CRASH INVESTIGATES
Where did all those Spectrum 128K launch titles go?
When there is something that does not quite make sense in the world of the ZX Spectrum, Martyn Carroll goes looking for answers.
When the Spectrum 128 launched in the UK in March 1986 it came with a catalogue that promised ‘76 top software titles’ that would be enhanced for, or exclusive to the new machine. As Martyn Carroll discovers, many of those titles never made it.
The 128 was bundled with two Ocean titles — The NeverEnding Story and Daley Thompson’s Supertest 128
— and a small number of other updated 48K games were available at launch, including Sweevo’s World, International Matchday
and Technician Ted: The Megamix. But the catalogue also listed 36 titles that were to be enhanced for the 128 that failed to show, including
Marsport, Mikie, Rambo and
The Goonies. Crucially, there were a handful of 128K-only titles that also went AWOL. Here’s what happened to four of them.
I, OF THE MASK
The catalogue revealed that publisher Electric Dreams was preparing a 128K-only version of Sandy White’s third game — something that’s news to Sandy. ‘I don’t recall ever having discussed
an enhanced version,’ he tells me. ‘My best thought is that it was conceived and publicised by Electric Dreams before sales figures for the game became apparent.’ It seems that the game flew off the shelves — and then boomeranged right back. ‘There were so many returns on the game that I was presented with negative royalties. I imagine any plans for an enhanced version would have been shelved at that point.’
I, Of The Mask looked stunning but played poorly and this pretty much sank the game, taking the possibility of an enhanced version with it.
RETURN TO EDEN
Originally released in
1984, this was the second game in Level 9’s Silicon Dreams trilogy of Sci-Fi adventures. Very good it was too, so Level 9 fans would have surely lapped up the 128K-only version that was supposedly incoming. And it did happen, kind of, a full year later with the release of Rainbird’s Silicon Dreams collection which featured enhanced versions of all three games. If you now loaded the game on a 128K machine you received longer text descriptions and different location graphics that took up the top half of the screen rather than a small portion of it (they were still awful, mind).
BORED OF THE RINGS
Moving from Level 9 to
Delta 4, we discover another text adventure that was apparently 128 bound. “Now bigger and better for the 128K Spectrum,” claimed the catalogue, “this enhanced version offers new music, more locations, more graphics, more problems, and more fun.” You can’t argue with that, except the ‘more everything’ version never materialised. It was on the cards though, according to author Fergus McNeill: “There was definitely a plan to do a super-duper enhanced version with lots of extra content, and we did some work on it but it was never completed.” The game was later updated and published by other companies, “but it wasn’t the all-singing all-dancing version.” Shame.
DYNAMITE DAN 2
This was perhaps the single most exciting game to be listed. The original was an instant classic, and according to the catalogue, the soon-to-be-released sequel would include ‘200 screens’ and be 128K-only. Well guess what?
The game arrived in May 1986 and it did feature all those screens, but it ran on a bog-standard 48K Speccy with no 128K enhancements. I asked Dan’s creator Rod Bowkett about the 128K version that he was supposedly rustling up for Mirrorsoft. ‘Really?
I’ve never heard of that!’ was the rather conclusive answer. He also explained that he spent ages compressing the data and trying to simulate polyphonic sound, things he wouldn’t have needed to do if he was working on a machine with bags of extra memory and an AY audio chip.
Sorry Dan fans, there was no special 128 version, but there is a happy ending to this tale. Friend of CRASH Richard Hallas recently discovered that Czech developer ‘Lanex’ has created a modified version which uses the AY chip rather than the old beeper — and it sounds amazing. You can download it here: www.ilnx.cz