Nextcellerated
With so many games and pieces of software rapidly arriving now for the Spectrum Next, it’s easy to forget the roots of its conception and remember that for many, the Next is primarily their go-to all-in-one solution for gaming from the entire Spectrum family. The power of the FPGA is responsible for all those impressive new titles, but if you’re not also using it to enhance your favourite classic Spectrum 48K and games, you’re missing out! Utilising those accelerated 7MHz, 14MHz and blistering 28MHz modes you can turn some terribly-performing disasters into playable curiosities, or cover the few sins some great titles made and unleash their potential with a little turbo boost...
Game: R-TYPE Recommended Speed: 7MHz Publisher: Electric Dreams Released: 1988
It was clear that R-Type would see a licenced port make its way to a multitude of home platforms at the time. Unlike other shooters that, perhaps because of their genre obviousness, were lazily ported, R-Type managed to see much better transitions on most platforms it made it to. For once, Sinclair’s underpowered underdog didn’t get screwed in the hands of an amateur. Electric Dreams did a fantastic job of bringing the busy space shooter to the Spectrum with a port that managed to faithfully replicate the visuals with more lashings of colour than would normally be seen and with the colour clash actually aiding the visuals of the simulated space battles. Extremely fast
paced and also classically arcade-hard, it’s a superb and highly reviewed title remembered fondly by many. It isn’t flawless though, and there are times during boss fights and some areas where the otherwise acceptable scrolling reaches a near stand still. This may make things a little easier if your reflexes aren’t the best, but it does take a little away from that arcade immersion, particularly if you’ve played other ports or are attached to the arcade original. This is an example of where you should be sensible with the acceleration choice and go for 7Mhz. Whilst this will undoubtedly massively hinder your performance initially, it will increase the pace to that of one nearer to the arcade game and once you gain some skills, will feel much more authentic to play and reduce those laggy moments. Only the suicidal would choose to go higher on this game though, so don’t be a hero, as it’s doubtful you’ll last long at the 4x or 8x speeds.
Game: Stunt Car Racer
Recommended Speed: 14MHz
Author: Peter Cook / Micro Style
Released: 1989
Pete Cooke’s port of Geoff Crammond’s unusual 3D stilt-track racing game was a valiant attempt, not too far removed from the Amiga and ST versions in terms of presentation or content.
Where it did lack however, was in the visual and gameplay departments. The original Spectrum was perfectly capable of rendering wireframe models to produce vector-like 3D graphics as seen in titles like ‘Elite’, but shaded 3D environments and high-colour graphics were never going to be possible with that horrid colour clash. Passable as it was on static-screen games, it would have looked awful on a 3D processed track.
Even going monochrome, the Speccy’s lack of dedicated graphics hardware and standard 3.5Mhz processor led to gameplay that was choppy at best, confusing at worst if you had a crash or in the high-banked turns of the trickier courses. Dial that Next speed up to 14Mhz though, and you’ll start to experience a game on par with the 16bit Atari and Commodore versions.
Whilst there won’t be the colour, the draw distance of the sky and upcoming track of those versions, the frame rate actually surpasses that of the superior ports and the game finally feels like a competent early 3D racer instead of some kind of tech demo.
The faster movement will help you read the track much easier and the joystick control will be just as responsive as it needs to be to meet the speed. Be warned though, as the digital inputs you make will be tough to handle and remind you why analog controls eventually became the only real way forward for future generations. Don’t try to play on 28Mhz unless you have ninja-like reflexes, and if you struggle there’s always 7Mhz to fall back on as a compromise.
Game: Trapdoor Recommended Speed: 7MHz Publisher: Piranha Software / Don Priestley
Released: 1987
Leaning on the success of his work on DK’tronics’ Popeye, Don Priestley built on what he accomplished there and created a new game based on a more contemporary I.P. Based on the extremely popular British claymation children’s series ‘The Trap Door’, he created a faithful and enjoyable game using the same cartoon-like and huge animated characters, where you must control faithful servant Berk as he struggles to restrain the trap door monsters in his job to serve the whims of ‘im upstairs’. The art this time is more gloomily designed to suit the dank castle setting, succeeding far better in avoiding virtually any colour clash with the way the backgrounds and the characters animate and interact. Whilst I’m tempted to suggest completely leaving this one alone as it functions much better at standard speed than Popeye, any childhood fans of the show will remember that the plasticine characters moved about at a comical pace in the animated series and that some of that is lost in the gameplay here. It’s not an easy game for first-timers, but seasoned players will know how to best complete the tasks and achieve maximum points in the final challenge, which reduces the replay value somewhat. Take the speed up to 7, 14 or even 28MHz though and not only will the characters all move around at a less sluggish pace, some of the movements can approach the comical levels of the series and you’ll have a far harder time getting all your rehearsed tasks completed in time, as any small pause or accidental monster release will cost you precious time and have you frantically trying to fix your mistake under pressure!
Game: Popeye
Recommended Speed: 7MHz
Author: DK’tronics / Don Priestley
Released: 1985
Don Priestley’s take on a game for the classic vegetable-chomping seaman stood out for one obvious reason.
Whilst there was a port of Nintendo’s 1982 arcade game and many other ports literally showing that the arcade experience could be brought to the Speccy in acceptable form, this completely different game was one of very few that was bold enough to bring bigscreen arcade visuals in such an impressive way. Although the theme and setting of the game is a little abstract and hard to define, it had an unmistakably faithful cartoon design that featured huge animated main characters and enemies inspired by the original cartoons that moved and contained a level of personality far above that usually seen in Spectrum titles of the era.
Even colour clash was mostly rendered negligible thanks to careful pixel work and some smart palette choices. For all that static impressiveness though, it’s hard to deny that thanks to no scrolling screens and no sprite capabilities, movement was a little clunky and there were several screens which really chugged along when there were lots of characters on screen. Take advantage of the first accelerated setting on the Next and the game suddenly feels very different. The characters will actually appear to walk rather than appearing like a slide show, you won’t be waiting forever to time that jump onto the UFO platform, returning with hearts when your inventory is full won’t destroy your soul and the pipe-chewer himself will feel a lot more responsive to your inputs. There is still caution to be had though because of the nature of the flipscreen gameplay, so don’t be tempted to jump up to 14MHz or more, else those enemies popping out of nowhere as you reach the screen border will drive you insane, and the input lag will ironically feel more noticeable.
Level 9 were to adventure games what Ultimate Play The Game were to arcade isometric games. Peerless. They created fantastical worlds, ingenious stories and puzzles that would infuriate and delight in equal measure. Add some evocative inlay artwork and you can understand why Level 9 attracted quite the fan base of adventurers and collectors alike. Richard Burton takes a lookback at the company and their Spectrum output…
It’s 1981, you are in High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire. There are three brothers. What next? Well, if you are Peter, Nick and Mike Austin then you would’ve formed Level 9 Computing and started creating adventure games for home computers.
In the first instance this would’ve been for the Nascom with a collection of arcade game clones based on the usual suspects of Space Invaders and PacMan, as well as a veritable smorgasbord of
programming aids.
Level 9’s first adventure was Fantasy for the Nascom but when they turned their hand to converting and extending Colossal Cave Adventure, an early adventure game created by Will Crowther on a PDP-10 mainframe in 1975, things really started moving.
Level 9’s Colossal Adventure was well received and so a second adventure promptly followed, a sequel entitled Adventure Quest.
A third game, Dungeon Adventure, would later complete the threesome called the Middle-Earth trilogy. This was later released as a compilation and renamed Jewels Of Darkness for Tolkienbased legal reasons. By now, Level 9 were producing adventure games for a variety of platforms. From their early Nascom beginnings they were producing and converting adventures for the Spectrum and every popular
(and not so popular) home computer system including Camputers Lynx, MTX Memotech and the Research Machines 380Z.
Looking forward and another trilogy of adventures
revisit their old adventures and revitalise them for 16-bit systems while spending time developing new 8-bit adventures for Telecomsoft’s Rainbird label. Three trilogies of games were released including a brand new one called Knight Orc which combined Loosed Orc, A Kind Of Magic and Hordes Of The Mountain King into a slickly packaged compilation released in July 1987. Sadly,