

Immortal ZX Spectrum games - hunglee2
http://zxds.raxoft.cz/games.html

======
rdtsc
I had spend a lot of my youth playing those games. Elite was fun to play. It
even had SimCity. Remember being so impressed I could get SimCity on my puny
3Mhz/48K machine since before I had only played it on an IBM desktop at scool.

But the good thing about the platform is that there quite a few programming
environments, there was a C and Pascal compiler. You'd load the compiler from
tape for 5 minutes, enter your program, compile it, run it, it would crash,
rewind the tape, do the whole thing again. Remember writing my own assembler
as well. Good times...

All in all ZX Spectrum platform is almost entirely responsible for me picking
programming as my profession.

~~~
stevekemp
> All in all ZX Spectrum platform is almost entirely responsible for me
> picking programming as my profession.

Me too. Started with the 48k, switched to assembly soon after getting bored
with BASIC, and for a few years I got my name printed in Your Sinclair for
posting POKEs for various games.

The Z80 assembly language set me in good stead for early programming with MS-
DOS (3.3 or so) as the assembly syntax was familiar. (I think Zilog engineers
were ex-Intel. But my memory is a little hazy these days.)

I still play "Choas:The Battle of Wizards" on an emulator every few months,
alongside "The Hobbit" and the various Hungry Horace games.

~~~
jlees
Well, it was POKEs from Your Sinclair that got _me_ into programming, so
perhaps I have you to thank? Thanks!

~~~
stevekemp
I think there were a lot of people doing that stuff. Most people would send in
one or two, but there were people like Jon North, & Gerard Sweeney, who I
remember as submitting, contributing, and documenting hundreds/thousands of
hacks.

Truely impressive to me, as a twelve-year old.

------
Malic
It's been brought up here before but relevant again in case you missed it the
first time.

The original developer for R-Type for the ZX Spectrum wrote up a detailed
story of the technical challenges for developing the game. Shaving cycles off
to make action smooth was what it was all about.

IT'S BEHIND YOU: [http://bizzley.com/](http://bizzley.com/)

~~~
foobarge
Yes - a recommended read. In a similar vein:
[http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/](http://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/)

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christoph
In my opinion this is a brilliantly put together list.

The nostalgia that comes flooding back to me from my childhood almost brings
tears of joy to my eyes.

It's truly staggering to read at the start that there were ten times as many
titles (15,000) than there are for the DS or GBA.

I do wonder if the children of today will feel nostalgic about the software of
today in 25 years time?

For some reason it doesn't feel like as much love and passion goes into a lot
of games being produced at the moment. So many of those Spectrum titles were
labours of love by single people working for months on their own in bedrooms.

~~~
zokier
> It's truly staggering to read at the start that there were ten times as many
> titles (15,000) than there are for the DS or GBA.

It makes sense that there will be a lot more games on a open platform than on
a platform from company that is notorious for not attracting 3rd party titles.

> For some reason it doesn't feel like as much love and passion goes into a
> lot of games being produced at the moment. So many of those Spectrum titles
> were labours of love by single people working for months on their own in
> bedrooms.

Step outside the world of Call of Duties and Battlefields and you will find
lots of games that are very much labor of loves from bedroom developers.

~~~
christoph
The author probably just picked that as an example of a very popular platform
- the DS (2072) has double the titles of the PS3 (1026) according to Wikipedia
and isn't far off the total titles of the PS1 (2355) or PS2 (2468).

I know there are plenty of indy titles on Steam and the other app stores that
are remarkable games and immense labours of love, but I wonder how many really
get under the skin of a lot of children today for a long period of time?

So many games I see my nephews playing are freemium titles that seem to drift
in and out of their lives on a day to day basis (especially on iOS). I
certainly don't see them building a connection like I did with Manic Miner or
the Dizzy games anyway. One exception I can clearly think of though recently
with kids would probably be Minecraft. Others miles may vary I guess.

------
platz
"Hard Drivin's approach to collisions or unrealistic events—putting the car
back on the road at a standstill—was the norm for driving games until later
games such as Cruisin' USA and its successors introduced intentionally
artificial physics to force a car to always stay near the road and land right-
side up pointing forward."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin%27](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Drivin%27)

I thought it was fun due to its realism.

also this bit is interesting from the wikipedia page

Physics The engine, transmission control, suspension, and tire physics were
modeled in conjunction with Doug Milliken[18] who was listed as a test driver
in the game credits. In the 1950s his father William Milliken of Milliken
Research led a team at Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory in Buffalo NY USA
(later Calspan) that converted aircraft equations of motion to equations of
motion for the automobile, and became one of the world's leading experts in
car modeling.

BTW, what is the spiritual successor to Hard Drivin' today?

~~~
Gazk
I remember playing Hard Drivin on the c64, it was a terrible port. The
spectrum version was great though.

Spiritual successor? In terms of realistic car modeling, I would say the
rFactor series.

~~~
platz
In terms of modeling I'm sure you're right. Something about Hard Drivin' makes
it feel not like a straight up racing game. It was an odd combination of
physics + disembodied stunt tracks.

The combo of a sim, but a playful environment seems very hard to find.

~~~
Gazk
I see your point, maybe something like BeamNG.drive when it is finished.

~~~
platz
I think you found it :)

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aidenn0
Back when a single person could make a top-notch game, and a really large team
might be 4, I feel like there were a lot more games. This, of course, meant a
lot more _crappy_ games too, but diversity makes for a more rapid exploration
of the problem space.

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joelanman
Pete Cooke was responsible for a lot of great, great Spectrum games. I don't
hear Micronaut One mentioned much, but to my mind it's the smoothest 3D game
on the Speccy

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKUZRI90rI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfKUZRI90rI)

His "Whole New Ball Game" was brilliant too

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIHM8SY1pE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIHM8SY1pE)

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jgrahamc
Wow. Reading that I could literally taste in my mouth the excitement I felt
all those years ago playing some of those games and seeing the amazing
graphics and interaction modes.

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asgard1024
I wish some retroprogramming fan would do Civilization, The Sims and Minecraft
(isometric) on ZX Spectrum. It would be interesting to see how well these
would be doable...

~~~
anthk
>Civilization

Could be done

>The Sims There is a home simulator for the C64 I think.

~~~
joelanman
Little Computer People

[https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Little_Computer_People](https://www.c64-wiki.com/index.php/Little_Computer_People)

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anjc
Great great list. It feels so good remembering all of these.

I can't believe Jack the Nipper 2 isn't on your list though. Excellent
graphics, great theme, great gameplay.

~~~
varjag
Good God you just mentioned it and the soundtrack started playing in my head.

~~~
anjc
Ha the SFX are burned into my memory

 _kicks green coconut_

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rcarmo
Amazing list. I've yet to find a Laser Squad clone that was as much fun, or a
Deflektor one. I did find a modern version of Highway Encounter sometime last
year (I forget where, since my hard disk died) and of course I have been
keeping track of the Elite renaissance, but it's amazing to think that I spent
hours as a kid waiting for these to load from a dinky cassette player.

Happy, happy days...

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mikkom
Nice list although I knew many of the games from other platforms (c64 and
amiga mostly) where the graphics were a lot better.

~~~
hunglee2
Time for a Speccy vs Commodore redux I think. Two tribes....!

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sixothree
The game Driller is certainly worth a look. Though I'm not sure this would be
my platform of choice.

It is a 3D puzzle game. Circa 1987 running on XT CGA class systems I find it
to be fairly advanced for the time. But it feels certainly antiquated today.
Still it definitely deserves a look.

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gcb0
i had a spectrum and a monochrome (green phosphorous), beige box, TRS 80.

i always wanted to play games and write basic on the TRS80 just because i
couldn't stand the keyboard on the spectrum.

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thomasdd
I would love to see or play "Nether Earth" like game clone :) I liked the
concept of "Nether Earth".

~~~
anthk
There is a libre remake somewhere.
[http://www.braingames.getput.com/nether/default.asp](http://www.braingames.getput.com/nether/default.asp)

------
anthk
Life is serendypic.

Yesterday I was doing some Z80 ASM code for the Speccy (FUSE + OpenSE ROM)
with the help of Pasmo, just for fun.

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huskyr
Excellent resource! Does anyone know of comparable listing for the C64?

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zem
i really liked the monochrome isometric graphics from games like knight lore.
wonder how successful that would be today; it produced some very atmospheric
games.

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pjmlp
I remember most of those games, boy I am really old! :)

~~~
dwd
Yes, we are.

30 years ago, pretty sure I would have been playing Lords of Midnight.

