/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9393487]

>no good games or software whatsoever.
>literally a calculator without an LCD screen
>worshipped by millions of Bongs and Russians (with its hundreds of clones)
can anyone explain?

[Anonymous No.9393491]

>>9393487
poorfag machine for poorfags
self-explanatory

[Anonymous No.9393501]

>>9393487
It's a neat little machine, though.
It's got plenty of software for what it is.
I've been playing around with an emulator recently and it's kinda neat.
I can see why so many people liked it.

[Anonymous No.9393524]

>released in the early-80s (americans compare it to much later stuff for some reason)
>games are the equivalent of $1 instead of 70
>you can program you your own stuff (home computers are the earliest location of indie games)
What's the problem? It's a pretty cool system.

[Anonymous No.9393539]

>americans don't have any games of their own, so they have to pretend old japanese children's toys is their own, and create console wars about 2 different foreign markets from decades ago, because they are that insecure and bored

pathetic...

[Anonymous No.9393541]

>>9393487
Programming learning machine, that's all.

[Anonymous No.9393553]

LUV ME SPECCY
SIMPLE AS

[Anonymous No.9393554]

the mad world of the ZX Spectrum clones is a place I plan on visiting, its a geeks wet dream there are hundreds of 'em

[Anonymous No.9393558]

can you actually reliably and quickly type on one of these with how the keys are spaced

[Anonymous No.9393562]

>>9393487
More powerful than the Sega VIC Dual arcade hardware, a board that was released just six years previously - so, within a gen. Now, let's compare the 16 bit systems with contemporary coin-op hardware. Quite the gap, as I'm sure you'll agree.

[Anonymous No.9393563]

>>9393558
yeah its easier than a blackberry, because the keys are bouncy its actually kinda fun

[Anonymous No.9393568]

>>9393487
>why do people fondly remember something they liked as children
it's a fucking mystery, my nigger

[Anonymous No.9393585]

>>9393491
>poorfag
My brother owned both an 800XL & ZX+2, then an Amiga & PC Engine, and then a SNES. Explain?

[Anonymous No.9393596]

>>9393524
>>released in the early-80s (americans compare it to much later stuff for some reason)
The Family Computer was released in Japan in 1983, sir.

[Anonymous No.9393601]

>>9393596
huh? Atari were releasing their home computers in 1978

[Anonymous No.9393610]

>>9393539
japan is united states territory

[Anonymous No.9393635]

>>9393558
Yeah I've got an omni which I tap in basic on and play the odd adventure. It's ok.

[Anonymous No.9393647]

>>9393524
>you can program you your own stuff (home computers are the earliest location of indie games)
I remember having some old soviet magazine "Moдeлиcт-кoнcтpyктop" with instruction on how to code a simple dungeon crawler. Not remember if the lines were actually there, but there were some examples.
People today don't understand that speccy was a learning machine first and foremost, the games came AFTER the popularity, and not the reason for it in the first place.

[Anonymous No.9393727]

This Castlevania homebrew game looks legit good, to be fair
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxaWP2go7W0

[Anonymous No.9393728]

>>9393716
Jesus Christ. Don't start this shit here.

[Anonymous No.9393742]

>>9393728
I didn't, really.
He did:
>>9393491
They always do. Always bringing flags into it like they're fighting from a position of strength. Sometimes it's thinly veiled. Most times it's blatant. ALWAYS the losers in the tit-for-tat. ALWAYS they double or triple down after getting smashed. Psychotic.

[Anonymous No.9393764]

Why no one laughs at the similarly capable MSX1 I don't get. Is it the Konami bonus? The SCC cart was fucking beautiful but being unable to scroll really limits the enjoyment of Gradius 2, making me reach for the smoothscrolling patches, which need at least an MSX2+ to run.

Meanwhile, on the base 48k Spectrum: https://youtu.be/zoDPU8fXKZY

The Spectrum didn't get enough wellprogrammed showcases like this to be fair, but despite the sound, yeah, this is an example that it could compare well.

[Anonymous No.9393768]

>>9393727
That would be the perfect Spectrum game if not for the Metroidvania crap. Oh well.

[Anonymous No.9393809]

>>9393768
I like it. It looks like it could be a better version of Castlevania 2.

[Anonymous No.9393849]

>>9393764
The MSX1 is more comparable to the Spectrum 128 than the ZX although it has hardware sprites so animation is smoother.

[Anonymous No.9393926]

Is this the best modern Spectrum reproduction?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2rZSt3DBY0

[Anonymous No.9393946]

>>9393487
>no good games or software whatsoever.
It had some adequate enough software for some purposes. The gaming was pretty damn meager, true, but you could find some alright ones to pass the time with. The best ones were mainly the ones which didn't try to be an overarching adventure, and more like simple arcade games.

>worshipped by millions of Bongs and Russians (with its hundreds of clones)
Bongs were in some harsher economy at the time, and Russia is perpetually poor from being wrecked to shit by Communism, and then oligarchs spawning from its corruption.
It should come as no surprise that inexpensive products have their appeal, Famiclones were very big in Russia for a time, for example. Cheap pirated software being easily available for the Zedex and the Famiclones is another reason.

The Zedex was never the best at anything, and it was limited, but it wasn't completely without use, and considering the economy nature it had its place in these markets. Of course the Commodore 64, the Apple II, the NES, and the Master System would all provide way better opportunities for gaming and utility software, but they also cost more money, and for the consoles the piracy was a lot less easy.

It's a little bit like the Hi-Point pistol of computers, it's not that nice, it's limited in overall power, but it does actually work, and it's not an expensive investment.

>>9393524
The reason it gets compared so much to later machines is because the Zedex lingered a really long time in the British market, stretching into the 90s even. It was competing in the market with superior machines, and it did so with a low price tag, until it became too dated to remain viable even for poorfags. You'd be surprised to learn that the Atari 2600 VGS tried the same thing, with the whole "It's just $50!" thing.

[Anonymous No.9393950]

>>9393539
Americans pioneered PC gaming in the 90s.
The ZX Spectrum didn't pioneer any kind of gaming.

[Anonymous No.9393963]

>>9393946
Personally I think the early period Spectrum stuff that was more like VIC-20 games was better than later on when they tried to copy NES or late 80s arcade games which the hardware clearly could not do.

[Anonymous No.9394018]

>>9393950
Wrong. British programmers are some of the best in the world because of the advantages of home computers. American programmers are better than Japanese, but the culture is too focused around universities. John Romero said this and he had first-hand experience with both sides in the 80s.

[Anonymous No.9394023]

>>9394018
no? the computer industry in the US was very strongly tied to the Cold War and the defense sector. this meant that nerdcore genres like simulations and dungeon crawlers were favored.

[Anonymous No.9394028]

>>9393585
Poorfags live above their means everyday. That's why they are poor. They buy dumb shit

[Anonymous No.9394030]

>>9394023
I genuinely don't understand this non-sequitur, sorry bud.

[Anonymous No.9394150]

>>9393487
>Russians (with its hundreds of clones)
You could literally build one yourself, sometimes with parts stolen from work or exchange them for two bottles of vodka. Many people did exactly that. Every component was easily obtainable with no proprietary ICs like SID on the Commodore.
Also the games were free, or at the cost of empty cassette.
Mine still works, although the keyboard is worse than the original.
https://youtu.be/aoDOUI4DdIA

[Anonymous No.9394164]

>>9394150
The ULA was technically a custom chip but it was just integrated switching logic (essentially several 74Lxx chips combined into a single IC) so pretty trivial to replicate.

[Anonymous No.9394171]

>>9394164
Yep, almost all those clones had discrete logic chips inside. Mine had 75 ICs, and still was rather cheap.

[Anonymous No.9394175]

Commodore did the same thing with the PLA in C64, and Apple with the IIe where they simplified the motherboard from the II/II+ by integrating a bunch of TTLs into one IC.

[Anonymous No.9394203]

>>9394171
that's still way less than an Apple II+ which had more than 100 chips in it

[Anonymous No.9394206]

>>9394203
>Apple II+
Yes, but that was in 79-82, and mine was made in 91.

[Anonymous No.9394258]

>>9394206
Technically 1977 since that's when the Apple II came out originally.

[Anonymous No.9394262]

>>9394258
Funny thing is there was a soviet clone of Apple II.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agat_(computer)

[Anonymous No.9394283]

there were many Third World clones of the Apple II and TRS-80 as they had no custom chips in them. government offices and universities began using PCs in the late 80s but it was more than a decade before they were affordable to the masses in places like ex-commie bloc.

[Anonymous No.9394354]

>>9394018
And John Carmack grew up with almost none of any of that stuff until his later teens, in the US, and is one of the best programmers.
Single anecdotes aren't really a great example, and this doesn't refute that the PC gaming scene in the US was gigantic in the 90s, many of the greatest game of that era came from American devs.

[Anonymous No.9394440]

REALISTICALLY

what is the least autistic way to get speccy titles up and running on original hardware in NTSC territories?

i do not want to play spectrum titles on a flat-panel

[Anonymous No.9394564]

>>9393487
Plenty of good games. Just play all the hewson and ultimate play the game games and you have about 20 or so. Ocean and Gremlin are also good but had a few clunkers. I didn't have one as a kid and still think its pretty cool.

>>9393764
Speccy tends to have a bit smoother scrolling but on msx its easier to animate 8x8 tiles instead so you get chunkier graphics if try to do smooth scrolling. Sprites make up for it as colour clash is the worst thing about the speccy. Both better at different things.

[Anonymous No.9394583]

>>9394171
You'll be hard up to find anything that doesn't have "discrete logic chips inside". Even modern stuff. What you imagine to be "discrete logic chips" are actually RAM. The ULA in that machine isn't done with discrete logic.

[Anonymous No.9394592]

>>9394583
I can tell apart RAM from logic, I assure you. КP555PУ6 and КP555PУ5Д1 are RAM chips, while the whole left section of the motherboard is basically ULA implementation.

[Anonymous No.9394640]

>>9393950
oh didn't realise you yanks created the GTA franchise cause you didn't.. Red Dead.. nope. you know what you did create, lots and lots of games where you kill people with guns.. bravo

[Anonymous No.9394650]

>>9394564
it's a little easier to do bitmap graphics on Spectrum as it doesn't have a tile based setup like MSX, and the graphics memory is visible to the CPU while on MSX only the VDP can see it and you have to write to it indirectly through ports.

[Anonymous No.9394652]

>>9394283
they don't seem to have cloned the PET although that also didn't have custom chips

[Anonymous No.9394661]

>>9394652
Would the VIA chips used for the I/O count as proprietary parts? Otherwise the PET was as much TTL-based as the Apple II and TRS-80.

[Anonymous No.9394665]

>>9394640
Both of those are games where you kill people with guns...

Also gta is garbage for wiggers.

Also also its wei4d that both of those take place in usa. Stop larping as us.

[Anonymous No.9394678]

>>9393524
>games are the equivalent of $1 instead of 70
You're talking about buying pirated software on cassette.

[Anonymous No.9394785]

>>9394440
Mister FPGA or some other fpga like the zx next

[Anonymous No.9394801]

>>9393610
based

[Anonymous No.9394972]

>>9394640
>Doom
>Quake
>Starcraft
>Ultima
>Elder Scrolls
>Diablo
>Simcity
>Baldur's Gate
>Planescape Torment
>Civilization
>Duke Nukem
>Fallout
>Age Of Empires
>Half-Life
>Myst
>Tale Of Monkey Island
>Wolfenstein
>Jagged Alliance
>Descent
>Might & Magic (Heroes)
>Twisted Metal
>Unreal
These are all American titles, many of these having a number of sequels, many which are good or even better than the previous, and a number of titles here were outright groundbreaking. I could keep going and going, but you get my point.

I'm not even saying "Brits never made any good or important games!" because obviously you'd obviously have to be completely fucked in the soft spot to have that opinion. Rareware, Team 17, Gremlin Interactive, Psygnosis, Mythos, DMA/Rockstar, Bullfrog, Codemasters, Core Design, these are all very significant studios from Britain which all made critical and important games, most of them even made a whole bunch of good or great games, including a number of my personal favorites (and I'm probably even forgetting a few big ones).
Fuck, Rare were even more popular and beloved in the US than in the UK, the Americans fucking LOVED them during 4th and 5th console gens, their name was synonymous with quality. Some of these devs turned to shit over time, but a lot of the American ones also did, there's just that danger of growing too comfortable and complacent from great success and fortune.

You need to try to do something about your crushing inferiority complex, you're living in an incredibly unhealthy mindset which makes you an obnoxious person to interact with, and it makes you really unhappy.

[Anonymous No.9394986]

>>9394592
You can't even tell left from right

[Anonymous No.9395001]

>>9394972
We made most of the microprocessors your beloved classics run on, with only ARM being a non-American invention.

[Anonymous No.9395005]

>>9394972
Rare pretty much explicitly made games for the US market and they had a lot of shovelware in the NES era, only getting good starting with Battletoads.

[Anonymous No.9395245]

>>9395005
You start at the bottom. I liked Wizards & Warriors.

[Anonymous No.9395252]

>>9395245
I'm sure that was one of the very earliest Western-developed NES games as it was 1987.

[Anonymous No.9395265]

>>9393610
This but unironically, Japan is far more Americanized than a literal former American colony (The Philippines)

[Anonymous No.9395275]

>>9395252
they imported a Famicom and reverse engineered it or something, and eventually talked Nintendo into signing them as a developer with the idea that they'd help them gain a foothold in the West.

[Anonymous No.9395351]

>>9394785
i was looking at the zx next
i had the mister up and running but
could never get most of the old computer cores to behave properly

even for c64 stuff, things would run on my c64 mini no problem and would have issues on the mister
things would load on the mister and not load on the mini

whoever decided to leave the original tapeload times was a fuckin masochist, if you "disable" it and allow "fast load" it fucks up most of the games kek

[Anonymous No.9395438]

>>9395351
Friend that sounds like a user education problem. For starters tap files are pointless when every game is in gamebas64 as a d64 or t64. Many games are also available as crt. You may have also been tripped up by the dolphindos rom just disable it.

[Anonymous No.9395456]

>>9395438
i mostly use VICE now on windows
but i am aware that there are several filetypes

[Anonymous No.9395775]

>>9394440
Isn't there some kind of NTSC to PAL converter thingy you can get to fuckulate the signal?

[Anonymous No.9395937]

>>9395351
The spectrum core is probably one of the best on mister and easiest to use.

[Anonymous No.9395995]

>>9395937
Not that anon, but I've been pretty curious about this Mister thing.
Is there any data on how Primal Rage does on it?
Any first hand accounts of it from experienced players, or video footage, or anything like that?
I'm looking for excuses to not have to buy an old broke ass Primal Rage circuit board and rebuild it into a new cab because I'm poor, but all the ports of it SUCK MONUMENTAL ASS.

[Anonymous No.9396006]

>>9394972
>These are all American titles
I can tell because there's not a single good game in the list. Look America this is an arcade, now please go there and learn something about fun game design.

[Anonymous No.9396018]

>>9395995
There's no core for it.

[Anonymous No.9396024]

>>9396018
Damn, I was hoping if I waited long enough someone would figure out how to dump that shit.
Oh well, a man can dream.

[Anonymous No.9396028]

>>9396024
It doesn't even work on Mame though, right?

[Anonymous No.9396030]

>>9393926
Yeah I've got one it fucking rules. Takes a while to get but worth it you can literally play speccy while you take a shit.

[Anonymous No.9396031]

>>9393487
You just had to be there to understand. For most, it was either a speccy for vidya or no vidya. The games are fun.

[Anonymous No.9396035]

>>9396028
I'm not sure about MAME, I can't get MAME to run.
The issue is that somehow the OG rigs are built in such a way that you can't get to the code or something. Some kind of encryption or DRM or, I don't really even know what.
So every port of it has critical parts where the devs just straight up guessed.
There's a handful of people that have been tinkering with it since forever, but as far as I know no real progress has been made.
I just don't want to have to go to all the trouble of building a cab.
That would be the hard part. I gotta cut all this wood, and glue shit together, and put in all this mounting hardware, and a controls thing and a monitor and yadda yadda.
A working circuit board is actually not all that unreasonably priced.

[Anonymous No.9397065]

>>9394354
>PC gaming scene in the US was gigantic in the 90s
So about 10 years later after british devs had pioneered PC gaming.

[Anonymous No.9397071]

>>9393487
They're "on the spectrum"

[Anonymous No.9397185]

>>9397065
British PC games were a wasteland until the 90s.

[Anonymous No.9397467]

>>9393491
well burgers love the c64 but that was dogshit compared to the Acorn Archimedes
so its all about perspective
the speccy was never designed for graphics or games
the limitations spawned more creativity and innovation than any other platform possibly ever.
I had access to all systems back then. Speccy had soul and you snooty pretenders have none.

[Anonymous No.9397618]

>>9397467
Big shock, the not very expensive Commodore 64 doesn't match up to the much higher end computer. Next you'll tell us a station wagon is crap next to sports car.

[Anonymous No.9398367]

Nintendies have no soul.

[Anonymous No.9398751]

>>9393950
>The ZX Spectrum didn't pioneer any kind of gaming.
> Invents the turn-based tactical game in your path

>>9396024
Primal Rage uses extremely complicated protection. A guy had started to figure it out for MAME, but he died of cancer. Someone else has started teasing a new attempt at reverse engineering, but it seems it will be for one of those closed source Arcade 1-UP machines.

[Anonymous No.9399361]

>>9397618
He couldn't very well compare his "the Acorn Archimedes" to a "the Commodore" sold around the same time for around same price, could he? That'd just be too embarrassing.

[Anonymous No.9399395]

>hears about the speccy
>does 2 seconds of "research"
>comes to a shit conclusion that is a complete 180 degree turn from reality
Young kids shouldn't be on /vr/.

[Anonymous No.9400289]

>>9399395
Show me one (1) kid on /vr/ that came to the conclusion it was good

[Anonymous No.9400305]

>>9399395
not him and your estimate of what he did is probably 1:1 with reality, but let's be honest dude, this thing is a piece of fucking shit. i'm not saying it wasn't cool at the time it was relevant, and i'm not saying it wasn't influential, but it's a piece of shit. it's an old ass computer with horribly archaic graphical abilities that has no real modern application outside of playing games that are playable on any modern device; the likes of which are not very good to begin with. i'd tell you the same thing about the original gameboy, and frankly, the NES.

[Anonymous No.9400334]

>>9400305
His point stands.
What the fuck are you doing on /vr/?

[Anonymous No.9400339]

>>9400334
>you need to like what i like
nope lol

[Anonymous No.9400343]

>>9397185
Elite? Lords of Midnight? Populous? Everything the Gollops did before X-com?
You basically don't know fucking anything.
They invented entire genres that are still going.

[Anonymous No.9400363]

>>9397467
C64 retailed at $600 USD at launch. Very much a luxury item in those times which was targeted at the middle class (Apple IIe was twice that price). And that was just the base unit without a disk drive. Speccy was targeted at everyone and had a much cheaper price point

[Anonymous No.9400394]

>>9400363
>C64 retailed at $600 USD at launch. Very much a luxury item in those times which was targeted at the middle class (
Those first machines were also a barely functional beta version that had video output so poor it was like smearing Vasoline on the screen. It took a year and a half before the hardware was stable.

[Anonymous No.9400894]

>>9394028
He wasn't a poorfag then, he definitely isn't one now. E-X-P-L-A-I-N?

[Anonymous No.9400908]

>>9394018
> British programmers are some of the best in the world
LMAO yea ok retard. All your country is known for is garbage euro jank like pressing up to jump and getting hurt by droplets of water and gay egg mascot. Your country fucking sucks. Why dont you go eat your fucking fish heads and beans some where else retard.

[Anonymous No.9400997]

>>9400908
hahahaha seethe

>invents the isometric platform puzzle genre in yore path

[Anonymous No.9401252]

>>9400908
Daily reminder:

Lara Croft on the cover of every pop culture magazine, WipEout in clubs throughout Yurop, GTA all over TV, thanks to the then-controversial nature of the game; British developers sold the original PlayStation to the western world. We revolutionised the industry. We made gaming super mainstream (you lost your virginity because of us. Well, not you; you'll die a virgin) We made Sony the vidya juggernaut it is today, something that forced its rivals to up their game. Only the Japs have done more. Cope, sub human wretch. In the grand scheme of all things gaming, you are almost insignificant by comparison.
Now, go make more games about trannies and square jawed women with Olympic powerlifter physiques, you disgusting degenerates; bring on that second crash (which will only affect you. AGAIN), you clueless shaven chimps.

You now may kneel.

[Anonymous No.9401568]

>>9401252
>britshit developers sold the original PlayStation to the western world
What is this cope? No one bought a PS1 for some shitty britjank lmao. People bought it for Tekken, FF, and Twisted Metal. Take your halal meds