/vr/ - Retro Games

>>7438662
You press play and dance to the screeching sounds for 15 minutes.

>>7438662
You can transmit computer data as signals through audio hardware, however it takes a long time and isn't the most reliable. But in Europe it was the most popular way of distributing games because cassettes are cheap, cassette players are cheap and if you're spending £129 on a computer it doesn't make sense to spend like 70%-120% of the cost of the machine on a floppy disk drive.

>>7438671
To add to this, it was also really useful for small British software developers to be able to effectively self-publish their games by hand-recording their games on to cassettes and just printing off some paper labels, without needing to go to the expense of having game cartridges and floppy disks purposely manufactured.

oi!

http://torinak.com/qaop/games

>>7438683
Based.

>>7438662
>OI ME SPECCY
nobody fucking cares.

>>7438709
>He got filtered by Willy Snatcher and the Jetting Twangers.

>>7438738
>He got filtered by not liking shit
>filtered
zoom zoom

>>7438795
>Calling someone a Zoomer for liking the Spectrum
Anon you have gone completely insane.

>>7438662
if you're on gnu+linux, install the fuse emulator.

btw, don't forget to play pic related, it's the best non-linear castlevania game of all time.

>>7438662
Early models like the 48k had you type LOAD "" in the BASIC command interface you got turning it on, you just press play on the tape when the loader pops up and wait a good 10-15 mins while it screams at you and shows a unique loading screen, which you can watch it draw line by line. Later models had a menu at the start you could get straight to a tape loader via without screwing about in BASIC, and a 48k compatibility mode for software that ran only on a 48k. Some games did fancy shit while loading like give you a counter that ran down, the instructions displaying page by page which saved you reading the manual, or even give you a basic-ass Space Invaders game while loading.

Really no need to sit through loading anymore on emulators unless you're a purist, or to see the loading screen art, which was usually an amusing rendition of the boxart a pixel artist struggled over for hours and it still looked bad.

Should I get a 48k or a 128k? The 48k looks awesome but I suppose the 128k is more functional.

>>7438934
I can't say for sure, but I'm pretty sure I've heard the 128k has some incompatibilities and reliability issues.

>>7438818
>Pretending that liking shit youtube told you to like makes you not a zoomer
Anon you have gone completely insane.

>put game tape in cassette player
>type LOAD
>press Play
>wait about 15 minutes
>pray you don't get a load error because the standard analog tape recording it uses isn't as reliable as the digital format Commodore and Amstrad used

>>7439481
>No one can like things I don't like, you must be pretending
Anon you have gone completely insane.

For me it's the Speccy.

>>7438848
It was 10 minutes only for 128k games, 48k games took 4-6 minutes max. Also I have used a turbo loader, which could compress games and load them with double speed, loading a game like SimCity in 2.5 minutes. Finding that turbo program was the biggest upgrade in my life.

>>7438662
>I saw in videos that they seem to connect it to some cassette player, how does that work?
The cassette tape has binary data, the computer plays the tape and reads it as it cycles through. If you played the tape on a regular tape player or stereo, you'd get a bunch of screeching noise, that's the ones and zeros.
After the computer has read in all the binary data, the game can be played. Some of these old games had little things put in the loading process, like music, or a picture, or both, to be more interesting while you wait for them to load.

The ZX Spectrum is kind of a direly dull experience with almost all of its games, but on the Commodore 64 there's some pretty good stuff.

>>7440164
Load times on 128k games suck although once you get them in you won't have to load as often while 48k games require frequent tape access if it's multiload.

>>7439494
if you save something like a BASIC program to tape, make sure to never ever touch the tone and volume knobs on the cassette player or you'll never get the program back again.

>>7439517
>le NOOOO zoomer maymay
Anon you are perfectly normal, for a zoomie

>>7441564
Now those really are the rantings of the clinically insane.

>>7441661
>now this is really the cope of a zoomy zoom

>>7441669
>someone went to the trouble of actually making this
Is it supposed to be funny or something?
Don't ever post it on /vr/ again

>>7442806
>Don't ever post it on /vr/ again
go fuck yourself, it's funny.
I too, am curious about the Speccy. I've gleamed that it was the queer british cousin of the C64? That Netflix movie Bandersnatch features the ZX Spectrum as a major plot device.

>>7442883
>it's funny
No, it isn't
>gleamed
oh ok you're an ESL or just a fucking moron with a loose grasp of the English language.
either way, neck yourself cunt.

>>7438823
Mmmmm colourclashelvania

>>7438680
>hand-recording their games on to cassettes
you can stop being retarded now

>>7442883
Not funny at all zoom zoom

I always thought I was an autistic sperg for owning and loving a C64 back in the day. Now that I had a look at the Speccy scene...I feel much better.

>>7443654
That might be because every speccy fan is a brit tranny manchild

If you fags can't appreciate a game like Head over Heels you can fuck off to /v/ right now and discuss microtransactions or whatever.
Simple as.

Where my Jet Pac bros at?

Better than any shite they released for the shitendo

>>7443285

He probably means recorded tape-by-tape using the computer at home as opposed to batch recording publishers used (and are still using).

>>7444130

luv me 'ead over 'eels
luv me fart sound effects
luv me page free birds
luv me speccy

simple as

>>7444859
I'm so sorry your parents exposed you to the ZX Spectrum.

>>7441836
>literal nutcase who is going to think I'm the same guy

>>7446397
>they will never live through the tape wars
>they will never get 12 free games per magazine

>>7438662
>american company gets away with blatant spectrum ripoff

>>7446554
>faggot insults superior american technology by comparing it to britshit

>>7446532
>literal nutcase who thinks he's not the same guy
meth. not even once

>>7438662

Atari and Commdore 8-bits are a lot better to get, Anon.

Get yourself a PAL Commodore 64/128 or Atari XE. Speccy outside of maybe Skool Daze, Dizzy and ULTIMATE: PLAY THE GAME games hasn't got too much to offer. If you want something with similar parameters but better sound graphics try an Amstrad.

And it's always good to try an emulate few games to see if you'll like them.

>>7446534
>they will never spend break time debating how much of their dinner money they can sacrifice for a sneaky trip to the newsagent for Mastertronic £1.99 games

Truly the apex of civilisation is past

>>7444859
That gun is firing every colour available on the ZX Spectrum. That blows my mind, no wonder the Castlevania here >>7438823 looks so ridiculous; no orange or brown!

>>7446397
>tfw I genuinely had that copy of that very mag back in the day and had the Vixen poster on my wall

that was probably my first wank

>>7448592
based bong tosser

>>7449350
80s haircuts were so bad. they made women look 45 when they were 21.

>>7449353

when did /vr/ become zoom central

>>7449358
>rules change to allow zoomers
>why are zoomers here?
it truly is a mystery, my big brained friend

>>7447272
chip buttie or speccy mag? I'll take the speccy mag and cadge a packet of crisps from a mate

>>7438818
>>7439481
>>7439517
>>7441564
>>7441661
>>7441836
>>7446532
>>7446628
Meds. Now!

>>7449358
Several summers ago

>>7443285
Oh I'm sorry dickhead, was that not the correct nomenclature? What specific term should I use to not trigger you in future?

>>7448121
The weird limited color palette is the only thing any non-Brit actually likes about it

>>7438683
Unironically, what is actually a good game to try here?

>>7438662

a music cassette is just a magnetic medium (tape) in a case that has normally been defined to save analog data, but that is arbitrary. You can just as well save digital data on it not defining the field as a wave but bits which are 0 or 1. And so they did since cassettes were cheap and ubiquitous. The only thing is that that is SLOOOOOW. The player reads it and transfers the data over just like any other drive.
You can also in the same way use VHS cassettes to store digital data, which seems so weird since they are SO connected to pushing them in the VCR and watching movies. But again there is nothing inherent about them having to store analog movie data.

>>7450563
>cringe
cringe

>>7438683

>no Kempston/Sinclair controller support

Half the games aren't even playable

What spectrum games are worth playing? I have no nostalgia for it but i’m sure there are some fun games to play like that castlevania game i keep seeing for it

Why does the spectrum have such strange colors, everything looks so garish and bizarre

>>7450843

Any of Ultimate's games, they were the only consistently competent dev
Rex
Deflektor
Exolon
Fire and Ice
Cybernoid
Mask 3
Quazatron

There's not much worth playing on it. The budgetary advantages of the Spectrum don't mean anything when you can play virtually every 20th century video game for free, and unlike the C64 it was never designed to play vidya

>>7450851
I assume like most computers of the era, they were primarily intended to, aside from text, display graphs and charts, where contrasting colors makes sense, so that was prioritized over making videogames look good.
Many other computers had really limited color palettes in the 80s too.
>cyan, purple, white, black
>orange, green, white, black
>green, purple, white, black
>various of these had a setting for a darker version of these sets
>some had the ability for these really weird hacks where the display intentionally exploited the fuzz and artifacting of composite to sort of get a few more colors/shades on screen

Then you had the Macintosh, which was straight up just black and white with no shades inbetween, so to draw anything, people would do simple shapes and stick figures, or they'd go the distance and dither the goddamn bejesus out of their graphics to create shading (which usually looked quite good, actually).

>>7450851
This is most basic palette you get with 1 bit resolution of each color channel, and the brightness/intensity bit. Video output in most of 80s home computers was supposed to be generated either by simple and cheap circuitry, or by the most simple and most cheap circuitry. So the ULA digital pixel color output is either “RED FULL ON” or “RED FULL OFF”, “INTENSITY FOR ALL CHANNELS HIGH” or “INTENSITY FOR ALL CHANNELS LOW”, and so on.

CGA 16 color palette values have exactly the same meaning (except light black and dark yellow), but the color triad voltages are produced differently, and the colors are less pure and less contrast. That allows them to better approximate the whole color space. Also, intensity bit on Spectrum affects the whole chunk, so the both of its colors can be either dark or bright, with the exception of black+other high intensity color.