What's your favourite Steve Turner Spectrum game?

Mark R. Jones · May 2013

To celebrate Steve Turner joining us here at WOS I thought we'd see what your favourite game by him is.

The only one missing from this photo is 'Ivan 'Ironman' Stewart's Super Off Road' released by Virgin, so don't let the fact it's not in the photo put you off if that's the one you'd like to vote for.

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekpub.cgi?regexp=^Steve+Turner$

I didn't include 'Zynaps' as, as far I know, Steve only made the music.

I voted for 'Dragontorc'. I loved Steve's games as a kid and it was seeing his games and those of others that made me want to start to work in the games industry. Without people like him I never would have got to work at 'Ocean'.

Rebelstar without a cause · May 2013

I've gone for Ranarama. I played that loads as a kid although I don't think I ever really knew what I was supposed to be doing!
I need to give Avalon a proper go as I've only played it briefly and found it really confusing!

Lee Tonks · May 2013

Ranarama for me too, although it was basically a coin-flip between that and Quazatron. :)

ramsrc · May 2013

Easy! Dragontorc is the hands down winner (IMHO).

Avalon was good, but Dragontorc was a masterpiece.

Retrobrothers · May 2013

I went for 3D Lunattack.

I played it to death back in the day, it was a real example of early 3D gaming that balanced the playability with the graphics.

The radar scanner, the changing colours, the dab-tanks... ah it was as if I was really on the moon blowing up the alien scum!

Also - I give it kudos for the humorous spoken piece between you and your mission commander that was on side-B of the tape. :razz:

"And what is this knob sir?"
"That... is your cigar lighter...."

Great stuff!

DavidB · May 2013

Ranarama + 3D Seidab ... basically as I only owned those two - and liked them both :-)

judasEZT · May 2013

Ranarama for me too.

If I would have older in 1984-86 Im sure I would have played Seiddabs and Avalons properly..

Jumping Stack · May 2013

Intensity - a great piece of programming that makes busy work into a strategy - it helps that I'm good at it. The design of the game is Andrew Braybrook's, and I guess Steve did the masterful conversion to the Spectrum.
This game stands the test of time very well and would make a good mobile phone app today.
I like the look of Astroclone, which I have never played. Steve seems to think it misfired with the critics, and so was under-rated, and so that's the one I'm tempted to fire up.

joefish · May 2013

Quazatron, by a country mile. Great mix of two game styles, and really looked the business. The sub-game may not have been his invention but the implementation was great.

Sokurah · May 2013

As much as I love Avalon, Dragontorc and the fantastic Quazatron I went for 3D Seiddab Attack as I was totally wowed by the immersive 3D effect.

...and this on the 16K Spectrum too. Amazing, I've played it lots and I still like to play it. It's a real "just pick it up and play it right away" game.

rich_chandler · May 2013

Dragontorc.

introspec · May 2013

It was definitely Quazatron for me, because it looked very impressive and because I loved the minigame.

Paul van der Laan · May 2013

Quazatron most definitely for me: very playable (love the minigame!), and beautiful isometric graphics. Even though it was inspired by Paradroid, it still is a very good game on its own.

Followed very closely by Ranarama . Also beautiful graphics and very playable. Although I never managed to get beyond dungeon 3 or 4 where I would be killed by wizards almost instantly. When that happened I'd be too weak to take any of the other enemies too. So I suspect something was not completely balanced in the difficulty level...

I like Intensity a lot too.

leespoons · May 2013

Abstaining until I've sat down and spent some time playing Avalon, Dragontorc and Quazatron, as to my shame I've never played any of them properly.

Rana Rama is fantastic though.

judasEZT · May 2013

Paul van der Laan wrote: »

Followed very closely by Ranarama When that happened I'd be too weak to take any of the other enemies too. So I suspect something was not completely balanced in the difficulty level...

Is beatable.. In its time Ive progressed very much. And in emulation era Ive finished.

Completely hooking, charming.. frenetic and puzzling at same time.

I suppose thats what Paradroid was for commies,.. for me that feeling came with Ranarama.

Jmk · May 2013

Astroclone edges it for me. That realisation when you suddenly figure out what it's about, that there's more to this game, that the bases are persistent and linked as part of a story arc. The arcade shooting bit is, in fact, just the surface.

Bangstick · May 2013

Personally, Quazatron narrowly pips Ranarama. Love both games, but where as Ranarama is sort of a Gauntlet derivative, Quazatron is, Paradroid aside, it's own thing. And then there's the isometric graphics.

I've often wondered why Graftgold went on to make Paradroid'90 instead of Quazatron'90. Quazatron was definitely the better game of the two, and had more scope for improvement (e.g. push scrolling -> smooth scrolling, fixed view isometric graphics -> multiple view isometric etc etc).

beanz · May 2013

I went with Avalon though it's pretty much 50/50 with dragontorc

Ivanzx · May 2013

Jmk wrote: »

Astroclone edges it for me. That realisation when you suddenly figure out what it's about, that there's more to this game, that the bases are persistent and linked as part of a story arc. The arcade shooting bit is, in fact, just the surface.

You are all tempting me to buy the game in ebay and give it a try! :)

deadpan666 · May 2013

Astroclone for me too...I would have picked Dragontorc, but although I love it I never really got very far in the game. With Astroclone, I was able to progress at a steady pace and it just all seemed to click better with me! :)

joefish · May 2013

I liked the idea of a shoot-em-up based adventure, but I found neither the adventure side nor the shoot-em-up side very satisfying. There was an RPG/Shmup hybrid on the GBA, but it just used the shmup side for 'random battles' - which is the most revolting 'game' mechanic anyone ever conceived of.

dm_boozefreek · May 2013

Astroclone.

Wasted hours on this as a kid, and I still like to have the odd blast every now and then.

Morkin · May 2013

Difficult one, but went for Avalon in the end.

I don't know why a lot people don't like Magnetron, I always thought it was pretty good.

Muig · May 2013

Dragontorc. Quazatron was very playable, but Dragontorc stands out for me.

Atmospheric, complex yet accessible, clever, ambitious, with good graphics, decent sound and a great tune. With that little Servant/cursor that you used to pick up and combine objects, Steve Turner deserves credit for creating a point and click arcade adventure on the Spectrum: was it (along with Avalon) the first of its kind?

It felt 'big', even though I only scratched the surface of it: I barely got out of the Vaults of Locris. Perhaps that was its only downfall, being rather difficult. Remember the tension of rummaging for the correct item in your backpack, while you could hear the crunching footsteps of advancing skeletons just off-screen?

Even as a lad I could tell that this was feat of programming that put it ahead of its time: a very different game from Knight Lore but on a pedestal with it as an achievement.

Hell, he even managed to pack in an arcade sub-game!

fog · May 2013

none of em, I preferred his c64 work ;) .

http://www.lemon64.com/games/list.php?musician=Steve+Turner joking aside selling wise quazatron ALWAYS does well if I have a spare one that I list.

I'd left for c64 land just after uridium was released on speccy , so it would be have to be either Ivan Ironman or Rainbow islands (if he worked on it ? ) . I wished they had done far more arcade conversions also, as they proved like others they were good at them multi-format.. (might have saved us from some of the PAP us gold etc churned out)

Mark R. Jones · May 2013

Steve didn't work on 'Rainbow Islands'

LCD · May 2013

Qazatron was excellent. Iron man too, but 3D Seiddab Attack was simply outstanding at that time, so I voted for that.

fog · May 2013

Mark R Jones wrote: »

Steve didn't work on 'Rainbow Islands'

I wasn't referring only to the spectrum, since they worked on multi-formats .. much like a few folk on here would say "WHO ?" I mentioned Mr Braybrook :D

check the credits for the amiga version of rainbow islands Mr ocean ;)

www.lemonamiga.com/?game_id=884

it easily rates alongside Iron man as an amazing multi format conversion..

Zagreb · May 2013

I've only played a couple of his games for any real length of time so I'm not properly qualified to vote really but I went for Rana Rama because it's ace and does interesting things with a Gauntlet-style game.

And even though it's unrelated to the quality of the game, I love its cover art with the blue and yellow frog.

WhenIWasCruel · May 2013

i hate steve turner. he prefers the brownodore over the speccy.

(i've voted for ironman).

Mark R. Jones · May 2013

fog wrote: »

check the credits for the amiga version of rainbow islands Mr ocean ;)

www.lemonamiga.com/?game_id=884

it easily rates alongside Iron man as an amazing multi format conversion..

This thread is about Spectrum games, check the title of it, as is the forum. Doesnt matter if he worked on the Amiga version, its not relevant to this thread.

And my name is Mr Jones, not Mr Ocean.

What's your favourite Steve Turner Spectrum game?

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