Reviews

I purchased my copy of Vectron in a store in central Munich where customers were allowed to have a go at games prior to buying them.

With no review in the back of my head I was amazed by the fast vector graphics accompanied by huge sprites of guardians, bullets and the "Master Control Program".

It is a Tron-ish game with a frentic pace.
Don't be put off by the difficulty level. You will soon master the challenges and the innovative maze map you can blend in at any time really helps a lot.

The shop I bought my copy in was rather noisy so I didn't even hear the excellent Beeper-music on the title screen. I have never heared such a good tune on the Spectrum with 48kB.

So if Tron, vector graphics, frentic gameplay and adrenaline kicks are your cup of tea then face the challenge of this game.
And beleive me - the following mazes of higher levels just get even more demanding :-)

Jangler has simple character graphics.
It is a maze game where several worms do battle. You can shoot at the other worms trying to reduce their size after a hit.
Crash head-first in to one worm if your worm is longer than the enemy and victory in this fight is yours.
Otherwise you lose one life.
The pace of the game is very hectic and it is tons of fun roaming around the maze, simultaneously trying to reduce other worms' size while guarding your own worm. On top of this you are always out to bump into any worm shorter than you so the maze's population density (and hectic) is reduced to a more bearable level.
I highly recommend this game even if the graphics are so simple.
But often the simple things of life are among the best.

The best version of Sokoban I've come across on the Spectrum so far.
Highly attractive graphics and some nice music to go with the action.
Plus an undo function that is really hard to find elsewhere.
This Speccy version would look good on more powerful machines, too.
A simply excellent Sokoban game so my rating is 5 accordingly.

As simple as grid-based games usually are - this one has playability oozing out of it.
Straightforward to get into and a joy to play.
Definitely recommended.
Who needs fancy graphics if clean character graphics are just so fine for the purpose?

Midnight Resistance is sheer brilliance.
What an impressive game design.
And it is very fair, indeed.
If you select the right weapons at the end of each level, of course.

But why the heck do I only grace this little gem with a rating of 4?
It's because of the pot luck weapons you receive right before the final level.
You've got the choice:
Either you save all your relatives and accept that you might end up with weapons that are absolutely abysmal for the purpose ahead.
OR you test every weapon briefly and stop saving your relatives as soon as you get a decent 3-way gun.
Poor buggers - your relatives.
Maybe you can argue that you come back after finishing off the big end-of-game baddie.
Or you save a snapshot of the game right before the relatives are being saved or alternatively afterwards when you find a decent weapon in your hands to continue.

Brilliant game - shame about the pot luck at the end...

UPDATE: Even in Tipshop you only find information about pot luck weapons right before the final level.
This is WRONG!
By watching a youtube video of Midnight Resistance I found out that you can walk and jump at your relatives. When they come down you then stand to the right (usually) so when they touch the ground they leave a weapon or add-on behind.
Now you can choose your equipment for the final battle properly.
And I have to amend my vote from 4 (Good) to 5 (Excellent).

HAVE FUN!

One of - if not the - horizontal shooter reference for the ZX Spectrum.

Excellent use of colour. Minimizing movements to character squares elimnates colour clash and frees CPU time for control of an armada of enemies, shots and smoothly scrolling scenery in the background.

As close to the arcade machine as you could hope for on the ZX Spectrum.

Niggling one might find two weak points:
1. Collision detection is character based.
Thus smoothly scrolling backgrounds may be nearer than you think or rather see.
2. No sound upgrade for the ZX Spectrum 128.

But still - brilliant game! Can be completed but the final guardian on level 8 is hard to beat indeed.
I still play this frequently on an emulator during train journeys (and, of course, at home on the real hardware, too).

I'm sorry to disagree with most reviews about Flying Shark.

But I have to say that the "invisible bullet" is a pain in the places the sun don't shine - especially in this game!
All too often you die and there is no way you could have seen - let alone avoid - the deadly bullet.
If only bullets were bigger and/or flashed so they could be seen properly.

Also I deem the difficulty level too bloody hard. I am no fan of games that require you to remember how to tackle the attack waves. And this is an example of such a game.
To make matters worse, your reaction time to incoming stuff (especially bullets) is very often way too short.
One of these problems may be acceptable, both add up to quite a mess.

So sorry again, folks!
But I had too little fun trying to get real far in this game.

Technically brilliant but the fun factor is in my humble opinion too low and frustration prevails.

Nice game - basically.
Reasonable graphics and a simple but maybe addictive idea.
Could be great and easy.
Unfortunately it isn't.
The controls spoil the fun massively.
You have to be in the exactly right spot to take a turn on the playing area.
The paths, however, seem to be far wider than this right spot.
Together with unresponsive controls - via keyboard at least - puts paid to playability; you often have to release all keys if you want to change direction properly.
So, sadly, I cannot recommend this game.

An excellent conversion of a classic shoot-em-up.
It has some extras bolted on, however.
Especially the docking sequences make you really sweat - they are pretty difficult to master and you need to be docked to progress easily.
Very much like the original arcade machine, things get somewhat impossible once you reach stage 3 (i.e. after two "FAR OUT!" messages. The aliens move way too fast on these levels.
But this does not spoil this excellent arcade conversion.
So take your trip to the space war today. Enjoy!

Well now - this is an odd one!
Strange game-play. But very close to the original game-and-watch look and feel.
Nice effects to spice things up a bit.
These (multi-)colour effects surely were not part of the original Nintendo gadget, were they?
Bottom line:
Nicely done - just a bit on the repetitive side as far as gameplay is concerned.

Let's get the obvious out of the way first:
The graphics are as good as you can get them on the Speccy in this type of game.
The all-too-soon obvious is, however:
Fiddly controls take a lot of patience and getting used to.
But in the end it all pays off nicely.
Bottom line - good game and thus 4 stars.

Rather nice background graphics and smallish sprites make this game appear a little weaker than its splendid predecessor Bomb Jack.
What, however, kills addictiveness is the low level of playability.
Split second timing to jump from platform to platform take away the freedom of movement the original Bomb Jack had.
Add to that the frustration of the pretty hard difficulty level and you end up with nothing to write home about.

Best thing of my copy was, in fact, the free original Bomb Jack on the other side of the tape.
Avoid this and play the original instead!

I still remember vividly the christmas eve when I found this little gem in my stocking.
The beautiful package included a lengthy poem on a paper that looked like parchment. This set the scene nicely for our wizard to roam the scenery in medieval Britain.
And quite a bit of exploring and experimenting was required. There are good clues for the puzzles in this one, too. E.g. "A stamp is the key if axed spike will see". It took me a while to find out that these were two separate sentences - which suddenly made sense.
The game isn't easy to beat but it can be done without a cheat. And that's a nice feature.
Roaming the landscape finding stuff and being chased around by foes was quite an experience. Solving puzzles added to the fun considerably and life became a lot easier if you prepared the right spell for immediate use in the next location.
The only niggle in this game is the jerky scrolling of the locations on screen - even though you get used to this and henceforth hardly notice it anymore.
Bottom line:
An excellent arcade adventure with a strong fantasy epic feel to it. A worthy successor to Avalon.
Check it out today if you don't know it already!

Seems quite nice to boot, this one.

However, up and down movements on the first screen (are there more?) spoil the fun tremendously.
It feels like the rabbit is unwilling to go up or down. You have to be in the pixel perfect spot to move.

Very annoying and thus only a poor rating from me.

Not bad for an asteroids clone.
But not really good either.
Character graphics are colourful and quickly moving.
But movement is limited to, well, character squares.
There are only 8 directions for your ship and the asteroids and the ufo, too.
So it's pretty simple stuff.
No inertia here so your ship stops moving as soon as you let go of the thrust key.

Like I said - it's simple stuff.
Playable but nothing too exciting.
And not really too much like asteroids.

Pretty nice shooter that is quite slow on the gameplay side.
Good graphics, though.
Worth a try if you like shoot-em-ups which are playable with a bit of brain instead of lightning fast reflexes only.

I admit it!

I do NOT like any platform games that are as hard as this one.
Graphics are somewhat acceptable - especially for a game published in 1983.

Playability is in my humble opinion largely influenced by the level of frustration caused by the gameplay.
If pitched right the frustation level is present but only to an extent where you think to youself: "Next time I'll pass this screen!"

Manic Miner and many other games of its kind are just infuriatingly difficult - and repetitive.

Examples of difficulty levels done right?
Try R-Type and Midnight Resistance to see what I mean.

Gauntlet is a maze game with lots of blasting action.
But that's not all there is to it.
You have to use your brains, too, in order to find a suitable way past or through the hordes of medievil opponents.
Speaking of opponents, there are quite a range of different ones, ranging from ghosts dashing straight at you up to death who eats away way too much energy if he gets hold of you.
The mazes are constructed with diligence.
You can master their challenges but quick thinking, quick reaction, precision and a reasonable bit of strategy are involved.

All in all - a true classic.
Even the rather simple graphics do not distract at all from the sheer brilliance of the game design.

The 512 levels are, however, only a part of the truth.
The levels repeat themselves if you really get far in this game.
If I remember correctly, there are about 32 different ones.
I recommend the wizard but your experience may be different.

4 different characters to play which entails 4 different strategies to tackle the mazes and enemies.

Once again, a true classic in my humble opinion.

Monochrome shoot-em-up with good level design.
If you like this type of game you could do a lot worse than playing Chronos.

The title music by Mr. Follin is good but not his best work.
Vectron still stands out among game music for the Spectrum's beeper.

My review is based entirely on a player's perspective.
Graphics are great and the arcade machine has been replicated as faithfully as one can expect on the Spectrum.
But almost all breakout games suffer from one thing: the player is hamstrung by the controls.
There is simply no way to replace a trackball or a paddle controller for games like this.
On my Atari 2600 there are some maddening addictive games of the breakout genre and they surely do not rely on fancy effects. It's the paddles which make the game work for the player.
Circus Atari e.g. would be unplayable without them.

Maybe a set of 5 hotkeys to operate with your other hand would come in handy to "teleport" your bat to 1 of 5 fixed spots along the bottom of the screen. This would emulate the control of a paddle to some extent...

Elite is the first game to create an open world to explore for the player.
Combined with great gameplay this fact alone justifies a rating of 5 - Excellent.
The players even decide what they want to be: trader, miner, bounty hunter, explorer or even criminal - or any combination of these.
The choice is yours and that is utterly great. This level of freedom even equals Skyrim which was produced in 2011!
Of course some ways to play are way more boring than others. Only trading and mining in safe planetary systems is anything but exciting.
But like I said, the choice is yours and you may change your playing style anytime you please. There is no cumbersome re-skilling necessary for you or your trusty Cobra MK III.
Grinding up is only necessary during the first hours of play until you get "an iron ass" (quote from the instructions) to fly around with.
Speaking of instructions, there is an excellent novella which puts you in the right mood for space exploration. Give my regards to Fleischer! ;-) Heck, I even considered to get a red uniform tailored for me once I got to Elite status. Didn't have the dosh to do so, though...
And there are some special missions to spice up the life of commander Jameson. I still vividly remember destroying the Isrema space station which was infested by Thargoids. This had me sweating blood.
The best setup IMHO is a rubber key Spectrum with an Elite overlay plus a programmable joystick interface + QuickShot II firmly sucked onto the table.
This way you always have full control over your ship and a finger over all important keys like "E" for the ECM system to counter any missiles launced at your ship from close distances (these sneaky bastards).
Bottom line:
While Elite isn't everybody's cup of tea (which game is anyway?), it's achievements in open world creation, freedom of choice and gameplay were groundbreaking and therefore Elite well deserves the legendary status it has.
Even today you can have tons of fun on your way from Harmless to Elite status.
I seriously consider to embark on that mission once more in the near future.

A true classic with very clever game mechanics.
The isometric perspective and the four camera angles were both innovative and really useful to complete the levels.
It is a game that can be solved if you invest some time in it, something which cannot be said about many games of that era.
And, of course, it will always stick with me as being one of the two first games I played on my ZX Spectrum, the other one being 3D Combat Zone.
Yes, I did start with one of the Speccy's strong sides, 3D games.

A decent version of the Atari 2600 cartridge game.
The game itself is pretty playable in my humble opinion but the action can get a bit repetitive.
Just like the original 2600 game.
But this is always good for a decent strike at the vicious Empire.
You can even destroy more Death Stars in one single game than Lukas and Disney threw at you on the big screen!

This is arcade perfect platform action with a lot of nice ideas thrown into the mix like riding some vehicles or hanging on to chains.
Obviously, the graphics were crafted with tremendous diligence.
There are so many clever touches to enjoy, it's freaking awesome!
But graphics alone do not make a game great.
The design of the levels and the difficulty level are just perfect, too.
This game has evolved through some iterations and it shows.
I own a nicely boxed version of this game and it represents the pinnacle of plattform arcade action on the ZX Spectrum.

And there is more out there now which plays in a similar league like Valley of Rains, Delta's Shadow, Aliens: Neoplasma and Castlevania: A Spectral Interlude.

These are wonderful times to rediscover the ZX Spectrum as the awesome games platform it has always been.

3D Combat Zone is a pretty good arcade conversion of Atari's Battlezone.
Like its original it is very hard to evade enemy fire once they get their sights on you.
And hitting them yourself is quite a challenge, too.
So the arcade feeling is replicated well.
Good fun for some quick games.