ZX Spectrum games bible is out!

In communist Poland of the eighties there was one computer magazine (quite popular, actually). It was divided into "clans": ZX Spectrum clan, Atari clan, Commodore clan, Amstrad clan. Plus game reviews, plus features. I was, of course, ZX Spectrum clan member and I remain one ever since.

Why do I even mention it? Because a book with ZX Spectrum games' reviews is out right now and I have contributed a review to it as well.


The project is called ZX Spectrum Games Bible, and while not the first one, it seems to strive to be the most complete one so far. There are of course online lists of best ZX Spectrum games (such as this one - great read!), but you know, a book is a book.

I learnt about it from Retro Gamer magazine I was reading at Heathrow airport, contacted the author and finally ended up writing one of many, many, many reviews included in it. Most of my favourite games were already taken, but I have found one game I have known under different name: Panama Joe, which I have come to know under the alias Montezuma's Revenge (you can play it in your browser on World of Spectrum). This is the excerpt from the review:

Today Panama Joe may seem simplistic, repetitive and hard as hell, but back in 1984 it was an epic adventure allowing players to experience the struggle with the dangers of Aztec pyramid and as such it deserves a place in the heart of every 8-bit veteran out there.

You can buy the book here. If you do, please let me know - it will definitely boost my ego.

Pac-man in space. On drugs.

I just came across this explanation to what Pac-man game really is all about:


I must say that this is ... creative. Not bad for reinterpretation of this:


And speaking of Pac-man, don't forget about this and this. Wicked!

Return of the Spy Hunter

Accidentally, I have stumbled upon this Pontiac commercial:



For the convenience of younger viewers who might not get the reference, please find the movie below:



Yes, that was a real computer and arcade game - Spy Hunter. I am writing this for those of you who are less than thirty years old.


For me it has a special place in my heart, because it was one of my first ZX Spectrum games. I actually have totally different memory of how it looked, but it was due to ZX Spectrum version limitations - click here if you want to see the version I played as a kid. Also, if you remember Blues Brothers, there is C-64 version with some familiar music in the background.

And if you feel like trying your luck with it, you can play it here (courtesy of World of Spectrum).

Spectrum movie goodness

I have been planning to write ZX Spectrum retrospective recently, but I realized I had already done it some time ago on the occasion of 25th anniversary of this extraordinary computer. Instead of writing a long-winded article over again, I have chosen instead to present you with two Spectrum-related movies I have found on Youtube.

The first clip is an advertisement for ZX Spectrum+ (exactly the model I had) from the eighties, and boy does it look cool.

The second clip is a retro music video featuring "SUPERB remix of Martin Galway's C64 'Arkanoid' theme (remixed by Lagerfeldt). The Arkanoid tune is of course a remix of Martin's ZX Spectrum music from the Ocean game 'Cobra'" which means that not only the video, but music as well stems from ZX Spectrum roots.

If you missed on the age of 8bit computers, you might watch it in the similar way people go to museum to see caveman tools exhibition, and if you are a thirty-plus nostalgic (like me), enjoy
this little retro flashback.

N + 1

Having a knack for retro old-school games, I am impatiently waiting for this little jewel :

Appearing for Sony PSP (as seen above), Nintendo DS (see the trailer for this version here) and Xbox Live!, the game is cryptically entitled N+. The title stems from the fact that the first version was an online flash game - don't forget to give it a try, just not at work, if you would like to keep it - so this is an updated remake (hence N+, as in C++, get it?). You can read more about the game and differences between different versions on Siliconera and on Metablog, be sure check official The Way of the Ninja page as well (contains a ton of screens and downloads!).

Obligatory PSP screen

The fiendish difficulty level of the original version prevents me from playing it too much, but it has a lovely minimalistic retro touch to it. So even though there are some A+ class titles to come out in march (I'm looking at you, God of War... drooling), I will be sure to keep an eye on this title, as it seems very interesting for an old-school guy like myself. Ah, the good ol' tiNes...

Interesting comment on MacBook Air

I have been waiting impatiently for Apple to reveal the specs of that damn new gadget, hoping it would be something interesting. After Steve Jobs presented new MacBook Air Apple stocks went down - and I can see why. The best comment to the machine specifications so far is the comparison below :

'Nuff said.

Little wishes come true - in green

In my last post about PSPCAP32 and Amstrad Schneider CPC I mentioned that probably the only thing that might make this program a little more perfect was the monochrome display option, just like on the old green monitors.


And voila! Christmas is approaching and my wish was granted! Zx-81, the man behind porting of this emulator (and a handful of others, too) to PSP, heard my cries and added this feature to the newest release, which, by the way, happened just a couple of days after the last one. That's what you call support!


So thanks to Zx-81 you can now see these games the way I have experienced them for the first time. For me it is yet another trip down the memory lane, for younger readers unique opportunity to see how gaming used to be long time ago. I bet there are one or two other guys out there who have just shed a tear of nostalgia as well. At least I hope so, otherwise this means I am really weird.


Oh, and if you were able to tell the name of the above games based on the screenshots, you're a geek over thirty.

Answer : Knight Lore, Fruity Frank, Boulder Dash.

Amstrad CPC on PSP

Long time before I actually got my first personal computer (we would call them microcomputers back then), which would be ZX Spectrum+, my sole contact with the emerging computer science would be to implore my Dad to take me to his work, where his friend, Mariusz Smoczyński, worked on Amstrad Schneider CPC 6128. Thus begins the tale of my digital fascination, born in the green light of the monochrome screen in the 8-bit times.

Fruity Frank - in that innocent times people were
not afraid to give such name to the game...

A little anecdote here. Many years later, when I was still a student at the Technical University of Lodz and had laboratory classes in one of too many laboratories where time has stopped, we were supposed to calculate some viscosity coefficients using ... Amstrad CPC with a prepared and preloaded program. I was the only one who knew machine, so after we had finished our task, I broke the program and wrote some simple animation in Basic that would scroll our names on the screen instead of boring program. Boy, was that nerdy, but you can't beat that feeling.

Ghosts'n'Goblins - there even exists a PSP remake now.
History has made a full circle.

It is therefore understandable that I have a special place in my heart for this machine, like some have for their first girlfriend. Fortunately, the development of everything digital has allowed me to have it in my pocket, more precisely on my trustworthy PSP.

The emulator that allows me to relive my childhood adventures in other worlds is called PSPCAP32 and it's author Zx-81 has just recently released yet another version that has transformed it from a very good emulator into a perfect one.

PSPCAP interface

The emulator runs very fluidly (50fps), has nice interface, is very configurable and user-friendly. It is enough to select a disk with a game (speaking of which - all Amstrad games are legally free) and the game will load automatically. I have not yet found any game that would be incompatible. They are just like I have remembered them and I am flooded with nostalgia (if you have read Barts' News for some time, you already know I have a soft spot for good, old times.).

Green Beret - one of the hardest games back in the day

The only thing I could think of in terms of features I would like to see would be to implement some filter to make the games monochrome, as seen on the green monitors back then. But this is a very bizarre request, stemming from the fact that I played these games this way. Apart from that, PSPCAP provides the ultimate Amstrad experience on the go. Thank you Zx-81!

Drill down

Just when I thought the PSP homebrew scene is dead, I found another gaming gem. The game is called Mr Driller and I was expecting some crappy port of Drill Dozer from Gameboy Advance. Fortunately, I have decided to give it a try first.

The game turned out to be really cool. The idea is simple - player controls a character that has to drill down through multiple coloured layers, while paying attention to their oxygen levels. Air can be regenerated by collecting capsules of oxygen, but they are usually blocked by blocks that are very hard to drill through. When drilling down, player must be very careful not to destroy blocks that support other blocks, which in turn will cause rocky avalanche and flatten our hero down. So simple and yet so amusing.


The game is not perfect - there is no music, sounds are few and far between, animation is simplistic, there are no saves, game can be damn frustrating later on. Still, the most important factor, meaning gameplay, is there. This game is actually fun to play and quite addictive too. As an additional plus, it plays well in short bursts, for example on the bus. Highly recommended!

Post Scriptum for Old Geezers

And now lengthy post scriptum with a personal twist. When I was playing the game, I had a feeling of deja-vu - irritating impression that I have seen it somewhere, some day, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Fortunately, I work with other guys that started their adventure with computers in the eighties, and one of them just glanced at the game and shouted "Kret!".


Kret (meaning The Mole in English) was an old shareware game (for Dos, meaning really old) where idea was somewhat similar. I started looking for the game over the net and finally have found it here. It is abandonware anyways so feel free to give it a try. Mr Driller does not actually steal the idea, it is in fact quite different, but the mechanics of blocks falling and supporting each other looks familiar, which explains my deja-vu.

On a side note in order to make matters even more twisted, there exists a port of DosBox (Dos emulator) for PSP, so I think it should be doable to run Kret on the PSP.

Aquaria

Just a short post to present a game the development of which I have been following for quite a long time ever since first reading about it on John Bardinelli's blog (whose slideshow with screenshots I have shamelessly stolen, see below) : Aquaria.

Aquaria is beautiful, slightly eerie and makes me recall Ecco the Dolphin. It's trancey and looks like the kind of experience that would grow on the player in a way similar to Flow. The guys behind it are Derek Yu and Alec Holowka - you can read developers' blog here. Have a look at the screenshots (thanks John!) and at the video, to see how it looks in motion :

I really can't wait to see what comes out of it!

Street Fighter II Overdose

My first contact with Street Fighter II consisted of playing it on my friend's Amiga during his birthday when I was more or less 12 years old. I played Dhalsim (reasoning that long arms and legs would help me win), and I lost (the winner chose Blanka and was just repeatedly pressing fire). It was one of the greatest computer games I have known for a long time - it had beautiful graphics, interesting characters, great gameplay (even if a little unbalanced - take Dhalsim for example...).


I had played the numerous variants of the game later on : crappy PC port, then cool PC Turbo version, some arcade machines (on one of them Ryu's fireball would fire FIVE fireballs at one, dunno what weirdo tweaked it), then Zero/Alpha series, the last one on my PSP.

I was excited when I learnt that the game is going to be redone in HD (High Definition) meaning high resolution sprites, more animation frames and essentially the same gameplay. I was even more excited that the guys doing the graphics are going to be studio Udon that I know as the creators of SFII comics and also from watching art of some of their artists on DeviantArt. But my scepticism kept me from getting my hopes up too much - it is so easy to spoil


Just recently I saw full screens and I think they look gorgeous. Of course, the final verdict can only be made based on the final product, but so far the screens look both great and surprisingly faithful to the original game.

Indeed, Street Fighter II has gone a long way...

The interesting fact is that already the whole process of converting and redrawing the characters into HD was causing quite some controversy. Capcom never replied to this and as far as I know. Personally, I like new looks and feel a little ambiguous about possible art copying. Anyhow, seeing screenshots of the new version flooded me with memories of playing it as a kid, which felt almost like re-reading a good book after years and finding out that it is still as good as before (I wanted to put some metaphor about women, but it would be risky and inaccurate, so I gave up).


On a side note, this reminds me that some time ago I have stumbled upon (probably via Kotaku) a very funny series of movies called Street Fighter : The Later Years - it's hilarious, especially if you are a fan of the series (like me).

As always, I intended to write a short note about the new HD version Street Fighter II and I ended up mentioning all sort of SFII-related stuff that came to my mind. At least I hope you could find out something interesting in it.

PSP Rhythm

I swear I couldn't decide on which aspect of this post I should put more emphasis : great piece of retro music, making me reminiscence about my 8-bit youth, or a great piece of PSP homebrew that allowed the music to be created. Let's make it just a quick note then all of it, before I get all nostalgic and start blabbering about ZX Spectrum and good old days.

PSP Rhythm is a homebrew sequencer program that you can carry around in your PSP and use to create music on the bus. Neat, eh?


The authors, Billy and Louie Iturzaeta, not only gave us the audio tool, but also sponsored a contest in which participants had to create music with PSP Rhythm. As a result, there was quite a couple of interesting songs that were conceived.

The winner was Transforming Landscapes by Turbo Raketti and honestly, it deserved the prize. You can listen to it by clicking below :

As I wrote in the beginning - I like this song a lot. It has this subtle retro feel to it which makes the images of 80's pixelized games appear in my mind. It resonates well with the synthetic sounds of Amiga mods and the first audio renditions of ZX Spectrum that I remember so fondly.

So all in all : great program and great music!

Space Invaders Extreme hands-on impressions

Space Invaders is one of the all time game classics that any gamer simply must know, even if they missed on early 8 bit era. If by any chance you don't know what I am writing about, read about it here and play it here (also, be ashamed and hand over your gamer's licence).


At Tokyo Game Show Taito has just presented Space Invaders Extreme, a remake of the original title for Nintendo DS. The game formula has been severely altered, which is a good thing, since the original was, to put it diplomatically, not the most complicated game in the world. The game was given major graphical overhaul in the vein of Q Entertainment's recent games - different skins, different weapons, special effects flashing on the screen, combinations of strange colours and crazy electronic music made me think of Gunpey or Every Extend Extra.


The few minutes I have spent with the game went by quite fast and the game seemed to be enjoyable. I don't know, however, how about the playability and replayability of the title. I mean how long can you shoot to rows of aliens?

Oh, and while on the topic of Space Invaders - someone please get me these shoes :

100 Amiga games in 10 minutes!

For nostalgics like me - a must. One hundred Amiga games flashback - I recognized so many of those...

There are similar videos on Youtube with early PC games - if anyone is interested, let me know through comments and I'll post them here as well. Enjoy!

Emulating Amiga on PSP with PSPUAE 0.63

One of my earliest posts on this blog was about PSPUAE, the Amiga emulator on PSP. Being an avid Amiga fan since childhood, I bought PSP fueled by the desire to play Amiga games on the go. Unfortunately, the reality was not that great back then, which made me somewhat bitter and unpleasant (read here to find out more).

Anyhow, just recently I have got my hands on the newest version of PSPUAE, namely 0.63 nicknamed "Birthday Edition". Happy birthday, PSPUAE!


Right, and now to the essentials: it certainly is nice, but how does it play?

The answer to that is : really good. One year has passed and it was not wasted. There's a lot of things that have changed since I first got a copy of PSPUAE

Most importantly, the authors have significantly improved the speed of emulation with this edition. Although still not sufficient to fully emulate every game in perfect fluidity, PSPUAE definitely has made progress. Many games are emulated almost perfectly, and many more have accelerated and crossed over a threshold from barely playable to playable.

The usability has also improved, in terms of user interface and the customization options available. The menu is more user friendly and I had no problem finding the options I needed.

Another important feature is the use of so called save-states. They allow for loading the state of Amiga memory directly in the emulator, instead of emulating the regular loading process from a fake drive - thus allowing for much faster loading times. It sounds a little complicated, but it boils down to being able to start playing without having to wait for a long time. Certainly a nice feature.

In order to use the emulator, user needs to have KickStart files. Due to copyright issues they are not distributed with the emulator, but they can be found on Google. The emulator itself can be downloaded from a couple of places, such us QJ.Net or its homepage.

A couple of examples of test scenarios (what a nice euphemism for playing games) is presented below :

International Karate Plus - plays great with sound and a little amount of frameskip. Fluid and playable.

WarZone - slight slowdowns, but playable with sound.

Speedball Deluxe - runs smoothly with sound. Impeccable.

SWIV - unfortunately not really playable. Sluggish even with frameskip, less so with no sound.

Another World - no problems here, runs great with sound and music.

My beloved Wolfchild also loads and plays great, with sound and decent framerate, although some frameskipping is necessary. But it finally plays fluidly!

To sum up, this is a very good release of a very good emulator. I hope for some more improvements, but given the complexity of task, I must say I appreciate what we already have. If you have a PSP, this one is a must.

Wolfchild speedrun

One of the most memorable games of my youth was Wolfchild. This can be attributed to many things, but for me it was The Game. The cyberpunkish story, the atmosphere, the graphics and music, the gameplay - Wolfchild had it all. And metallic howling of werewolf during the transformation...

I remember this commercial from Amiga Power or some other Amiga magazine.

The intro sequence, although today it may seem boring and uninteresting, back then made the kind of impression on me that today might be similar to watching Animatrix or some perfectly produced anime.

The forest level with its dark backgrounds and strange music remains for me one of the most vivid memories of 16 bit era. Also, the moment when the player beats the first boss and starts falling down from crumbling spaceship - this was really an innovative approach to already established shoot'em up genre.

As for the music - I even asked one of my friends, Arek Maciejewski (now a respected businessman), to record the music track on a tape recorder for me to listen (yes, we didn't have CDs back then...). This music is still my soft spot - I have it in mods and also two great remixes.

Why do I reminiscence like this at this moment, and, what's more, publicly?

The answer is that I have just discovered a video of Wolfchild speedrun on Youtube, which caused a surge of memories. So whether you are a nostalgic like me, dwelling on the 16 bit past, or a young PSP user who has never owned a Gameboy (the last 16 bit gaming machine) and never heard of Amiga, I invite you to discover the retro charm of Wolfchild story

Thanks for bringing this to us, Cubex!

Reminiscing Flashback

I have told you the story of my fascination with Amiga games, maybe even a little too often. One of the unforgettable games of that generation was Flashback from Delphine Software.


Incredibly fluid animation (referenced in one of Kid Paddle comics), great atmosphere, space conspiracy, thrilling story, incredible music - this game had it all. Oh, and insane difficulty, too. Nevertheless, there are some people that still get tears in their eyes when they hear the main theme...

Reminiscence is a homebrew application aimed principally at these people. It is an engine for running Flashback on PSP, sort of an emulator created for emulating but one game. I almost overlooked it in the flood of cool homebrew apps appearing recently and I certainly am glad I didn't.


The cult classic actually looks great on the PSP screen, and even though I don't usually like to play my games in artificially stretched 16:9 (due to the fact that proportions look strange to me then), somehow this format goes well with Flashback.

In order to play Flashback with Reminiscence, you will need to provide the engine with data files, but this is not a problem - you can download the game from House of the Underdogs, or from any other abandonware site. You will also need to download music from Amiga version in mod format, which you can find on UnExoticA.


The game hasn't lost anything in translation and it is a real pleasure to be able to have it in my pocket everywhere and anytime. It is as difficult as always and I have lost the patience to retry same fragment over and over, but it still is very enjoyable, especially for a nostalgic like me. I also think that younger PSP users might actually have fun playing Flashback as well, since it is a game that gets so many thing right, contrary to so many modern products.

So if you are reading this - have a flashback of gaming past and play the damn game!

NeoGeo on PSP

I never actually owned a NeoGeo console, nor did I play on it. However, I happened to have played Samurai Showdown and other cult classics in the arcade lounges in the south (Zakopane) , north (Karwia) and middle (Łódź, Warszawa) of Poland, leaving a trail of my parents' hard-earned coins behind me. Another fond memory of my childhood is reading about NeoGeo games in foreign game magazines - in the early nineties, those were like glimpses of a better world.

Therefore it comes as no surprise that when I have learnt about possibility of emulating NeoGeo on my PC, I started playing it immediately. King of Fighters series, Garou : Mark of the Wolves, Samurai Showdown, Metal Slug, Ninja Masters... I could name all heroes from these games, I would know the twists of storylines, I finished many of hem with different characters, achieved bonuses and became master fighter in some of them - briefly, I was in love.


No wonder that when I have heard about emulating NeoGeo on PSP, I was sold from the very beginning. After all, at the beginning the main thing about PSP for me was all the homebrew emulators and other programs (eventually, I would notice that there are some great commercial games for the system as well).

The best NeoGeo emulator for the PSP is definitively MVSPSP by coder NJ. It runs smoothly at 60fps, games are emulated accurately, there is a nice and functional user interface present, games load really fast. Its main disadvantage is the need to prepare so called cache. Basically, you need to convert regular zip files to something more "digestible" for the emulator, using the attached converter. This can be a minor annoyance at first, but when you get it done, the emulator works like a charm.

I tested in on a couple of my old time favourites (Last Blade, Samurai Showdown, Metal Slug) and also on King of Fighters 2003, which I haven't had the opportunity to play yet. Everything was smooth and impeccable and games look great on PSP crisp screen (plus player can chose whether they prefer stretched 16:9 format or regular 4:3 one). So far the emulator turned out to be working flawlessly.


Unfortunately, PSP digital pad and/or analogue pad (because there is option to customize controls) are somehow not very fit to pulling out some of the more complicated moves, which makes playing some of those games significantly harder. But this is not really the fault of the emulator, since I had the same impression when playing Dark Stalkers and Guilty Gear on PSP.

A very important feature of MVSPSP is an option to have two player mode via Ad Hoc mode. Thanks to my colleague Adrian, who kindly borrowed me his PSP, I was able to try that out. I have downloaded dedicated Ad Hoc version (which also works fine for single player, so I really don't understand the logic behind splitting the emulator into two versions) and tried to play the game on two PSP. And then surprise - I was totally unable to either make PSPs see each other or find any Ad Hoc parameter in options. It took me some googling, but I have finally found the answer, translating the Japanese instructions :

AdHoc時
ファイルブラウザで□(Square)でゲームを選択するとAdHocモードで
ームを起動します。

which, courtesy of Babelfish, became :

When at the time of AdHoc the □(Square) with the game is selected with the file browser, the game is started with AdHoc mode.

So finally, the procedure is the following :

• Download the dedicated Ad Hoc version (from QJ.net or from NJ's page).
• Convert the games using the converter and place the files in the correct directories. You can use them with both regular and Ad Hoc version later on.
• Find NeoGeo BIOS file and put it in Roms directory (Google is your friend).
• Set your connection to Ad Hoc in the Networking menu of your PSP.
• Run the emulator - on OE firmwares, you may need to put it into GAME folder (instead of GAME150) in order to work.
• Important step! Instead of running the game by pressing O (Circle) button, run it by pressing [] (Square) button (on both consoles).
• One PSP will be a master and the second one will be a slave. Chose the server on the slave PSP, accept incoming request on the master PSP and enjoy playing the game versus your friend.

I suppose this should also apply to CPS2PSP and CPS1PSP, since user interface is the same in both cases. I didn't have the time to confirm this, though.

There also exists a version of the emulator, called NCDZPSP, that will allow you to play your NeoGeoCD games. These are few and far between, but I have tested it on Last Blade CD edition and it worked great, just like its cousin. Sixty frames per second, nice interface, and the additional bonus of not having to painfully create games' cache. The game music is stored in MP3 format, so you can in fact remove it and gain some space, but that's taking away the whole beauty of using CD versions - after all, Last Blade's score sounds great in high quality.

To sum up, this is an exemplary piece of homebrew : polished, user-friendly, fast, functional. If only all homebrew programs could be like this one...

Abe's Oddysee redone on ZX Spectrum

Abe's Oddysee was the game that I got all of a sudden from my friend in 1996, without ever having heard anything about it before. I tried it with certain dose of suspiciousness and I was blown away. That game had incredible story, was oozing with atmosphere, great graphics and sound, and above all it was ... odd. the whole world presented in the story was as alien as it could be. Rarely have I seen such an incredible otherworld experience (with positive exception of Another World). If you don't know it (shame on you), catch up by checking the game intro on YouTube and also this great music video, containing a lot of gameplay.

Although unfortunately Lorne Lanning, the founder of Oddworld Inhabitants, gave up and withdrew from video games world (it is a topic that deserves a separate post), the game remains a cult classic and still has some faithful followers. Recently two Russian programers, Tropimtchuk brothers, have ported Abe's Oddysee to... ZX Spectrum. Yes, from 32bit to 8bit, just see the video below :

Now you see, I couldn't have missed that - a great game from my past ported to the very first computer I ever owned. To be honest, it is just the first level that got ported (see the map here), but nevertheless it constitutes a remarkable feat. It definitely looks better than the Gameboy version.

Personally, this event has made me sit down and replay Abe's Oddysee on my PSP (you can see how it looks in this video and also check this custom eboot animation, which goes nicely with the game). You can also download the game port and check it on any decent ZX Spectrum emulator (I did). And if you still have too much free time on your hands, see this music video made of the sequel.

Prince of Persia revisited

Just a short, but nevertheless interesting video, that Grocal has drawn my attention to. As you might remember, I recently wrote about the Prince of Persia remake on Xbox Live! - and I generally liked the idea. The video in question shows the differences between original Prince of Persia on PC, Sega Genesis and Xbox 360 (there should be also ZX Spectrum and Amiga version for the sake of completeness, but...).

Enjoy!