/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8056089]

Was this the last, great gaming console that actually had soul?

[Anonymous No.8056092]

A computer is not a console, you stupid idiot.

[Anonymous No.8056094]

[Anonymous No.8056112]

What are the best games on this thing that aren't inferior ports of other games? Genuinely interested in trying this thing out but it all looks like arcade ports and fucked up mazes.

Also is Manic Miner's title music supposed to sound like that?

[Anonymous No.8056116]

The ZedEx Speccy is not a console. Examples of consoles would be the Snezz or the Mega Drive.

[Anonymous No.8056140]

>>8056112

Cybernoid
Exolon
Cobra
Underwurlde
Knight Lore
Dan Dare
Uridium
Auf Wiedershen Monty
Dynamite Dan
Fairlight 128k
Heavy on the Magick
Light Force
Skool Daze

[Anonymous No.8056146]

>>8056112
>fucked up maze

Yeah. Heaven forbid you should expect an American to concentrate on something for more than 2 minutes. Probably why it didnt really take off in the US.

[Anonymous No.8056148]

Is OP even trying?

[Anonymous No.8056160]

>>8056112
>What are the best games on this thing that aren't inferior ports of other games?
See pic.

>Also is Manic Miner's title music supposed to sound like that?
Yes. It was one of the first games to do bgm, it was pretty amazing for the time.

[Anonymous No.8056203]

>>8056092
KWAB

[Anonymous No.8056212]

>that aren't inferior
>>8056140
>Cybernoid
>Cobra
>Uridium
>Light Force
Wrong

[Anonymous No.8056376]

>>8056089
>soul
Fuck off with that retarded meme already. I'm so sick of hearing it.

[Anonymous No.8056442]

>>8056089
wii probably
personal favorite is psx

[Anonymous No.8056504]

>>8056089
>Was this the last shitpost a bongpoor made?
I hope so

[Anonymous No.8057052]

>>8056089
No it wasn't, and soul is a subjective concept anyway.

[Anonymous No.8057082]

Gamecube. Soul era ended when it was decided. Every console was going to be a vaguely distinguishable oblong with minimalist design and presentation from that point forward.

[Anonymous No.8057093]

>>8056376
imagine being this angry because you have no soul

[Anonymous No.8057141]

Someone mentioned Stonkers and Nether Earth a while back in another thread. Are any of them worth trying or are they just interesting from a historical perspective being examples of early RTS games?

[Anonymous No.8057213]

>>8056146
TIMEX exited the computer business before it had a chance. The T/S 2068 is a fantastic machine and improves on the Spectrum in every way.

[Anonymous No.8057221]

>games that have clicking noises for sound that were made by one 19 year old in 3 weeks

[Anonymous No.8057250]

>tfw I tried to convince myself that the speccy is better than the NES for decades

[Anonymous No.8057252]

>>8056140
Stunt Car Racer

[Anonymous No.8057260]

>>8056140
What game is your pic? Looks cool.

[Anonymous No.8057265]

>>8057252
>Stunt Car Racer
just play the Amiga, or even the C64 version

[Anonymous No.8057271]

The best game* on the Specturm is Doom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v7cFGneuaw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHAXu089xW0

The Dark was pretty impressive too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVcZzbTyzCM
*not really but it's an interesting entry for this machine both technically and for meme reasons. Got to wonder what could have been back in the day if we had people with the knowledge and ability to really squeeze every last drop out of those old machines.

[Anonymous No.8057280]

>>8057250
You and the entirety of the UK. At least you woke up eventually, there are some that continue to delude themselves either because they genuinely believe it or because of some kind of combination of an unstoppable Nintendo hate boner and being too stupid to choose the Master Sytem as the rival 8-bit system.

[Anonymous No.8057290]

>>8057280
It's current year, you can have both.

[Anonymous No.8057315]

>>8057290
If the internet and video game discussion taught us something is that emulation and easy access to games didn't make things calmer in regards to console/platform wars, if anything it made it much worse.

[Anonymous No.8057337]

>>8057315
Can't argue with that, though I'll never understand it. I'm a Famicom/NES fag, but I recently got some Speccy / Speccy adjacent machines because I love 8-bit shit and the Spectrum got years and years of support after the NES was long dead. There's some wild shit on there.

[Anonymous No.8057364]

>>8057315
There's two kind of people. Those who relish being able to access new systems and new games, and those who will just double down until the end of time to defend whatever arbitrary choice they made when they were still pre-pubescent.

[Anonymous No.8057428]

>>8056094
When the fuck is Dungeon Quest going to be finished, and where the fuck can I download /vr/'s make of the first Zniggy?

[Anonymous No.8057435]

>>8057337
i wasnt born into your soulful nes days. i grew up on soulless n64

[Anonymous No.8057563]

>>8057250
I’m starting to believe that the only reason Brits cling to the Spectrum is because it was a home-grown computer.

[Anonymous No.8057694]

>>8057563
I get the appeal to a degree. It was Newgrounds before Newgrounds. The fun was in feeling like you were interacting with a community of punk artists, not necessarily that the games themselves were amazing.

[Anonymous No.8057724]

>>8057694
Americans never really had a community like that, their computer scene was always so droll and focused on dry adventures and dungeon crawlers.

[Anonymous No.8057726]

>>8056089
Gamecube and possibly ps2. Xbox 360 and ps3 were good but at the time point they had become multimedia centres, they weren't made just for gamers anymore. For handheld 3ds. Souless is something made by some company who doesn't care that much for video games but just wants a new market, 3do could fir that description.

[Anonymous No.8057728]

>>8057694
They really do feel like early flash games, but without the edgy humor that a lot of them had.

[Anonymous No.8057750]

>>8057724
We did but it didn't really have that "punk" quality to it like the UK computer community, it was much more nerdcore and populated by D&Dfags and guys who wear plastic Spock ears and look like Comic Book Guy.

[Anonymous No.8057758]

>>8057726
Guess the age of this anon

[Anonymous No.8057914]

Why isn't australia-kun perma-banned already?

[Anonymous No.8058176]

Did you know? The greatest Willyvania (also known as Metroidvania) of all time is exclusive to the ZX Spectrum.

[Anonymous No.8058205]

>>8056094
But when Nintendo does the same thing, or even worse these same anons will post KINO.

[Anonymous No.8059380]

>>8057724
They had a lot more ambitions back then, you know? They wanted to make something more than just arcade games.

[Anonymous No.8060038]

>>8056089
This piece of garbage never had soul.

[Anonymous No.8060089]

>>8058176
I disagree with the use of the word "vania" to describe labyrinthian platform games as Castlevania didn't introduce that concept until the 15th entry in the series. The correct title for this genre of game is: JetSet-troid. Any reference to castlevania from this point on will result in expulsion from the jetset-troid community and a 3 day ban from posting on /vr/

[Anonymous No.8060249]

>>8060089
Metroidwillia

[Anonymous No.8060358]

>>8060249
this is also an acceptable name for the category

[Anonymous No.8060387]

>>8060358
How about Jet-troid?

[Anonymous No.8060469]

Australia-kun is a janitor, isn't he? That's why his shit posts stay up and any posts shitting on him get deleted

[Anonymous No.8060571]

>>8056089
It was the last time Rareware (formerly Ashby Computer & Graphics) made good games.

[Anonymous No.8060594]

>>8060571
You only hate rare ware because they became Nintendo exclusive in the 64 era

[Anonymous No.8060607]

>>8056089
PC

[Anonymous No.8060615]

>>8056376
>>8057052
Soul = Authentic
Soulless = Generic

[Anonymous No.8060747]

>>8060594
Yes.

[Anonymous No.8060762]

>>8057563
I just love the colour palettes to be fair. It really is that simple

[Anonymous No.8061469]

>>8060747
Are you actually really mad because Nintendo didn't have much of a presence in your country? Only the nes and SNES were good anyway, and Sega had a larger presence there. Why care?

[Anonymous No.8061612]

>>8061469
>trying to rationalize an actual autistic guy

[Anonymous No.8061724]

It was a well designed machine with a lot of bang for the buck. The simple nature of it made it accessible so easy to squeeze a lot of power out of it and it had a relatively fast processor speed for the price too.

Back then it was fair to say that there were so many games you'd be sure to find something you liked and the games on speccy were so cheap they were literally pocket money. How many NES games could a 10 year old buy per week or month? A Speccy game could be bought for one pound. Plus free ones on magazine covers and so on.

In fact in some places they even broadcast games over the radio. You recorded the sound onto the audio tape and could just play that on your computer.

The strength the speccy had was the sheer number of software, low price of it and way larger range of options in genres and so on. Text adventures were big and fun back then. Imagine trying to play one of those on a game pad?

Nothing wrong with the NES or Master System or whatever your poison was, but you'd easily find things to satisfy your gaming or computer experience needs back then on the Speccy.

[Anonymous No.8062425]

>>8056146
Americans had loads of superior machines to pick from. The only reason it did so well in the UK was because it was cheap and managed to snag a good chunk of the market based entirely on its affordability and the recognition of the Sinclair name. That doesn't make it a bad machine but when stacked up against the IBM PC, VIC 20 and c64, TI-99/4a, Tandy CoCo, Atari 400/800 and Apple II line it really didn't have anything to offer that wasn't already done better elsewhere.

[Anonymous No.8062719]

>>8060038
It had many souls. You could hear their tortured screams every time you loaded a game.

[Anonymous No.8063091]

>>8062425
The IBM PC isn't really worth mentioning among the other 8-bit machines, no normal person had one until way later and gaming on an 8088 pretty rudimentary, the Apple II largely sucks for games, and the Spectrum is objectively better than the VIC-20 and TI-994A. Only the C64 and Atari 8-bit line were generally "superior" machines, but the Spectrum having a fast Z80 and a drastically lower price gives it a leg up in some respects.

[Anonymous No.8063468]

Soul.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zHaO2DhZRY

[Anonymous No.8063591]

>>8062425
WTF. Vic 20 better than the Speccy? You're nuts. The Speccy absolutely blows the Vic 20 out of the water and competed well with the C64.

The Speccy was always better at early wireframe and 3D and other tasks that needed high clock speeds than the C64. The TI was not a good machine by then. The Apple II was aging and not impressive by comparison and way more expensive. The Atari 400 was MEH and you'd be better with a C64 or Speccy for sure.

You're listing off a bunch of machines there but I find it hard to believe you were around for them or used them. That or your memory is patchy because you've mentioned some real lemons there or things that just wouldn't be reasonably compared (like an IBM PC that costs ten or twenty times the price of a Speccy).

[Anonymous No.8063598]

>>8063591
Apple II for gaming compred to something like the C64 or the Speccy was like being the kid who got a JAGUAR for Christmas trying to convince himself he bought into the right system when everyone else is playing one of a million games on their systems.

[Anonymous No.8063607]

>>8063591
The Atari XLs (and XEs) can stand toe to toe with the C64. The 400/800 were a bit hamstrung by their RAM limitations, which the XLs rectified. Of course the C64 got software support for much longer, but on a hardware level they're certainly comparable.

[Anonymous No.8063614]

For just $120+shipment, you can have modern ZX compatible desktop with many advanced hardware features.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-E4aoeybzI

[Anonymous No.8063624]

>>8063614
I got a ZX Omni recently and it kicks ass. Having clones made from 100% new parts is a testament to the simplicity of Sinclair's designs, and allows for a thriving scene now without having to rely on aging hardware.

[Anonymous No.8063651]

>>8056092
OP BTFO

[Anonymous No.8063702]

>>8063598
>>8063591
The Apple II was good at dungeon crawlers, adventures, and strategy games that took advantage of its fast disk drives, 80 column text, and optional 128k memory. As an action game machine it was superseded by the Atari 8-bit and C64 rather early on. A ZX Spectrum couldn't do Might & Magic or Ultima. Not enough memory or suitable storage.

[Anonymous No.8063707]

>>8063607
>The Atari XLs (and XEs) can stand toe to toe with the C64
LOLno they can't. Three years older hardware and can't do a lot of what the C64 can do.

[Anonymous No.8063716]

>>8056094
This is a pretty accurate depiction of Specfags.

[Anonymous No.8063718]

>>8063091
>The IBM PC isn't really worth mentioning among the other 8-bit machines
It's 16-bit, it's not an 8-bit machine.

[Anonymous No.8063820]

>>8063591
>The Speccy absolutely blows the Vic 20 out of the water
Unless maybe sound and keyboard quality where it kind of loses out.

[Anonymous No.8063891]

>>8063820
Sure the keyboard on the speccy was crap, but most people playing games it didn't matter too much. Joysticks back then were super popular. The Vic keyboard probably doesn't compare much to modern typing but it was nice to have a "real" one than those cheap buttons if you liked typing in programs (which was a big thing) or used keyboard a lot for play (also a thing).

Sound on the Vic wasn't up to much. It had really hard limits on hardware and what it could do at once unless you had cartidges and expansions and even then it wasn't amazing in its time (some modern games made on it are highly impressive though). C64 though absolutely crushes the Speccy on sound, no surprise. It wasn't until the C64 that I even cared about sound and music on home systems as before then it really was all just crude buzzes, clicks, bloops and beeps and sometimes a half decent tune if you didn't mind it sounding like those all in one Scramble (etc.) games games systems with VFD displays.

I can still listen to and enjoy C64 music and sounds as it had developed itself to the point where it's like listening to a particular instrument. Kind of like a lot of early electronic instruments had their own sound.

If I was back in time though I'd never suggest a parent or kid gets a Vic 20 instead of a Speccy if they had the choice at the same point.

[Anonymous No.8063954]

>>8063091
TI is 16 bit zoom zoom

[Anonymous No.8064071]

>>8060762
It’s one of the most garish palettes I’ve ever seen.

[Anonymous No.8064710]

>>8063891
I own a C64C and I quite like typing on it, actually. I kinda want to get a mechanical keyboard with a similar feel.

[Anonymous No.8065917]

>>8063707
>can't do a lot of what the C64 can do.
I see inaccurate, age-old fanboyisms have gotten the better of you. The C64 really only has an advantage on sound, but the POKEY is no slouch (it's also no SID).
>>8063954
Yeah I know, but the CPU is absolutely neutered.

[Anonymous No.8066252]

>>8065917
>the CPU is absolutely neutered.
You're confusing the CPU with the system. A common mistake as the 99-4/4a were the only systems most people have even heard of that use the part.

[Anonymous No.8066591]

>>8062425
I agree with >>8063591 to a degree.
ZX Spectrum was great, well certainly when it comes to the price point. IIRC it was half the cost of the C64 which itself was a budget machine.
Source: own 3 of them 2 48K and 1 128k

[Anonymous No.8066593]

>>8060762
>>8064071

Garish but I do like it more than the washed out C64 palette.

[Anonymous No.8066608]

If Quazatron's scrolling speed was just a bit faster it'd be a legitamately great game.

[Anonymous No.8067132]

>>8060387
doesn't have 'willy' in the title

[Anonymous No.8069095]

bump for me speccy

luv this console

[Anonymous No.8069204]

>>8069095
Speccy sucks, Amiga sucks, bong developed games suck, pal standard was ignored by japan/us, treasure is top fucking tier and rarwares best days were when they were under Nintendo's control.

Amiga never got doom, and jet set willy is jank that can't be finished due to glitches. Spectral interlude is an unfinished fan project, and SNES is one of the best consoles of all time. Nintendo will always be remembered and revered and British micro-computers will always be the butt of many jokes.

[Anonymous No.8069597]

>>8063624
Mine Omni brethren

[Anonymous No.8069604]

>>8063624
Mine Omni brethren

[Anonymous No.8069841]

Spectrum is full of unplayable jank. Jet set willy is unbeatable to due it being glitched. Spectral interlude is just an unfinished fan project.

[Anonymous No.8069875]

>>8069841
>Jet set willy is unbeatable to due it being glitched.
Just don't breathe in the poison gas. Oi, you got filtered mate.

[Anonymous No.8071509]

>>8069604
those keys look horrible to type on

[Anonymous No.8071582]

>>8056089
It was an 8bit computer, not a console. In our shithole we only had spectrum clones, mine still works after 30 years (after small repair though). Was playing SimCity on it for years and years. Literally cried when tape recorder chewed the cassette and it stopped loading. Literally danced with joy when it magically had loaded months later and I could make a backup. Still have saves from 25 year ago with a city fully covering an island.

[Anonymous No.8071838]

>>8071509
>she thinks those keys are for typing

[Anonymous No.8071950]

>>8071582
The Speccy port of Sim City is a tour de force, I have no idea how they pulled it off. Cool eastern bloc clone, comrade.

[Anonymous No.8071964]

>>8071582
Make your Sound Blaster input work for the money, and connect that cable radio line to it to stream the granny-oriented programming over the internet.

[Anonymous No.8072118]

>>8071509
Imagine spending 2 hours doing a BASIC type-in from a magazine with that shit.

[Anonymous No.8072350]

>>8071509
they're bad enough that most of them just function as hotkeys when you're doing BASIC lmao

[Anonymous No.8072428]

>>8071509
It isn't an actual ZX Spectrum (I've never even been in the same room as a real speccy) but from what I understand Retro Radionics got the feel of the keyboard and case down pretty solid. And yes, those keys are awful to the point where I really wish they had slapped a USB port on the Omni to allow you to use an external keyboard.

[Anonymous No.8073097]

>>8072428
>(I've never even been in the same room as a real speccy
You really dodged a bullet there matey

[Anonymous No.8074093]

>>8071950
Fun fact: it's "Delta-S", soviet made clone, stolen from a nearby factory in my city. And it's quite an accurate clone, even divIDE and ZX-HD works with a simple convertor board I made. And while in some aspects it's rather nice - computer requires only +5 volts, has only one large capacitor inside that I had to replace, has built-in Interface-II joysticks ports and a turbo-loader in ROM, it has ridiculously bad keyboard. It's probably as bad as original, keys are stiff, should be pressed directly on he middle part and often could get stuck if pressed wrongly. Soviet/russian joysticks were also horrendous, they broke easily and were stiff and unpleasant to use. If only I knew that I could just use Sega Genesis/Mega Drive gamepads with a different connector. Using that now and it's light years ahead in terms of comfort.

[Anonymous No.8074418]

>>8074093
Very cool, anon. Eastern Europe had a wild computer scene in the 80s, must have been like the wild west.

[Anonymous No.8074464]

>>8056092
I guess you've never heard of the Famicom, then. Said machine was originally a computer, but NEC and Commodore had the JP market by the balls at the time. Coupled with the hardware team's desire to make a home console that ran Donkey Kong, and the 1983 Famicom launch being terrible, they decided to just take that messy "Family Computer" project and market it as a home console in 1984.

[Anonymous No.8074654]

>>8069841
>Spectral interlude is just an unfinished fan project.

Not sure what you're talking about, the game is complete, go beat it and see for yourself.

[Anonymous No.8074748]

>>8074418
You wouldn't believe how it was. We didn't know anything about Sinclair, about Commodore, Amiga or Nintendo, about official licensed games, didn't even new that in 1991 Spectrum was so outdated that using it was like a joke. But what else? The payment at that time was like 20-30 USD a month and a normal PC XT/AT was more than a thousand dollars. Spectrum was a cheapest option, all the games were free (you could always make a copy of a game from a friend, or get a pirated cassette with 8-12 games for a small price at the local store), and you could even build a machine yourself with parts that you could steal from work or get cheap at local flea market.

[Anonymous No.8075157]

>>8074464
Did you just make all that up on the spot?
>>8074748
Absolutely hard to imagine. Must give you either an appreciation or utter loathing for the technology we have now.

[Anonymous No.8075521]

>>8075157
not really. the wikipedia page, and other retro sites lists the painful 1983 launch, the initial marketing with the PC-based idea, and the idea of the Donkey Kong home console. hell, wikipedia even has a page on the modem for it, with the CEO talking about how their computer was the machine of the future.

[Anonymous No.8075541]

>>8075521
The NES was absolutely planned to be a computer, the wikipedia mentions that the Famicom was on the drawing board as one but Yamauchi promptly dismissed that idea, it was never actually in development as one. Also I'm not aware of Commodore ever being more than a niche thing with coders like Iwata in Japan, the MSX was around by 83 and was a pretty dominant 8-bit microcomputer platform.

[Anonymous No.8076475]

>>8073097
I dunno, I'd love to have one of the Amstrad machines or a 128k toastrack but there is basically a zero percent chance of ever running into one in America so I'd have to pay out the ass to ship it over here. The Omni honestly was the perfect solution, I've been real happy with it.

[Anonymous No.8076485]

>>8056089
PS4. We'll see how the PS5 does, too early to call.

[Anonymous No.8077001]

>>8075157
>Must give you either an appreciation or utter loathing for the technology we have now.
It's mostly appreciation. Hell, I even have a PhD in microelectronics and teach my students high-speed PCB design at University, partly because of Spectrum in my childhood. It's fun showing this machine to students and seeing horror in their eyes.

[Anonymous No.8077054]

>>8077001
Totally kickass, stay radical anon.

[Anonymous No.8078868]

>page 10

[Anonymous No.8079853]

>page 8