r/zxspectrum

The Greatest ZX Games?

The Greatest ZX Games?

I'm trying to get a curated list of the greatest ZX Spectrum games. Our website, 6502ish.com has a few ZX Spectrum games playable online, and I'd like to significant increase the number of games we have to offer. Any suggestions on a top 100?

u/6502ish-com — 6 hours ago

Turkiah pirate game casetteses

İ found in this two casettes in bursa antique bazaar in nilüfer halk pazarı (nilüfer halk pazarındaki antika pazarında buldum türk varsa diye yazıyorum)

Infiltrator - "Papers, please" (blog post)

I've written about the history of helicopter sim/stealth game Infiltrator and its development and reception. Including how its original developer Chris Gray got his start with Boulder Dash, and how the Spectrum version of Infiltrator was made by the company of Charles Cecil, who went on to Beneath a Steel Sky and Broken Sword

superchartisland.com
u/superchartisland — 21 hours ago
🔥 Hot ▲ 104 r/zxspectrum

forget ChatGPT, the speccy had AI back in 1985

For fun (well nostalgia) I was browsing some old Your Spectrum issues, and ran into this ad from the April 1985 one.

never knew we had all this already in 1985 🙂

I would like to dig up that book though (guessing it's probably online somewhere)

u/dolphin560 — 3 days ago

Original Vega+ Repair. Would appreciate ideas !

I've got one of the original Vega+ kickstarter handhelds but I recently realised that the up and left buttons on the d-pad aren't working.

If you can see the image it appears the fix is obvious as those two affected buttons don't seem to have any 'pads' on them so there's no connection to the motherboard.

Does anyone know if you can get these ?. I wouldn't know if they're supposed to be a specific make or material.

The idea was to have this as a bit of an investment since they're quite rare but if it's not fully working then it would have to be sold for parts and I'd lose a ton of money on it most likely.

u/Buck_Slamchest — 1 day ago
🔥 Hot ▲ 83 r/zxspectrum

Do you remember copying games from friends and hoping they’d actually work?

I remember getting a tape, loading it up, and sitting there watching the screen for ages not knowing if it would even run properly or just fail halfway through. When it did work it felt like a win, but when it didn’t you’d have no idea what went wrong. Anyone else remember that whole process? It was more like winning a lottery!

reddit.com
u/ScrollAndThink — 4 days ago
▲ 9 r/zxspectrum+1 crossposts

ZX Spectrum tape trap (0x0556) help needed

Hi all, I'm developing my own ZX Spectrum emulator in cC99 and I'm having endless issues with the LD_BYTES tape trap. If anyone has any experience I would greatly appreciate any help.

reddit.com
u/wokani — 1 day ago
🔥 Hot ▲ 69 r/zxspectrum

What if Nether Earth has the most influential game mechanics of all ZX Spectrum games?

So many features was unique and ahead of its time. It's perfectly playable even now. Tactics in realtime, programmable robots, drones, resource management....

u/BusyInitial6200 — 3 days ago

FREEZE-ZX issue 03 ready to buy!

FREEZE-ZX issue 03 is now available to buy from:

https://freeze64.com/freeze-zx-issue-3/

The issue includes a whole host of old and new #ZXspectrum content to enjoy. Stock is limited and so you’ll need to be quick to secure a copy.

#Speccy #Z80 #IndieGames #RetroGaming #RetroGames

u/FREEZE64 — 3 days ago
▲ 47 r/zxspectrum+1 crossposts

New ZX Spectrum Graphics Editor

Hi All

I've been working on a web-based graphics toolchain for Spectrum development. Looking for some feedback. No installation needed — runs in the browser.

https://zx-editor.vercel.app/sprite_editor

  Five integrated editors:

  - UDG Editor — Design your user-defined graphics with a pixel-perfect canvas,

  resizable up to the full UDG character budget

  - Player Sprite Editor — Create software sprites at 8x8, 16x16, 16x24 or 24x24

   pixels with full animation support (up to 32 frames), onion skinning, and

  real-time preview at 1–30 FPS

  - Scene Editor — Full 256×192 screen canvas (32×24 chars) for painting

  backgrounds and title screens

  - Tile Editor — Design reusable tiles at 8, 16 or 24 pixel sizes

  - Level Editor — Assemble levels from your tile library across multiple named

  screens

  Drawing tools throughout: pencil, line, flood fill, rubber, and pan

  (right-click drag works with any tool).

  Authentic Spectrum palette with per-character INK/PAPER/BRIGHT attribute

  control — it won't let you break the colour clash rules.

  Trace Image — load a reference PNG as a semi-transparent underlay to trace

  over. Drag, scale and adjust it independently of your artwork.

  Export to Z80 assembly directly. The sprite exporter has options for

  transparency masks (interleaved or separate blocks), all 8 pixel pre-shifts

  for smooth horizontal movement, and a lookup table for runtime frame/shift

  addressing.

  Save and load projects as JSON files between sessions.

reddit.com
u/norbsoft — 3 days ago

Trying to find an old spectrum game - driving me mad

Sank a ton of hours into a 48k game, can’t remember the name for the life of me! It was mid 80s and had probably been out for a while even then.

Single screen levels, I think you play as a cute robot character. Not a side or overhead view, kinda flat field of view.

Had to collect objects against a time limit then get to an exit - I think it may have been a depleting power supply?

Would love to play it again and take a trip down (48k) memory lane

reddit.com
u/CompleteSecret2681 — 5 days ago

Yes that's a troll .. and a "Dead Revenge" spell ..

Had a huge day yesterday and got a LOT done including implementing the Troll and a couple of the new spells.

All of the movement, including flying and shadow form, is done. All of the creatures can now be cast and all are fully animated identically to the original. All of the things that can be killed also throw up the corpses as well so you can use Raise Dead.

Subversion is also implemented as well.

I found some text in one of the breakdowns of the game that indicated some spells were planned for the game but left out, I assume, due to memory constraints so I decided to try and implement them.

Cast Dead Revenge on a creature and it essentially turns it in to a 'land mine'. You kill that creature and you die as well so you need to figure out if you can sacrifice one of your creatures to kill it or risk it and hope someone else does.

Cast Sleep and it puts the thing to sleep for a random number of turns. Maybe handy if you've got a Dragon up your behind :)

Blind is another one and that will "blind" the thing that's attacking you, or one of your creatures. It'll wander off in a random direction for a random number of turns because it can't "see" anything. Maybe useful for a rapid escape ..

I've still got about 25 spells left to implement with Dark Power being the big one so it's going to be a while yet but, as it stands, the game is actually fairly playable right now.

There will definitely be a point where I'll probably be looking for testers as well, although I've played the game myself for nearly 30 years so there's not much I don't know about it :)

u/Buck_Slamchest — 4 days ago

Dizzy Query

Someone here gonna know this.

Dizzy game, late in series. Available on at least ST. Title screen has a song using sampled voice, including repeated use of the phrase "my name's Dylan". Anyone know what I'm talking about?

reddit.com
u/spikeclipper — 3 days ago

Got a game that I can't remember and need help to identify

Okay, I remember a game that I used to play as a kid that came on one of the covertapes from either Your Sinclair or Sinclair User (definitely wasn't Crash).

What I remember about the game was it was a top down kind of shooter-maze-search-em-up kind of game where you drove a futuristic tank around a large map. The only other thing that I remember about the game was that you had an 'interaction' at the beginning with some woman?(maybe) at the games start.

Bear in mind that this is all I can remember and that this is (hopefully) not a fever dream that came into my head. I want to say that the game was either from Hewson Games or Melbourne House but that may just be my brain crossing wires and coming up with wrong answers.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? Anyone know what game this was as now that I woke up with the game in my head I just can't go on without playing it once again.

reddit.com
u/skiveman — 4 days ago

Trying to find a game I never got to play..

A request to help me unlock a core memory!

So the very first time I ever saw a spectrum was staying over at a friend’s house. It was a spectrum plus and after playing through his game collection we went into town and bought a new game to try from a shop. It was exciting for me at the time as we had a BBC Micro at home and the selection of games in shops was generally quite limited. So we get it home and try loading again and again from tape but can’t get it to work.

The game had a flying section that had a cockpit view followed by a run and gun section. I vaguely remember the plot being about infiltrating an enemy base. The cockpit view had a limited number of missiles.

The art and screenshots on the tape box looked incredible but I never got to play it! My friend did later get it to work but said it was disappointing- but I’d love to try it myself. Bonus if I can find it on tape to try with my speccy next (when it arrives).

reddit.com
u/kimondo — 5 days ago