Good Speccy Games?

[alyinsanfran]

Back in the day I had a ZX81 (with wobble-rampack and stick-on keys!) that I tinkered with (anyone remember when it was called 'machine code' instead of assembly, and you had to know a little of it to get anything resembling speed?). Another memory... massively nested loops, an fm radio 6 inches away tuned in to the interference to make 'music'....
Where was I..
A friend had a 48k speccy (really expensive at the time in NZ) and I'd bike over to his place for sessions. The only 3 games I remember being really hooked on were Tranzam, Jetpac and Manic Miner.
MM runs beautifully under fzx32, I'm hooked again.
Any suggestions on games that run well (ie run well with joystick emulation, instead of keys)?

 

[craigix]

I really like slippery sid, one of those quick blast games.

Also Rex is quite good, very nice graphics.

I used to love the Dizzy games, especially magic land which was the only one i finished without a guide.

-Craig

www.gbax.com

 

[Tippy]

A favourite of mine from back in the day would be Psytron, a vaguely obscure but excellent game I enthuse about in great detail here, if you'll pardon the shameless self promotion.

See also Jet Set Willy, Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Chuckie Egg, the surprisingly good version of R-Type, Cybernoid, Sweevo's World, Head over Heels, Exolon, Uridium, Sabateur, Horace goes Ski-ing and my personal favourite bit of Cold War drumbeating Raid Over Moscow.

Oh, and who could forget the mighty Advanced Lawnmower Simulator?

P.S. Half of these aren't speccy exclusives, natch, just a potted list of what I remember playing in my formative years.

 

[lubidog]

Back in the day I had a ZX81 (with wobble-rampack and stick-on keys!) that I tinkered with (anyone remember when it was called 'machine code' instead of assembly, and you had to know a little of it to get anything resembling speed?). Another memory... massively nested loops, an fm radio 6 inches away tuned in to the interference to make 'music'....
Where was I..
A friend had a 48k speccy (really expensive at the time in NZ) and I'd bike over to his place for sessions. The only 3 games I remember being really hooked on were Tranzam, Jetpac and Manic Miner.
MM runs beautifully under fzx32, I'm hooked again.
Any suggestions on games that run well (ie run well with joystick emulation, instead of keys)?

​

OMG, where to begin

3d Death Chase (wonderful star wars game!!!),
Attic attac
SabreWulf
Ant Attack
Jet Set Willy (of Course)
Lords Of Mmidnight (if you have a chatboard...?)
Elite (not really playable on the GP32, but the greatest game ever made )
Pajamarama
Spellbound
Head over Heals (actually, not soogood with the joystump)
Matchpoint
matchday 2 (love it!)


Er, could go on all day.

(Mods,Can we have this thread stuck in the best games on which system bit please B) )

 

[alyinsanfran]

Back in the day I had a ZX81 (with wobble-rampack and stick-on keys!) that I tinkered with (anyone remember when it was called 'machine code' instead of assembly, and you had to know a little of it to get anything resembling speed?). Another memory... massively nested loops, an fm radio 6 inches away tuned in to the interference to make 'music'....
Where was I..
A friend had a 48k speccy (really expensive at the time in NZ) and I'd bike over to his place for sessions. The only 3 games I remember being really hooked on were Tranzam, Jetpac and Manic Miner.
MM runs beautifully under fzx32, I'm hooked again.
Any suggestions on games that run well (ie run well with joystick emulation, instead of keys)?

​

OMG, where to begin

3d Death Chase (wonderful star wars game!!!),
Attic attac
SabreWulf
Ant Attack
Jet Set Willy (of Course)
Lords Of Mmidnight (if you have a chatboard...?)
Elite (not really playable on the GP32, but the greatest game ever made )
Pajamarama
Spellbound
Head over Heals (actually, not soogood with the joystump)
Matchpoint
matchday 2 (love it!)


Er, could go on all day.

(Mods,Can we have this thread stuck in the best games on which system bit please B) )

​

Oops hadn't seen that forum!
Thanks for the suggestions. Does Ant Atrtack run with joystick ok? I'd always wanted to see that game but my mate didn't have it. I just read the RetroGamer story on it's author and got enthused to look it up.

 

[c0ncept]

Dizzy, for sure!

 

[The Wub]

Hi Aly,

to add to the great games mentioned so far:
Bruce Lee, Antiriad, Turbo Esprit(possibly my all time fave), TrailBlazer, Split Personalities(Splitting Images), Finders Keepers/SpellBound/Knightime, Nomad, Ollie and Lisa, HeliChopper and Deflektor(really works well on the gp)..

loads more could be mentioned but these are the ones on my smc at the moment and all work well on fzx32.

Yeah, ant attack sadly uses a funny keyboard control system that I don't think will ever work on an emu, not on the gp32 anyway unless you used a chatboard...that would be very cool to see

 

[thingley]

The speccy shares a lot of common ground with the c64 and amstrad - so if you originally played a game on one of the other machines your best sticking to the version you have good memories of..

But some of my favourite games on the spectrum are:

Pippo (a kind of 2d cartoon q-bert clone)
Batman / Head over Heals (Ritman & Drummond)
Popeye
The Pyramid (by bob hamilton)
Trapdoor
Extreme
Astro marine corps
Rodland (yes I know not very colourful - but i kinda like this version)
Chase HQ
Robocop (too easy - but still a great game)
Saboteur (the sequels pretty good too)
Repton 1 and 2

I currently have about 400 speccy games on my smc and i think of more that should be on there everytime i'm on the bus to work.

 

[Grebn]

Chaos - definitely. Ace stuff, especially with a chatboard and/or friend.

 

[lubidog]

Chaos - definitely. Ace stuff, especially with a chatboard and/or friend.

​

I suppose Ii'm allowed to mention the www.worldofspectrum.org website.... :huh:

Hope so, cos it's a fantastic recourse, not just of games (and he's tried to get author approval, hence the lack of Ultimate games ), but also for reviews, articles and instruction manuals!

Lots of stuff!

 

[johncross85]

Towards the end of the Speccy's and Your Sinclair's reign they did a top 100 games of all time, both from the reviewers point of view and as voted for by the readers. I've stuck the lists online here.

Hope that helps!

J(ohn)

 

[rlyeh]

my top 231
http://www.emulnation.info/retrodev/system/Spectrum/ex.html

its missing some good ones, some descriptions, etc
hope to finish it some day

greetings


EDIT: best with MS explorer at the moment... sorry for that

 

[spaceboygp32x]

(Mods,Can we have this thread stuck in the best games on which system bit please B) )

​

???

wheres this bit then?

:huh:

 

[alyinsanfran]

my top 231
http://www.emulnation.info/retrodev/system/Spectrum/ex.html

its missing some good ones, some descriptions, etc
hope to finish it some day

greetings


EDIT: best with MS explorer at the moment... sorry for that

​

Hey thanks Rlyeh, that's a great site!
And thanks all for the others, it's really given me something to bite into.
I'd assumed there would be few quality games that would work with just the joystick, my mate didn't have one (I think the interface may have been needed to be ordered from the UK to get to NZ back then..) so I got used to keys.
Actually, in high school we had bbc-b's in a network and I well remember Elite working well by keys once you worked it out.
But I just love that little GP joystick. The positive click is a treat for any of us old codgers who remember microswitched sticks in the arcades. Never really liked pads.

 

[jcabrer]

A common mistake in terminology is to mix up the names machine code and assembly language. I hope it is clear from my description what constitutes machine code; it is the sequence of numbers held in the computer's memory which give the CPU instructions on what to do. While the CPU understands numbers, these are not readily understood by humans, who would prefer something closer to the written language. For example, when the CPU receives the number 62 (as an opcode), it interprets this (in human terms) as "load the A register with the number in the next memory location". That description is somewhat cumbersome, but we could adopt a shorthand which means the same thing. Assembly language gives us that shorthand - LD A, n (LoaD into A the number n). Assembly language, therefore, is a descriptive shorthand of machine code operations. It is easier to write machine code in assembly language, then have a special program, called an assembler, translate assembly language into machine code. The reverse translation is called disassembly.

Taken from FIRST STEPS IN MACHINE CODE

 

[JaseDaMase]

Well heres my dollars worth, no doubt some have already been listed




Starquake
Dynamite Dan 1+2
Dan Dare
Match Point
Bomb Jack
Commando
Turbo Esprit
Spellbound
Batman
Head Over Heels
Knight Lore
HyperSports
Stainless Steel
Bobby Bearing
Spindizzy
Starion

I could go on, the speccy is my all time favourite machine

 

[gaterooze]

Nodes/Arc of Yesod
Strangeloop
The Great Escape
Starquake

 

[c0ncept]

trapdoor was awesome, not that I ever got past the first level!

 

[lubidog]

(Mods at Can we have this thread stuck in the best games on which system bit please  B) )

​

???

wheres this bit then?

:huh:

​

Right here http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=11916 I was moaning about saying how we should have threads for each emu with top games on each one, and someone had already done it!!!! And it's good, too

Some great speccy games here. Has anyone got Trashman to work? doesn't on mine..... And am I the only 3d Death Chase Player????

:huh:

 

[spaceboygp32x]

(Mods at Can we have this thread stuck in the best games on which system bit please  B) )

​

???

wheres this bit then?

:huh:

​

Right here http://www.gp32x.de/board/index.php?showtopic=11916 I was moaning about saying how we should have threads for each emu with top games on each one, and someone had already done it!!!! And it's good, too

Some great speccy games here. Has anyone got Trashman to work? doesn't on mine..... And am I the only 3d Death Chase Player????

:huh:

​

thnks for that - its the quick or the dead round here at times!!

EDIT: OMG no jackie chans action kungfu in the NES section!