Some Retrospec remakes are very good, but occasionally they get it wrong and put something out that doesn’t really work. Knight Lore and Alien 8 are two Retrospec remakes of Ultimate games that just do not work as well as the originals.
Category Archives: PC
Atic Atac Retrospec Remake, PC
This homebrew PC remake of Ultimate Play the Game‘s 1983 Spectrum hit Atic Atac was published for free in 2006. It is one of Retrospec‘s better remakes.
Lunar Jetman Retrospec Remake, PC
Another Retrospec remake of a classic Ultimate game. This time: Lunar Jetman. This one was released in 2002 and unfortunately is another flawed piece of software.
Tranz Am Retrospec Remake, PC
This PC remake of the classic ZX Spectrum game, Tranz Am, was first released in 2008 by Retrospec. It is a reasonably faithful, “enhanced” conversion of the overhead racing game originally published by Ultimate Play the Game in 1983.
Pssst Retrospec Remake, PC
A twenty one year-old remake of a thirty eight year-old game… John Dow‘s Pssst PC conversion was originally released in 2000 for MS-DOS and it’s not a bad effort, with decent enough graphics and responsive controls. The game was later ported to work in Windows, but there is a problem with that (see below).
Cookie Retrospec Remake, PC
This remake of Ultimate Play the Game‘s ZX Spectrum classic, Cookie, is unfortunately completely unplayable on modern PCs. It just runs way too fast to be playable and the only way to slow it down is by using a throttling app, like Advanced Game Launcher. But even then it’s still not very playable, so is a bit of a lost cause. Your only option would be to play it on very old, slow hardware to get it going at the right speed.
Jetpak Solar Crisis, PC
Jetpak Solar Crisis is a homebrew remake of Ultimate Play the Game‘s classic Jet Pac, made by Retrospec and released for free in 2004. While not all Retrospec remakes are good games, this one is actually pretty decent.
Bubble Bobble, PC
The PC MS-DOS port is actually one of the better Bubble Bobble conversions, with graphics that don’t flicker and are more or less the authentic experience. The play area is slightly wider than the arcade original, but it doesn’t affect gameplay, which is excellent overall.
Pong Quest, PC
This modern take on a retro classic sees you take control of a “brave young paddle” on a quest to unlock the mystery of “The Spooky Door”.
Pong Quest is of course a re-imagining of the classic Atari arcade game, Pong, with cute, colourful graphics, a large variety of different Pong balls, and single and multiplayer play modes.
Quake 4, PC
For the fourth instalment in the Quake series id Software returned its emphasis back to the single-player story-driven mode of the first two Quake games. Actually, the majority of development on Quake 4 was actually done by Wisconsin-based Raven Software, with id Software supervising.
The King of Grabs 