35 35 Years zx spectrum games more than 10,000 games have been released for the zx spectrum and that number grows everY single Year. as it celebrates its 35th anniversarY, martYn carroll selects a keY title from each Year, from 1982 to todaY, highlighting the sheer durabilitY of this diminutive micro 44 | RETRO GAMER
1982 the hobbit DEVELOPER: BeaM Software GENRE: text adventure Were it not for The Hobbit the Spectrum’s first year would have been forgettable as far as gaming goes. The reason for the lack of quality software early on is clear: the Spectrum officially launched in April 1982, yet Sinclair struggled to meet demand with some waiting for months for their machines to arrive. These delays meant that there wasn’t a great deal of games software available this year, decent or otherwise. Quick arcade clones were the order of the day, and it was obvious that many were hastily updated versions of existing ZX81 releases. Sinclair’s own label published some early hits like Space Raiders and Hungry Horace but they were simple, fleeting affairs. This begs the question: how did Philip Mitchell and Veronika Megler, authors of The Hobbit text adventure, create such a sophisticated title and have it ready so soon after the Spectrum’s launch? The pair actually began developing the game on the Tandy TRS-80, but when Beam Software witnessed the clamour for the Spectrum it shifted the development over. An added benefit of the move was that it allowed for colour location graphics to accompany the text descriptions. These images will evoke memories for many gamers, as they were slowly sketched on screen and then painstakingly coloured in, line by line. But for fans of interactive fiction, behind the crude graphics lay an engrossing adventure. The Hobbit was ahead of its time, introducing an intelligent parser, non-playable characters and non-linear progression years before it became commonplace. Tolkien, who famously wrote his tomes by hand, would have been baffled by this game, for sure. Yet the idea of readers being able to explore his world at will would have surely satisfied him. THE ZX SPECTRUM: 35 YEARS, 35 GAMES on spec veronika megler The Spectrum developer talks Tolkein On the Spectrum It was sleek, very obviously aimed at the home market. It was a good game-playing machine. We did all our development on the TRS-80 which was more focused on the business market. On developing The Hobbit We knew we were taking the current state of the art a leap forwards. But we got so caught up in the building of the game we didn’t think about that much. We talked more about design and the challenges of debugging something so complex. The ‘Inglish’ environment was more structured and testable, while the randomness of the NPCs and the game engine made testing that a real challenge. On the impact of The Hobbit I’m still astonished and humbled when I hear the impact The Hobbit had on peoples’ lives, and on other gamers and developers who came ater. Playing the game had far more impact on their lives than developing the game had on mine! of 1984 the midnight lords 1983 Jetpac DEVELOPER: Mike Singleton Ultimate carried on where it had left off, releasing several more Spectrum classics this year including Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf and the groundbreaking Knight Lore. Any one of those was a contender for 1984’s best game, as were Graftgold’s Avalon and Microsphere’s Skool Daze, but there’s one title that comes out on top for being both technically brilliant and brilliantly fun. The Lords Of Midnight, developed by Mike Singleton and published by Beyond, was so advanced that it made The Hobbit look like a type-in listing. Featuring 4,000 locations (all depicted GENRE: Strategy adventure visually, thanks to Mike’s inventive ‘Landscaping’ system), dozens of playable characters and multiple ways of seizing victory, this sprawling strategy adventure shouldn’t really have been possible on the Spectrum with its limited hardware and meagre 48K memory. But Mike brought the land of Midnight to life and everyone who trekked, battled, cowered and bluffed their way across its icy wastes will know that The Lords Of Midnight was simply peerless on release. Even the follow-up, 1985’s Doomdark’s Revenge, struggled to top the seminal original. DEVELOPER: ultiMate GENRE: Shoot-‘eM-up ‘From famine to feast’: that sums up 1983 basically. The Spectrum was suddenly everywhere, with Sinclair reportedly selling half a million machines by August 1983. The userbase exploded and so did the number of amazing games available. Sandy White’s Ant Attack pioneered the isometric adventure while Matthew Smith’s Manic Miner redefined the platform game. And then a brand-new outfit from the Midlands went and produced the purest arcade experience yet on the Spectrum. Jetpac was the debut offering from Ultimate Play The Game, the software house that would dominate the Spectrum’s early years. There were many single-screen shooters around at the time, but this was just so polished, so professional, that it could have come straight out of the arcades. The objective of warily refuelling your space rocket while blasting aliens was simple yet compulsive. Yes, colours clashed and sprites flickered but there’s arguably never been a better example of a pick-up-and-play game for the Spectrum – and it still holds up today. Jetpac was just the beginning for Ultimate: Pssst, Cookie, Tranz Am and Jetpac sequel Lunar Jetman all arrived before the year was out. RETRO GAMER | 45
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