Tag Archives: cute

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).

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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.

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Martianoids, MSX

Martianoids was released in 1987 on three different formats: ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and this MSX conversion. All three are pretty much identical in terms of gameplay; they feature a robot, walking through nine sectors of a scrolling landscape, fighting off alien robots that are trying to destroy a computer you are defending.

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Martianoids, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC version of Martianoids is arguably slightly better than the ZX Spectrum version, because it has a couple more on-screen colours to play around with. It plays the same as the Spectrum version, but looks a little better. The scrolling and control responsiveness seem a little slower, though.

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Martianoids, ZX Spectrum

Ultimate Play the Game‘s 1987 release, Martianoids, is another US Gold attempt to recreate the thrills and spills of a genuine Ultimate game and failing miserably.

You can find some indication of this if you type “Martianoids longplay” into YouTube and seeing that there aren’t any videos. Almost every other Spectrum game has someone playing through it on YouTube; definitely every other Ultimate game, but not this one.

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Gunfright, Commodore 64

This C64 homebrew conversion of Ultimate‘s 1986 ZX Spectrum hit Gunfright was developed by Rod & Emu and released in 2017, and it’s another decent modern port of a thirty year-old game.

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Gunfright, MSX

The MSX version of Ultimate Play the Game‘s Gunfright is identical to the Spectrum original, except for the lack of a loading screen. It was initially released in 1986.

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Gunfright, Amstrad CPC

The Amstrad CPC received a conversion of Ultimate Play the Game‘s Filmation II game Gunfright in 1986 and it unfortunately suffers from the same problems that the previous Amstrad Filmation II conversion (Nightshade) did, namely: colour issues and slowdown problems.

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Nightshade, Commodore 64

The Commodore 64 conversion of Nightshade was coded by Shahid Ahmad and published by Firebird in 1986. It is a reasonable, if slower, version of the original game from Ultimate. What is more interesting, though, is the enhanced version, released by Nostalgia in 2016.

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Nightshade, MSX

The MSX conversion of Nightshade was first published by Ultimate Play the Game in 1985. It is identical to the original Spectrum version, barring a few small differences.

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