Thank you so much for including my type in game. As a 14 year old in 1983 I was quite the playground celebrity for earning £30 from my game, terrible as it was (BTW the font was nicked from a Quicksilva game, 4D Timegate 😂😂😂)
I love this show. Found it a year again and have been working my way through the episodes. I have a KS2 Next on the way so have got right back into all things Spectrum. 👍
Another cracking episode guys. I spent many months saving up for white Lightening, convinced I was going to become a brilliant games designer. Sadly, that was not to be but hey Ho that’s life Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
My top ,most frustrating game was Airwolf, made even worse by me smashing my joystick into my desk, breaking my desk. I remember looking forward to playing it so much, but I couldnt even get past the first screen
V was another frustrating game - The very first screen of the game you have to decipher the alien code to open the door to explore the mother ship. It was a puzzle that would have alluded a lot of youngsters that had the game.
I loved Jungle Trouble and Jack & The Beanstalk. I am not a very patient person and don't like playing a game over and over, but I played both these games for hours.
City Connection... Never heard of (or gamed) it... But it looks like (later game)... CarVup by Core. But I, for some reason, loved CarVup. Played it on my ST, though it wasn't such a good game, but somehow I liked it...
Airwolf has got to be up there as the most rage inducing spectrum game, along with kokotoni wilf. I quite liked underwurlde, although playing it now really angries up the blood. I recall you could get past the guardians without the objects by getting an enemy to bounce you through the scenery as the collision detection glitched if you were close to where the guardian was stood. That phoenix game would be quite good if it was remade with a bit more polish, I like the concept. With the Kempston disk interface, with setting the step time in milliseconds do you just start from the fastest and work your way down until it works with a specific drives tolerances or does each drive have a set value that must be adhered to?
I love Underwurlde. One of my favourite Ultimate titles. For frustrating games you should try Dinky Digger by Postern (impossible to survive for me than a few seconds)or Molecule Man by Mastertronic (if you can survive for more than 30 seconds you’re a better man than I)
Great episode. I've never actually heard of City Connection before. I will have to check it out. Regarding annoyingly difficult games, they don't get much more infuriating than Lunar Jetman, Abu Simbel Profanation, and Airwolf.
You may be surprised to learn the team behind the rather broken Road Runner included Jim Bagley (Midnight Resistance, CABAL), Fred Grey (Renegade, Where Time Stood Still) and Dawn Drake (Robocop, Target: Renegade). RoseTintedSpectrum's TH-cam has a great review of this game in which Baggers admits there are collision detection bugs due to his "young nieve [sic] self trying to be too clever and make it a 3D collision", which assumedly never got fixed as U.S. Gold (being U.S. Gold) would rather release the unfinished product instead of, you know, maybe actually letting the team fix the bloody thing first.
Hi mate, where did you get your white 48k from and did games or do games once loaded actually use the full 48k of memory??? Great show again thanks Paul.
Got the white case from ZX Renew. Highly recommended, got loads of stuff from them. Games (usually) will just use the memory taken up by the code. So an 8k game will use 8k. Some games used the free memory for technical things like buffering the screen or randomly generating levels etc.
I have the Atari 2600 version of Road Runner, and it's better than both the speccy and arcade versions. There is a trick to it - Coyote only gets one of his things like a skateboard etc when he goes off screen.
Slap Fight was another really frustrating game - it was just so hard to see the bullets - it was close to being an amazing arcade conversion but was too hard for me.
@@geoffneil5073yep Slap Fight from Imagine Taito arcade conversion. It had really well defined graphics but was just too hard with the bullets being hard to pick out against the background.
@@jezz2k Ah I never thought of that since maze painting/filling/clearing was such a common mechanic in the early '80s and these two made that seem a minor part of their designs.
Frustrating games: I've seen videos of people completing Spiky Harold (Firebird) and Phantomas (Codemasters), both of which left me baffled. Also Deviants (Players), although that's mainly for the bomb defusing mini-game.
Games that are frustrating and annoying.... Let me think, from the vast Spectrum catalogue... Jumping Jack! Loved it, but by the gods it was frustrating.
Thank you so much for including my type in game. As a 14 year old in 1983 I was quite the playground celebrity for earning £30 from my game, terrible as it was (BTW the font was nicked from a Quicksilva game, 4D Timegate 😂😂😂)
I nicked the the font too! 🤣
Thanks for letting me use it :-)
Loved the font! Looked great
Which game was yours Robs Retro Stuff?
I love this show. Found it a year again and have been working my way through the episodes. I have a KS2 Next on the way so have got right back into all things Spectrum. 👍
Another cracking episode guys. I spent many months saving up for white Lightening, convinced I was going to become a brilliant games designer. Sadly, that was not to be but hey Ho that’s life Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.
Great stuff Paul, thanks for making the episode.
Great as always = I particularly liked 'The Collision Detection is Hit-and-Miss'
My top ,most frustrating game was Airwolf, made even worse by me smashing my joystick into my desk, breaking my desk. I remember looking forward to playing it so much, but I couldnt even get past the first screen
I think that was most people's most frustrating game. 😅
V was another frustrating game - The very first screen of the game you have to decipher the alien code to open the door to explore the mother ship. It was a puzzle that would have alluded a lot of youngsters that had the game.
Saturday evening, red wine, bake salts and new episode of TSS. This is ASMR :)
Another excellent episode, thanks Paul, best wishes for the live event in November.
Thanks. Rehearsing for the live event.. should be good.
I loved Jungle Trouble and Jack & The Beanstalk. I am not a very patient person and don't like playing a game over and over, but I played both these games for hours.
I just looked at Fire Hawk, from line 1000 there is a lot of basic for the instructions, high score table and to draw the screens for each level.
Always look forward to the end of the month and a new episode. Great feature as always and games.
Airwolf and Olli & Lisa were so frustrating I was surprised my Kempston survived 😂
+1 for Airwolf - awful game
Underworlde is hard but it's not frustrating. It always felt like you could get better at it. I remember completing it when I was a kid.
What's the secret to playing it ( underwurdle I mean )😁👍
@@Alancalan I'm not sure. I was about 15 then and 40 years later I suck at all the games I used to play then (-:
Cobra Force converted to Blood Money with 128K AY Music would have been awesome.
City Connection... Never heard of (or gamed) it... But it looks like (later game)...
CarVup by Core. But I, for some reason, loved CarVup. Played it on my ST, though it wasn't such a good game, but somehow I liked it...
City Connection 128K is a masterpiece :)
Airwolf has got to be up there as the most rage inducing spectrum game, along with kokotoni wilf. I quite liked underwurlde, although playing it now really angries up the blood. I recall you could get past the guardians without the objects by getting an enemy to bounce you through the scenery as the collision detection glitched if you were close to where the guardian was stood.
That phoenix game would be quite good if it was remade with a bit more polish, I like the concept.
With the Kempston disk interface, with setting the step time in milliseconds do you just start from the fastest and work your way down until it works with a specific drives tolerances or does each drive have a set value that must be adhered to?
Some drives (older ones) had them listed, other than that, yes, go for the fastest and see what happens.
I love Underwurlde. One of my favourite Ultimate titles. For frustrating games you should try Dinky Digger by Postern (impossible to survive for me than a few seconds)or Molecule Man by Mastertronic (if you can survive for more than 30 seconds you’re a better man than I)
The +3 was the only ever computer I really wanted and hated when I got it.
Great episode. I've never actually heard of City Connection before. I will have to check it out. Regarding annoyingly difficult games, they don't get much more infuriating than Lunar Jetman, Abu Simbel Profanation, and Airwolf.
Don't get me started on bloody Airwolf!
The best thing about Underwurlde was the box art.
I totally agree the adverts and posters promised so much and the game didn't quite deliver.
Roadrunner was a classic case of 'yes it's totally broken but get it out the door.'
Agree. So frustrating!!
Another excellent episode!😄
You may be surprised to learn the team behind the rather broken Road Runner included Jim Bagley (Midnight Resistance, CABAL), Fred Grey (Renegade, Where Time Stood Still) and Dawn Drake (Robocop, Target: Renegade). RoseTintedSpectrum's TH-cam has a great review of this game in which Baggers admits there are collision detection bugs due to his "young nieve [sic] self trying to be too clever and make it a 3D collision", which assumedly never got fixed as U.S. Gold (being U.S. Gold) would rather release the unfinished product instead of, you know, maybe actually letting the team fix the bloody thing first.
Is that the original Road Runner receipt? How on earth did you keep it so pristine all these years? Usually they fade over time.
Yes original, although not mine. It came with it when I bought it a few years ago.
Has anyone ever poked Monty Mole to make the crushers deterministic?
Or better yet, turned them off ?
@@frankowalker4662 Nah, they're part of the game. they just need to not be random and go off at a set time so you can wait to avoid them.
@@gnattress I was wondering if there was a way to constantly reset the timer so they never drop. Ha ha.
Hi mate, where did you get your white 48k from and did games or do games once loaded actually use the full 48k of memory???
Great show again thanks Paul.
Got the white case from ZX Renew. Highly recommended, got loads of stuff from them. Games (usually) will just use the memory taken up by the code. So an 8k game will use 8k. Some games used the free memory for technical things like buffering the screen or randomly generating levels etc.
Ok Paul interesting, thanks.
Using move to rename a file is not that unusual, it's the method used in Linux and Mac OS (mv oldname newname) terminals.
I have the Atari 2600 version of Road Runner, and it's better than both the speccy and arcade versions. There is a trick to it - Coyote only gets one of his things like a skateboard etc when he goes off screen.
Slap Fight was another really frustrating game - it was just so hard to see the bullets - it was close to being an amazing arcade conversion but was too hard for me.
Do you mean Slap Shot or Slap Fight? I remember the bullets being almost invisible in Slap Fight
@@geoffneil5073yep Slap Fight from Imagine Taito arcade conversion. It had really well defined graphics but was just too hard with the bullets being hard to pick out against the background.
Yah! A new episode. See you at Crash Live!
See you there... looking forward to it.
Enjoyed your section on Frustrating Games. These games were supposed to be for little kids but I don't think so!.
Escape MCP a game I found so frustratingly difficult.
I loved City Connection and Q*Bert in the arcades and sucked at both... but I don't see any connection or similarity between them.
In both games you have to go on platforms to paint them a different colour. Well okay, cubes in Q*Bert if you want to be pedantic.
@@jezz2k Ah I never thought of that since maze painting/filling/clearing was such a common mechanic in the early '80s and these two made that seem a minor part of their designs.
Agree with Hunchback, but loved Underwurld
Paul any chance to have the file that you use as benchmark ? We questioning how could performing the Opus Discovery
It's just the standard tape file of Birds and the Bees. Nothing special. I will be reviewing the Opus next series.
Frustrating games: I've seen videos of people completing Spiky Harold (Firebird) and Phantomas (Codemasters), both of which left me baffled. Also Deviants (Players), although that's mainly for the bomb defusing mini-game.
Frustrating games? Henry's Hoard - 1st frustration: sometimes the game would crash when it loaded and ran. 2nd frustration: the game itself! ;)
Games that are frustrating and annoying.... Let me think, from the vast Spectrum catalogue... Jumping Jack! Loved it, but by the gods it was frustrating.
Frustrating games, also Bugaboo the flea, Jumping jack, Abu Simbel profanation as well, infact all Dinamics games