a Spectrum could do musically with 128k at it's disposal. But certainly it is programs like this that helped create the impression that the Speccy was a poor beast musically when compared to the mighty C64.

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

Ironically my favourite ever Christmas game actually has no relation to Christmas whatsoever beyond being released as a Christmas cover tape for Your Sinclair back in 1987.

Moley Christmas is a short platformer game featuring the legendary Monty Mole character, who at this time had starred in four previous outings, from the original Wanted: Monty Mole to my personal favourite, Auf Wiedersehen Monty.

It was released as an interlude (of numerous years) before the final Monty game, Impossamole but bears no resemble to what was to come for Monty and instead plays as a retread of the familiar Monty style.

Despite this it's still lots of fun and today serves as a good introduction to the series. The aim is to get the Your Sinclair magazine produced, printed and delivered to the newsagents in time for Christmas, and standing in your way is the usual Pythonesque array of bizarre enemies and cartoonish characters.

Looking back, Moley Christmas stands as the postscript for the classic Monty character. Impossamole was released as an attempt to modernise Monty as a superhero in a video game world adjusting to more brash and modern heroes like Sonic the Hedgehog. At the time I liked it, though it was plagued with slow loading times, but in retrospect it was a sign of a series that had lost it's way and created a more generic platformer in an attempt to stay mainstream.

It was a sad end to a classic series (though by no means a complete waste of time) but Moley Christmas still retains the unique magic of Monty's earlier outings and is definitely worth a play.

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

Plum Duff has the makings of a classicly British, irreverent Speccy platformer but despite some clever and original ideas the overall implementation somehow manages to fall short.

You play as Santa, and start in your sleigh in the night sky flying over houses and avoiding flying baubles and trifles. The aim is to drop down chimneys and deliver presents to the sleeping children in their homes. As you enter each home you'll see a message from the children to Santa with their request, and your task seems to be to correctly match the presents in the homes with the right request, therefore shifting them around until everyone has the present they want.

At least I think that is the aim but after playing it through multiple homes I've yet to find a present that's actually been requested by a child, creating a hopeless and quite tedious merry-go-round until eventually you lose all your lives from the various obstacles in your path, from Venus flytraps to waking children.

This is a shame, as the basis of a good game is buried here. The multi-stage structure of the game, as you fly over the houses before dropping down the chimney, allows for a decent variety to the gameplay, while the presentation has bags of character, from the children's letters to Santa to the messages from the game itself, which offers advice and general nonsense prose.

Sadly because of the obtuse way the game plays, with an unclear method of properly uniting the children with their presents, it presents an unclear objective, which is off putting enough to the gamer that no amount of charm can make up for it. A shame, as on the surface Plum Duff has plenty of potential to be a Christmas cracker, but frustratingly lacks a proper prize within.

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

Christmas Cracker was a Eurogamer exclusive title by modern homebrew legend Jonathan Cauldwell, featuring his not-at-all Dizzy-like character, Egghead.

The game is a cute nod to magazine tie-in games of the past such as Moley Christmas (reviewed below) as you have to rescue the staff of Eurogamer who have become snowed in for Christmas.

While the game has the usual high quality of a Cauldwell game there is a slight knock-out rushed feel to it. Like Crimbo it doesn't have a right load of screens but unlike Crimbo it doesn't offer much by way of difficulty, and you shouldn't really have any problems completing this game within twenty minutes unless you lack hands.

That said, the point of the game wasn't really to provide a stern challenge to gamers, but to provide readers of Eurogamer a nice little treat for Christmas and encourage them to perhaps try out some more retro games, particularly ones by Jonathan Cauldwell.

On that level, Christmas Cracker succeeds, and it's certainly worth a quick, enjoyable playthrough. But it's unlikely to be something you'll seek out more than once. However there are many other adventures involving Egghead if you enjoy playing the game, which I suspect you might.

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

A Chu Chu Rocket clone on the Speccy? Why wasn't I informed of this?! All Present and Correct updates the classic Dreamcast launch title Chu Chu Rocket for a Christmas related Spectrum title, replacing the cats and mice with Christmas presents and their not-so-obvious nemesis, hammers.

The aim of the game is to guide the lemming-like presents to the sacks dotted around the screen, while avoiding wandering hammers and dropping into any holes. You do this by placing arrow markers on the screen, which will guide anything that crosses its path, present or hammer, in the desired direction. It's a simple concept that provides more than enough opportunity for devilish level designs and with 40 levels there are plenty in All Present and Correct.

Despite the humongous difference between the 8-bit capabilities of the Spectrum and the 128-bit power of the Dreamcast, the author Bob Smith has done a good job of ensuring the game plays much the same on both systems. Sadly the multiplayer aspect has gone completely but it might be for the best. The game lacks a slight fluidity that the original has, which doesn't affect single player games but could be a deal-breaker to the multiplayer game where quick reflexes and speedy gameplay are essential. Certainly a poorly implemented multiplayer could be a bigger negative than no multiplayer at all.

Nonetheless, All Present and Correct has the usual mix of Bob Smith traits, it's easy to pick up and play with slick visuals and consistently good sound and music, but contains enough fiendishly difficult levels to appeal to most gamers. It's definitely one to play if you're in the mood for a Christmas or puzzle themed Speccy game and yet another example of the high quality of much of the modern Spectrum homebrew.

At first glance the Spectrum version of Bubble Bobble looks like a truly hideous attempt that has proved well beyond the capabilities of the Speccy. Actually, it plays quite well.

Graphically, seeing Bub and Bob rendered with just a white outline is at first rather depressing but the cute flick of their tail as they bounce around does enough to convey their cheerful demeanour (Classic bubble blowing dinosaur character trait, always cheerful even when fighting to the death to rescue their girlfriend, Ed).

Despite all this the gameplay is just about present and correct and it’s high rating on World of Spectrum is testament to it’s playability. It also plays faster than the C64 version, which makes a difference to the tactics you use when you play the game.

However, if the screen fills with bubbles, as it is wont to do, there is a quite severe slow down in speed. It’s by no means insurmountable but perhaps the slower gameplay on the C64 is the price you pay for extra stability and consistency.

Whether you can get over the sound effects is another matter. It’s disturbing to think that anyone thought what comes out of the speakers was ever acceptable as sound effects but I’ll admit to finding something cute about the burps and whines that come out of the system as it attempts to provide an authentic arcade experience. Musically it holds it’s own better than many 48k tunes.

Turning to the completeness of the port, the Spectrum version of Bubble Bobble does appear to lack some features from the arcade version that made it to the other 8-bit ports.

The most noticeable for myself, based on the way I play the game, was bursting a huge collection of bubbles and discovering they don’t turn into collectable objects like fries or lollipops. Likewise killing an enemy with water or fire doesn’t leave you a high scoring diamond as a reward.

Despite the lack of a few elements within the game the central components of are all present and correct. It is a valiant attempt to port the arcade classic into 48k of memory and it obviously didn’t put me off back in the day as I spent many hours waiting for it to load and many more playing it.

Taken from my website www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

The object of the game is simply to collect all the objects on any given level. A simple premise made brilliant by the presence of your 'alter ego', a ghost who mirrors your every move without regard for platforms or enemies. The objects, essentially throbbing pixels, are scattered across every level. The animation of the figures is smooth and the graphics are pleasantly colourful while avoiding colour clash; in this they are reminiscient of the best of the Spectrum games.

To help you in every level you can swap positions with your alter ego a limited number of times, allowing you to reach areas that would otherwise be unattainable. However, your alter ego also has objects to collect forcing the player to consider not just his own position but also that of his alter ego. Neither character can pick up the objects intended for their alter ego, meaning you have to plan your route through every level carefully. The lack of a save or password option for every level means playing it on anything other than an emulator could end up a frustrating experience as you will use trial and error to work out the correct path through the levels.

What is refreshing about Alter Ego is that it hasn't come from the usual suspects of the Spectrum homebrew scene, such as the excellent Jonathan Cauldwell (who did Utter Tripe, reviewed below) or the Mojon Twins, but is actually only the second effort by Retro Souls for the platform. With a bit of luck, hopefully it'll be followed by many more efforts of equally high quality.

Amazingly, it has already been ported to the NES by a fan of the game. Although their name suggests Retro Souls aren't too interested in modern systems, the game deserves a wider audience and I'd like to see it developed for the mobile and handheld market. Given the existence of a legal Spectrum emulator on the iPhone perhaps it could be released through future updates of that. Nonetheless if you own a PC you should download an emulator and give it a try.

There doesn't seem to be any storyline to the game, which is not strictly necessary given the style but is something that always irks me a little. Nonetheless, Alter Ego is a brilliantly realised puzzle platformer for the Spectrum and would have been easily worthy of a commercial release back in the 1980s.

You can download Alter Ego for free at World of Spectrum and watch a video of it in action on Youtube.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Crystal Cubes is essentially a Tetris clone where you match falling cubes of the same colour to build your score and progress to the next level. Although the game is well presented with colourful graphics it feels very basic given the sheer number of similar puzzle games out there for the system.

The game plays slowly, frustratingly so, and whilst there is always merit in focusing on the basics there seems to be little to Crystal Cubes beyond the basic ability to match a simple set of same coloured cubes. Ultimately it leaves you wishing for something with a little more about it.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Dex is a Pacman clone reminiscent of numerous similar games that appeared on the Spectrum in the early 1980s like Gulpman or Gobbleman, indeed the author states in the instructions on World of Spectrum that his intention was to create such a game.

The plot, such as it is, sees you tasked with filling ten randomly selected mazes with paint while trying to avoid the paint bugs who patrol the corridors looking for paint brushes to eat. This is a nice flip on the usual plot for Pacman games where the aim is to clear the maze of objects, in Dex the aim is to fill the maze with colour.

Every level comes with a set amount of bonus points to start with, which you can use to scare away the paint bugs for a limited period of time or keep to bank if you complete the level. This is a clever way to implement the usual ‘invulnerability’ mode typical in Pacman games by forcing the player to choose between a temporary invulnerability and the chance for a greater score at the end of the level.

The difficulty of the game is punishing, though you can select the speed the game plays at (which essentially constitutes a difficulty selection), but even on the slow setting it still constitutes a challenge to the casual gamer.

As I’ve mentioned above the author’s intention was to create a game similar in style to the early 1980s BASIC games and in that respect they’ve succeeded completely. As to how much you’ll enjoy it that depends on how much you enjoy that era of games that can sometimes feel quite basic compared to what was to come over the next few years.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Lost In Maze is Tom Dalby’s entry into the 1kb category 2011 minigame competition, an annual competition where developer compete to produce the best game on various platforms such as the Spectrum, Oric and ZX81 in 1kb, 2kb and 4kb categories.

The aim of the game is to find the key that unlocks the exit to the maze within a set time. To complicate things further the maze is only revealed to you as you travel through it, making the game a tense race against time into the unknown to find the key and exit before your time runs out.

Given that the game is squeezed into a mere kilobyte of memory, Lost In Maze is an impressive work, like Dex it is reminiscent of the early 1980s BASIC Spectrum games. It should do well in the 2011 Minigame competition as it’s a well crafted and enjoyable enough experience. There isn’t quite enough there to keep you coming back for more time and again but it is well worth the occasional play.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Utter Tripe is like a speed-typing game in the vein of the famous House of the Dead spin-off for the Dreamcast and PC, The Typing of the Dead but with Cauldwell’s usual brand of surrealism and Pythonesque humour.

The idea is a clever one, with various mini-games to play through involving typing words as fast or well-timed as possible to progress to the next round. The game is in what I consider to be the classic era of Spectrum graphics, full of colour and brightness, as opposed to the early basic graphics and the later monochrome era.

Nonetheless, while the game is well executed it could be better. The same words crop up too frequently enabling you to quickly learn how to type them and too many of the levels provide absolutely no challenge whatsoever, with no discernable difficulty curve.

The odd level shows the potential for the formula but ultimately, strange as it is to say it for a Cauldwell game, Utter Tripe feels slightly undercooked. However, it’s worth checking out just for the instructions, written in mock-medieval language, describe the tripe wizards, those who practise the art of cobblers. Classic Cauldwell humour, but his other games have proved a better vehicle for it in the past.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Sid Spanners 2: The Slackening is the second game in the Sid Spanners series by Digital Prawn, which has quickly expanded to four games in the series in less than two years. Like the other Sid Spanners games it follows a very basic Manic Miner formula.

With that in mind, there’s little to be said about the game that isn’t obvious just from looking at a screenshot. The level design is thoughtfully done and the overall presentation of the game is good. It’s worth checking out if you’re a fan of the Manic Miner series, but it doesn’t play as fluently as Manic Miner or other series of the genre such as Egghead. However, for fans of the genre the Sid Spanners games are worth checking out.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Stela plays like a cross of Snake and Crazy Balloon clone Balloonacy, where you guide your ‘snake’ to the exit while avoiding the obstacles in your way which cause instant death if touched.

The game starts off simply enough as it introduces you to the concept and different obstacles in your way such as walls and timed gates. The difficulty increases gradually until it becomes quite challenging, though it never feels excessively so or that the difficultly is such that it is not in your control to master the level if your reactions are quick enough.

To help you along your way you can briefly enter a ‘turtle’ (or should that be tortoise?) mode where everything slows down for a limited time, useful for when you are stuck waiting for a gate to open in a confined space.

While the graphics are basic, the good use of colour keeps it from being monotonous and there are enough nice touches, such as the funny faces that appear on a monitor below the screen, to make the game visually interesting. The sound effects make good use of the Spectrum beeper although the continuous buzzing noise that plays when your ‘snake’ is moving seems needless and mildly annoying to boot.

Stela is a well polished little arcade game for the Speccy and well worth checking out

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/10/05/zx-spectrum-games-of-2011-reviews/

Based on a 1983 arcade game of the same name, which makes it as old as I am, Dingo is actually about a Koala Bear called Ted, who has to clear the mango fields of fruit before all the pesky dingo’s eat them.

Graphically it’s reminiscent of Sabre Wulf, (perhaps no surprise given that the arcade game was made by ACG, who went on to become Ultimate Play The Game, makers of Sabre Wulf) while the sound effects remind me of Skool Daze, and given that those are two of my favourite games on the Spectrum then Dingo has a lot to live up to. So how does it do?

In a nutshell, very well indeed. It successfully recalls what I think of as the colourful arcade era of the Spectrum such as Cookie and Jetpac (both perhaps unsurprisingly by Ultimate Play The Game).

The action takes place on a fruit farm, essentially a grid filled with fruit, which you must empty to get to the next level, where you do the same thing over and over again. Each piece of fruit you collect is worth a different amount, but as you have to collect them all to finish the level it doesn’t really add much to the game.

As you run around the grid collecting fruit the Dingo’s are doing likewise, and when they see you they’ll quickly throw a piece of fruit at you, which you have to avoid or destroy by throwing your own piece of fruit.

The gameplay is pretty unforgiving but that’s not necessarily a bad thing in an era when many games are so easy they’re clearly designed not to overly challenge the fussy gamer (Oblivion I’m looking at you). However it does mean that unless your positioning is spot on you can get stuck on a corner while trying to navigate around the grid. This leads to lots of avoidable deaths as you try rush around a corner to avoid a Dingo and end up pushing against a wall as you get caught by a flying banana.

This is something that happens to me on other games like Space Marine (getting trapped on corners, not being hit by a flying banana) so I think this cross-generational gaming is just revealing to me how bad I am at perceiving corners and getting around them.

Dingo was released at the Replay Expo 2011 in Blackpool and seems to have gone down a storm. This means that sadly all the copies made to promote it are now gone. It’s available for free download at World of Spectrum and on Tardis Remakes’ own website but it is frustrating for collectors that no more tapes will be made. Given that Cronosoft are happily publishing Spectrum games why not allow him to release a new batch on cassette as long as the demand is there?

Regardless, Dingo is a fun slab of fast-paced, colourful arcade action and a welcome addition to what is becoming a vintage year for homebrew first-time Spectrum releases along with Retro Souls’ release of Alter Ego.

The author has said that he has no plans to convert any of his other games to the Spectrum (perhaps partially because some of them originally appeared on the platform), but did mention the possibility of converting Star Castle at some point in the future. Given the quality of Dingo it would be great to see more Spectrum games from Tardis Remakes at some point in the future, especially as they can be ported to iOS with various emulator apps (as Dingo is) so it doesn’t have to restrict the audience to such a degree.

Perhaps a co-ordinated twitter assault can be arranged to persuade him of the demand?

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/11/13/homebrew-review-dingo-on-the-zx-spectrum-a-remake-by-sokurah/

Crimbo is a festive effort from 2010 by the Little Shop of Pixels, who released it as a semi-sequel of sorts to their Gloop Troops game of the same year.

The quality of the overall package is exceedingly high. The graphics are crisp and have a classic ‘Spectrum’ feel to them, while managing to avoid any excessive colour clash. There’s a nice little introduction, which I’ll come back to later, and then we’re right into the game, a neat little platformer where the objective is to collect all the presents on any given level, while avoiding the usual array of enemies and spikes that can finish you off, which means no presents for the kiddies this Christmas.

The first thing that hits you about Crimbo, other than the crisp, colourful Bubble Bobble-esque visuals, is that it’s fiendishly difficult. I mean it’s really hard. Every level has a strict 30 second time limit and often require pixel perfect jumps over spikes and enemies to even stand a chance of getting all the presents in time.

Whether this puts you off or not depends on how much you like a challenge in your games. Over on the World of Spectrum forums some people rationalised it by saying that the relatively small number of levels, around a dozen or so, justifies the difficulty. Personally I feel the right balance of difficulty should leave you wanting to try it again even when you fail multiple times. With Chrimbo I have to admit it quickly got to the point where I just wanted to throw the damn thing out of the windows. Well, it would have done if I wasn’t playing it on an emulator.

What is for certain is that Chrimbo is a high quality package that bodes well for future releases from the Little Shop of Pixels, provided they get the difficulty balance right.

As an aside, the storyline to this game amused me. Santa’s elves go on strike, so it’s your job to help Santa around his house to collect all the presents for the children.

Now, it might just be me, but my first thought was ‘What if Santa’s to blame for the strikes?’. I mean, why have the elves gone on strike? What sort of working conditions did they have? What were their demands? Why didn’t Santa get round the negotiating table instead of deciding to do it all himself?

It’s hard to believe Jolly Ol’ Saint Nick would have such sub-standard working conditions as to merit a strike but then they do say a strike is a sign of failure on all sides. Certainly Santa wouldn’t be the first global giant to present a good image to the world while subjecting his workers to appalling working conditions. And think about it – if Santa engendered such good will from those around him then why does everyone in the game want to kill him? Even the cute little Robins are after his blood.

Anyway, where were we?

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/12/27/the-retro-review-10-zx-christmas-classics-and-curios/

Season’s Greetings was given away with ZX Computing magazine back in Xmas ’83.

It runs through a series of carols while showing images of the star of David shining on the stable and a Christmas tree. It’s pretty basic but the relative newness of home computing back in 1983 meant it would have been a welcome example of what the Speccy could do as a home computer rather than just a gaming system.

As a type-in program it allowed you to test your BASIC skills and also put in your own personal message for any loved ones you could persuade to look at your Speccy.

I’ve no idea if the use of multiple screens meant a lot more time was needed compared to the single-screen Your Sinclair card but it at least provides another option if you want one.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/12/27/the-retro-review-10-zx-christmas-classics-and-curios/

A nice idea that would probably seem a bit odd nowadays, this Xmas Card by Your Sinclair magazine was a type-in program where you typed in the code and then ran it to display the Xmas card.

It explains why the image is pretty basic but I can imagine that back in the day I’d have happily spent a couple of hours typing it all up to see the results and feeling pretty pleased with myself.

Now of course we can fire it up through an emulator in seconds and the lack of a sense of achievements rather defeats the point. However at the time you could write in your own Xmas message giving you the opportunity to tape your own card to give to friends, which would have been unbelievably cool (to me at least), even if your friends would resent sitting in front of their TV waiting for the damn card to load.

In this respect it offers something quite unique (ignoring all the other type-in cards that were put on covertapes) but obviously it’s a feature unavailable through the emulator. I guess with the Kinect you could probably have some form of Microsoft Kincectmas card program where you film yourself onto an existing template.

Actually that’s not a bad idea…I’ll have to remember to tweet it to some Xbox twitterati and make space in my living room for the inevitable free Kinect reward.

The Your Sinclair Xmas Card is a nice little program for the time, but without the type-in instructions is a bit pointless today, especially when viewed on an emulator.

Taken from: http://zombiesatemyxbox.com/2011/12/27/the-retro-review-10-zx-christmas-classics-and-curios/