What was your favourite ZX Spectrum game?

O yes, that was good. I bought it before it hit the shops properly, at the ZX Microfair.

ah, yeh, i remember that sam cruise thing now ... don't think i ever played it, mind. but, of course, i can rectify that pretty easily ;)

Tir na Nog, Dun Darach, Marsport, Heavy on the Magick - Gargoyle Games brought the next-level shit.

Also Lords of Midnight.

Valhalla.

Now that was a strange one. Amazing graphics for an early game. But what the hell where you supposed to do?

The Valhalla graphics were fucking rubbish! They were little stick men. The game was fun, in some way. It was sort of an adventure game but errr... not really.

the follow-up, "the great space race", got absolutely fucking panned and the company (legend, was it? i'm not looking any of this up, i promise) went under shortly afterwards. sinclair user memorably compared the battle graphics to "two fried eggs fighting in a pan", or something.

it worries me, the effect SU/crash/YS have had on my personality/writing style/life.

more amazing feats of memory: infinite lives in JSW was poke 23296,0. i think manic miner (has no-one mentioned this yet? my (acting) boss looked over my shoulder when i had this window open and said MM should win, hands-down) was 35136,0.

The other John Peel, of Valhalla and TGSR fame.

Why are he and his wife green?

christ, i remember reading that first time round.

hah! "dave ashe and his mouse".

I remember the background graphics of Valhalla being quite good. And I also seem to remember the stick men moving quite well. It had quite a lot of atmosphere iirc.

There was a whole host of Spectrum games that I seem to recall as being unfathomable: Gift From The Gods, Braxx Bluff, Dark Star....they seemed to be graphics experiments with a scoreboard plonked somewhere on the screen.

And did anyone know how to get past the first screen on "The Pyramid"?

I think we could do a few screens on "The Pyramid" but they were all the same boring shit. Spent a lot of time trying to get to the top/bottom tho.

(Clue: just keep the fire button held down)

http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/050/sodov2.gif

Sodov the Sorcerer: not a bad, if odd, game for £2.95.

I forgot Avalon and Dragontorc. Man those games were good.

http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/shared/sshots/rambo.gif

How many precious hours of my teenage life did I sit playing Rambo? Better than the film, anyway. Good music too!

('Good')

http://www.23mag.com/games/vg/bmxsimsp.jpg

Okay, now THIS fucking rocked! More playable then the C64 version (as usual: better graphics, clunky gameplay), and the slow-motion replay option was useful for viewing your opponant's Spec-tacular crash and burn.

ah, god, "the pyramid"! i really loved that, for some reason.

"sodov the sorcerer" ... hoo hoo, almost sounds like swearing, etc.

What was that one with the wizard floating around & travelling along ley lines? That one was pretty great, and quite creepy in places.

Dragontorc of Avalon! Thx NV!

I remember one bit where you got the mage to open a chest and a pair of super-scary disembodied eyes came out! I got the chills the 1st time I saw it.

Yeah. In Avalon these ghost things used to appear and throw stuff at you if you hung around too long in one room. And the creaky noise that bad guys made as they walked round a room was very atmospheric.

a 1930's detective thing that was absolutely BEAUTIFUL

"Mugsy" or something?

I actually finished "Valhalla". SUMMON ODIN!

nah, mugsy was a much older melbourne house thing. this was contact sam cruise. there's a screenshot above and everything ;)

I think my favourite spectrum games are Ranarama and Quazatron (among the many fine games published by Hewson).
I loved the exploration 'combat' mini-games that allowed you to upgrade your skills if you won the right runes/parts.
Ooh, apparently there was a sequel to Quazatron! Must check that out.

I had an Amstrad CPC rather than a Speccy - but Ranarama was and is a great game. One thing I remember about it: the tape version was cleverly coded so that there was a little tune embedded in the "loading noise" just before the game finished loading.

Is it wrong that I had an ineffable urge to correct Grimly's BASIC syntax up above?

Anyone remember The Alchemist? It was an early 16K game, that was dead easy to complete, but was thoroughly engrossing before you did.

And talking of 16K, let's not forget Chuckie Egg, the crack-cocaine of the Spectrum world........

I still play Chuckie Egg occasionally. My girlfriend was a BBC kid (children of teachers always got BBCs)(except me) so we're gonna have a challenge sometime.

Best ZX81 gane = 3D Monster Maze. Lo-fi t-rex!

Best ZX80 game = ?????

My Brother got insanely good at Chuckie Egg. We were neck and neck at one time (we could both go round about five or six times), but after a while he could spend hours on it.

He was a sort of a black belt 3rd Dan at Chuckie Egg.

5 or 6! I think I only ever got to the third round.

Does gaming have a golden age? I think the Spectrum era would be it, if so.

I had a ZX81 too, with the 16K expansion, but I was only about 6 when its video generator broke, so I can't remember any of the games.

Don't wobble the RAM pack!

Horace Goes Skiing!

Yes! The Horace series were a good introduction. They came free with the computer iirc.

No money no ski! Words to live by.

http://www.clive.nl/images/10457.jpg

I love this blurb. "...mischevous moving eyes and a rolling gait"! They don't promote modern computer games like that!

Best unexpanded ZX81 games = Breakout and an adventure game I've forgotten the name of, also written by Crystal Computing. An adventure game in 1K! And I never managed to finish it.

A feat:

http://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/generated/tapethumbnailindex.html

I didn't get any Horace games free with mine. I think you could pay extra to get them bundled though.

I got a weird free cassette with mine, called Horizons or something. The only game on it I remember was one about foxes and rabbits that was meant to demonstrate the dynamics of ecosystems.

Wriggler. About a little worm. That was very good in a totally surreal kind of way. No-one else I knew seemed to play it, however.

I've also just seen on Crash that there apparently was a Spectrum game called "Hampstead"

!!!!!

Track down the Cafe Latte's and organic Prosciutto!

Don't get caught by the sun-dried tomatoes!

I got a weird free cassette with mine, called Horizons or something.

Yes! It had Breakout as well.

Are you sure? I don't think I ever played Breakout on the Spectrum, only the ZX81.

I've also just seen on Crash that there apparently was a Spectrum game called "Hampstead"

!!!!!

Track down the Cafe Latte's and organic Prosciutto!

This is not so far from the reality. It was a humourous take on the adventure game format. Instead of reaching a wizard's castle or whatever, you had to social climb to the lofty heights of Hampstead.

Humorous.

See also Torremolinos, the adventure game of package holidays.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizons:_Software_Starter_Pack

Bubblesort is an implementation of the bubble sort sorting algorithm.

Thrilling stuff... actually I only remember breakout and evolution. The Game of Life is awesome but maybe it went over my 9 year old head.

Ah, so you're quite right about Breakout. I must have just had enough of it by the time I got a Spectrum.

I remember thinking Bubblesort ought to be a lot more fun, what with having "bubble" in its name.

I remember one of the launch cassetes for the Spectrum was for working out yr biorhythms! Whatever happened to biorhythms?--they were the big thing for a period. Surely due a revival.

I don't know if it's been mentioned in this thread, but you can play emulated Speccy games online at World of Spectrum.

Blimey -- some people are still trying to flog biorhythm programs:

http://www.diplodock.com/Products/Software/DBS2.htm

Bomb Jack, Jet Set Willy, Monty Mole , Daley Thompsons Decathlon, Paperboy, Ghosts N Goblins were all great. Horace & The Spiders is the game I wanna play most though. Need to get an emulator.

The memories of buying Crash Magazine every month. :)