Category: Sinclair News

Z80 Size Programming Challenge #4

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…

New Game 'Yars Revenge' for the ZX Spectrum

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,…

Pentacorn Quest

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…

Pets vs Aliens Prologue – Colourful New Game for the ZX Spectrum

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,…

Escape from Cnossus – ZX Spectrum

[youtube p0OFBRKwKKQ nolink] Escape from Cnossus is a rogue-like for the ZX Spectrum, made with Boriel’s ZXBasic compiler. It’s a minimalist coffeebreak game; It’s possible to complete the game in about 40 minutes.You can play the game online courtesy of the JSSpeccy emulator or you can download it from the link below and play it on your favourite Speccy emulator….

The Tales of Grupp – ZX Spectrum

Grupp is a handsome, womanizing gentleman of the court, but the king, tired of his womanizing with his nine daughters, decided to expel him from his army and locked away his daughters for a long time, nasty king! Grupp decides to kidnap all for revenge, but it will not be easy as the King has deployed his army against you…

How to make ZX Spectrum graphics on a PC

[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!…

The Centre for Computing History previews the ZX Spectrum Bluetooth keyboard

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 official 'comp.sys.sinclair' Crap Games Competition 2015 is On!

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…

It's behind you – The Making of a Computer Game – ZX Spectrum R-Type

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…