The Dark is a rare first-person shooter on the humble ZX Spectrum, written by Russian coder Oleg Origin. It was originally released under the title of Quake in 1997, and was then re-worked and re-released by the original author as The Dark in 2016.
Category Archives: ZX Spectrum
Stunt Car Racer, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Geoff Crammond‘s classic Stunt Car Racer was converted by Pete Cooke, the same guy who programmed the brilliant Amstrad version. It was published by Micro Style in 1989 and came in 48K and 128K versions. The 128K version obviously had more features and that’s the version I’m showing here.
Ranarama, ZX Spectrum
Steve Turner‘s classic Ranarama originated on the ZX Spectrum in 1987. The game is an overhead Gauntlet derivative where you play as a frog (actually a wizard’s apprentice, called Mervyn, whose botched spell has turned him into a frog), who must fight his way through various levels of a maze, defeating warlocks and taking their runes.
Deliverance: Stormlord II, ZX Spectrum
Deliverance: Stormlord II is the sequel to Stormlord and was published by Hewson Consultants in 1990. Programming and art were once again handled by Raffaele Cecco and Hugh Binns respectively, with game design by Paul Chamberlain and Barry Simpson.
It’s a single-player platform game where you once again take control of Stormlord to rescue kidnapped fairies from the evil forces of the defeated Black Queen; fighting from ‘Hell’, all the way up to ‘Heaven’.
Stormlord, ZX Spectrum
Stormlord is a scrolling run-and-gun platform action game designed and written by Raffaele Cecco and Nick Jones, with graphics by Hugh Binns, and was published for the ZX Spectrum by Hewson Consultants in 1989. In it you play the titular Stormlord, a Norse-style warrior who is fighting to rescue fairies from the evil Black Queen.
Exolon, ZX Spectrum
Designed by Raffaele Cecco and published by Hewson Consultants in 1987, Exolon is a simple-but-effective run-and-gun shooter with flick-screen levels and snazzy Spectrum-esque colourful graphics, with minimal colour clash.
Equinox, ZX Spectrum
Equinox is a flick-screen action game designed and programmed by Chris Hinsley and Raffaele Cecco. It was first published on the ZX Spectrum by Mikro-Gen in 1986.
Stainless Steel, ZX Spectrum
In Stainless Steel you are Ricky Steel – a teenage superhero with a flying car called ‘Nightwind‘ – on a mission to defeat the android troops built and controlled by the evil Dr. Vardos. What that basically means is that you have to drive/fly and shoot your way through a variety of overhead scrolling levels, collecting fuel to constantly top-up your ever-diminishing life bar and avoiding bullets like the plague.
Judge Dredd, ZX Spectrum
This second attempt at a Judge Dredd game on the Spectrum was developed by Random Access (the development team at The Sales Curve) and published by Virgin Games in 1990, although there is some debate about how widespread the game’s release actually was.
Was the game even properly released, or was it cancelled and some copies leaked out? Few people seem to have had a copy and it only recently turned up on game preservation sites. There were reviews in most of the major magazines at the time, although this doesn’t indicate whether the game was released or not.
Nemesis the Warlock, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Nemesis the Warlock was developed by Creative Reality and published by Martech in 1987. And it is another relatively poor adaptation of a classic 2000AD comic character.
The King of Grabs 