StewartyMac Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Commodore 64 snobs need not apply. Get yer ain thread. The humble ZX Spectrum, an 80s micro computer that should, on the face of it, never have worked. Awful keyboard, sound capabilties of a couple of tin cans, and horrendous color clash when colours got within a few pixels of each other, it was a technical basket case. But it was an amazing wee machine. And the games, oaft the games. Somehow bedroom programmers got the absolute most out of just 48k of memory and all its other limitations to produce thousands of games, many of which are still playable 40 or so years later. So, what were YOUR five favourite games on the machine? Almost impossible to narrow it down to five, but here's my best effort. 1. Skool Daze 2. Manic Miner 3. Chuckie Egg 4. Football Manager 5. Hyper Sports Honourable mention to Match Day 2, Red Moon, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, Jet Pac, Jet Set Willy, Trashman, Great Escape, Daley Thompsons Decathlon, and Wanted:Monty Mole. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 I didn't have a lot of money for games back in the Spectrum days, so my favourites will likely be substantially different to most folk! Also, imagine the youngsters looking at these screenshots and wondering why we ever bothered. Robocop Batman: The Movie Striker Soccer Star Software House 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Kersey Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Rock Star Ate My Hamster Jet Set Willy Turbo Esprit Elite Renegade 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarto Mutiny Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Jet Set Willy Football Manager Chase HQ Elite The New Zealand Story 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shandon Par Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Horace Goes Skiing x5 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cardinal Richelieu Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 (edited) Any list of Spectrum games that doesn't have Bak 2 Skool / Skool Daze in it deserves opprobrium. Two games that were far ahead of their time. Edited July 4, 2021 by Cardinal Richelieu 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 2 hours ago, Shandon Par said: Horace Goes Skiing x5 Mullarkey will fight you. The correct answer is "Horace and the Spiders". 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melanius Mullarkey Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Probably the most difficult and most important Top 5 ever. 1. Turbo Esprit. Essentially and early GTA. Good for just mowing down random folk on ladders. Lack of prozzies though. 2. Football Director. Even when The Double came along, this still pissed all over it. 3. Knight Lore. 3D GRAPHICS. 4. The Quill and The Illustrator. My first foray into creating pornographic adventure games. 5. Tracksuit Manager. Scotland World Cup semi finalists. Twice. f**k you Steve Clarke. Horace was great at the start but sadly, his usefulness faded as the years wore on. Sorry Horace. Many other honourable mentions including Back to Skool, International Matchday, Starquake, Death Chase, Full Throttle and Match Point. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Football Director just reminded me of Soccer Director - I used to get the two mixed up. Soccer Director was basically a betting game where you had ten years to own a majority stake in the top ten clubs in England. You bought and sold shares, put bets on which teams would win trophies or get relegated, and could sabotage teams by buying a small number of shares and calling for the manager to be sacked, which would invariably affect morale and performance if the team was doing well. Only a £2.99 budget title, but it was surprisingly complex for its time. I'm probably the only kid who bought and played it, but it made a nice change from the usual football management fare. Also, nobody's mentioned R-Type yet. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StewartyMac Posted July 4, 2021 Author Share Posted July 4, 2021 1 hour ago, Melanius Mullarkey said: 5. Tracksuit Manager. Scotland World Cup semi finalists. Twice. f**k you Steve Clarke. I always longed for a club version of that game, would have been epic at the time. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BFTD Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 12 minutes ago, StewartyMac said: I always longed for a club version of that game, would have been epic at the time. They made a Tracksuit Manager 2 years later that fit that criteria. Not much use to you now, I'm sure. Apparently there was also a Tracksuit Manager Europe released on the Speccy, but I've never heard of it before. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StewartyMac Posted July 4, 2021 Author Share Posted July 4, 2021 2 minutes ago, BFTD said: They made a Tracksuit Manager 2 years later that fit that criteria. Never released on the Speccy, I don't think. TSM Europe was released, but I never saw any screenshots or ads for it, far less played it. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Melanius Mullarkey Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Aye a club TSM would have been superb. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arthur Orton Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 59 minutes ago, BFTD said: They made a Tracksuit Manager 2 years later that fit that criteria. Not much use to you now, I'm sure. Apparently there was also a Tracksuit Manager Europe released on the Speccy, but I've never heard of it before. I ordered tracksuit manager 2 from a computer magazine last, but alas it never ever appeared. The first one was simplistic genius. Loved it. The Double was good also. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StewartyMac Posted July 4, 2021 Author Share Posted July 4, 2021 10 minutes ago, Tynierose said: The Double was good also. Easy route to success in The Double was to sign Clive Allen. Lethal in that game. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paul Kersey Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Surely this was the greatest football manager game... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ya Bezzer! Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 I can't get lower than 7! Atic Atak Tracksuit Manager Arkanoid Sabre Wulf Way of the Exploding Fist Skool Daze Gauntlet 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ya Bezzer! Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 In Tracksuit Manager it only had pre-loaded the England players so if you wanted to manage anyone else you had to enter all the names yourself. I'd usually go Scotland so easy enough but once I went Spain but didn't know any actually Spanish player names so I got a Thomson's holiday brochure and entered in all the holiday resort names as players. Lanzarote, Fuerteventura, Lloret de Mar etc. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Benjamin_Nevis Posted July 4, 2021 Share Posted July 4, 2021 Sabre Wulf (easily no 1) Jetpac Chuckie Egg 2 3D Lunattack The Oracle's Cave 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LongTimeLurker Posted July 5, 2021 Share Posted July 5, 2021 Had a ZX81. The 3D Monster Maze game seemed quite good at the time. Not sure if it got upgraded to a ZX-Spectrum version after that: Doing a computer science course at uni with a line printer and no monitor not long after that is about to launch me into kids today mode so better stop... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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