ZX Spectrum games.
Written by John F. Cain (who also made Booty, Moonlight Madness and Super Dragon Slayer on the Spectrum), and published by Melbourne House in 1986, the ‘official’ Marble Madness on the ZX Spectrum bears little resemblance to the classic arcade original.
Continue reading Marble Madness: The Construction Set, ZX Spectrum
Written by Pete Cooke [Tau Ceti, Academy, Micronaut One, Earthlight, Stunt Car Racer], A Whole New Ball Game is the 1989 sequel to the puzzle game, Brainstorm, and was only made available on the covertape of Crash magazine issue 66 (July 1989). It was basically given away, as a full game, with the magazine.
Castlevania: Spectral Interlude is a free-to-download homebrew Castlevania game for the ZX Spectrum, developed and published by Rewind (a Russian indie team) in 2015. The game is playable on 128K Spectrums only and is available digitally for Spectrum +3s as a disk-based game, and also as a TAP file. A limited number of physical copies were also produced for sale.
Continue reading Castlevania: Spectral Interlude, ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum version of Geoff Crammond‘s classic puzzle game, The Sentinel, was ported by Software Creations (with assistance from Mr. Crammond himself) and published by Firebird Software in 1987.
Shadow of the Beast is a scrolling fighting/action game originating on the Amiga. It was enough of a success for publisher Psygnosis to convert it to various home computers and consoles. The ZX Spectrum version was developed by Gremlin Graphics and published in 1990, and it is not a bad port overall.
The 1986 ZX Spectrum version of Paperboy is both a nice self-contained attempt at Paperboy on a Spectrum, and also a bit of a joke when compared to other versions of this great game… Let me explain.
The ZX Spectrum conversion of Data East‘s Midnight Resistance was created by Jim Bagley and Keith Tinman and was published by Ocean Software in 1990. It wouldn’t be unfair to say that it is probably the best run-and-gun shooter on the humble Speccy, and punches well above the machine’s weight.
CRL Group‘s 1987 release of Frankenstein is a text adventure based on Mary Shelley‘s infamous novel and takes a more serious approach than most other adaptations of the time.
I’m not sure if the Commodore 64 version of this obscure 8-bit game was the target platform, or if it was the Spectrum version, but all versions of Bride of Frankenstein that I’ve played so far have been pretty awful.
Icon Software‘s 1985 release – Frankenstein 2000 – has the barest of premises when it comes to links to the Mary Shelley novel, but it does count as a ‘Frankenstein‘ game in my opinion. And it’s actually not a bad game either, which might come as a shock to some people.
The King of Grabs 