Category Archives: Old Computers

ZX Spectrum

Top 10 Spectrum Games: the best Spectrum games ever!

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Games every ZX Spectrum owner should play

Every Spectrum owner will have had their own personal favourites on Sinclair’s popular home computer, and I have drawn up a list of what I believe to be the best. My Spectrum Top 10 is based on my experiences of innovative games, that even 30 years later will spark fond memories of the fantastic little machine.

ZX Spectrum Computer
The colourful ZX Spectrum

You could claim that I have made some noteable exclusions, such as footballing classic Match Day, perennial favourite 3D Death Chase, and various games featuring the Spectrum mascot Dizzy. All I can say is that this is my list, and I have my reasons for every game included here.

I have also included a mix of 16k and 48k Spectrum games, as I owned both versions and early arcade titles that fit into the smaller memory could be just as good as the (relatively) memory hungry versions. Remember this is a time when their were no hard drives, every game had to be loaded from tape (or usometimes micro-drive) directly into memory whenever you wanted to play.

So after much deliberation, here are my Top 10 Spectrum games…

10 – Jet Set Willy

Every Spectrum owner will have played one of Matthew Smith’s classic Spectrum platformers starring Miner Willy. The first game, Manic Miner, was a sensation and its sequel, Jet Set Willy was even better.

Jet Set Willy for ZX Spectrum
Jet Set Willy navigates the Landing

Having made his money in the first game, Miner Willy has bought a huge mansion and held the mother of all parties. Before he can go to bed, the housekeeper is inisiting on him tidying up the place, requiring him to explore the many rooms of the mansion and collect various misplaced objects.nothing will top this game for addictivity, fluent graphics, responsiveness and sheer imagination

The first really good attempts at a platformer on the Spectrum, these games featured many tricky hazards including conveyer belts, melting walkways, devious enemies and also required some pixel perfect jumping skills. Jet Set Willy improved on the linear nature of the first game by allowing free movement between the rooms of the mansion, creating a truly unique sequel.

“…nothing will top this game for addictivity, fluent graphics, responsiveness and sheer imagination”

CRASH! Magazine 1984

9 – Knight Lore

This was the first game from Ultimate to feature the innovative Filmation graphics engine, which enabled rendering a game world in isometric 3d. This viewpoint was subsequently used in a number of classic Spectrum games including Head over Heels and Batman.

Knight Lore ZX Spectrum
Sabreman returns in an isometric adventure

Knight Lore itself was the third in the series of Sabreman games, this time our hero suffering from a nasty case of Lycanthropy, resulting in him spending half the game in werewolf form as he explores a huge castle seeking a cure. Each room of the castle featured puzzles and obstacles to overcome, in order to access the ingredients required to place in a central cauldron and create a potion. A smash at the time, Knight Lore was a huge leap ahead in terms of graphics on the Spectrum, and set a standard for other games to follow.

8 – Atic Atac

At the time this “haunted mansion” themed game seemed epic, a colourful and action packed game like nothing before it on the Spectrum. Your mission was to play as one of three medieval characters, each with different skills and different routes that must be taken through the game. Find the various pieces of key, avoid or kill the numerous monsters, and fight your way to the exit. This game featured some great graphics, shown from a top-down perpective, and some well animated creatures – but my favourite component was the chicken based life-meter which shows your character’s health.

Exploring the basement in Atic Atac

One of many Spectrum games that required you to draw a map as you progressed in order to remember your way the next time, often resulting in lots of bits of A4 paper selotaped together as your map grew ever larger and more complicated.

Click here for the full review

7 – Underwurlde

The sequel to Sabre Wulf, Underwurlde transported the hero Sabreman to a underground world, which saw him turned on his side and become a platformer rather than a top-down adventure.

Underwurlde Spectrum
Sabreman is back in Underwurlde

Much like Atic Atac and Sabre Wulf before it, the gameplay required you to explore a complex series of rooms, avoid baddies, and find specific items (in this case weapons) in order to escape. Along the way Sabreman would be required to jump gaps, climb ropes and ride on bubbles in order to traverse the huge maze of over 500 screens.

Some might say 3 Sabreman games in the the Top 10 but each had a different graphical style and unique gameplay elements that merit their inclusion.

“…it’s a totally original game that will keep you enthralled for ages”

CRASH! Magazine 1984

6 – Skool Daze

Another game that could really only work in the UK, Skool Daze was the closest thing to a Spectrum version of popular 80’s TV show, Grange Hill. Your mission was to survive the various challenges that school threw at you, from grumpy teachers through to evil bullies, and uncover the combination to the school safe, which held an incriminating report card. Get caught using your catapult, or any other number of misdemeanors, and you will be given lines, too many lines and you are expelled.

Skool Daze for ZX Spectrum
Bunking off in Skool Daze

Another game featuring classic British humour, this was a unique game concept that was platformer, simulation, puzzle and adventure in equal parts, and a firm favourite with many Spectrum owners.

5 – Daly Thomson’s Decathlon

Ocean – 1984

Famous for its ability to destroy joysticks, Daly Thomson’s Decathlon was a clone of the Track & Field arcade game, which required players to bash buttons and waggle joysticks furiously in order to make the on screen characters run, jump and throw their way to athletic victory.

Daley Thompson’s Decathlon
Decathlon – breaking keyboards since 1984

Ocean’s version for the Spectrum featured popular decathlete Daley Thomson, and gave the player the opportunity to take part in all 10 events. The game featured some great animation, although slightly strange graphics in that the black Olympian was portrayed as an all-white sprite – probably more due to the limited colour palette and attribute clash issues of the humble spectrum than anything else. My personal favourite was the Javelin, which required maximum speed and just the right throwing angle in order to get a qualifying throw.

A great game and must feature in any Spectrum fan’s Top 10 list.

Click here for the full review

4 – Sabre Wulf

The third game from Ultimate in my Spectrum Top 10 game, this featured the first outing of Sabreman, reappearing in Underwurlde, in wolf form in Knight Lore, and finally as a wizard in Pentagram.

Sabre Wulf ZX spectrum screen
Sabre Wulf ZX Spectrum Screenshot

Sabre Wulf was an adventure set in a huge flick-screen world of lush vegetation, back in the day when there were no maps on your head up display, if you wanted to find your way through the many screens you had to get busy with a pencil and paper. Avoid the jungle critters, collect 4 pieces of the amulet and you were free, but not without a long battle with numerous enemies and a lot of back-tracking through the game’s 256 screens. An obvious inclusion for my list of Top 10 Spectrum games.

My full review of Sabre Wulf can be found here.

3 – Everyone’s a Wally

Microgen released the much loved series of platform / adventure games featuring the affable Wally on a number of platforms including the Spectrum. All of these games featured large colourful sprites and challenging gameplay, culminating in this version which allowed players to adopt the personas of various members of the Week family.

Everyone’s a Wally Spectrum
Punk Wally on the prowl

Each had special skills which had to be used to full effect in order to solve the various puzzles required to complete the game, and each had their own health bar which had to be independently maintained. A novel game with some innovative features, most Spectrum owners will have at least one Wally game in their collection.

2 – 3D Ant Attack

Before Ultimate kicked off the craze for isometric adventure games, Quicksilva gave us 3D Any Attack. Set in a scrolling isometric 3D world (think Zaxxon with movement in 4 diagonal directions), the objective was to rescue your partner, boy or girl depending on your chosen character. Avoid the giant ants, and climb ever more complex structures to locate your mate and escape the city, armed only with a few grenades with which to stun the overgrown insects.

3D Ant Attack Spectrum
Bloody big ants attacking you

Another unique Spectrum game, this was a great retro memory for me and still playable today.

1 – Chuckie Egg

This game was available on a number of platforms, and everyone has their favourite, but I loved the Spectrum version. As a farmer charged with collecting eggs from around a multi level henhouse, you used some fairly atheltic running and jumping skils to navigate the various levels and platforms whist avoiding the resident hens. Take too long to complete the level and the Boss Chicken would escape his cage and chase you around the level.

Chuckie Egg ZX Spectrum
Henhouse Harry plays Chuckie Egg

Some frenetic gameplay and excellent controls ensured that an apparently simple platformer became an enduring Spectrum classic and a dead cert Top 10 inclusion.

Was the Spectrum version really better than the BBC Micro version? Find out here!

The best Spectrum Games that didn’t make the top 10

There were so many exceptional games for the ZX Spectrum that they couldn’t all make it into my top 10. Developers such as Ultimate Play The Game and Ocean produced so many fantastic games that they probably deserve a Top 10 in their own right.

Here are some that could easily have made it into the top 10 list:

  • Manic Miner – the original platformer from Matthew Smith, and the first appearance of Miner Willy. But I could only have one Willy in the top 10, and it’s the Jet Set one that pips it.
  • JetPac – a classic early Ultimate game best described as a “platform shooter in space” and featuring slick multi-coloured graphics. The title really showed what could be achieved with only 16k of memory. Check out my review of this classic Spectrum game
  • R-Type – an amazing reproduction of Irem’s seminal horizontal scrolling arcade shooter, it has so much detail that each level had to be loaded separately as it couldn’t all fit in 48k

I hope that has inspired you to try some of these games for yourself, they may be 40 years old but they are still playable today.

ZX Spectrum

Pyjamarama for the ZX Spectrum

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What is Pyjamarama for the Spectrum all about?

Pyjamarama was part of the series of Microgen platform games, including “Automania”, “Everyone’s a Wally”, “Herberts Dummy Run” and “3 weeks in Paradise” that starred our hero Wally Week.

Wally stars in Pyjamarama for the ZX Spectrum
Pyjamarama ZX Spectrum

Playing the part of the sleeping Wally’s “dream” alter ego, the object of the game was to explore the many rooms of Wally’s house, find a key to wind up the alarm clock and wake Wally ready for work. Each screen featured a number of platforms, allowing Wally to navigate to different locations through doors linking the various rooms.

Pyjamarama needs a map to complete

This involved finding objects which could be used to solve puzzles, unlock rooms, and exchange objects for other objects which would eventually lead to the key. Controls were simple, just left right and jump. The player could carry up to 2 items at a time, and picked up the items by walking over them.

Puzzles in Pyjamarama were solved by using the right combination of items, and therefore the game became a memory test of what items were left where.  This would necessitate manual documentation of the screen layout, something that gamers of the early 80’s will be intimately familiar with – rather than the system plotting where you have been with a helpful map screen.  

This lead to pieces of a4 graph paper being taped together to recreate the map when you ran out of space, or until you bought the latest copy of CRASH! magazine which often included a handy map for games like Pyjamarama.


To complicate matters, various enemies patrolled Wally’s dream world, and contact with them drained Wally’s “snooze energy”, and ultimately lead to a loss of life. Lose 3 lives and the game was over.

How to Complete Pyjamarama

To complete the game, you need to find the various items and swap them in the correct order to proceed through Wally’s dream world. The following Pyjamarama walkthrough should help if you get stuck, although you still need to know where the rooms are.

Pyjamarama Walkthru

  1. Get the Bucket and fill it up from the tap in the bathroom.
  2. Get the Plant Pot and walk to the room containing the Venus fly-traps
  3. Swap the bucket of water for the BP caniste
  4. Get the triangle key from the 3rd Floor
  5. Go to the 1st and fill the BP canister from the petrol pump
  6. Get the pound coin and swap it for the penny
  7. Enter the Toilet with the penny and get the hammer.
  8. Exchange the hammer for the fire extinguisher in the lift.
  9. Go to the 3rd floor and find the room containing the pile of tea
    chests.
  10. Climb up the chests and exit through the window.
  11. Continue past the fire and get the square key.
  12. Enter the unlocked snooker room and get the laser gun.
  13. With triangle key and laser gun go to the 1st Floor.
  14. Go past the pump room and take the battery, then drop it.
  15. With the Bp Can and the Full Laser Gun go to the 3rd floor.
  16. Enter the rocket and leave the laser gun on the moon.
  17. Get the Ignition Keys from the roof using the Driver’s License.
  18. Get the ignition keys, and returning to Earth, slide down the banister and get the helmet.
  19. Swap the library ticket for the library book.
  20. With the helmet and the book, get the scissors.
  21. Switch HELP on, and go to the room with the balloon.
  22. Get the box key and swap it for the magnet.
  23. Re-fill the BP Can and return to the moon with the magnet.
  24. Touch the magnetic lock and get the clock key.
  25. Return to Wallys Bedroom, touch the clock and complete.

Pyjamarama Versions

I had the Spectrum version of Pyjamarama, and was blown away by the large colourful graphics that seemed to avoid the worst colour clash that the Spectrum was prone to (only having two colours in any one 8×8 pixel portion of the screen at a time).

Pyjamarama on the C64


Pyjamarama was also released on the C64 and Amstrad CPC.

BBC Micro

Frak! retro review for the BBC Micro

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Back before the word Frak! became a swear word on the most recent incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, or a controversial form of mining, it was a 1986 platform game on the BBC Micro. My friend had a BBC Model B and a Sony colour monitor, and we would play Frak! for hours, as well as the excellent Mr Ee! (a clone of the arcade game Mr Do!).  The game was written by Nick Pelling under the Aardvark Software brand, although he preferred to be known by the name Orlando M. Pilchard.

Frak! on the BBC micro

Frak! game for BBC Micro
Frak! Screenshot for the BBC Micro
You control a caveman called Trogg, who had to traverse various platforms and defeat monsters armed with only a yo-yo. Timing had to be pixel perfect, and Trogg could only fall a short distance without dying – with no floor, falling from the edge of a platform often meant instant death. The game itself was not exactly Chuckie Egg in terms of speed, with progress more of a puzzle than a rush through the levels. Trial and error was often the way to progress, plodding your way through the various obstacles to collect the keys to the exit and complete each of Frak’s 3 basic levels.

Along the way you would meet one of three stationary monsters, whose touch was deadly, so you had to work your way around them or destroy them your yo-yo. In addition to the monsters, balloons would rise from the bottom of the screen, and daggers would fall diagonally down the screen, and colliding with either would also end in death. Fortunately you could also destroy them with a well timed yo-yo strike.

To score extra points you could collect light bulbs and jewels that are dotted around the platforms, often in out of the way places that made your journey longer and more treacherous.

 

After completing 3 levels the game screen turned itself upside down and you would play again, a novel way of extending the life of the game by re-using graphics, important when you only have 32k of memory to play with. Most toasters these days have more than this.

Most memorable for the fact that the caveman would cry “FRAK!” in a speech bubble whenever he died, clearly a way of swearing without swearing, ultimately influencing the writers of Battlestar Galactica (possibly). The back story for the game was never really clear to me though. Why was he a caveman? Why did he have a yo-yo? Why monsters, if he was a caveman why not sabre-toothed tigers or mammoths? Perhaps we will never know.

Frak! was also released on the Electron (I had a copy of this and it was monochrome and very disappointing) as well as the Commodore 64, but the BBC Micro version was the original and best.

For and interview with the developer head on over to the BBC Games Archive.

ZX81

3D Monster Maze for Sinclair ZX81

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3D Monster Maze Cassette
3D Monster Maze Cassette
As an 11 year old with an interest in computers, what better birthday present could I get but the latest in home computing the Sinclair ZX81. During the 1980’s you could buy computers from John Menzies, which for the under 40’s was a store a bit like WH Smith but with more calculators.On unpacking my new best friend I plugged it into the mains and my old black and white TV, tuned to channel 36, and started typing in some BASIC commands on the plasticky membrane keyboard.  After about 10 lines of code I got an out of memory error. Apparently I had filled the 1K of memory. So Dad got me a 16K RAM pack, which was attached to the expansion board at the back and held on with velcro.  As long as you didn’t jog the keyboard too hard and dislodge the unit, this extra memory let you type in (and load) much larger programs.

3D Monster Maze Sinclair ZX81
3D Monster Maze Sinclair ZX81

My favourite of these 16K games was called 3D Monster Maze, from a company called New Generation Software, which saw you running away from a Tyrannosaurus in a randomly generated 3D maze. Given the limitation of the computer’s graphics, which were in-built character blocks in black, white and shades of grey only, the effect was amazing.

The game managed to really ratchet up the tension as you tried to escape from the Tyrannosaurus, with the status line on the screen telling you how close the Tyrannosaurus was. A bit like Doom did over 10 years later, the tension while you waited for the monster to appear made the game.

Remember this was a first person perspective 3D game, back when you had to load the game from tape, and the computer would randomly reset at regular intervals when it got too hot.  To say it was ahead of it’s time was an understatement.

A great classic from a time when lone programmers working in their bedrooms could release a number 1 selling video game, and proof that you don’t need high definition colour graphics and surround sound to create an atmospheric gaming experience.

ZX Spectrum

PSSST! for the ZX Spectrum, an Ultimate review

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PSSST! was one of my first experiences of a really slick and addictive Spectrum game. It was launched by publisher Ultimate! around the time of Jet-Pac, prior to the later and more popular isometric games.

Pssst! Gameplay on the ZX Spectrum using animated GIF
Pssst! gameplay recording on the ZX Spectrum

I remember cutting out the coupon in Sinclair User to order the game, paid for with a postal order for £5. No downloadable content and PayPal for us back in 1983! Back then you had to rely on a grainy screenshot if you were lucky, and the idea of Youtube to view gameplay was a fantasy.

PSSST! Loading Screen on the ZX Spectrum

The game was released on cassette tape, much like all games for home computers of the early 80’s. The ZX Spectrum loading screen for Pssst! was a sign of the graphical goodness to come, with chunky graphics that somehow managed to avoid the colour clash that plagued the Sinclair machine.

Playing Pssst! on the ZX Spectrum

Playing the role of “Robbie the Robot”, your objective is to patrol your garden and protect your green shoot from invading insects long enough for it to grow and flower. The insects would crawl or fly towards the flower, and could be killed by using the right kind of spray for the insect – either a puff of gas, an electric zap or a water spray.

Screenshot of Pssst! For the ZX Spectrum
Pssst! Game-lay screenshot on the ZX Spectrum

The cans were dotted in alcoves by the side of the screen, and you could only carry one at a time, which forms the main game mechanic.  You will encounter a number of different bugs as you progress through the game, starting with caterpillers and moving through bumble bees and wasps, each with a different attack pattern, and requiring different spray types.

Survival of your flower was a frantic battle to keep swapping sprays and killing insects moving at different speeds towards your flower.

Not the best or deepest game from Ultimate but a taste of things to come, and a world away from the clunky amd jumpy character animation of most early Spectrum games.

BBC Micro

Arcadians retro game review for the BBC Micro

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In my retro games reviews I’ve covered a few BBC arcade conversions including Killer Gorrilla, so won’t repeat what I’ve aleady said about some of the liberties taken in the early days by developers like Acornsoft.

Arcadians for the BBC Micro
Arcadians for the BBC Micro
But if they hadn’t stretched the boundaries of IP infringement we would not have arcade perfect conversions such as Arcadians (a thinly veiled Galaxians clone). All seems to be in order, from the swooping aliens to the large player ship at the bottom of the screen. In fact the player ship was huge, making bullet dodging quite a challenge.

Arcadians was quite a repetitive game, sitting somewhere in between Space Invaders and Galaga in the arcades, with not much variation in gameplay if any between waves. Galaga took the Arcadians model with swooping aliens and added in bonus screens and dual ships, perfecting for many the formula and providing some much needed variety.

Anyway, back to Arcadians, in addition to the perfectly replicated gameplay, it also featured an arcade-style high score table and a novel “attract” screen with a demo of it being played, just like a real cabinet, making it feel really authentic.

Arcadians was also released later on the Acorn Electron, the BBC Micro’s younger brother, and it was just as good despite it being a less powerful computer. Anyone with a BBC or an Electron back in the 80’s should remember this game, another great example of what the BBC was capable of in the right hands and the closest thing to the arcades for a home gamer.