Top 50 ZX Spectrum games of 1988 - in under 10 minutes

Hello and welcome to the new episode of TOP 50 games in under 10 minutes.
We go to 1988 today to check what kind of games we played on our ZX Spectrum back then and to see the games that we think are the top 50 games for ZX Spectrum in that year.
Looking back, the 1988 was a year of some good movie licensed games (like Robocop and Platoon). Dizzy also showed us that the success of the first part (release a year before) was not a fluke - as the second part is even better.
Football Manager also got a "part 2" (and it was great). Also, who can forget fantastic Last Ninja 2, Operation Wolf, Ramparts and Action Force 2?
And the last shout out goes to Target Renegade. Fantastic second part of the Renegade franchise.
Games are, as always, presented in no particular order.
Have fun, let us know in the comments if you agree with our choices (and if we missed a title that should be on the list), and see you in the next one!
PLEASE NOTE: A viewer in comments (Enric LL) noted that I show the wrong Batman game. The game featured in video is Batman from Jon Ritman, not the Caped Crusader released by Ocean in 1988. You can visit worldofspectrum.org/archive/s... to see "the correct Batman game"

[@duffywolves]

Great escape, manic miner, Barbarian (the fight game), The way of the exploding fist...etc.... these games are sure in the top 50 for me. what a time was in the 80's. so much memories

[@nilsondelourenco1883]

Amazing!!! =) This is history! I have been watching since the 1982's videos and it is so cool to watch the changes (I don't like to call it evolution because every time is peculiar and evolved enough! Thank you!

[@retrononame]

I'm glad you enjoyed the videos. 1990 coming soon. Thank you for watching.

[@PianoandKeysStudio]

Great little machine, the Spectrum... and some great games for it here. The only graphical limitation the Speccy had compared with the BBC Micro was that it allowed only two colours per character space which wasn't bad at all, considering it was over £200 cheaper. You still had a choice of two different colours for each different space - and the game developers took advantage of this very cleverly. Both very intuitive machines in their day.

[@Hologhoul]

This format of short clips is really useful. I have a spreadsheet of 'games to check out' (and one of favourites I've discovered which I don't want to forget) and I can quickly add entries as I watch. Nice work!

[@retrononame]

Thank you! I'm glad you liked the videos and found them to be helpful.

[@3dhYT]

Thanks for the big dose of nostalgia.

[@retrononame]

Thank you for watching. I'm glad you enjoyed the video!

[@PawelKraszewski]

That's... Amazing... I had ZX Spectrum+, then ZX Spectrum+3 (I suppose like 6 years total, before my A500 came) and I haven't played *any* of those games.

[@Primosete]

Great video and Great games! Just... I think it's not the Caped Crusader (4:37), I spent so many hours playing Batman, Batman: the Caped Crusader and Batman the movie (maybe I was specially sick 🤣🤣) and the one you show is Batman (by Jon Ritman)

[@retrononame]

You are correct! Thanks for pointing this out. I use FinalCut's search function when editing and I had 2 Batman games recorded. When I wanted to include the caped crusader search probably found both "Batmans" and I chose the wrong one. Will add info to video description along with the link to the correct game. Thanks for the help!

[@Primosete]

@@retrononame don't worry both games were amazing and you are doing an awesome work!

[@retrononame]

Thank you.

[@peterpereira3653]

Subscribed as I liked the video content.

[@retrononame]

Thank you!

[@lorzete]

Great video, thanks a lot.

[@retrononame]

Thank you. I'm glad you liked the video!

[@juanbascunanmorera3733]

Amazing!! Im looking for a Spectrum game ( i dont remember his name) where you was in a cave or maze and where you had to open doors and the enemie was behind. The enemie had a letter in the head and you had to type this letter quicky in the keyboard to beat him .

[@retrononame]

Hm, I'm not sure but could it be the "The Oracle's Cave"?

[@donny121able]

@@retrononame a shame that you take your time to reply but don't get the same respect.

[@alex2005nnov]

Хороший был год ;-)

[@retrononame]

It was indeed. Thanks for watching!

[@314159265mangler]

‘88 and ‘89 were my favourite gaming years on the speccy. Good times!

[@johnny5805]

Why is the music turned off in some games shown ? Like Target Renegade and Bionic Commando to name two ?

[@markenetube]

Wasn't amazing what they could squeeze out of 48k! Some of those still look playable today.

[@andrewclark8630]

Makes me feel ashamed of making fun of the Spectrum when I was at school. I had a C64 and at that time I thought it was much better - but in a way, it wasn't; the C64 didn't have such high res graphics and its microprocessor didn't have the clout to do these 3D games you have here.

[@retrononame]

Ah the famous "Spectrum vs. C64 war" :) If we are perfectly honest, both machines were great. Spectrum got faster CPU and (for me) nicer colours. But the sound was horrible and most games suffered the notorious "colour clash". C64 had much nicer sound/music and hardware sprites that Spectrum lacked. If you had C64 back in the 80s, then stay tuned - I'm gonna cover the Commodore games here as well.

[@andrewclark8630]

@@retrononame We ribbed one boy mercilessly because he had an Amstrad 664 - actually, his was probably the best of all! Some of the games here have music - was that on a later version of the Spectrum?

[@retrononame]

Amstrad CPC was a nice machine indeed. Otherwise, it was possible to do background music in games on spectrum with a bit of "creative programming" but the quality was not the best (it only got a small speaker for sound) - especially if compared to something like C64 with its dedicated sound chip.

[@archieil]

@@retrononame Amstrad had cool graphic modes but too weak CPU to use them and no graphic acceleration. ZX was average or poor in everything but the result was unexpectedly cool. Using modern tools and no memory, storage limits Amstrad would be a powerful platform also for games. In 80s it was nowhere as on a professional market it was wasted because of 3" floppies and for games had a very narrow field of operation. and the most important factor... it was soon in a price range of 16 bit machines without their benefits. the main price was floppy and memory in 80s... with memory prices going down 16 bit machines were easily winning at the end of 80s with 8-bit one./Amstrad was somewhat in a price range of 16-bit PCs trying to compete in 8-bit market and was wining its place only because of software the platform was able to acquire in its early years. It soon was obvious that software for 8-bit was not smaller than for 16-bits and most tasks requires 16 or even more bits. 32 bits were minimum target for home PCs and 64 won only because there is no real reasons to cut down bits when memory access needs 64 of them.

[@alkolove1]

У C64 есть режим 320х200. Что касается микропроцессора, то производительность mos6502 не сильно отстаёт от Z80, ибо меньше тактов расходуется на команду. Тем более у спектрума нелинейная видеопамять, ещё и с оффсетом, так что тут ещё под вопросом, где 3Д игры тормознее.

[@donny121able]

The spectrum wasn't the best but is by far the most nostalgic and churned out many classics. Was easier to program the spectrum but you had to be a wizard to cram it all into 48k.

[@Jasonm25870]

3-D Batman by Ocean was 1986

[@retrononame]

Yes, was my mistake (I included the wrong Batman game). Someone already mentioned it. I also edited the video description and added a note about it. Thanks for watching!

[@bobzeepl]

Captain blood? what the hell was happening there? :D

[@VeggieManUK]

Bionic Commando sure does not look like I remember, even on the Speccy, weird.

[@ocelete74]

Seems a good video, but to put the ice in the cake it should be in 4:3 instead 16:9

[@retrononame]

I started using the correct aspect ratio in later videos. I also plan to revisit these early videos and "remaster" them (with correct aspect ration and by fixing some mistakes I made). Thanks for watching!

[@johnwheelan3703]

I used to play a ZX spectrum game, that was a man walking on a yellow grid and they would walk away from me. Add the other end of the grid where the man was walking to. There are numbered doors. When you died a wizard brought you back. All he was was a drawing of a round face, with spiky hair all over his head. Does anyone know the name of this game?

[@veronicaporras9246]

5:25

[@sethterran2492]

Quazatron? 🤔

[@allanm6246]

How the hell did programmers get the Spectrum to scroll the screen?

[@retrononame]

It was quite an achievement, yes :)

[@edgepixel8467]

How the hell did programmers get Elite on the NES?

[@archieil]

6144 bytes of screen memory comparing to 8k in C-64 or Atari :-), and I think that about 16k in Amstrad. A very fast routines using illegal ways of programming ;-)... outside of games they would lost theirs job using these tricks ;-).

[@blatherskite3009]

@@edgepixel8467 That wouldn't have been _too_ difficult because Elite started out as a BBC Micro game, and the Beeb used a 6502 CPU, same as the NES. The NES was clocked a little slower than the Beeb (1.79MHz vs 2MHz) but that's the only difference. Neither machine was built to do 3D wireframe graphics. And Elite was surprisingly compact in size because all those galaxies were procedural :)

[@donny121able]

Scrolling is a trick of the imagination, the processor works hard to deceive. Tight programming is essential not like today where you can be sloppy and get away with it.

[@jaimeken1707]

muy corto short

[@eagle_3388]

человек сделавший это видео никогда не держал в руках спектрум? картинка растянута, спектрум как бы не 16:9 картинку имеет.

[@salvoognibene8054]

Jesus... I guess the worst games!

[@user-pk7mb9is1e]

i didnt like dizzy games