Blasts from the Past - The Speccy
Jun 10 '04
The Bottom Line N O S T A L G I A
Can you taste it yet?
Blasts from the Past - The Speccy
Ah, the dear old Speccy – Clive Sinclair’s best invention (and probably his only good one…). Although because he imagined that people were actually going to use it for serious purposes, he didn’t worry too much about what would happen if two colours were close to each other on the screen – leading to the wonderful and well known Spectrum bug, “Colour Clash”. (Oh okay, you probably would call it “Color Clash”, but that’s because you can’t speeeeellll….
Anyway, like most youths of the time, I used my Speccy rather more for playing games on than doing serious things. I guess the definite “Speccy” would be the old rubber-keyed 48K Spectrum, but the one I had was the 2 (128K RAM, tape deck) model – though in effect the only thing you got that 48K users didn’t was usually a bit of music. (WARNING – the ever-changing lines in the border of the screen while loading a Speccy game may induce various states, ranging from epilepsy to ecstatic nostalgia…)
Here I take you on another trip down memory lane, my memories of one of the most loved computers ever built, and the one most remakes are inspired by. (Though I never played many of the games by the legendary “Ultimate” team, sadly…)
Head Over Heels by Ocean – Jon Ritman (coding) and Bernie Drummond (graphics) teamed up again after the success of Batman to create what is possibly the best isometric platform puzzler ever to grace the home computer. (The main rival to that title is a Spanish game that was never released in the UK called “Las Crimen en el Abbey” - pardon my Spanish, I could only remember the second half of the title in English) You played Heads (who could jump high but was slow) and Heels (who could run fast but could jump very high), and on occasions you could team them up and use both of their abilities at the same time. It was fantastic on the Speccy but you MUST try out Retrospec’s remake – (website listed at the bottom of this review) - that’s an order! Very probably the best remake ever to have been made by anyone anywhere.
International Match Day / Match Day 2 by Ocean – Jon Ritman’s coding skills were also behind the definitive football (soccer) games of the time. The first was more memorable for using the theme tune to “Match of the Day” than its gameplay, but the second was the best on any system until Kick Off came along years later. At least, that’s how I remember it…
Taipan by Ocean – unlike the game of the same name released on the Apple Mac (not sure if that was also Ocean), this was a mixture of trading and arcade adventure, loosely based on James Clavell’s novel. It took a full 5 minutes to load from the tape version, but I loved it. A fantastic game the even let you “Shanghai” (press-gang) crew members. My favourite game of its type for years, until I played “Pirates!”
Outrun & 720º by US Gold – I already mentioned these in my BftP for Coin-Ops, but I want to mention them again as they’re just soooooo good! (And sitting there listening to the original coin-op music while playing Outrun on the Speccy was pretty cool! Well, at the time it was…
Fued by Mastertronic – ah, this was a fantastic game. There are at least a couple of remakes being done but, as far as I’m aware, none have made it past the early beta stage – sadly, as this was a real classic. Two wizards battling it out, collecting herbs to take back for their cauldrons to make the dopplegangers, magic bolts, and whatnot that would enable them to blast the other wizard… so simple, and yet so much fun!
Advanced Ski Simulator by Codemasters – unless I’m much mistaken, this was another offering from the fabled Oliver Twins, one of the most prolific developers of the time. Featuring very nice graphics for the time and very decent gameplay (it took a little while to get used to the fact that the controls were reversed though!), this started you off in Saalbach and put you on a tougher slope each time you completed one in the target time – which wasn’t easy by any means!
Draughts Genius by ?Mastertronic- not too sure on this one) – not your everyday draughts (checkers) simulator, this one put you up against Einstein! Well okay, other than that it was pretty much like any other draughts simulator, but at least his had pseudo-3D graphics.
Monty on the Run / Impossimole by Gremlin Graphics – who can forget the loveable mole who’s always in trouble? Evidently not many as there are hosts of websites devoted to the series and of course a multitude of remakes around.
Exolon / Cyrbernoid by Hewson – Raffaelle Ceco (or something approximately almost nearly close to that spelling) revolutionised the shoot-em-up genre with his games, particularly the later, which even on the speccy had more colours than you could shake a stick at. I wasn’t a great fan of either game myself, I have to admit, but they have hoards of fans (and remakes) even today and are definitely worth mentioning.
Star Paws by ???? – Take a dog. Give it a space helmet. And what have you got? Erm…. A dog wearing a space helmet. I have fond memories of this bizarre platformer with the big-eared dog. Great stuff.
Oddly enough I don’t remember the games I had on the Speccy as much as the C16, which I owned earlier… weird. But as a bonus feature, I give you:
Blasts from the Past – ZX81
Yep, the very first Spectrum home computer, and in fact the first home computer of any make (someone tell me I’m wrong – go on, I dare you!) Featuring completely incomprehensible machine code that would have given an ancient Egyptian perfectly used to interpreting complex hieroglyphics a very bad headache indeed and a power pack that constantly fell off, combined with the might of one kilobyte of RAM (count it – count it again… it’s still one), it was still a computer to love and cherish, and I wish I still had mine as it’d be worth a fortune now (possibly).
The games I remember on the ZX81 include a geography quiz game, a flight sim (your plane was a dot on the screen…), and Asteroids (which had to be typed in from scratch each time – once it was typed in wrongly and you only scored points for hitting the asteroids!).
But of course there is one game that will forever be synonymous with the ZX81 - 3D Monster Maze. My main memory of this game is it crashing as the power pack fell off, but someone’s done a brilliant remake – (grab it from the retro-remakes site listed below) - now there’s a real Blast from the Past!!
Other Blasts from the Past
Coin-Ops
Commodore 16
Websites to check out
www.remakes.com
www.retrospec.com
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.