ZX Spectrum golden years — Final
1989
The best full price games were technically excellent now that programmers had fully mastered the machine and could generate some wonderful effects with it using crisply designed and animated graphics together with some dazzling music. This year was filled with classic games, but there was a distinct shift in the games industry away from the Spectrum and towards the increasingly affordable Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Amstrad saw sales of the Spectrum itself starting to decline.
New games were now designed for the more powerful machines and then selected games were transferred to the Spectrum if a conversion was possible. The software houses tried to boost the shrinking games production schedule by re-releasing their back-catalogue at budget prices. This seriously damaged sales of full-priced games forcing some software houses to leave the Spectrum games market entirely.
Best games of 1989
Original games
Batman: The Movie — is an action game developed by Ocean and based on the 1989 Batman film directed by Tim Burton. The game follows closely the plot of the movie. It also plays in four different genres throughout the game which was the preferred formula for Ocean at the time.
The first level is a platformer on the chemical plant, while in the second the player will have to drive the Batmobile. The third level is a Mastermind-like puzzle game. The fourth takes place during the Joker parade and the player will have to drive the Bat-Jet. The final level, the second platformer, takes place in the Cathedral, where the final fight will happen. The game was a huge success and was awarded Game of the Year.
Stormlord — was more of an arcade adventure than Raff Cecco previous arcade oriented titles. Each level was divided into sections that were partitioned by the use of simple puzzles. The player needed to solve these puzzles by using the correct object to get past the obstacles. Other more dangerous foes required serious action. Fortunately, the player was armed with a magical sword and lightning bolts to fight off some of the more persistent enemies. Stormlord was an excellent and enduring game.
Rick Dangerous — is an excellent arcade adventure developed by Core Design. The setting of the game is very like an Indiana Jones movie. Armed with a pistol and dynamite, Rick must fight hostiles and evade traps as you venture through the four levels of the game. The dynamite sticks that Rick carries are generally used for solving puzzles. It’s a simple but tricky game. Many of the traps have no visible warning, meaning that most of the gameplay consist on trial and error.
Myth — was an exceptionally polished title from start to finish. It was an epic game set across five time zones: Hell, Ancient Greece in 400 BC, a Viking longboat circa 700 AD, Medieval England circa 1000 AD and Egypt 2600 BC. The player took on the role of a mortal selected by the Gods to undo the damage to the timeline done by an evil God, Dameron, who had corrupted previously pure Gods and circumvented the course of human history. In each zone, the player was required to collect period weapons and fight off supernatural enemies such as skeletons, trolls and other period appropriate nasties. At the end of each zone was a large boss monster that had to be defeated to proceed to the next level. Myth was a superb title that really stretched the hardware to its limits.
Nebulus — is a video game created by John M. Phillips and published by Hewson combined puzzle solving with a platformer. In it you guide a cute frog to the top of several towers in order to detonate them. Working against a time limit, you’re required to use lifts and doors to go back and forth through the rotating towers in order to avoid the nasties. As challenging to play as it is gorgeous to look at, Nebulus impressed with its unique ‘rotating cylinder’ 3D effects. It was converted to almost all hardware platforms under the sun.
Fantasy world Dizzy — Oliver Twins most enduring franchise hero, is widely considered to the best of them. The Dizzy series of games were billed as realistic cartoon adventures. Fantasy World Dizzy represented the first appearance of Dizzy’s extended family and friends. One of these, Dizzy’s ovoid girlfriend Daisy, had managed to get herself kidnapped by the Troll manservant of an evil king, who was holding her captive in the Cloud Castle in Fantasy World. To rescue his beloved, Dizzy had to run and jump around the world collecting objects to solve all of the puzzles contained within the game world.
Arcade conversions:
Silkworm — is a side scrolling shooter arcade, developed by Tecmo. It’s fast and amazing with two players. The first player controls an helicopter, that can fly and shoot. The second player controls a jeep with a turret that can be rotated to hit the enemies. The game is difficult but very addictive and once you have started playing it, you won’t stop easily!
Pac-Mania — is an update of the original maze game, adding isometric graphics and the ability to jump. This version has good scrolling, it’s very responsive and the speed of play is almost perfect. It is definitely a corker conversion.
Cabal — originally developed by TAD Corporation for the arcades is an interesting game that puts you in control of a one-man army against a seemingly endless wave of enemies. Hiding behind walls, you have to use the control to move from one side of the stage to the next while firing on whatever happens to be coming your way. It was an Operation Wolf style shooting gallery title, albeit with your character in the foreground. The game was one of the Spectrum’s more accomplished shooters and a great arcade conversion by the brilliant Jim Bagley.
16 bit conversions:
At this point the 16bit where starting to be dominant and developers where pushing cutting edge simulators and big adventure games into this machines.
The spectrum and the other 8 bit machines received then ports of some of this games. Some of the conversions were still great and proved that Clive’s 8-bit warrior was as capable as the newer ones. Instead of flat shaded polygon of the 16bit the speccy used wireframe graphics but they still looked amazing.
Stunt Car Racer — was in full 3D and explored the vertical space in a fantastic way. The key thing about all this vertical fun was the ever-present sense of danger — there were no barriers to any of the tracks, so you always felt that just one small slip of the wrist could send you hurtling into the abyss, costing you valuable time as your vehicle is winched back onto the track and, more importantly, causing potentially race-ending damage to your car. With a fantastic set of rollercoaster-like tracks it was the intense adrenalin rush this caused that is the most memorable thing about the game.
Carrier Command — set in the near future, placed two sea-based carriers at each end of an archipelago of 32 islands, rich in natural resources. The aim was to take over the islands, constructing bases that could extract natural resources, build weapons and craft. Originally programmed for the 16-bits, Carrier Command was one of those games which they said couldn’t be done on the Speccy. Realtime proved everyone wrong by producing one of the best non arcade games to ever appear on an 8-bit computer.
In addition to improvements at the technical level, refinements were also made in gameplay compared to the Atari ST version, including a much-needed time-lapse facility to speed up travel between islands and a balancing in the difficulty of the game.
Starglider 2 — More space combat and strategy in this sequel, which challenges you to collect the elements to form a bomb to destroy a resistance force, before delivering them through heavy fighting. Each planet has its own characteristics, with differing inhabitants and features.
As well as flying through space, you must dart through tunnels under the planets, which restricted your movement range but are where most of the weapons are. As you go along you’ll have to obtain objects from people, and trade them so as to be able to complete your main objectives. Starglider 2 remains one of the best vector shoot em up’s you can get. The animation is still pretty good and the game moves along at a fair old pace. Still playable, Rainbird’s classic is worth digging out again.
Next Time: The last Days (90–92) and the beginning of the Agony years (93–2011).
