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STOP THE TAPE NOW: THE ZX SPECTRUM WAS A POWERHOUSE FOR ARCADE CONVERSIONS

28/11/2018

41 Comments

 
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The ZX Spectrum was my machine.

I know I'm not alone in clutching it to my hairy bosom, but if I was forced to have my memory wiped of all but one games system, the Spectrum is the one I'd choose to keep. It was the point at which I properly understood the potential of games - the breadth of its catalogue displaying more imagination and creativity than that of any rival home computer.

I played a lot of diverse games back then - let's face it, we all did thanks to the ubiquity of illegal C90 cassettes being passed around among mates - but one of the system's most potent selling points were its arcade conversions.

A machine as objectively limited should not have been able to offer any half-decent conversions of games designed for hardware costing thousands of pounds... and yet, somehow, the Spectrum provided a ton of them. And here are 10 of my favourites.

Watch this Sunday's ep of Digitiser, where I make an impassioned defence of the Speccy.
R-TYPE
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I have two overriding memories of R-Type. One of them is of a former schoolfriend playing it in the pub we all used to go to before the authorities closed it down because most of the clientele were underage,... and the other is of punting serious hours into the ZX Spectrum version.

Indeed, I loved it so much that I went on to buy it for my Atari ST, when I eventually manipulated my parents into buying me one for Christmas. Ha ha - yeah, I did loads of "homework" on it, idiots.

Somehow, the Speccy version was the more impressive of the two, purely because it managed to cram in everything from the arcades - with an obvious, primary-coloured downgrade to the visuals - onto a system that should, in theory, not have been able to handle it. 
CHASE HQ
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For what was, even at the time, a less-powerful machine compared to the Commodore 64 (the "64" referred to its 64 shades of brown), it's remarkable how many into-the-screen driving games there were on the Spectrum.

I'm saying it now: Chase HQ was arguably the best Speccy racer - and probably one of the top Spectrum games ever, regardless of genre. Admittedly, the frame rate would give most modern gamers an aneurysm, but they'd have been more than comfortable with the long loading times; one of the few iffy aspects of this near-flawless adaptation.
RAINBOW ISLANDS
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A game about rainbows felt right at home with the Spectrum's colour palette, and from the glorious technicolour of the loading screen to the game itself, Rainbow Islands did not disappoint.

What really impressed is how smooth and fast it all was. Had it been an entirely original game, and not an arcade conversion available on all the home systems, it would probably be regarded as a Spectrum classic. Because, and yes I am about to commit heresy, it's a FAR better game than Jet Set Willy. I mean, at least you could actually complete it.

Another one I also got for my Atari ST, because - I'm realising now - that was a thing that I did.
SPACE HARRIER
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When it arrived in arcades, Space Harrier was as technologically advanced as anything else - especially the sit-down, hydraulic chair, "My dentist has gone insane!", version.  

Yes, it was a bit hard on the eyes, it flickered and twitched like a rabid tramp on detox day, and it lacked the original's sublime soundtrack... but it had the most important element; the 3D checkerboard ground.

Given the lack of saves, I confess that there weren't many Spectrum games I played to the end. Space Harrier was a rare exception. And I only had twelve epileptic fits along the way.
COMMANDO
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Man, this was tough. I remember an entire Sunday spent trying to get beyond the first stage of Commando. No, it was not the easiest game to play with the Spectrum's keyboard, and it looked somewhat bland compared to its arcade progenitor, but Commando nevertheless captured the spirit of the original. 

Nevertheless, I still shudder at the bits where the gates would open and a swarm of enemies would come flooding out. I don't want to underplay the experiences of anyone who has actually fought in a war, but I think Commando might've been more harrowing.
ARKANOID
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If any game is ever going to be well-suited to the Spectrum, it's Arkanoid; simple controls, basic graphics, and gameplay that wasn't going to stress the hardware too much. There were other bat-and-ball games available. but Arkanoid - unlike the others - had a really cool logo. Logos are important.
STAR WARS 
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The Spectrum conversion of my favourite arcade game was - to my formative brain - near-perfect. Admittedly, going back to it now... it wasn't. In fact, it's a right pain in the arse to play, with a cross-hairs that doesn't even re-center, and the frame rate of a flick-book.

Plus, while it may have been official, it certainly wasn't the first interpretation of Star Wars on the Spectrum (Starstrike had ripped it off three years earlier, and arguably might've been the better game). Nonetheless, Star Wars was imbued with the whiff of an official license - and so long as you didn't actually play the thing, was as close to arcade-perfect as you could've hoped for. 
MIGHTY FINAL FIGHT
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Technically not an arcade conversion, Mighty Final Fight is the port of an NES game inspired by the Capcom arcade classic. Also, nor was it released back in the day; it's a brand new remake, produced by a small team of hobbyists, and punted out earlier this year.

It's pretty remarkable all told, succeeding in capturing that scrolling beat 'em up feel, with some gorgeous background art. It also serves as a demonstration of just how the Spectrum remains close to so many hearts, and that developers are still managing to squeeze the last drips of power out of it.
BOMB JACK
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Despite the obvious (admittedly surprisingly slight) downgrade in visuals, Bomb Jack was a near-perfect recreation of the arcade original. Somehow, they even managed to squeeze in the backdrops featuring famous world landmarks - arguably the thing most people remember from the arcades.

​Whatever happened to Bomb Jack anyway? One of the great forgotten 80s gaming characters. He even had a funny hat!
MIKIE
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A suitable game for any hormonal teenager, Mikie's somewhat you-couldn't-do-that-today premise required the player to disrupt a lesson at school by collecting hearts, in order to get a dirty kiss from the object of Mikie's affections.

Among one of Mikie's more questionable tactics is using his disgusting fat anus to bump his classmates from their seats, thus revealing the hearts concealed beneath. And also: throwing entire roast chickens at people. We've all done it.

​The game did a fine job of consolidating the limitations of the Speccy with the arcade original - and stands alongside Skool Daze and Back to Skool as one of the system's finest, and most accurate, depictions of school life. 

Do you remember when kids would play Kiss Chase? Dirty little perverts. Thanks a lot for never asking me to join in, 'cause I never wanted to play your disgusting sexual harassment game anyway, no matter how fun it looked.
41 Comments
Johnny Blanchard link
28/11/2018 10:28:32 am

Can't disagree with most of list - haven't played Mighty Final Fight though, so no opinion on that. Chase HQ was, indeed, one of several fantastic racing games on the speccy, also it's technical predecessor Wec Le Mans. Bombjack though is probably my favourite - I played that game for hours.

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Jim Leightion (Future World Darts Champion) x
28/11/2018 10:29:06 am

I never owned a Speccy

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@purplephlebas
28/11/2018 10:30:03 am

Some cockle warmers there. Had I not built my Atari ST a raft, and set it ablaze on a canal in Bath, I'd still be rubbing it's R Type teats. Oddly never had it for the speccy. But I basically played IK+ and not a lot else

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WheelieWorld
28/11/2018 11:16:35 am

Space Harrier was a technical marvel, the speed at which it moved was just as fast as the arcade, unlike the rather disappointing conversion of Out Run. After Burner, Paperboy, Ghosts n' Goblins, Green Beret, Mikie, Hyper Sports, Ping Pong were all fantastic conversions. My personal favourite was the little known arcade game Terra Cresta, published by Imagine and programmed by the late Jonathan Smith. Anything by Jonathan Smith was usually gold, just check out the music for Kjonami's Ping Pong. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKKTlGHkh0E

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Splat
28/11/2018 07:13:38 pm

Terra cresta had an awesome sound track, was always fun getting all pieces of the ship, also is your user name reference to the game wheelie? Game always creeped me out...not sure why looking back : )

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Mark M
28/11/2018 11:28:34 am

While I had plenty of access to a Spectrum at my mate's place practically next door and loved it, I must admit I preferred a lot of conversions on the CPC. I'm thinking Mr.Heli, Gryzor, Rainbow Islands and Arkanoid 2.

I'll definitely give you R-Type though, which ran on the Amstrad like a one-legged dog through treacle filled with broken glass. Shame they never released SF2 but it looks like someone's had a go at a port! :)

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The DPS
28/11/2018 11:35:46 am

They did release Streetfighter 2 actually, I bought it and played it back in the day. It was really, really slow and took forever to load...

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Mark M
28/11/2018 07:21:01 pm

Hmmm how did I miss that!? I was sure I read that it was unlikely to ever be released back in the day. Ah well.

Barbarian was the best fighting game on CPC anyhow (probably). :)

bezubapz
28/11/2018 11:45:54 pm

So the house next door to your next door neighbour then?

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The-DPS
29/11/2018 12:46:42 am

There's really nothing to gain from me lying about this...I promise I literally owned and played the actual official ZX Spectrum version of Streetfighter 2! There are even gameplay videos on YouTube!

https://youtu.be/hS7HYsOEccw

The-DPS
29/11/2018 12:56:56 am

Plenty of information to prove it was real here, including magazine reviews:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0009426

Mark M
29/11/2018 09:04:48 am

Haha... anyway it looks like I've gone and confused things, I never saw SF2 on CPC was what I was getting at. Not talking about the ZX (that would be suggesting that Biffo was telling porkies!)

The-DPS
29/11/2018 09:57:17 am

Ahhh gotcha, my fault too, didn't read your first post properly! Oh well, all's well that ends well.

Mark Sibson
28/11/2018 11:44:04 am

Wot no Spy Hunter! I loved that game to pieces. It was a few years after that i actually saw the arcade version and I much preferred the Spectrum's zoomed in sprites.

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Craig Grannell
28/11/2018 12:04:54 pm

It's interesting in that list, how many of those were dogshit on the C64. R-Type was a mess after being rushed due to a change in developers (Katakis/Denaris showed what could be done); Chase HQ was an abomination (with the CPC version, of all things, showing how a great colour take could work on 8-bit); Commando had half the levels missing; Bomb Jack was a sick joke due to all the sprites being expanded (I recall a hack in CU or Zzap that reversed this and – hey presto – playable game). Although that's not to say the breadbin didn't have its own impressive arcade ports: Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands; Buggy Boy (not very accurate, but really playable); Wizard of Wor; Gyruss; Pac-Land; Ikari Warriors (despite being delayed about 57 years); Power Drift (better than the 16-bit versions); Hypersports; Spy Hunter; Salamander; Rodland (fnarr, etc.); Bionic Commando…

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Kelvin Green link
29/11/2018 10:35:56 am

There were two versions of C64 Commando, I think. I don't know if the second one was any better.

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Col. Asdasd
28/11/2018 12:49:31 pm

Somehow the bold primary colours of Speccy make R-Type's body-horror bad lads more disturbing, not less.

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Geoff Pastie
28/11/2018 12:53:03 pm

My favourite thing about the Speccy (besides Dizzy, Jet PAC and Knight Lore) was coding my own games. It somehow never occurred to me that these games were being produced with language other than BASIC, and I thought all games coders were freaky geniuses.

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M
28/11/2018 01:27:06 pm

Shocked no C64 idiot fanboys have turned up in the comments yet. The zx speccy had so many technical marvels on it. Chase hq and space harrier were remarkable.

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Marro
28/11/2018 03:10:40 pm

Sorry I'm late... Phew! I'm here...wow...the lift was broken, I had to run up the stairs...I just need a second...weeeeoooo..OK...C64 idiot Fanboy is here!

If we're talking simply about Coin-Op conversions, then the Speccy wins hand down. The C64 got shafted time and time again with truly hideous conversions : Paperboy, Enduro Racer, Street Fighter - each one of them breaking my little heart with a lesson in life's cruel indifference.
But when (mostly British) programmers got to grips with the C64's hardware and played to its strengths it was untouchable. And the SID chip in the hands of Rob Hubbard or whoever was the whiny, Cyberpunky sound of 80s futurism distilled.

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Chris
28/11/2018 05:00:07 pm

Paperboy and Enduro Racer were both excellent on the Speccy. Enduro Racer along with Chase HQ is one of my favourite racing games ever. I remember doing Enduro Racer wheelies (on a skateboard?) with my cousin and shouting "Enduro Racer" because it did that when you did a wheelie or something I don't really remember haven't played it recently.

Bubble Bobble was one of my favourite Speccy arcade conversions, still load that one up from time to time too.

Jamie
28/11/2018 01:39:51 pm

What about Gauntlet. 2 player dungeon crawling excellence!

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Moonbucket
28/11/2018 01:59:54 pm

That version of Bombjack was so accurate I can still massacre the high score table on the arcade version because of playing it so much on the spectrum.

When you look at an early spectrum game and consider how far that system was pushed by the end of that era, its staggering.

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HdE link
28/11/2018 03:13:10 pm

It behoves me to post here to say that seeing the merest screenshot of any version of R-Type (apart from R-Type Leo) sends me into paroxysms of fanboy joygasming.

Yes. Paroxisms.

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Chris Dyson
28/11/2018 06:12:15 pm

I was thinking of tuning in on Sunday in the hope of seeing Larry puking his guts up but the prospect of your speccy defence really seals the deal.

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Danforth
28/11/2018 09:14:52 pm

Another highlight of Speccy R-Type was the explosions at the end. On arcade, you'd get some farty explosions overlaying a fade-to-black of the boss sprite and surrounding scenery. On the Spectrum you were treated to several seconds of carnage where boss and level definitely blew up. It just worked better and was more satisfying.

I got to level six once. That maze with almost indestructible enemy lumps.

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NixPix link
28/11/2018 11:05:26 pm

Bomb Jack, a game I sunk hour after hour into, memorising a pattern for every level to the mm, yet until I read this page today it hadn't entered my thoughts once in over 30 years. How I managed to wipe that from my memory I'm not quite sure, but thanks for bringing it back to my noggin' cos it really is a classic. Apparently they did a Bomb Jack 2, that's news to me, and screen shots look a bit shonky.

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darbotron
29/11/2018 12:05:00 am

+twelve billion for commando - also Ikari warriors.

I had a +3 and it made the old multi-load a non-issue. New Zealand Story was amazing on it, oh and Gauntlet. Head Over Heels was another one of my faves.

Thinking about it, I probably only finished NZ Story, Ikari Warriors, and Head Over Heels out of all the speccy games I had.

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Garry Cowan
29/11/2018 08:06:04 am

Let's be honest take your rose tinted specs off the games usually looked terrible the sound was awful and failed to load far more often than was ideal

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Scott C
29/11/2018 08:54:03 am

Speccy R-Type developer Bob Pape wrote a book about the making of the game. Ignoring the typos and formatting errors it's a great little read, and a free download from: http://www.bizzley.com/

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Mark M
29/11/2018 12:48:08 pm

Thanks for that - I'll be reading it on my commute :)

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Jigglypuff
29/11/2018 02:10:14 pm

Gryzor!!!

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Lummox60N
29/11/2018 07:22:29 pm

Hold on...HOLD ON...WHERE'S ATOMIC ROBO-KID?
I mean, it was fairly spot-on, wasn't it?
Totally with you all on Bombjack. The Speccy version pretty much ruined every iteration I played since.

Oh, and Solomon's Key suffered the same way.

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Al go rhythm
30/11/2018 02:00:06 am

Commando was the most fun I had as a teenager until I got a phone call from my friend telling me he'd found his Dad's 'stash' .

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Dr Brule
30/11/2018 12:36:25 pm

Good choices. Me & my mate played R-Type to death on his Spectrum and it still remains one of my favourite games. I was giddy to learn it's now out on the Switch as of this morning. We played on a black & white TV so colour clash was never an issue.

I would have included The Great Escape, Turbo Esprit, Aliens, Skool Daze/Back to Skool, Chuckie Egg 2 and Movie.

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Dr Brule
30/11/2018 12:38:10 pm

I realise I been a massive idiot and this list is about arcade conversions rather than decent Speccy games. A thousand apologies.

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Pete Davison link
30/11/2018 04:39:55 pm

As an Atari 8-bit kid growing up, I was always a bit jealous of the arcade conversions the Speccy and C64 got, because the poor ol' Atari got left out in most instances. Still, we had plenty of unique experiences you couldn't get anywhere else -- and as you point out, the Atari ST redressed this balance somewhat, too.

I actually have a working Spectrum at home now -- my wife randomly bought one a few years back just because she felt like it, and we've never really done a huge amount with it. I should probably take the time to get to know some of the "classics" a bit better!

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Chris
30/11/2018 04:57:27 pm

I'm slightly curious as to whether the Spectrum Next in 28MHz mode will improve the frame rate of Chase HQ, or whether it will just make the game so fast as to be unplayable.

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Mike Taylor
1/12/2018 12:10:45 am

Every Speccy game I owned was called R-Tape...never fucking loaded though.

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Bren-Fu
1/12/2018 01:01:57 am

See the Digitiser logo at the top left of the page? That's 47kb in size. For what a small static image does today got you the entire game of Bubble Bobble or Renegade on the Spectrum. It is amazing to me how those coders pulled that off. A marvelous machine of efficiency and diversity.

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Anthony
11/9/2021 02:09:49 pm

Anyone have a list of all official and unofficial arcade conversions for ZX Spectrum?

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