Last days of the ZX Spectrum
The production of the Sinclair line of computers ended in 1992 when the final Spectrum Plus Two was manufactured. The fate of the flagship Spectrum magazines was also clear, Sinclair User closed in Spring 1993 and Your Sinclair followed soon with its final issue being issued in the summer of that same year
Most of the games sold are budget titles, a few original ones, mostly from Code Masters and Hi TEC (most notably Hanna Barbera Tie in) and lots of re-releases of old full price games. With re-releases and magazine cover tapes hitting the full-price market badly most of the full price games are ported from the 16 bits and consoles who star to dominate the market by now and due to the specs limitations end to be average at best. Only a few titles made the jump successfully; typically those with more gameplay than horsepower. Puzzle games are the exception because of the simply nature of the graphics and received a boosts.
Puzzle games
Chip’s Challenge — is actually a conversion of an Atari Lynx game. In this game you play as Chip which has somehow got himself trapped in a huge number of scrolling mazes and the only way to get out is to collect up alt the chips in each maze. There’s around 150 different mazes to conquer before he finally escapes the maze network!
The graphics are very simple but the actual gameplay is very addictive. It’s the sort of game you don’t really need to play on anything posh because it’s the puzzles that you are buying, not the graphics.
The game requires a fair amount of brain-power to actually get anywhere. There’s a certain satisfaction to be gained from finishing off a particularly devious round and with well over a hundred stages to keep you going, Chip’s Challenge potentially provides hours of fun. A great game for puzzle lovers.
Loopz — is a puzzle game where the main goal is to make loops! Random pieces are presented over a board, including simple lines and corners as well as S bends and other warped shapes, of varying sizes. It is up to the player to link them up in a loop form, then moving on to the next level.
Three play modes are available, two of which can be played with two players. Game A is freestyle simply make loops, gaining extra points for size and style. Game B is about unlocking bonus boards of the game by reaching a certain score and uses a bonus multiplier method depending on loop difficulty. The third mode of play begins with an already made loop and then removes random pieces of it, so the player has to put them back in when they appear again. It is essentially a memory test and logic puzzle of fitting the pieces back as one remembers although placing a piece where it seems to fit is also often effective.
Sim City —is one of the best strategy games of all time, and it made the transition to the ZX Spectrum virtually intact.
Sim City put the player in the role of a city manager in charge of developing a city on a barren piece of land. The player was able to zone out regions as residential, commercial and industrial and could also build the infrastructure required to support the zoning.
The challenge of the game was to manage the different needs of the city. For example, keeping the populace happy by balancing industry needs and pollution, residential environments with amenities and maintaining a good transport infrastructure.
In addition to that, as the city grew in size the needs became more complex, including adequate police and fire protection, stadiums, ports and airports, as well as replacing aging facilities with more modern alternatives as they were invented became an important consideration. Of course, managing the city and maintaining a positive tax flow would have been easier were it not for the ever present danger of a city-wide disaster, such as tornados, fire, flood, earthquake, plane crashes and monsters.
It’s incredible a complicated concept like this being so well executed on the Speccy. The game plays just perfectly — it’s one of those things where the loss of brilliant graphics really makes no difference whatsoever to the fun you can get out of playing the game.
It’s full of neat little touches, is simple to understand and hands together perfectly. One of the best games you can play.
Other notable puzzle games of this era are: Klax, Lemmings, Pick ’n’ Pile, Plotting, Puzznic, Stack Up and E-motion.
Amazing new games
Castle Master — Incentive Software hit on a winning formula with their Freescape engine, producing a number of fantastic 3D arcade-adventures such as Driller and Total Eclipse. Freescape allowed solid, fully three-dimensional environments to be produced. Catle Master runs on an updated version of the engine that is slightly faster at rendering the world and allows more interactivity with objects.
The game requires the player, through a first person view, to explore Castle Eternity on a quest to rescue his captive twin who was imprisoned in the highest tower of the castle.
The castle consists of a network of catacombs that are populated by evil spirits (which you can kill with a well-laid rock) and to progress you need to solve puzzles, collect keys and potions hidden inside the castle. The ultimate goal is to kill the boss Magister and thus rescue the prisoner.
Castle Master was an excellent game and the pinnacle of the Freescape series.
Switchblade — was designed by Simon Phipps in his spare time while he completed several other projects including Rick Dangerous during his work hours. The Spectrum conversion was done by Gremlin. Switchblade was inspired by the artwork of Japanese video games, a bit of Mad Max and the scale of Ultimate’s classic Underwurlde.
In Switchblade. the chaos rakes the form of the evil warrior Havok, who has exterminated the Bladeknights and shattered the ancient Fireblade into sixteen fragments. Your quest, as the super-deformed ‘Hiro’ is to explore the labyrinth Of the Undercity, reassemble the Fireblade and use It to defeat Havok. You start off armed with a Cyber arm and must pick up extra weapons as you proceed.
The game uses a system similar to that seen in Hewson’s Spectrum game ‘Ranarama’ where areas of the screen were only made visible as you entered them. You start off on the surface of the planet, but soon plunge into the world of the undercity. The challenge is a combination of arcade skill (finding your way around various platforms and walkways, climbing ladders. demolishing blocks, leaping over gaps) and combat action as you fight off monsters.
The levels are packed with tons of collectables and bonuses — even the collection of ‘EXTRA’ and ‘BONUS’ letters, inspired by ‘Bubble Bobble’.
Switchblade is a very good and polished game that it is still remembered fondly by lots of fans.
Rick Dangerous II — after the commercial success of the first Rick Dangerous, this sequel developed by Core Design and published by MicroStyle follows the same gameplay mechanics of its predecessor, with some minor tweaks to Rick’s abilities and the overall structure of the levels. This time ditching the Indiana Jones look opting instead for a Flash Gordon inspired character designs and settings.
Rick’s very simple Gun, Stick and Dynamite gameplay remained virtually unchanged — the gun became a ray gun, the Stick became a punch and the dynamite, a space age chrome cylinder with a little handle on it. Like the first game, each of the levels have their own distinct themes and enemies. The game is made of five levels that took the player from the alien spaceship in Hyde Park to the planet Barf and its many different regions: the Forests of Vegetablia, the Ice Caverns of Freezia and the Atomic Mud Mines. The game reached a conclusion in the Fat Guy’s Headquarters at the center of Barfalatropolis, with Rick’s nemesis ‘the Fat Guy’ finally making an appearance.
Rick II proved to be a great game and one that no one should miss.
Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles — is a side-scrolling platform game originally created for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Konami. The game was ported to various home computers in 1990, including the ZX Spectrum.
TMHT was an adventure platform game in which the player was responsible for controlling the turtles as they fought against the evil Shredder. The turtles needed to run around the streets of New York (shown as a top-down map) and jump down into the sewers or into a building to switch to a platform style beat’em-up. The player could then find upgraded weapons as well as hordes of nasties to take down.
TMHT was a huge seller for the ZX Spectrum release given the huge overlap between the target market of the cartoon series and the owners of the ZX Spectrum. By now they were often treated as hand-me-downs from older brothers and sisters who had moved on to ‘bigger’ 16-bit things.
Converted by David Perry, the game is very similar to every other of his creations such as Dan Dare III or Tintin on The moon. The same occurred later with his games on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive were he kept rehashing the same template just with different graphics.
Super Cars — is a racing game by Gremlin Graphics. The game starts by presenting some cars for sale, your racing track selection and where you can access the garage to make upgrades to your current car. Starting off with £5000, there are only a few things within this initial budget. The early tracks start off relatively simple, so getting a good finishing place and in turn getting more money, is the way to go. When you’ve finished equipping your car and start racing you’re presented with a top down view of the track.
The controls are pretty straightforward; with ‘left’ and ‘right’ turning your vehicle anti-clockwise and clockwise respectively, with ‘fire’ increasing your acceleration. Across the bottom of the screen, there are various indicators showing your position in the race, lap counter and the current status of your car in four categories; engine, body, fuel and tyres.
The first level is a rather simple affair having just other cars to contend with but the further you progress through the levels, you’ll find other hazards in your way in the form of water puddles and oil slicks.
The races are quite fun. You’ll be up against another four vehicles who have their own strengths and weaknesses, as you progress the tracks get longer and with the extra hazards it becomes a very exciting and fun challenge. Plus you get to play with missiles.
At the end of each race you’ll be informed of your stats for the race; the race number, the position you finished in, along with a few others but most importantly, how much money you’ve won. Head back to the main screen and head to the car shop — it’s time to fix your tyres, add some fuel and buy a missile or two! On to the next track you go and start racing again, earning some more moolah and making your car speedier (is that a word?) and more dangerous, taking out cars and leaving them in your wake as you speed on to victory. Very satisfying. Not only can you make improvements to your car, you can also buy a completely new one. Wow! Though slightly more expensive than adding extras to your existing car, isn’t it nice to be able to go into a garage and choose a brand new car that no one else has driven before?
Super Cars is a very good game. The ability to improve your car and add lethal accessories really do add to the addictiveness of the game. With some nice music this is another game you shouldn’t miss.
Arcade Conversions
Pang — is a conversion of the Mitchell coin-op. Conversions for home systems were produced by Ocean Software in 1991. In the game, the Buster brothers must finish a round-the-world quest to destroy bouncing balloons that are terrorizing several of Earth’s landmarks . The fight begins on Mt. Fuji, Japan, where the brothers must pass all three stages before moving on to the next location.
The basic gameplay is identical to a much earlier 1983 MSX Japanese computer game called Cannon Ball by Japanese publishers Hudson Soft (also released in 1983 on the ZX Spectrum).
For what a 128k Spectrum can do this has got to rank as one of the best Speccy conversions of all time. Brill graphics and sound, and gameplay that’ll have you smeared across your screen for months.
Rainbow Islands — is a sequel to the popular Bubble Bobble and smash hit in it’s own right. This was a game with bold graphics, addictive gameplay and family-friendly appeal. The conversion for both 8-bit and 16-bit computers were handled by Graftgold.
The arcade version boasts fast, fluid gameplay, large numbers of on-screen sprites, as well as game mechanics that require the ability to display certain colors on-screen. With it’s restrictions on color, lack of hardware sprites and scrolling, surely this could never work properly a Spectrum, could it?
Bub and Bob must liberate each of the Rainbow Islands and reclaim the magical rainbow gems to save the day. Each island is divided into a number of stages, each inhabited by various enemies. Instead of being confined to a single, static screen, Rainbow Islands now presents the player with levels that scroll vertically.
The two heroes have magical abilities that allow them to create special rainbows that will eliminate enemies when hit. The ‘rainbows can form ad hoc platforms that you can use to reach the top of the level but collapse if jumped on. At the end of each island the player is faced with it’s respective boss that must be killed with a falling rainbow. A colored gem will appear The monster’s where the monster lands.
The gameplay of the arcade version make it through into the Spectrum version in their entirety. Vertical scrolling is quite smooth and responsive. The different power-ups from the arcade also made it in. These include the red and yellow pots for upgrading the length and speed of your rainbows, star-bursts, and even the screen-clearing thunder-chalice. The 128K version has some excellent in-game music and effects, with a great rendition of the game’s take on ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’.
The character sprites are sharper, well defined and proportional and there’s plenty of attention to detail in the various tile-sets and bonus items — this is a really good-looking game. In certain stages attribute clash poses a problem, with the textured background s— particularly Doh’s Island and Robot Island
The Spectrum version is an amazing conversion, Graftgold really pulled out all the stops on this one. This is definitely one of the top spectrum games and one well worth playing even by modern standards.
All in all, the Spectrum commercial era lasted for about eleven years, and changed the lives of a generation helped create and develop the IT market in Europe.
