1989-2019
Ok Ok maybe this is going a bit far now, but here's another year to look back on the games from 30 years ago and tear into them, or give occasional praise if you so desire.
Have fun, here's a few from 1989 I wrote a while back, but have to have something to start the ball rolling ;)
Batman: The Movie
I never understood why this game got the praise it did, it's another boring multi-level format Ocean license.
The first level is a pretty bog standard platformer.
Then a driving level which is pretty crap, some fun twists like grappling lampposts to turn quickly. Why it doesn't rip batmans arm off I don't know?
Solve a crappy puzzle thing.
The Batplane to stop the balloon full of poison gas, boring, and super unfair in places.
...and the last level back to bog standard generic platforming.
Not a great game on the Speccy, but I remember some of my friends practically cumming their pants over the Amiga version at the time, which was exactly the same shite game with a lick of paint. A year or so later Sunsoft managed to make a version for the Megadrive with better levels, gameplay, and graphics, but it was still average at best.
Not a good game, and the rose tinted spex are off for one of those later Speccy title type explanations, budget houses were bringing out better games than this in 1989, and charging between 1/5th-1/3rd of the price for them.
.....and what makes this a really sad state affairs is that Ocean brought out Batman: Caped Crusader a year before this game, and it was great, pretty much 2 games in one, and both way more involved in the Batman Universe than this tosh. Sh*t! Even John Ritmans nonesensical iso-3D Batman was a pleasure compared to this pile of steaming nob!....and I hate iso-3D games!
2/5
Heartbroken
The 36th Chamber of Shoa Lin is possibly my favourite kung Fu movie of all time starring Chia-Hui Liu (Pai Mei from kill Bill) as San Te the Shoa Lin monk who was eventually responsible for the creation of the 36th chamber of Shoa Lin. It tells the story of how he came to end up at Shoa Lin and how he progressed through the ranks to become a Kung Fu master in a very short time. The movie was directed by the Shaw Brothers who have been making fine kung Fu movies for years and years and years.
However for how much I like the Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies Heartbroken was not written by them. It was written by the Shaw brothers, but not the Kung Fu movie makers. No The Shaw brothers I'm on about aren't responsible for a single Kung Fu movie as far as I can tell. They are however responsible for making Atlantis Software considerably less **** than it was.
Heartbroken is a medieval arcade adventure and features absolutely no Kung Fu what so ever! It does however feature magic spells, trolls, ogres, knights, a dragon, an evil warlock, and of course the obligatory damsel in distress.
The game is quite simple and features the Shaw Brothers usual style of extremely nice looking but minimally animated sprites. I'm still quite in awe how they always have these sprites in their games that have about 2 or 3 frames of animation total, and still manage to make them look and move very nicely. It's pretty much the same story with all their games, and it's not a bad thing at all.
Anyway Merlin has retired and buggered off, but he was nice and left you his Spellbook. Of course the doddering old sod didn't hand it to you, he just casually dropped it off somewhere near the starting screen. The idea of the game is obviously to rescue the princess from the warlock, and this involves you having to find the ingredients to stick into the cauldron to make a key to unlock her cell. Of course first you have to find the spell book, and then you have to be standing in front of the cauldron to use the spells. There is one thing which is quite shady here, and that is just how deviously hidden the cauldron is on the first adventure (There is actually a clue on the cover of the game itself, but the solution may not be obvious right away). First adventure I hear you say? Yes to call yourself a master of this game you have to complete it 3 times in a row. There's no saves after you complete an adventure so you literally do have to play through them all in a row (Or at least you did before emulation).
Sounds daunting, but actually once you know what you're doing you can play through all 3 probably in less than an hour. I did it before I reviewed this game, and it's very easy to do actually.
The game is a flick screen affair with ladders and platforms you can't jump in this game, but to be honest you don't really need to, of course in this day and age a game like this without a jump seems a little unnatural, but it works. Anyway if you did have a jump the game would be way too easy.
There isn't really a lot of love for this game, but personally I think it's a delightful distraction, and for an arcade adventure it's quite lite really, and it's not too taxing. I also like the style of the enemies, and it's apparent that the Shaw Brothers are fans of Ghosts n' Goblins. It could be coincidence, but the ogres, and the ghost demons look a little too familiar to have not been influenced by Capcom's insanely difficult platformer.
The game does suffer from one considerable flaw but it's easily avoidable and that is very rarely the ogres will be invincible, and just keep coming at you no matter how many times you shoot them. This can be remedied by leaving the screen then re-entering it, as this problem never seems to happen twice in a row. Another annoyance is that Ghost Demons have a habit of making a beeline for you when you're climbing a ladder. You can't shoot while your on a ladder, so this becomes frustrating sometimes. The final problem I find is that occasionally the collision detection can be a little off at times, it's not totally ridiculous, but it is noticeable at times that you died unfairly.
These problems aside the game is fun to play, and as I've said not really too taxing. One thing I like in this game that adds a tiny amount of strategy (but not much really) is that to use a magic spell you have to sacrifice your score so you may have to go and grind a little if you don't have enough points to cast a spell. The graphics for the scenery are nice, colourful and quite detailed, and the game even has an ending. The end sequence is pretty simple and nothing special at all really, but at least the effort was made to add an ending.
Once you complete adventure 1 if you choose to continue, adventure 2, and 3 are basically "Arrange Modes". The items are in different places, the enemies are tougher, and it costs more points to cast your spells.
All in all a simple, fun, and colourful arcade adventure, that I enjoyed when I was 10 years old, and still enjoy now. Along with Superkid, and Hop n' Chop this is one of my fave Shaw Brothers games, it may not be the best arcade adventure ever, but it was £1.99 well spent, and I think I may still have my original tape somewhere?
4/5
Werewolves of London
This was actually a fun game with some great features, and some surprisingly violent imagery for a time when such things were quite frowned upon by stuffy nosed politicians, and PC-Brigade types.
It was quite a fun game, and actually looked, and sounded pretty decent.
But no sorry, any game that is released in a bugged form that is impossible to finish because of said bug is a piece of sh*t.
No POKEs, or bug fixed releases forthcoming makes it even worse, a complete an utter failure of what would have been an otherwise really good and atmospheric game.
It's a shame, because if it wasn't broken I'd have gave it a 3 or a 4....
1/5
Astro Marine Corps
Gronf! Gronf! Gronf!
4/5
Cabal
Average yet coin munching beast of an arcade machine, gets a pretty decent conversion.
I'll give it 3 since the Speccy version even though brutally difficult still is actually easier than the arcade version which is pathetically difficult, and not that much fun once you get past about level 2, and use a credit roughly every 8 seconds.
But in the age of emulators I've discovered that the arcade is really not that fun, the levels are a bit crap, and the bosses are very unimaginative. I get the impression TAD weren't expecting people to ever get to the end of the game in the arcades, as the game actually becomes worse as it progresses.
Surely in that case it's not the Speccy's fault that it's version is actually also quite dull?
3/5
Moonwalker
B*llocks of the highest order!
Cursed IP even at the time, the arcade game was sh*t! The home computer versions of the game were all sh*t, regardless of system! I mean it also doesn't help that the actual movie it was all based on was also complete sh*t! Not to mention a creepy ego trip for the ever skin tonally challenged "King of Pop".
About a year later Sega managed to make a semi-serviceable platformer for the Megadrive/Genesis, and Master System.
But that doesn't save this heap of crap from anything.
Best thing to do now is drink a King Size can of "Jesus Juice" call up my 14 year old friend Gavin for a sleepover, and take a fistful of horse tranquilizers.
What a party!
.....Did I go too far?
1/5
Rick Dangerous
An exercise in memorization, so much so independent researchers have tagged this game as a possible preventative stimulative method of slowing the progression of dementia.
3/5
Turbo Cup
More like 2 girls 1 cup.
Or at least there's just as much sh*t involved.
1/5
Have fun, here's a few from 1989 I wrote a while back, but have to have something to start the ball rolling ;)
Batman: The Movie
I never understood why this game got the praise it did, it's another boring multi-level format Ocean license.
The first level is a pretty bog standard platformer.
Then a driving level which is pretty crap, some fun twists like grappling lampposts to turn quickly. Why it doesn't rip batmans arm off I don't know?
Solve a crappy puzzle thing.
The Batplane to stop the balloon full of poison gas, boring, and super unfair in places.
...and the last level back to bog standard generic platforming.
Not a great game on the Speccy, but I remember some of my friends practically cumming their pants over the Amiga version at the time, which was exactly the same shite game with a lick of paint. A year or so later Sunsoft managed to make a version for the Megadrive with better levels, gameplay, and graphics, but it was still average at best.
Not a good game, and the rose tinted spex are off for one of those later Speccy title type explanations, budget houses were bringing out better games than this in 1989, and charging between 1/5th-1/3rd of the price for them.
.....and what makes this a really sad state affairs is that Ocean brought out Batman: Caped Crusader a year before this game, and it was great, pretty much 2 games in one, and both way more involved in the Batman Universe than this tosh. Sh*t! Even John Ritmans nonesensical iso-3D Batman was a pleasure compared to this pile of steaming nob!....and I hate iso-3D games!
2/5
Heartbroken
The 36th Chamber of Shoa Lin is possibly my favourite kung Fu movie of all time starring Chia-Hui Liu (Pai Mei from kill Bill) as San Te the Shoa Lin monk who was eventually responsible for the creation of the 36th chamber of Shoa Lin. It tells the story of how he came to end up at Shoa Lin and how he progressed through the ranks to become a Kung Fu master in a very short time. The movie was directed by the Shaw Brothers who have been making fine kung Fu movies for years and years and years.
However for how much I like the Shaw Brothers Kung Fu movies Heartbroken was not written by them. It was written by the Shaw brothers, but not the Kung Fu movie makers. No The Shaw brothers I'm on about aren't responsible for a single Kung Fu movie as far as I can tell. They are however responsible for making Atlantis Software considerably less **** than it was.
Heartbroken is a medieval arcade adventure and features absolutely no Kung Fu what so ever! It does however feature magic spells, trolls, ogres, knights, a dragon, an evil warlock, and of course the obligatory damsel in distress.
The game is quite simple and features the Shaw Brothers usual style of extremely nice looking but minimally animated sprites. I'm still quite in awe how they always have these sprites in their games that have about 2 or 3 frames of animation total, and still manage to make them look and move very nicely. It's pretty much the same story with all their games, and it's not a bad thing at all.
Anyway Merlin has retired and buggered off, but he was nice and left you his Spellbook. Of course the doddering old sod didn't hand it to you, he just casually dropped it off somewhere near the starting screen. The idea of the game is obviously to rescue the princess from the warlock, and this involves you having to find the ingredients to stick into the cauldron to make a key to unlock her cell. Of course first you have to find the spell book, and then you have to be standing in front of the cauldron to use the spells. There is one thing which is quite shady here, and that is just how deviously hidden the cauldron is on the first adventure (There is actually a clue on the cover of the game itself, but the solution may not be obvious right away). First adventure I hear you say? Yes to call yourself a master of this game you have to complete it 3 times in a row. There's no saves after you complete an adventure so you literally do have to play through them all in a row (Or at least you did before emulation).
Sounds daunting, but actually once you know what you're doing you can play through all 3 probably in less than an hour. I did it before I reviewed this game, and it's very easy to do actually.
The game is a flick screen affair with ladders and platforms you can't jump in this game, but to be honest you don't really need to, of course in this day and age a game like this without a jump seems a little unnatural, but it works. Anyway if you did have a jump the game would be way too easy.
There isn't really a lot of love for this game, but personally I think it's a delightful distraction, and for an arcade adventure it's quite lite really, and it's not too taxing. I also like the style of the enemies, and it's apparent that the Shaw Brothers are fans of Ghosts n' Goblins. It could be coincidence, but the ogres, and the ghost demons look a little too familiar to have not been influenced by Capcom's insanely difficult platformer.
The game does suffer from one considerable flaw but it's easily avoidable and that is very rarely the ogres will be invincible, and just keep coming at you no matter how many times you shoot them. This can be remedied by leaving the screen then re-entering it, as this problem never seems to happen twice in a row. Another annoyance is that Ghost Demons have a habit of making a beeline for you when you're climbing a ladder. You can't shoot while your on a ladder, so this becomes frustrating sometimes. The final problem I find is that occasionally the collision detection can be a little off at times, it's not totally ridiculous, but it is noticeable at times that you died unfairly.
These problems aside the game is fun to play, and as I've said not really too taxing. One thing I like in this game that adds a tiny amount of strategy (but not much really) is that to use a magic spell you have to sacrifice your score so you may have to go and grind a little if you don't have enough points to cast a spell. The graphics for the scenery are nice, colourful and quite detailed, and the game even has an ending. The end sequence is pretty simple and nothing special at all really, but at least the effort was made to add an ending.
Once you complete adventure 1 if you choose to continue, adventure 2, and 3 are basically "Arrange Modes". The items are in different places, the enemies are tougher, and it costs more points to cast your spells.
All in all a simple, fun, and colourful arcade adventure, that I enjoyed when I was 10 years old, and still enjoy now. Along with Superkid, and Hop n' Chop this is one of my fave Shaw Brothers games, it may not be the best arcade adventure ever, but it was £1.99 well spent, and I think I may still have my original tape somewhere?
4/5
Werewolves of London
This was actually a fun game with some great features, and some surprisingly violent imagery for a time when such things were quite frowned upon by stuffy nosed politicians, and PC-Brigade types.
It was quite a fun game, and actually looked, and sounded pretty decent.
But no sorry, any game that is released in a bugged form that is impossible to finish because of said bug is a piece of sh*t.
No POKEs, or bug fixed releases forthcoming makes it even worse, a complete an utter failure of what would have been an otherwise really good and atmospheric game.
It's a shame, because if it wasn't broken I'd have gave it a 3 or a 4....
1/5
Astro Marine Corps
Gronf! Gronf! Gronf!
4/5
Cabal
Average yet coin munching beast of an arcade machine, gets a pretty decent conversion.
I'll give it 3 since the Speccy version even though brutally difficult still is actually easier than the arcade version which is pathetically difficult, and not that much fun once you get past about level 2, and use a credit roughly every 8 seconds.
But in the age of emulators I've discovered that the arcade is really not that fun, the levels are a bit crap, and the bosses are very unimaginative. I get the impression TAD weren't expecting people to ever get to the end of the game in the arcades, as the game actually becomes worse as it progresses.
Surely in that case it's not the Speccy's fault that it's version is actually also quite dull?
3/5
Moonwalker
B*llocks of the highest order!
Cursed IP even at the time, the arcade game was sh*t! The home computer versions of the game were all sh*t, regardless of system! I mean it also doesn't help that the actual movie it was all based on was also complete sh*t! Not to mention a creepy ego trip for the ever skin tonally challenged "King of Pop".
About a year later Sega managed to make a semi-serviceable platformer for the Megadrive/Genesis, and Master System.
But that doesn't save this heap of crap from anything.
Best thing to do now is drink a King Size can of "Jesus Juice" call up my 14 year old friend Gavin for a sleepover, and take a fistful of horse tranquilizers.
What a party!
.....Did I go too far?
1/5
Rick Dangerous
An exercise in memorization, so much so independent researchers have tagged this game as a possible preventative stimulative method of slowing the progression of dementia.
3/5
Turbo Cup
More like 2 girls 1 cup.
Or at least there's just as much sh*t involved.
1/5
Every night is curry night!
Comments
Wow, you wrote all those games? ;)
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
Yeah I also wrote the 128k version of Steve Davis Snooker, several Atari titles back in the day, and I also wrote a song called Hey Hey 16k :p
Author of A Yankee in Iraq, a 50 fps shoot-’em-up—the first game to utilize the floating bus on the +2A/+3,
and zasm Z80 Assembler syntax highlighter.
Member of the team that discovered, analyzed, and detailed the floating bus behavior on the ZX Spectrum +2A/+3.
A few Spectrum game fixes.
Games List 2016 - Games List 2015 - Games List 2014
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
Canyon Warrior
This is a typical scroll down shoot em up. The graphics are nice a detailed as are the landscapes, which scroll very nicely. But there is nothing original or special about this game. The reward economy is a bit tight, as it takes ages to find power ups and extra shields. Shooting whole waves doesn't give you anything, you just have to get to a certain point. Which for an amateur shoot 'em up player like me makes it a little hard and gets a bit repetitive. All in all a nice game, well written but doesn't stand out in the croud.
2/5
@luny@mstdn.games
https://www.luny.co.uk
That's what I call a review.
Mixing beat'em up's and maze games, like Saboteur. Neat graphics.
3/5
A charming mix of colour clash and blocky animation - multiscrolling and thick with monsters.
3,5/5
A strange Dinamic game in which it's hard to die and there aren't colourful but clashy graphics, they're in fact small and monochrome.
Your character is an agile guy jumping, clinging and climbing with ease while collecting power up's and annihilating dozen of monsters.
It's playable. Dunno if it can hold one's interest for long though.
3/5
Cautious and moderately paced vertical shoot'em up.
3/5
Cute verb-noun text adventure with gangsters and killings in prohibition time.
3,75/5
Fairly acceptable Boulderdash clone.
3/5
The platform levels perhaps but the 3D driving sections (batmobile and batwing) were amazing for the time and machine in question , the A500.
I didn't know about it then but the programmer behind those is the same that worked on Chase HQ for the Spectrum. Somehow I had a dejá-vu feeling and right it was!
The sampled speech used from the film and some screens also enhanced the cinematic experience of the game.
Don't forget the Bat-pack helped commodore to sell many A500.
IMHO, maybe one of the last few really great movie computer-game adaptations.
Possibly one of the best arcade conversions on the Speccy, NZS revolves around Tiki the Kiwi's quest to release his friends who have been kidnapped by a walrus and hidden around the island. This involves guiding Tiki, who is initially armed with a bow and arrow around a maze of platforms while shooting or avoiding various enemies until he reaches a cage with a Kiwi within. One boss fight later and one of his friends, hopefully, is free, hooray. Then it's on to next even harder level to do it all again.
Cute cartoony graphics, a nice bouncy in-game tune and oodles of playability make this a:
5/5
Comic/parody management sim where, in the role of a struggling manager, you have to put together a band, or just choose to manage a solo artist and lead them to stardom and the ultimate goal of collecting four platinum discs within the calendar year.
After deciding how many artists you want (from 1-4) it is onto the screening room where you see caricatures of a variety of pop stars from the time and their wage demands. You then choose a name and then it's on tour until they get such a following that various record companies chase your signature. Once you get a deal you can then record an album and watch as it and its singles race up the top 10, or not.
As well as all of that, there are the occasional scandal to deal with, as well as record pirates, diva demands from your stars and the risk of killing one of your acts if a publicity stunt goes wrong,
It gets a bit repetitive after a while but it is still quite fun.
3.5/5
A minor Hewson release, that is a simple top view maze game mixed with Mastertronic's Pippo.
It's very playable, it's colourful, and it's in my top 10 games from 1989.
4/5
The best football game on the spectrum.
Great graphics, fiddly controls and an annoying speed loader which would often fail to load the individual levels. It's also one of the few games I managed to complete and for some reason I really love it.
One of my favourite spectrum games ever.
5/5
There's a good game in there somewhere. And those graphics - wow! But why didn't somebody playtest it! It's no fun being swarmed by tons of enemies with no way of avoiding them!
2/5
Excellent horizontally scrolling shooter particularly with 2 players. Whoever takes control of the jeep has got the harder job and will need to rely on the helicopter to keep the path clear. The jeep can jump and fire in 2 directions so it's far from useless and is a lot more fun to play as in my opinion.
A great, not too tricky shoot-em-up that never seems to get the recognition it deserves.
5/5
Needs a lot of practice.
After the game's loaded, there's a massive pause before it starts where you'll think the game's crashed. Eventually the game will start and you'll wish it had crashed! Look at that screenshot, looks thrilling eh? And that's about as exciting as it gets. Everything you do takes ages and really isn't worth it as you don't seem to be able to improve your team at all. This really is an absolute turd of a management game.
1/5
A decent version of the Sega classic. Some of the colour schemes are horrific though, particularly the yellow and red on level two. And why is it if I'm using a joystick I still have to use the keyboard to buy items from shops?
4/5
Some great games were still being released in this year.... and Renegade 3.
The most interesting thing about this game is the cheat mode which turns you into a bottle of banana milk! It almost makes the game worth playing, but not quite.
3/5
Don Priestley's masterpiece. You have to find the pieces of Gregory's alarm clock in order to wake from a surreal dream world.
5/5