Games That Push The Limits of The ZX Spectrum

[@schragemusik]

Just before his untimely death, my pal, Ian Brownridge, was working on a sideways-scrolling shooter called 'Thunderwing'. This had three depths of parallax scrolling and it looked superb. He had the gameplay working and we were almost ready for me to add the music when he left the planet. A sad loss in all respects.

[@stewsretroreviews]

Sorry for your loss, hope you can find someone to finish his game🤞🏻

[@cy6erGn0m]

Speccy has so many limitations, but everyone who blame it for these limits most likely don't even know what a big step it was. I personally wouldn't even had a computer at all in my childhood because other personal computers were too expensive. Now I have become a software engineer and I am not sure if I had a chance to be who I am without speccy. So thank you Sinclar!

[@SirMo]

Same here. I would not be a software engineer without ZX Spectrum. It started my love for computers, and its the reason I learned programming at an early age. My parents didn't really see the value in home computers in those days so my brother and I bought it by saving pennies. ZX Spectrum was all we could afford. And even that was a lot of money for a couple of kids. Yet it was magical. Thank you Sir Clive Sinclair, wherever you are!

[@arostwocents]

Spectrum was the vanguard of the computer revolution. It's responsible for the wide acceptance of PCs and consoles too in the UK.

[@smorris7741]

Same here! I still occassionally write z80 code on a spectrum emulator, just for fun.

[@retro-robbo]

Lords of Midnight, now that was a game that pushed the Speccy to the absolute limits along with Doomdark's Revenge. And no other game has even attempted anything as big.

[@danl9161]

I can't take this video seriously as it doesn't mention LOM or DDR.

[@Hologhoul]

That game had so much atmosphere!

[@richbuilds_com]

No Mans Sky is it's intergalactic successor :-)

[@seanbrown453]

Lords of Midnight was one of my favourite games on the spectrum but couldn't get into the sequel

[@kevinnoyce6672]

What about chaos

[@briansrcadventures1316]

"Myth: History in the Making". Stunning animation on the old ZX Spectrum!

[@craigthornton1971]

Been a gamer since the Speccy and my best memories are from this era and then the Amiga. Can't beat it.

[@TheSudsy]

With an Atari 800xl in the middle lol

[@barbarianzg8826]

Gamers since speccy..had tons of good games..Highway encounter,Knight Lore,Manic Miiner and Cyclone was legendary boundary breaks...Frank'n'stein! Brilliant platformer!

[@stewsretroreviews]

I'm the same, Speccy and Amiga, both with so many memories😀

[@Willo7863]

Same here, speccy then the best Xmas ever was my amiga

[@merlin5476]

Hewson consultants done a game called " the nodes of yesod" which actually spoke, which was amazing as the speccy only had a beep command.

[@rafaelcarrizosa]

It was made by Odin.

[@ped7g]

"Turbo Esprit" from 1986 was quite achievement and also it plays very well. And "Stunt Car Racer" by Geoff Crammond (16b version, converted to ZX by Pete Cooke) was probably pinnacle of driving physics on ZX with decent 3D. Also pretty much anything from Pete Cooke was mind blowing from programming perspective, that guy is insane genius.

[@oscarjimenezgarrido7591]

I came in to mention Turbo Esprit actually. I consider it to be the spiritual predecessor to Driver; it was such an amazing game for the time.

[@volocat]

@@oscarjimenezgarrido7591 they say that Turbo Esprit was a direct inspiration to original GTA, not Driver.

[@Scripture-Man]

I mentioned Turbo Esprit, before I read this comment. Great minds…! :D

[@oscarjimenezgarrido7591]

@@volocat I said that *I*, subjectively speaking, consider TE to be the spiritual predecessor to Driver. I never said it actually was in any literal sense of the expression, nor that such a thing was stated anywhere. It's just the way it felt for me and the vibes I got from it. Besides that, regarding GTA, I'm pretty sure that there was a lot of games and media that inspired the first one. In my case, the first thought that crossed my mind when I tried the original GTA was that it felt like a more sophisticated, role-reversed take on Ocean's Miami Vice. Some people said to me back then that it reminded them of an adult, contemporary take on the classic Zelda formula, something that I can't assess for myself as I've never been a fan of Japanese RPGs - or any RPGs at all to be honest -. That's the way art, culture and entertainment works really. Creators put a number of things in their works, then the public gets their own things and reflect them upon that work too, and it all turns into a huge melting pot that keep feeding itself from all the back-and-forth interactivity.

[@volocat]

​@@oscarjimenezgarrido7591 No offence. We are in this together. Miami Vice, you say? I think I'll have a look at that.

[@mcgeorgeofthejungle6204]

REX, Driller, Elite, Tir Na Nog, Exolon and Auf Wierdesen Monty were all classics and in many different ways each pushed some limits. Even Rockstar Ate My Hamster was good fun. Valhalla because although it looks a simple adventure it had a working AI for each character.

[@dilithium72]

All of the Ultimate: Play The Game stuff was great. Favourites were Jet Pac and Sabre Wulf.

[@richbeach9664]

Yes, atic atak was fast and furious, Lunar Jetman was a fun struggle, Alien8 was a space version of Knight Lore .. I also loved the fast pace and quick screen loading of Starquake , wonderful sounds too !

[@GeeTheBuilder]

Going to the newsagents in Ashby where the parents of the Ultimate guys lived and getting games on a cassette was a lot of my childhood. Remember it like yesterday. Loved my Speccy 48

[@scook2003]

@@richbeach9664 I liked Batman that was same genre

[@tedcrilly1]

I loved my Spectrum! I still play Target: Renegade even today! :)

[@4k60-i1r]

Jesus crist

[@Dannysince1985]

One of the best games ever

[@stewsretroreviews]

Classic, don't mention the 3rd one tho😂

[@HAVOCJKD]

@@stewsretroreviews there is no 3rd game.....

[@danmcdaid]

Great game, wonderful soundtrack. That and R-Type were my first two games for the Speccy

[@panathatube]

Karnov was another great coin-op conversion. Stunt driving, Exolon, Where time stood still, carrier command and another 3D famous game that i can not remember its name also come to mind.

[@willcorlett7630]

Surprised that Elite never made your list, I mean cramming all those ship types, 8 galaxies with mnamed and different planets, 3d ships and all with a feame rate that was smooth , it was and still is simpy a masterpiece of design and execution. The only downside the loading time and originally that stupid lenslock security device, Best thing nowadays is that you can get an emulator and get nearly speccy game good and bad for buttons, to simply wallow in a nostalgic time when it was gameplay not graphics that mattered

[@BigOlSmellyFlashlight]

it's on the nes video and it's probably most impressive on the nes since it could only show tiles from a table of 256 tiles on the background layer at once so it had to render onto that tile sheet and then map the tiles to show the 3d image and it still manages to do it smoothly

[@bangerbangerbro]

MOst spectrum developers apparently preferred graphics. There are countless spectrum games with lower colour but higher resolution than all the other systems but very slow.

[@noop9k]

@@bangerbangerbro It is not like you could choose the graphics mode on Speccy, unlike BBC Micro or C64 or Atari 800/XL/XE or PC. Yet, Z80 in Speccy had greater performance than 6502 and most 3D/pseudo 3D games do run faster than on C64. Many of those existed. Some highly ambitious. Carrier Command, for example.

[@bangerbangerbro]

@@noop9k I mean lots of later spectrum games choose big sprites and detailed graphics over speed. Especially US gold trash. Basically I was getting annoyed about the cliché claim that gameplay was prioritised over graphics on the spectrum any more often than on new platforms.

[@noop9k]

@@bangerbangerbro big colorful sprites with jerky movement are not more expensive than small with smooth movement, but still look more impressive. And have color. I haven’t heard these arguments about gameplay vs graphics. Lots of games were obviously pushing graphics first and had crappy gameplay.

[@TANuclear]

Hard to imagine a person could squeeze the tiniest bit of fun out of any of these games really

[@Sharopolis]

Things were tough in Britain in the 80's. Even back then children under 10 were considered too young to drink and entertainment options were limited. This is what was on TV kzbin.info/www/bejne/nZfXeomsgJtsmbc Watch this for 10 minutes and tell me Starstrike II doesn't seem like a better option.

[@SmashCatRandom]

Just like to say thanks to Bob Pape for the book. As a game dev myself it's always good to read stories and details from other devs from past years!

[@codswallop321]

All amazing triumphs of human creativity and ingenuity over technical constraints!

[@josephgriffin9676]

Weirdly fond memories of typing reams of BASIC code for a game from the pages of 'Your Sinclair' only to have to spend hours debugging it after supposedly finishing it. Nevertheless Your Sinclair was a great magazine with its occasional Magnificent 7 games cassette included.

[@scook2003]

CRASH magazine too

[@Bigheadedwon]

Remember this with my c64. You’d spend literally a whole Saturday typing and finding your errors. And when it finally ran it was beyond crappy in ever way. Lol

[@scook2003]

@@Bigheadedwon true, good times though.

[@dogwalker666]

Yes but then you saved to tape then flogged them at school,

[@SirMo]

I grew up in Sarajevo Bosnia. A local radio station would actually play ZX Spectrum tapes late at night. And we would record them to play the games in the morning. Haha. Wild memory I just remembered.

[@FireAngelOfLondon]

Dark Star. 3D, fast, smooth, decent gameplay and it just worked properly. A weird kind of blend of wire-frame and sprite graphics that somehow blended really well enabled it to keep up a decent frame rate and the amount of compression of data present meant it had a lot of places to conquer.

[@SimonBrattel]

I don't remember putting any sprites in there... "Basil!"

[@FireAngelOfLondon]

@@SimonBrattel Weren't the incoming missiles sprites? I thought they were at the time but if you wrote the code I can't argue with that. Thanks for the high quality entertainment, that game kept me interested for far longer than most.

[@Domarius64]

2:07 I love the arm flailing "running away from a monster in Scooby Doo" running animation :)

[@nicktaylor8032]

Brilliant upload mate. I was a 64 owner from Xmas 84, and it had a massive influence on my life in so many ways.

[@Ky0l]

Thanks for taking to time to make this video, having used one as my first computer as a child, its nice to later know its history and specs.

[@mrscreamer379]

Underwurlde was my all time favourite spectrum game. Loved the Dizzy series too and had a cool game called The Alchemist.

[@mickaka]

There are some parts of StarStrike II that look incredibly similar to parts of Starwing/Starfox on the SNES.

[@jeccius]

Chase HQ; the 128k version also included speach (sounded like a very bad asthmatic being drowned shouting "Let's go Mr Driver!). Also Shadow Warriors (ocean games), that looked amazing at the time, full colour and no clash. TMNT too.

[@Sharopolis]

I remember that now you mention it, not exactly hi-fi quality, but impressive in 1989.

[@PsychoticPsoftware]

Shadow Warriors was mind blowing at the time. I couldn't believe I was playing on a speccy.

[@Hologhoul]

Very entertaining and excellent video! Knight Lore is incredible. The viewpoint and 3D is already impressive, but then the way objects move over and around one another with no glitches at all, it's remarkable. Wow that game at the end is superb as well..

[@Quimper111]

The coding geniouses of the Spectrum, such as Ultimate play the game were pioneers that created much of the groundwork for later generations of games. The way some of them squeezed every last drop of RAM out of the system, inventing new optimizations is something we will forever be indebted for.

[@MaskedGEEK]

I had a ZX Spectrum 128K +3 and fondly remember Hard Drivin;. It was also the first game that I experimented with to find out what was beyond the known map. I was able to find an awesome shortcut that allowed you to consistently beat the lap without running out of time. The only dangers were running out of "off-road" time as well as crashing into the other cars. Starting off from the starting grid, just keep driving forward and don't turn off heading for the shunt track, keep going forward on the speed track After the hill when you reach the first corner, while avoiding the building still keep driving forward at full speed and don't turn in any direction. Eventually you'll be warped to behind the bridge and the junction where the speed and stunt tracks merge back into the starting line, and providing you didn't make too many turns while off road, you'll fly across the road at a sharp angle but with 1 second life on the "off-road" timer, resetting it. Now you'll have another 10 seconds to get back on the road but that'll be easy and you're on your way to the start finish line. Get that timing nailed down and you're only danger is the other traffic. The good ol' Freescape Engine. Amazing. That engine was also used in the C64's version of Driller.

[@fostersdomain]

A couple of classics also worth a mention here; Tomahawk (Digital Integration) and Elite (Firebird). Both blew my mind and gave countless hours of fun on my 48K Speccy! Its amazing how efficient the coding must have been to run within that smidgen of RAM.

[@Sharopolis]

Not heard of Tomahawk before, looks good!

[@lawrencemanning]

@@Sharopolis had a load of fun with tomahalk here too. Decent polygon action from the same guy who did fighter pilot. Protected by lenslock- remember that? Also no speccy game discussion would be complete without mentioning Academy. Totally cool!

[@AitchKayCee]

Yes, Tomahawk, the Apache helicopter game. For another one of those, Gunship was incredible!

[@TheTurnipKing]

>implying the Amiga has limits

[@adamw.p.6287]

Here's an obscure one, "Gregory Loses his Clock". An adventure game with big bold cartoon styled graphics, and massive levels with so much variety. And all for a cheap price of £1.99 at the time.

[@EndreBarathArt]

that engine was great (popeye, trapdoor etc)

[@davewaring73]

I got quite good at this if I remember

[@KuraIthys]

The Spectrum really is the epitome of 'make the most of what you've got'. A system that realistically is objectively terrible, but so cheap nobody cared, so they put in the time and effort to push it to it's absolute limits, and got decent, sometimes even amazing results anyway.

[@Sharopolis]

Lots of weird genius on display in the Speccy's library, that's for sure!

[@CZ350tuner]

The Speccy wasn't handicapped with the slow 6502 processor, unlike the C64. The Z80 gave the Speccy a considerable speed and performance edge over the C64.

[@tommik1283]

I think Spectrum was actually very well designed for the price. Relatively fast CPU combined with simple but flexible bitmaped based "high resolution" colour display opened doors for innovative programmers to create beyond limited world of text modes and hardwired sprite and scroll co-processors.

[@SpearM3064]

@@CZ350tuner Not as much as you'd think. The average 6502 instruction requires 4 clock cycles, and almost never more than 6 cycles. The average Z80 instruction requires 8 cycles, and as many as 23! The Speccy ran at 3.5 MHz … on average, this is roughly the equivalent of a 6502 running at 1.75 MHz, which the 6502 is easily capable of. The BBC Micro ran at 2 MHz, and in 1984 Acorn's Beeb got its Second Processor unit with a 3 MHz 6502. Bill Mensch had a 6502 running at 5 MHz as early as 1975 (but the 6502 was never sold at that speed). Now, having said that, there were some things the Z80 was better at (for example, the 6502 was mediocre at manipulating large blocks of memory), and there were a *lot* of ways to optimize Z80 code. I have no doubt that the programmers that were really pushing the limits, were using a lot of those optimizations. (And on a personal note, I wish the 65xx had as many registers as the Z80 did. Having only three 8-bit registers was a pain in the arse.) P.S., I know this is splitting hairs, but technically the CPU in the C64 was a 6510, not a 6502. (Of course, the only difference was a minor change that allowed for bank switching.)

[@gasparinizuzzurro6306]

@@CZ350tuner Pratically all cpu intensive games ran on speccy from 20% to 150% faster than on the worstest 8 bit cpu ( the 6502 used on nes or c64)

[@Artur-vh3nk]

Laser Squad - It's unbelievable that in 48kb there is such an extensive game with such a large complexity....

[@darrenporter1850]

Laser Squad had incredible gameplay. Pretty sure wasn't in shops, had to be bought from back of a magazine..

[@getsideways7257]

It even includes digitized speech

[@darrenporter1850]

@@getsideways7257 It did???!!! I don't remember mine having speech? Did they release a 128k version?

[@getsideways7257]

@@darrenporter1850 I was running mine on a 48k machine. Maybe "speech" is a bit stretching it. It would just say "not enough action points" or something like that (can't remember which phrases exactly). One thing I do remember is that I was pretty shocked at the time hearing my computer "speak" :)

[@darrenporter1850]

@@getsideways7257 lol. Are you sure? Wasn't a friend talking to you? I don't remember the speech?!! What's funny is that when I thought of 128k.. I had to double check, as 128k is so small I convinced myself I made a mistake. If I draw a single line in Photoshop my line could be 48k!

[@speccysrule3678]

Last year I finally finished building a 128K Speccy Laptop. It took 4 years of sourcing parts, (main board, screen and a suitably sized box), I only got internet access 6 months ago! I've had at least one working Speccy ever since 1995 mainly for programing. Absolutley love the ease of use. The first thing I bought when I got on the Net was an Expansion pack for SD cards! I don't use casserttes or Microdrives anymore! Great vid. Total Eclipse is a good game!

[@stevesrover]

Bob Pape is a legend!

[@Scripture-Man]

I'm a huge Speccy fan, and yet there were only two games here I'd even seen before! (Knight Lord and Hard Drivin'). Shows how many games there were! For me, when I think of games that push the limits of the Spectrum, four words immediately come to mind: Tim Follin's beeper music! Another that comes to mind is Turbo Esprit.

[@fandabidozi3191]

If you’ve not played Head Over Heels yet, it’s my favourite game ever!

[@seraphinberktold7087]

Starglider 1 (haven't had a look at Version 2 yet) was awesome, too. And so was Carrier Command.

[@lower_case_t]

My favorite top 10 (off the top of my head) 48k games that were also technically impressive and that were not mentioned here: Micronaut One, Sentinel, Uridium, Elite, Space Harrier, Nebulus, Impossaball, Quazatron, Trailblazer, Spindizzy.

[@miikasuominen3845]

Don Priestley's games (Benny Hill, Popeye, Trapdoor etc.), Ant Attack, Rex, Cobra, Karnov, Dan Dare 3, Lightforce... New games with new engines like Sword Of Ianna... And, and, and ;)

[@Sharopolis]

Yep, Sword of Ianna is amzing, I think all those new Spectrum releases deserve their own video sometime.

[@miikasuominen3845]

@@Sharopolis Also, Gluf (free downloadable game) looks absolutely stunning! Fantastic smooth animation and scrolling, simple but addictive gameplay. Check Bazza H's video here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/omPWdnaenZ56pJI

[@Sharopolis]

Wow, that does look impressive!

[@lee2217]

Loved karnov

[@Scripture-Man]

Anyone who likes Sword of Ianna, should also check out Souls Remaster and Castlevania. I also love the graphics for Zombie Calavera Prologue and Nixy The Glade Sprite.

[@The-Man-On-The-Mountain]

I don't know if Dark Side pushed the limits of the Speccy, but I was absolutely blown away by it. I was a kid and I had no fkg idea of what to do in the game lol. but I loved to load it and navigate the map. To me the game was pure magic.

[@fRikimaru1974]

There are a few Spectrum games that are way too better than the most of them. One of them is Rex, the animation and the controls in that game were stunning at the time in comparison with any other but, well, the game is extremely short 😂 Other little wonder for me in those days was Thanatos. Incredibly original and different, really hard indeed, but it was quite remarkable in some aspects. And I remember that Raffaele Cecco's games were quite unique as well. And Ritman's Batman and Head over Heels, of course. And for some reason I remember that there was a game named El poder oscuro that had a really original aproach.

[@e.mattioli7039]

Thanatos, Nether Earth, Fat Worm Blows a Sparky, Street Fighter... but the most extreme in my mind is Micronaut One. It's unbelievable.

[@lesneilson67]

There was a space shooter called Starion (I think) that was the smoothest running 3D game I ever saw on the speccy. There wasn't much of a game behind it, but technically it was really clever

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for the tip!

[@rhpiggy123]

Great game from Melbourne House

[@darrenporter1850]

@@rhpiggy123 I bought it! Remember asking my Mum which country used to be called Rhodesia, as was a question in the game.

[@jeremywood5530]

I always thought Don Priestly did an amazing job on the humble Spectrum especially popeye and trapdoor. Savage was also pretty good as was Chase HQ. :)

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

Flunky was great too.

[@madblank]

The Sentinel should be on this list...

[@Sharopolis]

It should be.. but I'm planning on talking about it a different version of it in another video... so keep watching!

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

I bet you can't find games that push the limits of the Sinclair QL. There weren't that many.

[@lawrencemanning]

Rebelstar and Laser Squad, both by Julian Gallop who is still working on the UFO games. I still fire up rebelstar every now and then for the challenge and a break. I've only beaten the highest level a couple of times in the the 30 years..... Talk about staying power.

[@mnomic8371]

Lawrence Manning They are also my faves! Especially Rebelstar II, I even have this on my ipad now, from the ios app store.

[@martinparker6536]

dont forget CHAOS ......me and my mates played it to death !!

[@anonymo4177]

Laser Squad, (Big) Moonbase (scenario 5?), highest level. No armor for my squad, half of my men have only pistols or rifles (both suck) and enemy has an attack droid with insane front armor, can be destroyed only from rear. Oh, those were the days... :-D

[@paulabbott3601]

great blast from the past, You forget to mention how long these games took to load. I remember Hard driving took about 15 mins to load

[@dcarbs2979]

Looking at the level of detail and data for the system, that's not surprising

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Think yourself lucky you didn't own an 8-bit Atari 😂 Ace Of Aces 22 mins to load on tape

[@Psycandy]

gyroscope, ant attack, underwurlde, death chase... some of the most playable were 16K too. AND speccy demos, that's worth a gander

[@robhall5392]

Anything from Ultimate really pushed the boundaries for the Spectrum. My favourite is Underwurld and Lunar Jetman.

[@robintst]

The sentiments surrounding I of the Mask are something that echoed for years in those days with many other classic games and hardware platforms. It's an impressive technical feat of the stock hardware but it doesn't necessarily translate to fun or engaging gameplay. I do have to admit though that the visuals he came up with for that game are somewhat entrancing.

[@random007nadir]

Lords of Midnight (and Doomdark's Revenge). An open world first person 3D fantasy strategy war game in 48k.

[@davidnewby191]

Still use names from them games in pillars of eternity 2 like Luxor Zarashand Shareth

[@random007nadir]

@@davidnewby191 lol - the bundled story was quite good too (given the target audience was children). I was obsessed by the whole thing as an eight year old.

[@AndrewHalliwell]

Star glider 128. excellent wire frame, speech, and a good game too.

[@thefurthestmanfromhome1148]

Better than the ST version. More levels, speech etc

[@micklee5152]

Can't believe they even tried hard drivin. Props for even attempting it. I don't think they did a bad job, considering. I'm amazed there was a 3d fps on the Spectrum (eye of the mask). Wasn't aware of it and amazed they could pull it off. I remember being blown away by Robocop 3 on the Amiga which had fps elements

[@rvfiasco]

Damn! 10,000 games?! You guys over on the other side of the pond had a funky gaming scene of it's own, that's for sure!

[@tubbiele2]

It even arrived to Eastern Europe. Check russian zx spectrum scene

[@urbantuckerman]

I had a spectrum 16k from the beginning. I am now 50! The games that myself and my mates remember are manic miner, and above all, Elite.

[@allahspreadshate6486]

Elite is (quite rightly) legendary for what the dev managed to squeeze into it...

[@kefhomepage]

Loved elite . Remember it well

[@stewsretroreviews]

Can't beat the good old speccy, its got to have one of the biggest game libraries of any systems anywhere. For its limitations it did a grand job if u think about, still got my plus 3 speccy and the case for the 48k still. Happy times and great video mate.

[@karlsavage7495]

Brilliant vid, so nostalgic & "alien's combi boiler" made me laugh out loud. Some of the most graphically (and aurally) impressive games I recall were Steve Crow's Firelord, Zynaps & Exolon. Hewson really hit a purple patch with their output in the mid-80s, especially with shoot-em-ups.

[@Sharopolis]

Cheers!

[@TheFusedplug]

Exolon remains a game that I could easily play for hours on my grey +2 it does have 128k AY sound when loaded via the 128's tape loader BTW even though there is no mention of being able to do so on the inlay card. I often loaded games via the "Tape Loader" just in case some 128 extras were implemented and it often proved me right. Part of me wishes that the 16 bit era was delayed by an extra 2 years back in the day so we could see even more Speccy 128k only games as I'm convinced there was still oodles of surprisingly ground breaking games to be had from our fave machine

[@RolloTonéBrownTown]

That game around 2:50 - 3:00 is actually super neat in how it creates the illusion of running through this huge 3d space.

[@molokoko786]

From pushing the hardware to the limit, addition to the below can I add :- Combat Lynx - 3D (ish) graphics, large play area of many miles, and surprisingly playable Match Day 2 - only 8 bit title to really get 6 a side with decent AI and controls. Robin O The Wood - for getting the spectrum to pump out recognizable speech that sounded better than Steven Hawkings chair! Starquake - for the 50Hz refresh trick that made it buttery smooth next to everything else. Lord of Midnight - already mentioned but when you read the Story of what It took to fit that game world into 48k it probably takes the technical complexity prize.

[@FDCAFOK]

Ah the ZX Spectrum, my first & favourite computer.

[@leerees]

Hard drivin' was my favourite spectrum game. It definitely ran faster than that on my 128K +2.

[@bentavener254]

Brilliant. Such good memories of the Spectrum. Thank you.

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for watching!

[@guillep2k]

I think you should have included some games that pushed other aspects of the hardware to the limit, like sound: from plain old "2.1-channels" (Mikie) to amazing multi-channel/multi-modulation in games like Chronos. Also games that extended the screen to the border (I think there was a flight simulator doing that) and the simulation of multi-color attributes. These were not necessarily the first to do that, but the ones remember from the back of my head at the moment.

[@marasmusine]

I think my favourite piece of Beeper music was from Dark Fusion kzbin.info/www/bejne/pYrSoaGmgayJetk&ab_channel=RetroArcade

[@PaulRoneClarke]

Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's revenge. The former from quite early in the Speccy life cycle. It filled up so much of the RAM that the only way to re-start the game was to reload it. I think it also used the screen memory to hide essential game code. Mike Singleton went on to write Midwinter which was one of my favourite games on the Amiga - the first open world game that actually felt open world (to me at least). Elite - It ran better on the Speccy than on the C64 (I had both - so no owner bias here) It didn't have the Tribbles that the C64 version had - but the vector graphics were quite a bit smoother. The huge advantages the C64 had in sprites and smooth hardware scrolling and none clashing colours didn't amount to anything in a game that didn't use or need any of those features and instead used just raw CPU power. Zombie Zombie - Sandy White's follow up to Ant Attack. Except you could actually pick up and move the blocks and create your own zombie mazes, bases and death drops. I don't think anything like it was seen before or after - at least not for the next 20 years. It could be argued that Minecraft owes a lot to Zombie Zombie. Driller. You mention Sandy White's Eye of the Mask which was a 3D system looking for a game. What about Driller? A better 3d system and a lot more of a game. In the same hardware. "Featuring Feescape" The Great Escape. How many game systems were squeezed into this game?. Time tables, guard awareness, tools, tunnels, interactions with other prisoners and guards. O.K they were all a bit shallow compared to today's expectations, but blimey. There was a lot going on for a 48K game with decent 3d graphics. There were some excellent ports that were surprisingly good on the Spectrum. Ports that - 18 months before they were released you might have thought were not possible, or at least doomed to be poor quality failures. Gauntlet, Bombjack, Bubble Bobble - Carrier Command YES Carrier Command - on the Spectrum!! It played about as well as the Amiga version as well (which is to say - just about Ok) But of all these do you remember Imagine/Ocean's two wonder games that (sort of) never came out. Psyclapse and Bandersnatch. Adverts of musicians, artists, coders, gameplay designers, producers all gathered around a ZX Spectrum. These were going to break all the boundaries of the system. The games were going to cost 4x the amount of other games. Bandersnatch is back in the public eye thanks to the recent Black Mirror series - but let's not forget it wasn't even the first "vapour ware" AAA game. Psyclapse was. "Gift from the Gods" was supposedly the result of a code rescue, and is a pretty decent game.

[@MikeDewisBaritone]

You could have mentioned Fairlight, the game that somehow produced multi-channel sound from the Speccy’s single-channel sound processor.

[@MauveDash]

Tim follin

[@empusa23bis]

I wonder, if Hard Driving was programmed with late ZX-clones in mind, the ones that featured higher CPU frequency and a Turbo button.

[@flare242]

A lot of the games i was amazed by the most on ZX Spectrum were pushing the hardware to its limits. 3d games - Mercenary (a freakin' openworld adventure), Micronaut One, Catch-22, all Incentive Software games (Driller, Dark Side, Total Eclipse, Castle Master), Sentinel (game with procedurally generated levels, i'm surprised you didn't mention THAT) Codename MAT (something like a Battlecruiser, but on Speccy), Ocean Conqueror (a freaking submarine simulator with 3D graphics), Fighter Bomber, Tomahawk, F-19 Stealth Fighter. tactics games: Rebelstar, Laser Squad, Hero Quest, Project Omega other games: Saboteur series, Dizzy series, Renegade series, Barbarian, Last Ninja... There were just too many fantastic games. For example Fighter Bomber was a flight simulator with external views, 3d models of the planes, and it was relatively FAST. I also liked all of Pete Cooke games, Costa Panayi games. I loved this era, it's good to see that a lot of the developers are still in some way connected to the gaming industry. Julian Gollop (Laser Squad author) is just now finishing his new tactics game, Phoenix Point. Spectrum was one of these computers, where when you didn't pushed it to (and over) the limit, you didn't get much out of it. The BASIC programming language that was built in, was basically useless. Most of the games were done in the Assembler.

[@skyblazeeterno]

Bandersnatch was programmed in Basic 😁

[@dodgydruid]

Solstice on the NES was just so close to Knight Lore lol, my favourite one though was the Fourth Protocol which was a pig to keep going without it crashing on the Spectrum and I remember a game that was like a fantasy maze which was huge, it came with Uridium on the front of a Spectrum magazine. Funniest game was Urban Upstart, best moment in that getting killed by the football hooligan ftw :)

[@Vargon7]

Deathchase, a 16K game that's still exciting to play now. Cookie (another 16K game) which would have been a good arcade game proper. Laser Squad, a turn based tactical wargame with multiple missions/maps.

[@stevenspx6226]

Had a +2 back in the 80s what amazes me is whole games were programmed n 48/128k and today a update for my iPhone calculator is 60mb??? Wtf 🤦🏻‍♂️

[@Kinitawowi]

Driven by the fact that you don't need to restrain yourself when your phone can hold 128Gb. A lot of Speccy games were great because, not in spite of, the system's limitations.

[@big_b_radical3985]

We've gone backwards as many ways as we've gone forwards.

[@squodge]

You couldn't even use the entire 48K or 128K because a sizeable chunk of it was reserved (around 7K, if I recall).

[@Kinitawowi]

If you mean the screen (just shy of 7k) and the system variables (about a quarter of a K)... yeah. Although a (very) small number of programs used screen memory as executable code...

[@drgusman]

​@@Kinitawowi The screen pagefile is 7Kb but the limitation was on the contended memory, the first 16Kb of RAM, that's why usually programs where allocated above 0x8000 (ROM + contended memory). As that memory zone was shared between the CPU and the ULA for graphics contention could happen, if the ULA is accessing that RAM then the CPU is unable to use it and it introduces a lot of programming complexity to use it. So basically you had 32Kb for programs if you didn't wanted to do complex synchronization routines.

[@alritedave]

Some of this is extremely impressive.

[@Dios67]

I think the first "3-D" game I ever saw that blew me away was Star Raiders on the Atari-8 bit.

[@jaysonbyse4178]

NARC was an amazing arcade conversion,that really used full Speccy Power! I recall Double Dragon being the worst,especially compared to Renegades crunch in the bollocks and throw them over your shoulder effects.

[@richretrotech9426]

Thanks for putting this together. Really entertaining. I love the vivid colours of the spectrum.

[@vengermanu9375]

I would include The Sentinel (1986) to this list. I also enjoyed The Great Escape and Turbo Esprit that year which were impressive too

[@smorris7741]

The Great Escape, good call.

[@user-yv2cz8oj1k]

I have a tape original of Sentinel. :D

[@briggsbughouses6291]

If I remember correctly Hard Drivin' had a key to centre the steering so it was fairly easy to keep on the track. I don't think your review did it justice. It also had a mode where you could race against a ghost of your car from your previous fastest lap.

[@SoulPoetryandOtherWorks]

Gyron should be mentioned for its technique of avoiding colour clash using frame buffering. An impressive feat indeed.

[@kpbendeguz]

Sir Fred was my all time favourite regarding graphics and gameplay.

[@GarryGri]

For some reason I was facinated by Popeye on the Spectrum! Now that had 'large' graphics, and handled colour clash very well! Also 'Heavy on the Magick' was an achievement that seems largely overlooked.

[@andrewbutler9533]

You brought back a lot of memories there! R-type was superb! Tell you what, chase HQ was a brilliant conversion too! :-)

[@sijcalv]

The thing i looked forward to all the time as a 13 year was the progression of the games getting more and more out of its tiny memory and limited tech, the programmers were very innovative.

[@ZenithfilmsUK]

In regards to the Spectrum, you should def check out The Muncher (originally called T-Wrecks until the deal with Chewits) the graphics are awesome and full colour! Only on the 128k ofc and it felt like the damn tape took nearly an hour to load lol

[@Scripture-Man]

I'd totally forgotten about that game, thanks! :)

[@listerofsmeg884]

my mate had R-Type on his Speccy and as a C64 owner with the passible port i had (the best thing about it was the music) i was always a little jealous

[@faustasazuolasbagdonas123]

I think Prince of Persia by Magic Soft should be also mentioned here.

[@greenhowie]

r o t o s c o p e

[@gabormiklay9209]

00:45 Knight Lore is mind blowing on the Speccy. 👍

[@appenginenode]

Still pushing its limits today with the homebrew and demo scene!!!!

[@StopFear]

For me the most memorable spectrum 3D game was the one that looks like the 1st game in this list in which a guy is running who knows where, but it was like you looking around and moving around inside an Egyptian pyramid.

[@buxdan]

You mean Total eclipse, from Incentive.

[@pon2oon]

I'm from the USA, and we never got the Zx-Spectrum, but it's graphics limitations give it an odd, and quirky charm.

[@lazlogurzogonas878]

I believe that Spectrum has managed to have sensational games like these by a combination of factors but the main one of all was the love that millions of boys, mainly in the UK (I am not nor do not live in the UK), had for this small computer with rubbish keyboard and games on K7 tapes. A striking feature of Spectrum is its peculiar way of using colors (attributes) that if on the one hand caused the famous "color clashes" that some disliked , on the other hand allowed a speed of manipulation of graphic objects in high resolution (at that time) simply stunning for an 8-bit computer, and with no help from graphic coprocessors !!(like C64 and MSX). In fact when we see how slow the Amstrad CPC games, which works with 16 colors per pixel, we see how it was clever and wise the choice of Speccy designers to adopt the system that mixes monochrome graphics in high resolution with a map of low resolution color attributes! Add to all this the immense creativity and technical skills of the young game programmers of the time and the result is these wonderful and unbelievable ones that were created for our beloved Speccy !!

[@RobertBlow]

Great video. Very enjoyable. Thanks for making this.

[@Sharopolis]

Thanks for watching!

[@bluebull399]

The late 80's "arcade conversion" era was definitely when the Spectrum was at its best. Some of the games that came out really were amazing, considering how low spec this machine was. I think the Spectrum developers of the time definitely worked that little bit harder to give us the best possible gaming experience.

[@danielelston7457]

Great work Mate and thanks for the nostalgia

[@juanavila6022]

Wow,thanx for the video. I really hated the Spectrum when i was a child, but with the past of the time i LOVE It!! My best time of.gamer, best games so far...Gryzor, tennis of Dinamic, Xevious,Match day II...

[@tarstarkusz]

After seeing some of the modern games on various old hardware, I think the Speccy probably has more to give than even the games here. The CPC got a wicked version of Pinball and there is a racing game in the works that looks unbelievable for the hardware. The C64 has had some new releases that are incredible like Sam's journey and Super Mario Bros. Even the Plus 4 got a pretty amazing new release called Pet's Rescue. Then there's all the wicked Atari games like Scramble, Star Castle, Mappy, Juno First and so on. Lots to squeeze from these old machines!

[@mikedavies5049]

The greatest gaming machine ever. So many limits were pushed to achieve greatness. Games were sometimes very cheap but we're incredibly playable which is something modern games sometimes lack. That one more go mentality meant games were great.

[@KaijuLover2]

What I saw here on KZbin is that some of the games on the system look rather great. Pssst, Cookie, Game Over 1 and 2 look like lots of fun.

[@stevenmccorkindale4684]

The original Dizzy and Cybernoid which featured at the end of the videos were 2 games I personally bought on tape with my pocket money in the 80s for my zx+. I played Dizzy again recently on the origional platform and it sure hold up well today. I only have Cybernoid on the C64 DTV. The Spectrum version was actually superior to the C64 version. The Spectrum version has sound effects.

[@stuartbrownlee3108]

What about the ZX81? Stuff like "3d Defender", "3d Monster Maze" and the Software Farm hires stuff...incidentally, back in the day, I even recall typing in reams of machine code programs printed in "Your Computer" magazine, some of which did feature hires stuff like "Bipods" and some sort of hires citybomber thing. Them was the good ol' days.

[@Sharopolis]

ZX81 is on the list! 3D defender is nuts "Hey lets do Defender on the ZX81, but in 3D!", it works somehow though!

[@MrRjhyt]

Surprised at the absence of Sandy White's Ant Attack, and Design Design's Halls of the Things. Lords of Midnight. But that's just my preference.

[@Sharopolis]

Lords of Midnight definitely deserves a mention in a future video. Did ant attack come out before Knight Lore? I think it might have got there first with the isometric thing.

[@MrRjhyt]

@@Sharopolis long before, if I recall correctly.

[@pqrstzxerty1296]

Most of software bulk these days is the eye candy that takes up the size

[@azimov6250]

Hi! I have to mention here some hits I think they deserve it. From spanish scene we have the totem "Abby Of Crime" with gorgeous backgrounds and impressive IA with real-time day-routines and independent living characters. Second mention is to "Astro Marine Corps" with colourful and gigantic sprites. Even in the Homebrew scene you can find awsome jewels as "The Sword of Ianna" (with large different levels), and "Redshift" (maybe the summum of Zx shmups), the colourful (using Nirvana engine) "Gandalf" (this time from latin America). Classics I miss in this list are "The Great Escape" and "The Sentinel". Thanks for this video and for let me contribute with this titles!

[@chestergeo]

Great research! May I suggest that, in upcoming videos, you just add black bars (or, if you really need to fill the space, a fixed bitmap)? The blurred extension of the image is _very_ distracting, in particular when seeing those impressive (for the time/hardware) videos. Keep them coming, thanks! :-)

[@Scripture-Man]

I agree, I found the blurred borders very distracting, too. It just looks like part of the game at times.

[@arostwocents]

Gandalf Manic Pietro Any Zosya Entertainment game