Category: ZX Spectrum

Retro Programming website announced today the 4th challenge about Z80 programming the ZX Spectrum. The challenge consists in creating a program up to 50 bytes that will perform a fade-to-white CLS command. As shown by the animation above, the program will scan the monitor following a diagonal line, and changing the colours of the lines until it gets white. The…

Yars’ Revenge was created by Howard Scott Warshaw and first released for the Atari 2600 in 1982. Now, the ZX Spectrum owners can also can enjoy it (It is never too late!). Created by Luca Bordoni, the ZX Spectrum version is very well done, with nice graphics and very fast paced gameplay. I found a few problems with collision detection,…

Recently released, comes Pentacorn Quest, an Adventure/Platformer for the ZX Spectrum created using the popular La Churrera (The Mojon Twins) In the game, you need to collect five golden acorns distributed by the large mapping and deliver to the magical sanctuary, so you can cross an ancient door that will lead to … well, creators would prefer us not to…

Using the author’s own description, “Pets vs Aliens is a rather experimental story-driven “lullaby” board game for the ZX Spectrum that was recently released on World of Spectrum forum. The storyline is narrated in rhymes following the style of a classic children’s book although combined with a more exciting sci-fi theme. That’s a somewhat weird combination for a computer game,…

[youtube -RgjyezdsqU nolink] On this video, Carl Attrill teaches how to make ZX Spectrum graphics on a PC, displayed/animated on his ZX Spectrum emulator. The 10-minute long video shows where to get and how to use all necessary tools. The results are quite impressive! If you happen to try it yourself, don’t forget to show us the results on Twitter!…

CCH curator, Jason Fitzpatrick, had the opportunity of spending the afternoon of 19 February with Rick Dickinson, industrial designer of the original ZX Spectrum, and Steve Wilcox, director of Elite Systems and the man behind the Spectrum BT keyboard. Based on the post linked below, he was very pleased with what he saw: “It’s a really nice and generally faithful…

The comp.sys.sinclair Crap Games Competition 2015 – CSSCGC for short (!?!) is now on. If you want to participate, the entries can be submitted until the last minute of the last day of this year – Thursday 31st December 2015, at 23:59:59. According to the organizer’s website, the CSSCGC is an annual competition designed to showcase two things – the…

I’ve downloaded the free ebook ‘It’s behind you – The making of a computer game’ by Bob Pape a while ago, but I never got around to actually read it. If you haven’t heard of it, the book was released in 2013 and it tells the story of the making of the ZX Spectrum port of R-Type. This weekend I…

[youtube V6-_48Aqso0 nolink] This amazing demo was created for the ZX81 by ex-Ocean Software coder Jim Bagley (Cabal, Midnight Resistance, Hudson Hawk) and shown exclusively at the Retro Computer Museum Valentine’s Event 2015 at Snibston Discovery Centre in Leicester. It is just streaming video from CF card using the ZXpand on a ZX81, but he is aiming to make it…

[youtube 5zVYfisnDys nolink] As we reported few hours ago, Castlevania – Spectral Interlude was finally released on this “cursed” Friday 13th, including its own website! As described on the game website “Castlevania: Spectral Interlude is an action-adventure platform game with elements of RPG. It merges well known elements of classic games with some new ideas. It tells a new story…