The ZX Spectrum golden years -Part I
1986
was a turning page in the history of the Spectrum. It launched the Spectrum 128k which brought extra memory and a new sound chip but without improvements in the graphics. Sinclair Research was troubled with a huge debt and sold the rights of its range of computers to Amstrad. By targeting the Spectrum purely at the games market, with a redesign (new keyboard with attached tape record and 2 joystick ports) and with a focused marketing campaign Amstrad had guaranteed that the Spectrum would sell for several years to come.
In the eighties arcade machines were the cutting edge in terms of graphics, sound effects, music and scale. The difference between the 8-bit home systems and arcades was increasing every passing year. Nonetheless in this period arcade to home tie ins were all the rage, and the programmers worked wonders trying to re-create the levels, creatures and game play accurately.
Best games of 1986
In 1986 the spectrum was graced with fantastic arcade conversions as can be seen bellow.
Ghosts and Ghoblins — playing as the knight Sir Arthur, you must rescue a fair maiden from the grasp of Satan in a nonsensical Arthurian amalgamation of jumping and throwing knives at waves of undead nasties. Ghosts’ n Goblins is a good game that maintains the mechanics of the arcade.
Green Beret — One of my favorite ZX games. Great conversion from Jonathan ‘Joffa’ Smith, one of the greatest programmers of the day. The player takes on the role of a green beret (a special operations soldier) infiltrating an enemy military base in order to save several POW’s. The base weapon is an assault knife but can be supplemented with special weapons that are being captured throughout each area. The game consists of four stages with the player facing at the end of each one, a unique group of enemies specific to that stage. You are alone, against immeasurable odds, have you the skill and stamina to succeed?
Space Harrier — this game was a revolution in the arcades with innovative graphics and gameplay defining the rail shooter game genre. It was one of the first to use hardware technology to scale sprites (“Super Scaler”) allowing pseudo-3D at high frame rates. It is centered around a jet-propelled human character on a fantasy world. It is obvious that converting this game to the spectrum would be an incredibly difficult task. Thankfully the Spectrum version managed to capture the playability reasonably well.
Other fantastic conversions
Bomb Jack — originally brought into the arcades in 1984, Bomb Jack migrated to the spectrum beautifully. Some baddie has been placing bombs at famous locations around the world, and only superhero Bomb Jack can come to the rescue. He can leap high in a very controlled manner, and then glide around as he descends. This allows him to collect the explosives. Once the first has been collected, a detonation sequence is activated and Jack must get to each lit bomb in turn as quickly as possible. This conversion translated into a very colorful and detailed version of the game.
Paperboy — in this conversion it’s up to you, to deliver the early morning newspapers fighting against fantastic odds. Negotiating your bike around the neighborhood, hazards have to be avoided — but lots of points are waiting to be won for accurate lobbing of newspapers. Paperboy on the spectrum is very faithful to its arcade counterpart. The gameplay was spot-on and it was full of attention to detail.
Now for something special, great original games:
Cobra — was a run-and-gun game (with super smooth parallax scrolling). Joffa took the base from his previous hit Green Beret and injected it with humor and silliness. It had very little to do with the movie of the same name despite our hero looking like a convincing Stallone. The action was also pretty violent. The bad guys would run in from both sides of the screen and attempt to kill you. Cobra was short and hard but sweet with excellent tunes and great fun.
Dan Dare — the graphics looks gorgeous, colorful and bright with a great atmosphere. The controls felt solid and the time/energy system was a neat approach to game progression. Gameplay became increasingly tense as the player neared completion and raced against time to insert the last key.
The Great Escape — is an isometric 3D prison break game inspired by the film of the same name where you play a POW trying to escape from a prison camp. It was full of innovative ideas — it offered various different escape routes from the camp and your hero would automatically adhere to the camp’s routines if you left him to his own devices for too long. It’s one of the best-regarded Spectrum games and it’s amazing how the authors managed to pack all that magic into the humble Speccy.
Saboteur —taking on the role of the eponymous, nameless saboteur, players were tasked with silently infiltrating an enemy’s lair to retrieve some sensitive information. The journey through this dangerous world relied as much on exploration, quick reflexes and carefully choosing your fights. The backdrop graphics were well drawn and added atmosphere to the game. The mix of stealth, arcade action and platform elements was a nice mix of genres that worked perfectly.
Uridium — was first released on the Commodore 64, originally written by Andrew Braybrooke. Dominic Robinson converted Uridium to the spectrum and created a game that is stunning, both technically and artistically way ahead of its time, and remains very playable and addictive even today.
A smooth, sideways scrolling arcade romp that sees you attempting to fly your ship to the landing strip at the end of the level, dodging land based objects, waves of alien ships and the arsenal they fire at you as you go.
Starglider — converted from the Atari ST by Realtime Games, a successful ZX Spectrum developer who specialized in fast 3D action games. Their first game, 3D Tank Duel, was also a wireframe graphics game in the style of the Battlezone, written for the ZX Spectrum. Starglider boasted the best 3d wireframe graphics of the time, representing the natural evolution after the emergence of Elite the year prior. In term of graphics and gameplay the spectrum and the ST versions are virtually identical.
A new development in the gaming market has emerged with the launch of various brands of low cost games. These labels were aimed at the teenage market, hoping to entice young spenders to spend their pocket money on good quality, low-priced games rather than records and comics.
Although there were doubts as to whether or not the market could afford to sustain a range of budget titles, the budget software market grew as publishers, such as Mastertronic, Firebird and Codemasters, decided to capitalize on the initial success.
Ollie and Lissa — in this devious platformer game the player see the protagonist duo Olli & Lissa solve a mystery. It is very addictive and humorous with great style and imagination. A fine example of how good budget games were rapidly approaching the quality of the full priced ones.
180 — was released for the ZX Spectrum by Mastertronic, budget software specialists. The rules are simple, you start on 501 and must bring this score to zero and finish on a double. You would face opponents of increasing skill, one after the other.
You would view the dartboard and a nicely animated hand would ‘float’ in front of it, ready to throw your dart. It was implemented well and had the right feel to it. When your opponent was taking his shots then the view switched to the bar (in which you were playing). Two player mode can be fun too. The humor, speech and all round gameplay made it a really nice little game.
Next : The ZX Spectrum golden years — Part II https://medium.com/p/2af4672732ff
