ZX Spectrum/128 games

[Prizrak]

I was a vic 20/c64 user as a teen because the Sinclair PCs were not available stateside and at the time I didn't know about the Timex collaborations. I play some ZX games via emulation because at the moment it's the only way I can enjoy these amazing games. Does anyone here love the spectrum and have a collection of games (both original and newer homebrew) that they can share? I could download sets from various sites etc but looking for something smaller and personal that has input from someone as to what someone who's never had a childhood of the systems enjoy.

[JamesD]

Check out the World of Spectrum.
https://worldofspectrum.org/

 

[oracle_jedi]

I never owned a Spectrum, but plenty of my friends did.  

 

In the early days many of the titles were cross ported to the VIC20 or Dragon 32.  Games like Horace Goes Skiing, Jet Pac and Arcadia were all fun. 

 

Spectrum exclusives I recall were Penetrator - a pretty good Scramble clone, Ant Attack and the Psion Flight Simulator.  I was amazed watching the landing lights move on the screen in response to the inputs, and furious that Flight Path 737 on my VIC20 could not deliver the same experience.

 

Later games were 48K and competed with the Commodore 64.  The Hobbit was very impressive when it came out, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wulf and then all of the isometric games like Alien 8.

 

One of my favorites was Time Gate, an interesting spin on the Star Trek/Star Raiders theme.  I recall we played that one for hours.

 

Lots of great titles for the machine, and some truly impressive achievements given the limitations of the platform.

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

 

[Sinyavin]

 

[Sinyavin]

 

[Sinyavin]

 

[Sinyavin]

Games presented on the videos above this sentence are the best ones on classic ZX Spectrum, either 48 or 128k machines. Some of these games (one or two) may require TR DOS operating system. All these games above are made in United Kingdom, Spain*, Slovakia and Russia* from the 1980's to present day.

 

* Maybe some (one or two) of these games are made in Uruguay, Ukraine or Belarus.

Edited August 19, 2023 by Sinyavin

[Sinyavin]

 

[Sinyavin]

 

[Sinyavin]

 

 

This is all you need to get started. And, yes, River Raid is there too.

 

[Retrospect]

I was a late-comer to the ZX Spectrum.  I bought one cheap at a boot-sale in my town , Wakefield, back in about 1999.   It was a grey +2 (not A) with curiously a bundle of game for the 16K machine.  I soon started to program on it , and I learnt how to do those loading screens quite easily.  Lots and lots of fun to be had with these machines.

 

My cousins both had a +2A when they were younger and the games were great.  If you look on the Spectrum Computing website there are lots of new releases coming out from all over the world, and they're fantastic.  One of them is a conversion from the TI99/4A game "Parsec" and they did really well with it.  

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/index.php?cat=301

[Sinyavin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[masteries]

 

More great games of the platform:

 

 

 

 

 

Obviously many games try to mimic a Gameboy style, 2 colours per tile,

to avoid the classical ZX Spectrum color clash effect (due to a tile of 8x8 pixels

can only have two different colours).

 

There are other games such Savage, Dan Dare III, Ninja Turtles 1, Turrican;

that cleverly used the color capabilities of the platform:

 

 

 

Games that managed to use colour looks much better.

 

 

Edited December 25, 2023 by masteries

[Sinyavin]

On 12/25/2023 at 6:36 PM, masteries said:

 

many games try to mimic a Gameboy style

 

 

 

Did you say the word "Nintendo Game Boy"? 🙂 By the way there was an amazing bootleg port from Game Boy to ZX Spectrum:

 

 

 

 

 

Let's compare with the original game for Game Boy:

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

Whenever I think I've remembered all the noteworthy games, I later remember 8 to 12 more superb games.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Sinyavin]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Warning! Adult content. 😆 (cartoon characters talking about sex).

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 20 by Sinyavin

[segasonicfan_designs]

I love Speccy.  Recently scored a 128k +2A and just love it.  On this hardware, a lot of the newer games have issues running, including Redshift which Im dyinggg to play without crashes...😥

the new games coming out are superb and it's like retro gamings best kept secret in the west

[Sinyavin]

 

 

Golden Age (1982 - 1993) games for ZX Spectrum were produced in Britain and Spain.

 

ZX Spectrum was popular in Holland too. It is strange that I do not know Dutch computer games.

 

Later games for ZX Spectrum are written in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, Uruguay. Surely something is written in Brazil.

 

 

On 1/20/2024 at 1:50 PM, segasonicfan_designs said:

I love Speccy.  Recently scored a 128k +2A and just love it.  On this hardware, a lot of the newer games have issues running, including Redshift which Im dyinggg to play without crashes...😥

the new games coming out are superb and it's like retro gamings best kept secret in the west

 

I love Russian game named Survivisection (see above). Although the game uses some graphics from the Chaos Engine / Soldiers of Fortune game for Amiga, it is a loose continuation of the Far Cry (2004) Windows PC game. )) I love Spanish game named Sword of Ianna (see above). It is a loose continuation of the Severance: Blade of Darkness (2001) Windows PC game. ))

 

But first of all, I love British and Spanish classics from the 20th century (which is also given above).

 

 

Edited February 1 by Sinyavin

[Sinyavin]

It would not be amiss to say that the Nether Earth game (UK, 1987) mentioned above was one of the first real-time strategies ever.

 

Many of the games mentioned above (Astroclone, Feud, Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager, Laser Squad, Nether Earth, Quazatron, Sentinel, Southern Belle, but not only these) are impossible to play without reading the Manual. But these games are worth reading two or three pages of English text to play. ;)

 

Of course, you can also play Kolobok Zoom 2 if you're too lazy to read the instructions. ;)

[Sinyavin]