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ZX Spectrum Documentary 'The Rubber Keyed Wonder' Gets London Premiere Next Month
(www.timeextension.com)
ZX Spectrum
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Celebrating Sir Clive Sinclair's amazing machines and the impact they had in our lives.
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40 years later, a game for the ZX Spectrum will be once again broadcast over FM radio
(www.racunalniski-muzej.si)
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cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/7218821
Lemmings on the ZX Spectrum Next. I took this not long after I got mine in 2020.
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/49543
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ninja/post/49419
If you’re an American you’ll appreciate the first two paragraphs. It will provide a context that just makes you say… “but HOW?” Our friends from Great Britain will likely shrug and skip to the third…
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the UK in 1982 by Sinclair Research. Renowned for its affordability and wide-ranging software library, the ZX Spectrum became one of the leading computers in the 1980s European home computer market. Its graphical and computational capabilities, though rudimentary by today's standards, enabled the creation of a diverse selection of games, many of which have since become cult classics. Its iconic rubber keyboard, compact design, and the distinctive sound of its audio output have endeared the Spectrum to a generation of users.
One of the ZX Spectrum's distinguishing features was its versatility and the creativity it fostered in game design. Despite the machine's technical constraints, developers found innovative ways to design a broad array of games, from adventure and puzzle titles to racing and shooting games. As a result, the Spectrum's game library encompassed many genres, including some that were relatively rare at the time, such as first-person shooters.
The game The Dark by Oleg Origin stands out as an exceptional example of this creativity. Released in 1997 and now re-released in a remastered format, The Dark deviates from the typical ZX Spectrum platformer mold. The game is a unique first-person shooter, drawing parallels to the seminal PC game, Quake. In The Dark, players assume the role of warrior Alexander, embarking on a personal mission to liberate his homeland from an insidious force that has breached the land's borders. Throughout this exciting adventure, players encounter various beasts that must be eliminated with precision, be it through a well-aimed stab or a timely bullet. The game's distinctive features and the engaging quest at its heart cement The Dark as a unique entry in the ZX Spectrum's impressive game catalogue.
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2342633
Everyone knows about Final Fight, right? This 1989 Capcom beat 'em up feels almost genre defining, even though it was not the first beat 'em up of its type. Nevertheless, it cast a long shadow over games that came after it, especially those released by Capcom.
And with good reason. Final Fight is awesome, even today. It's a simple enough concept - gang kidnaps ex-Street Fighter and new Mayor Mike Haggar's daughter, so Mike and his pals Cody and Guy undertake a mission to save her. Said mission involves beating up fools, swinging various weapons, taking part in a wrestling match at one point, and eating lots of food out of trashcans. You can play as either of the three pals, and even bring a pal of your own along as a second player.
It's a lot of fun, and well worth a look today. It hurls hordes of bad guys at you that you slice through with kicks and punches and special moves. Nothing quite beats the feeling of your guy disappearing under a pile of ruffians, only to emerge with a cyclone kick to send the bastards flying.
But it was also a technical powerhouse, with massive sprites, detailed backgrounds and a ton of stuff on screen at once. So how the hell would this behemoth fit into a humble ZX Spectrum? Grab a trash-chicken and let's find out...
Let's deal with the Amstrad and Spectrum versions together, since they share a lot of the same DNA, not to mention failings.
Okay, there's no two ways about this. 1991 was way late in the life of the 8-bit home micros. They were about two generations behind the curve at this point, and time had not been kind. So any hope of getting a decent port of Final Fight onto these two was wishful thinking at best. Yet, somehow, someone thought it might be a good idea...
There are two ways you can look at these versions.
First, you can judge them on merit. And, honestly, they come up wanting. They're both terrible games, by any measure. To their credit, both attempt to copy the arcade to the best of their abilities, including all three playable characters, all stages, most moves, a representative sample of the animation frames... but it's this ambition that cripples both ports. Because the result is a slow, jerky, indistinct mess (especially on the monochrome Spectrum) that is really difficult to play. Moves take forever to animate, collision detection is terrible, every single-enemy fight is more like a boss fight in the length of time it takes to play out. There are glitches aplenty and both versions share a quirk that sees your character getting frozen to the spot after every punch or kick, standing there like Mitch McConnell while the enemies pile on. On top of that, weapons are useless, Cody and Guy are useless, and the game generally feels like a kind of torture.
But there's another way of looking at them... because there is clearly some achievement there. They are both recognisably Final Fight. The sprites, the locations, the enemies, all reasonable representations of Final Fight. They play like Final Fight, albeit Final Fight shot through a prism of shit. They attempt big boy feats they have no business doing, like the animated train on level two, or the wrestling arena. They both have the fancy animated intro... these are clearly not mindless cash grabs. There was talent here, talent that pushed these two machines beyond what anyone would have thought possible in 1982. It just feels like wasted effort.
Worth a look for novelty value alone.
I've kept the C64 version apart from the other two because it is a very different beast, and a very different kind of bad. As is often the case, the C64 went its own way and knocked out a port that feels inspired by Final Fight at best. The levels are similar only, the sprites are smaller, the whole feel of the game is different.
It has a weird kind of floaty feel to it. There's this strange quirk where landing a kick will only have an effect a short time later. So you'll kick a dude, you'll get a sound effect, then about half a second after that, the dude will fly backwards. It's almost surreal.
The thing is, this port almost feels like it could have been a decent game. Just rounding off the sharp edges would have helped a lot, and it could have been a fun two player beat 'em up in the Renegade style. It's just not Final Fight.
Surely things are better on the 16-bit micros, right?
Well, yes and no. The Amiga port is clearly superior to the 8-bits. It has some great intro music, the graphics are colourful, the sprites massive and reasonably well-animated. It just has that undeniable Amiga-arcade-port quality of something feeling off. It doesn't feel fluid or hectic like the arcade. There are fewer enemies at once, the control is hampered by a one-button joystick and feel sluggish, and the difficulty feels off, with stunlocks happening far too often.
But it's not the worst Amiga arcade port out there, and would probably serve you well if you were looking for bit of quick mayhem.
The same can't be said of the Atari ST port, sadly. This version looks similar to the Amiga, but with fewer colours. It has some terrible character-block scrolling that wouldn't look out of place on the Amstrad. And the sound is about Spectrum quality. Not the ST's finest hour.
Over on the console, and things look a little better, as you might expect.
Starting with the SNES version, which is definitely the runt of the litter. It's not terrible, it plays pretty well, it just feels cut down. That's because it is... only two characters available (sob, poor Guy). No two player mode. Some weird early-90s censorship that saw various female enemies replaced by cookie-cutter male hoodlums. A whole missing level. Some missing level transitions. And a generally drab looking appearance.
Not awful, but not great by any means.
It should be noted that Japan got a version called "Final Fight Guy" which returned Guy to the game... at the expense of Cody. So close.
Let's end on two high notes.
The Mega CD version of Final Fight is superb! From the animated, voiced intro, to the faithful reproduction of the gameplay, to the extras that this version includes, everything feels complete. It plays well, it sounds amazing, it is the first port so far that actually captures the essence of the arcade incredibly well. It has lots of enemies on screen at once (not quite as many of the coin-op, but better than the SNES).
If I was compelled to level but one criticism, it would be that the colour palette feels a little off, which is probably a limitation of the Megadrive itself. It just leaves things looking a bit... gritty.
But that shouldn't deter you! This port is awesome and well worth a play!
But for all that the Mega CD version is great, it's not my favourite...
That accolade goes to, surprisingly, the Gameboy Advance!
The GBA got a port titled "Final Fight One", which is basically a port of the arcade, so it counts. Unlike the SNES, all characters are present, as is a two player mode via link cable. All stages are here, and the game generally looks a lot more vibrant. Due to the nature of the GBA screen, it does feel a little "zoomed in", but you get used to it.
Where this port succeeds the most is in how it plays. It is fluid as hell, fast and easy to control. You get the same frantic feeling as the arcade, with lots of enemies flying all over the screen. The music really adds to this feel, with some cool renditions of the arcades tunes.
Overall, a really complete package and well worth playing today!
So what are your memories of Final Fight? Did you suffer through the Spectrum version or were you lucky enough to get the Mega CD port?
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cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/2821578
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/3994305
Commando (released as Senjō no Ōkami in Japan, Wolf of the Battlefield) is a 1985 Capcom arcade shooter. Word to the wise: Commando isn't based on the Schwarzenegger movie of the same name - that's some false knowledge I've carried round with me for close to forty years... oh, how I've embarrassed myself at dinner parties...
Commando is a vertically scrolling run-and-gun shooter where you play "Super Joe", a one-man army pitted against the endless ravenous hordes of whatever country was the mid-80s enemy du jour at the time. You have a gun with unlimited ammo, and a finite supply of grenades with which to dispatch your foes. While the gun can fire in any direction, the grenades only launch upwards, which creates a need for careful positioning in order to use them effectively.
The game is split into levels, and each level ends with a heavily fortified building that spews out a huge number of enemies that must be defeated before you progress.
It's a cool game, one of the first of its kind. It's also fast and frantic, and doesn't really reward slow and methodical play. You've almost got to treat it as an auto-scroller, never slowing down, just moving forward and spraying your gun wherever you can. If you don't, you risk being overwhelmed by the constantly respawning bad guys.
It was a genre defining title, spawning many imitators (such as Ikari Warriors, the home Rambo games, and countless others; as well as a 198 sequel, Mercs). It was also extremely tough, especially the unforgiving end-of-level sequences. A real coin muncher.
In terms of ports, it got more conversions than a corrupt third-world regime has cannon fodder mercenaries. And I've looked at them all... war is hell, man.
So, lock and load, we've got a lot to get through...
We begin this epic journey with a familiar friend: the Amstrad. But it's not up here because it's terrible, far from it. It's actually a pretty decent conversion, albeit not as good as the Spectrum or C64. Like the Spectrum, it suffers a bit from its one-button joystick, meaning that grenades are fired by holding down the button, which leaves you a little vulnerable for a moment. I think I prefer the C64's approach of using the space bar for this.
The graphics are bold and clear, if a little monotonous; the game is hard, but fair; and the sound is... okay. Overall, it's fine. Not the best, not the worst.
The Spectrum port of Commando is good, seriously. It just looks bloody awful. Not sure why they chose yellow as the background colour, but they did and you end up feeling like you're wading in custard. It's not the only port to feel like this.
If you can ignore the stinky visuals, there's a great game underneath. It is fast, similar in pace to the arcade and has a similar frantic feeling. It throws hordes of enemies at you, just like the arcade... no idea how the Spectrum keeps up! Bullets are very visible, making it feel fair, even the sound is okay.
Overall, a great effort!
I think C64 owners would claim Commando as their very own, and with good reason. It's very much a C64 staple.
It's the theme music, you see? A Rob Hubbard classic, famously knocked up in 12 hours. And it's great! But beyond the awesome SID soundtrack, the game is amazing as well. Smooth, fluid, fair, fast, it just feels right. On the 8-bit micros, at least, it is the closest by far to the arcade.
You could, perhaps, argue that it is a little bit... brown. But hey, so was the original. And it worked for literally every Xbox 360 game, so I'm prepared to let it slide.
Well worth a look, even today!
We leave the well-trod paths of 8-bit machines and enter the hinterlands...
The BBC Micro, for those not raised in the UK in the 80s, was a machine that was only ever owned by the children of geography teachers. It was never meant to be a games machine, it was meant to be for learning or a tool for recreating the Doomsday book (don't ask).
Nevertheless, it turned in a commendable effort on its Commando homework, a solid B-.
Yet another victim of the yellow backdrop curse, this effort is garish and bright. It is also pretty slow, with jerky movement. That limitation kind of changes how you play the game. It becomes more intentional, less frantic. You can take your time a little, plot out the best place to stand and fight. In that respect, it's quite enjoyable.
So a reasonable effort, if a little... yellow.
Sadly, the same can't be said about the MSX version, which isn't so much a war hero, as a war crime.
It looks passable in still form, with colourful graphics that are reminiscent of the arcade. It has that old MSX thing of a multi-colour main sprite and monochrome enemies, but looks mostly fine. Sadly, it all comes apart when it moves... the main sprite jerks from character block to character block, the screen moves similarly badly. It's like viewing Commando through a flashing strobe light. The music is discordant and jarring, and plays in half-hearted 20 second bursts before giving up. Really off-putting.
It's a shame, because it has all the elements of the arcade in one form or another. They're just put together in such a way that makes playing it feel like having a seizure.
Enough with the garish 8-bit ports, let's take a look at what the 16-bit powerhouses can do...
The Amiga turns in a solid effort. Pretty boring really, leaving me very little to comment on. It's Commando... slick, smooth graphics, solid controls, a nice rendition of the arcade music. It's enjoyable to play, but doesn't really push any limits...
If you want solid, authentic competency, this is the port for you. But where's the fun in that?
Similar to the Amiga version, the Atari ST phones in another competent port. In fact, I actually prefer this version to the Amiga version. It feels looser, smoother, a bit faster maybe? Regardless, there's not much in it, with both versions having near identical graphics. The ST music is a bit chippier, but it still sounds authentic.
Another great port!
Regular readers of these posts will know that what I value more than lazily applied raw power, is moxie. And this port has moxie in spades. It's an Intellivision, for goodness sake! From 1979! It has 1K of RAM! This machine has no business running a game like Commando... and yet...
Okay, it doesn't look much like the original, with the chunky colourful sprites being whittled back to one colour stick men. But it moves kinda like Commando and it sounds kinda like Commando and it plays kinda like Commando. All of it powered by sheer moxie alone!
It's not the best port here by a long way, but it is perhaps the most impressive. Importantly, it's also very playable, enjoyable even! It has moxie, see?
Now, there's moxie and there's wishful thinking, and the Atari 2600 (hailing from 1977) was more of the latter and less of the former. If the Intellivision port embodies the spirit of Commando, the Atari 2600 embodies the spirit of a two sentence description of Commando. It is super basic, super stripped back, and it doesn't really work, sadly.
The graphics are limited, with yet more liberal use of yellow; the movement is perfunctory; the bullets frequently go missing and can't be avoided, and it's annoying to play rather than quirky.
There are good 2600 games, games that are enjoyable even today, but this isn't one of them. Well, what do you expect? The console is basically just resistors!
Luckily for Atari console fans, the Atari 7800 version is actually quite good. It's a proper grown-up console version, comparable to the NES port, and very playable. It has all the bits and pieces from the arcade, and adds pick-ups to give you a more powerful gun, or a knife to enable hand to hand killing (run into enemies).
It looks great and moves smoothly and, if you're playing the original cartridge, it uses an extra POKEY chip to give enhanced sound (one of only two 7800 games to do so).
The NES version of Commando is probably the best of the bunch, possessing that slick console feel that leads to such great coin-op conversions.
Superficially, it's a solid recreation of the arcade. It looks great, it sounds as good as can be expected, it is smooth, fast and frantic. It sometimes pushes the limits of the NES too far though, with the abundance of on-screen sprites causing some pretty epic sprite flicker. But you barely notice it in the heat of the action.
Like several other NES conversions (Rygar, Strider), this one adds a number of little extras to prolong interest. It has powerups that can be collected for points or to make your weapons more powerful. Also, hidden around the levels and revealed by a well-placed grenade throw, are ladders. If you climb these ladders down, you're taken to a hidden bunker, containing either hostages, enemies or pick-ups. It doesn't add a great deal to the game, other than the need to locate these ladders, and you could even argue that it detracts from the frantic pace. But it's an interesting example of how developers tried to add a little bit extra to coin-op conversions back then.
So there you have it, Commando. If you want to experience it today, try the C64 or NES versions for realsies, or the Intellivision version for interest.
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The Seance – A spooky text adventure for the ZX Spectrum - Vintage is The New Old
(www.vintageisthenewold.com)
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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1312535
Some games arrive right on time, while some games arrive later than they should... but some, a rare few, arrive way too early. Like Micronaut One.
You've probably never heard of Micronaut One, and with good reason. It was a single platform, 1987 title that was released with little fanfare and to modest acclaim, on a platform largely only popular in Europe. It wasn't a sequel itself, nor did it generate a sequel or a franchise. It simply arrived, enjoyed a moment in the sun, then disappeared...
To my mind, this is a great shame. Not because Micronaut One was an amazing game (it was more technically intriguing, in my opinion, than amazingly playable), but because Micronaut One was so far ahead of its time that it deserves to be more widely known.
Even without digging into the finer details, Micronaut One sounds surface-level impressive. It is a first-person, solid 3D science fiction game, on the ZX Spectrum, of all things. In it, you pilot a craft around the winding, intersecting corridors of some great ship, manipulating the energy levels of various computer nodes in an effort to stop an overload.
As you travel around, you encounter various fauna that inhabit the ship with you. These mostly take the form of "Scrim", an insect lifeform with a three stage growth cycle - from invulnerable eggs, to creeping larvae, to egg-laying flies.
If you fail to destroy these creatures, they inevitably mature and start forming webs that block the corridors. Eventually, you'll find your route between the overloading nodes is impossible, and overload will be imminent...
If you know the ZX Spectrum, you can see that it's already pretty ambitious. It moves at a nimble pace in flawless 3D, looks great for a Spectrum game, and has a compelling game loop and tense atmosphere as you struggle to keep on top of the replicating Scrim.
But it's the extra details that make this game especially impressive, and well worth a few moments of your time in 2023. In parts, it feels like a game from much later, 1997 rather than 1987 say. It's almost Descent, 10 years before Descent even existed.
It has a menu/pointer configuration system. This may seem old hat, but back then this was virtually unheard of in 8-bit games. This system allows you to configure the game down to the smallest detail and lets you navigate the complex mapping system. It even lets you change the colour of various parts of the UI!
Next, it has a kind of mini-wiki built into it, giving background details on the ship and its inhabitants. Honestly, this was so unheard of back then, I can barely think of another example, let alone one this well presented.
In game, you're giving access to a map, and on that map you can set waypoints which the game will then plot routes between. As you're playing, your HUD will display an arrow telling you which way to go... again, this feels like something from the late 90s!
On top of all that, as well as the main game, Micronaut One also lets you play a racing mode, in which you compete against a "pacer" through the twisting corridors of the ship. It has leaderboards, various levels of pacer speed... It's amazing!
So, is it the best ZX Spectrum game ever?
No, sadly not. Despite all of its gratuitous innovation, it definitely has its shortcomings, some of which are especially vexing to a modern eye.
It is clunky to control, as you can't turn around in the corridors. Instead, you need to stop and then hit reverse, flipping your direction. This can lead to lots of alignment issues, as there are no strafe keys. Also, the menu can be difficult to navigate, requiring you move the "mouse" from side to side of the screen to back out to the game. And the sound is typically Speccy... ie, bleeps and burps and not much else.
But all that's wrong with it feels like something that could be fixed with a couple of months of extra work and a couple of decades of hindsight (strafe keys, a back button in the menu).
It feels like a shame that Micronaut One never got a chance to get an Amiga sequel, or a PS1 reboot. Instead, we should content ourselves with the fleeting moment of brilliance that was all this curious little game ever became.
#ZXSpectrum #Retrogaming
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