Top 100 Best 48k ZX Spectrum Games Ever

[@srvuk]

Nice breakdown, I was surprised not to see Jet Set Willy.

[@RetroSanctuary]

JSW was essentially released unfinished, the game isn't really even functional.

[@DOGOID]

@@RetroSanctuary or Dynamite Dan. Fantastic video tho

[@richwhite1784]

Fantastic resource, especially with the launch of "The Spectrum" - really appreciate you putting this together, clearly a lot of time & effort involved to produce such a great video - Thanks so much!

[@TMWRPJAYMZ]

Great work. These top 100's are a good resource. I haven't fired up my spectrum in 30 years, hopefully still works 👍

[@madspunky]

Thank you so much! As an American, I missed out on so many games! Of course, you Brits missed out on Tecmo Bowl, so I guess we're even. But we have a lot more to catch up with!

[@FrothingManiac]

Absolutely ace. I really don't know a lot about the Spectrum aside from a lot of the famous titles (which frankly have dated quite poorly I think), but the vast majority of these games are completely new to me and they look really fun and innovative. I'll be checking out tonnes of them for sure!

[@MultidimensionalBeing123]

Atic attack was my favourite also Fairlight

[@MultidimensionalBeing123]

I saved two years of pocket money to buy a second hand one it cost me 95 squid.

[@RetroSanctuary]

That's dedication! Do you remember what year it was?

[@MultidimensionalBeing123]

​@@RetroSanctuary 87 i think i cut out a life size spectum from a computer magazine and blue tacked it reserving the space years before lol aren't I sad lol, but wish I was sad over something like that again:) mems

[@bonzobanana1]

My top 100 would probably have about 80 different titles to this partly because I often enjoyed the simpler games more. I loved the darts game '180' and Firebird's 'Stock Car' plus I enjoyed arcade ports of Space Invaders, Galaxians and Time Pilot. Even though it was a bit ropey compared to the Atari 8 bit version I enjoyed Rescue on Fractalus. Another game I loved was Activision's 'Hero'. I probably spent more time playing Elite though than all the other games put together. Which reminds me I also loved Starstrike 2 despite chugging a bit and Starglider although I'm not sure if there was a 48k version of Starglider. I remember playing the 128k version but not sure about 48k. There was a couple Battlezone games I enjoyed and also Star Raiders II I think. Different people different favourite games.

[@tonikeys]

Jet Set Willy not even in the top 100?

[@madspunky]

Based.

[@captvimes]

I watched this through getting more annoyed my fav speccy game wasnt there and there it was number 1 I sunk so many hours into Elite and Lords of Midnight. Also Rare were amazing all their games were good. Why did you miss off Sabre Wolf? It was much lauded but i found it too hard for me as a kid.

[@RetroSanctuary]

I felt that while Sabrewulf had prettier graphics than its predecessor, Atic Atac, the game play was noticeably weaker. Given that it came out later I felt that as such it didn't deserve to be on the list. Also IIRC Atic Atac was a budget game, while Sabrewulf was full price, which just makes the comparison even worse.

[@captvimes]

@@RetroSanctuary I agree just that when it came out it had massive hype was a disappointment when i bought it

[@iliashigin]

What's up with the colors on Spectrum anyway? It looks like the games are actually in black and white but then they are colored on the second pass.

[@RetroSanctuary]

I think that's pretty much it to be honest. Its like the graphics are monochrome and then a colour overlay is added over the top of it with 2 colours per 8x8 pixel square. This is the saving grace of the Spectrum hardware as it means the screen memory is only ~6k. There's no hardware support for scrolling or sprites, but because the graphics data is only 6k and the CPU was good for the time and has direct access to this screen memory, the CPU can just move all the pixels around in real time. Without the trick I think the screen memory would be like 16k, the CPU would struggle to manipulate that much data.