/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.8573297]

I can't take anything made for this seriously. I have seen better looking games on Texas Instruments calculators

[Anonymous No.8573301]

>>8573297
Filtered

[Anonymous No.8573302]

>>8573301
Explain? Do the games not look like dogshit to you?

[Anonymous No.8573305]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BLutrxB60I

To be fair you need a very high IQ to appreciate the ZX.

[Anonymous No.8573312]

LUB ME HORACE GOES SKIING
HATE ME MAYRIOO
SIMPLE AS

[Anonymous No.8573316]

>burgers when they spy a Speccy thread

[Anonymous No.8573319]

>>8573302
compared to an atari 2600 (which a lot of people still had at the time) it was great

[Anonymous No.8573325]

>>8573297
Speccy was for poorkids, just ignore the library composed of crappy jank. Play some C64 or Atari 800

[Anonymous No.8573331]

>>8573325
Ahem :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y9lm0gsbUA

[Anonymous No.8573338]

>>8573331
>MUH ECELEB TOLD ME SO
no
kys nigel

[Anonymous No.8573343]

>>8573338
>muh Eceleb
>never even heard of him
kek, enjoy your inferior arcade ports faggot

[Anonymous No.8573354]

[Anonymous No.8573361]

luv me horace
luv me jet set
luv me diszzy
luv me chubby gristle
ate seeegeh
ate nentendoh
ate amiger
ate commobore
simple as

[Anonymous No.8573367]

>>8573354
>comparing 16bit to 8bit conversions
Embarrasing cope

[Anonymous No.8573371]

>>8573297
Unironically a Ti calculator cost more too. Even at the time.

[Anonymous No.8573372]

I must admit TI83 had cool games. Wasted many school days playing R-Type, Tetris, and Doom

[Anonymous No.8573378]

>>8573354
we had plenty of sega megadrives
sonic was pretty popular over here

[Anonymous No.8573395]

>>8573302
In the time when the Spectrum came out it wasn't really about how the graphics looked like. Every platform in 1982 looked dogshit. The graphics were more of a suggestion and you used your imagination to fill in the gaps, like how you do when reading a book.
The Spectrum also had a veritable library of actual 3D games. NES didn't even get Elite until 1991.

[Anonymous No.8573510]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4DhpUn3Hkw

Don't mind me, just creating new genres and laying the groundwork for the Xcom games.

[Anonymous No.8573523]

>>8573354
When did the Queen play Wembley Stadium?

[Anonymous No.8573526]

>>8573354
This makes no sense. The Megadrive came out in the UK years after the Speccy. It wasnt a rival. Most people in England went Speccy > Master System > Megadrive

[Anonymous No.8573726]

>>8573297
That's because TI calculators are vastly superior technology. Not even joking. All but the earliest of the TI-80 series are faster and have more RAM. They even use the same CPU so it's not some bullshit comparison. But you understand those came out 10+ years later, right?

[Anonymous No.8573792]

how did the Horace games become a meme? they're about on par for early 80s stuff.

[Anonymous No.8573808]

>>8573302
Graphics are irrelevant to decent gameplay. The Spectrum has a ton of garbage, and a ton of good stuff too. It's quite strong for shmups.
>>8573325
There were like 11 people in the UK with Ataris at that time.

[Anonymous No.8573892]

>>8573297
That's fine, Americunt. We made up for it by selling the original PlayStation to the western world; Lara Croft on the cover of every magazine, GTA all over television thanks to the (then) controversial nature of the game, WipEout in every club throughout in Yurop when clubbing culture was at its peak; we made gaming super mainstream. We were responsible for a cultural revolution in gaming. You had the crash. COPE.

[Anonymous No.8573895]

>>8573297
That's fine, Americunt. We made up for it by selling the original PlayStation to the western world; Lara Croft on the cover of every magazine, GTA all over television thanks to the (then) controversial nature of the game, WipEout in every club throughout Yurop when clubbing culture was at its peak; we made vidya super mainstream. We were responsible for a cultural revolution in gaming. You had the crash. COPE.

[Anonymous No.8573914]

>>8573302
kys

[Anonymous No.8573929]

>>8573792
Because the guy who designed them suffered a collapsed lung and then vanished off the face of the earth, and no one knows what happened to him. In general terms, they’re well regarded games in the spectrum community despite all of them being carbon clones of other games and the protagonist being a random blue blob with legs. It just caught on. That’s kind of the case with speccy games become jokes. It’s either because the character and concept is absolutely surreal like Chubby Gristle, their bizarre popularity (Dizzy, Horace) and the background behind the games being equally unusual (all three series in this case).

[Anonymous No.8573934]

>>8573895
That wipeout ad with the bloody noses that was clearly playing off overdosing was pretty genius. No such thing as bad publicity, etc

[Anonymous No.8573978]

>>8573808
Not accurate. Most of the people I knew did have an XL, or an XE. They downgraded to the Spectrum because of the larger library.

[Anonymous No.8574002]

I had coffee with Sir Sinclair once I did. Even paid for his scone, the bastard

[Anonymous No.8574004]

>>8574002
How did it feel knowing you were in the presence of a man who could snap you in half like a twig in the blink of an eye?

[Anonymous No.8574005]

>>8573978
the Atari 8-bits were a C-tier computer in Europe along with the MSX and Dragon 32 that only existed to get low-effort C64 ports

[Anonymous No.8574130]

[Anonymous No.8574160]

>>8573978
Your example belies sales figures for the A8 line in the UK, especially when compared to the Spectrum or even the C64. I'm not disbelieving your experience, just suggesting it was uncommon. That said, if you had a lot of Eastern Euro friends, Atari was huge there.

[Anonymous No.8574176]

>>8574160
>That said, if you had a lot of Eastern Euro friends, Atari was huge there
...only after the Berlin Wall fell and they could sell stuff there

[Anonymous No.8574183]

>>8573808
Of course a fucking shmup playing loser likes the spectrum.

[Anonymous No.8574187]

>>8573297
it is basically a TI calculator with higher resolution and a color attribute table.

[Anonymous No.8574203]

>>8574176
Of course
>>8574183
I'm sorry you're so sad

[Anonymous No.8574210]

>>8574187
it's actually pretty easy to do action games on the Spectrum as the bitmap screen is straightforward and doesn't need a large amount of CPU cycles to manipulate.

[Anonymous No.8574247]

>>8574210
yeah, it's really underappreciated because the C64 steals its thunder but it's a great retro platform. if it had better sound I think it would be way more popular.

[Anonymous No.8574286]

>>8574002
Sir Clive, pleb

[Anonymous No.8574409]

>>8573302
They don't look any worse than the Game Boy, and for something that came out seven years earlier that's plenty good. Remember that the Spectrum was meant to compete with the VIC-20 and Intellivision, and in that context its greatest weakness is the sound (or lack thereof) which was rectified in the 128K models.

The reason it didn't collapse like the 2600 did was because the games were so cheap and piracy so easy that getting a stinker was no big deal.

[Anonymous No.8574441]

>>8574409
>The reason it didn't collapse like the 2600 did was because the games were so cheap and piracy so easy that getting a stinker was no big deal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r6-ooexrHLE
Pay $40 for this. Imagine.

[Anonymous No.8574505]

>>8573297
No one really liked it, it's a meme machine

[Anonymous No.8574631]

>>8573354
>we can't all be Paul macartny

[Anonymous No.8574639]

>>8573354
The amount of asshurt this has generated... Cheers m8

[Anonymous No.8575443]

>>8573523
July 12, 1986. Considered one of the most legendary live performances of all time.

[Anonymous No.8577245]

I would like to thank all you fine brit gentlemen for the engaging dialogue. But at the end of the day, I still prefer my old TI games over anything on the speccy

[Anonymous No.8577297]

>>8573297
It was literally the worst home computer. At least the Apple II has some fucking games. Same with C64.

[Anonymous No.8577376]

I haven't personally owned a speccy nor C64 but when I look at comparisons from Youtube I think games on speccy look often crisper than on C64. Is shitting on speccy just American memeing about stuff they have no experiences about, like being salty about us Euros having superior SCART connectors?

>>8577297
Explain this then
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Hy3rZkQL0w

[Anonymous No.8577385]

>>8577376
Of course it looks crisper vs the fat double-wide pixels of C64.

[Anonymous No.8577420]

>>8573395
>NES
Why is it that every time there's a Spectry thread there's someone seething about the NES? What's the relation between a japanese console and a brit computer?

[Anonymous No.8577440]

I've been working out an idea for a NES homebrew. It's sort of diet Zelda in which you have a top-down ARPG but just a single big dungeon you fight through with a boss at the end and there's an unkillable baddy who attacks you if you stay in a room too long. I have yet to work out the other details.

[Anonymous No.8577457]

>>8577385
I know right? And it is a trivial statement to say that crisper graphics = better graphics, although Spectrum of course had a limitation with colour palettes. What C64 seemed to have in its favour compared to Spectrum was a vastly better sound chip.

However, in all these comparisons it's good to keep let's not forget that the initial price of C64 was much higher than Spectrum's so a direct comparison is a bit misleading.

[Anonymous No.8577479]

>>8577457
the Spectrum has only 48k RAM, with 7k subtracted for the video buffer you have about 40k. that people were able to do what they did in this limited memory is a feat in of itself.

[Anonymous No.8577492]

>>8577420
They're mad they got dog shit games like Horace plays Footy

[Anonymous No.8577521]

>>8573338
In what universe is some guy with 1k subs an eceleb? Posting a YouTube video != eceleb worship

[Anonymous No.8577526]

>>8577376
I don't watch videos. If you have an argument, make it. Spectrum was trash.

>>8577420
Europoors and latams were too poor to afford consoles and they resent Americans for having both consoles and PCs in many households.

[Anonymous No.8577536]

>>8577526
>Europoors and latams were too poor to afford consoles
Pretty sure an Amiga cost more than a NES.

[Anonymous No.8577542]

not even Capcom could have made a good Spectrum game

[Anonymous No.8577558]

>>8577536
>Pretty sure an Amiga cost more than a NES.
And not a single European or latam could afford both, which was the point you tried, and failed, to miss.

[Anonymous No.8577572]

>>8577526
>I don't watch videos. If you have an argument, make it.
Fair enough. Although I did have some words and a picture there too but I guess I will have to concede that you don't read or watch images on an image board either.
>Spectrum was trash.
If that's your example of a proper argument let me tell you buddy, it isn't. It's stuff you hear in a kindergarten. I'll gladly hear you elaborate on why you think Spectrum was trash.

[Anonymous No.8577595]

>>8577572
>I'll gladly hear you elaborate on why you think Spectrum was trash.
Shit keyboard, shit construction, shit ULA which was buggy in most revisions, it was quite literally worse than many pocket calculators and BASIC computers of the same era. It was crippled.

[Anonymous No.8577604]

Well, lads, you can't overlook the fact that the Spectrum got R-Type and Street Fighter II which the NES was apparently deemed incapable of.

[Anonymous No.8577607]

I genuinely think it's charming. The colours are vibrant, the sounds it makes are fun. There's an interesting surreal sort of quality about it. The games themselves seem absolutely basic and not very fun to play though.

[Anonymous No.8577635]

>>8577604
There are bootlegs of both of those. More like they didn't want to make those games on a system that people in Japan cared about, because it might have devalued the brand. When some shovelware company calls you up and wants to adapt Street Fighter for a British calculator, I imagine the response is "sure, whatever".

[Anonymous No.8577640]

>>8577604
They didn't put SF2 on the NES because it made more sense to just make a SNES port. As for R-Type I have no idea. It was on the Master System but no NES.

[Anonymous No.8577660]

>In the 26th century AD, human space colonizers have accidentally awakened an alien race that has been asleep for 100,000 years. They are not happy at being woken up and have taken to their massive orbiting battlestation. Several Star Commandos were dispatched to plant explosives and destroy the alien ship, but all have been killed except one. You, the last remaining Star Commando, must complete this mission and annihilate the Deviants and their battleship before it's too late. The fate of the human race depends on you.

There's hints of a killer game in here if only it was on something more powerful.

[Anonymous No.8577724]

>>8573726
No NES love in bonglandia?

[Anonymous No.8577813]

>>8577724
Not really. It took until the Wii for Nintendo consoles to really catch on in England for whatever reason. Most people my age will be more familiar with Nintendo franchises on the GB than the NES through GC.

[Anonymous No.8577871]

>>8577813
I gather it was genesis > psx then

[Anonymous No.8577901]

>>8577871
Pretty much yeah, or computers. I always liked Nintendo consoles, but people like me were always regarded as weird at the time. I grew up thinking Zelda was an obscure franchise that only I knew about.

[Anonymous No.8577964]

>>8577595
>Shit keyboard, shit construction, shit ULA which was buggy in most revisions
Yeah ok these are legitimate concerns and I'll take your word for it. Although in the hindsight it might be argued that nowadays it boils down to whether or not the system had good software on it, since most people here emulate their games.
>it was quite literally worse than many pocket calculators and BASIC computers of the same era.
Debatable. Calling it worse seems like a stretch since Z80 was used in a wide variety of devices with different clock speeds. I'm not sure if there would've been a better processor available at the time in a similar price point.

[Anonymous No.8578012]

>>8577901
That is absolutely reverse world. Here people with Master Systems were the weird ones.

[Anonymous No.8578149]

>>8577724
I only speak from personal experience but growing up in the 80's I only knew one kid with a NES, 2 had Master Systems and everyone else seemed to have either a Commodore 64, Speccy or Amstrad. Early nineties the market seemed to open up a bit more and people either had Megadrives or Amigas, as far as Nintendo consoles went Gameboys were the most popular by far.

[Anonymous No.8578156]

>>8578012
I know lol
>>8577901
>>8573726
This has been a genuinely interesting read, I love reading about retro pcs on here, it is a whole other world, thank you guys for posting, and to the zx spectrum anon from another thread

[Anonymous No.8578282]

>>8577724
NES (britbong version) was licensed by Mattel and marketed as a mishmash Frankenstein console (picrel) in England and only had one retailer iirc. I think Nintendo was happy with their success in America and was overlooking the European market which is very dumb. Why leave money on the table?

I believe these Brits when they say they never heard of the the console, it wasn't available for them to experience it. Meanwhile here in burgerland every K-Mart, SEARS, Toys-R-Us, etc. had their NES demo kiosks as the focal point of their electronic departments.

But it still doesn't explain >>8577420, why get so angry at something you never heard of. Fascinating

[Anonymous No.8578412]

>>8578282
>why get so angry at something you never heard of. Fascinating
People actually do that a lot, and I don't fucking get it. I think some people really don't like feeling stupid when you bring up something they weren't aware of, so they get defensive about it.
This is basically why I don't get along with most people, because I've always been motivated by curiosity with things that are strange and unexplored, but then you try to share any of it with people, and you can just see them getting visibly annoyed by it all, because it's not one of the five things that's been served to them by mainstream media.

[Anonymous No.8578538]

>>8573297
You don't have to take it seriously, just play it and live, laugh and love.
Anyway the atari 2600 was sold until 1991, compare the pacman and donkey kong clones on spectrum to atari 2600.
For something comparable to nes try target renegade.

[Anonymous No.8578628]

>>8573354
holy kek

[Anonymous No.8578635]

>>8573895
>we made vidya super mainstream.
Thanks for ruining vidya, you fag

[Anonymous No.8578684]

>>8578635
Nice deflection and cope, you non-entity. We popularized a hobby that had previously only been taken up by the socially retarded. We got spotty basement dwellers like you laid, you dopey little shit. Well, obviously not you, you perpetual virgin. And if anyone has fucked up gaming, then it's the weebs, and the ban hammer, censorship infatuated, politically correct Americunt. PROJECT MOAR.

[Anonymous No.8578694]

>>8578635
Nice deflection and cope, you non-entity. We popularized a hobby that had previously only been taken up by the socially retarded. We got spotty basement dwellers like you laid, you dopey little shit. Well, obviously not you, you perpetual virgin. And if anyone has fucked up gaming, then it's the weebs, and the ban hammer, censorship infatuated, politically correct Americunt. PROJECT MOAR.
Bong cover art on the left, censored art for the sensitive Americunt on the right. You are pathetic.

[Anonymous No.8578715]

>>8578694
>censorship
Lmao. The home of the "video nasties" banlist is trying to preach about censorship. Kys before I report you for shit posting without a license.

[Anonymous No.8578718]

>>8578635
Nice deflection and cope, you non-entity. We popularized a hobby that had previously only been taken up by the socially retarded. We got spotty basement dwellers like you laid, you dopey little shit. Well, obviously not you, you perpetual virgin. And if anyone has fucked up gaming, then it's the weebs, and the ban hammer, censorship infatuated, politically correct Americunt. PROJECT MOAR.
Bong cover art on the left, censored art for the sensitive Americunt on the right. You are pathetic.
>b-but muh Hero Turtles..?
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ninja+zx+spectrum&t=palemoon&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images
COPE.

[Anonymous No.8578726]

>>8573895
>Europe made gaming popular, because Japanese console
Not sure I follow.

[Anonymous No.8578732]

>>8578715
https://ncac.org/resource/a-timeline-of-video-game-controversies
Cope. Cope. And then cope some more, you coddled bitch. WEAK.

[Anonymous No.8578738]

The real villains in gaming aren't Brits it's continental Europeans like Germans, Scandis, etc. Their games are the definition of demoscene crap that looks good but is awful to play.

[Anonymous No.8578743]

>>8578149
The SNES did way better in the UK than the NES did or so says Ashens.

[Anonymous No.8578748]

>>8578743
People did actually own the "SNEZ". Not as popular as the Megadrive, but it was out there.

[Anonymous No.8578753]

>>8578748
Street Fighter 2 was a deal breaker for many.

[Anonymous No.8578775]

>>8573367
?

[Anonymous No.8578795]

>>8578748
>SNEZ
Imagine still being this guy
They were equally popular

[Anonymous No.8578805]

>>8578795
That's what people called it. That's what I still call it, sometimes. It just slips out.

[Anonymous No.8578810]

>>8578635
If you look at why they were banned, then you'll see that only a few currently banned movies have had unfair treatment. A lot of the films glorify an inordinate level of violence against women, brutal rape, child abuse, and all sorts of other degeneracy. I mean, if that's your kind of thing, deviant, then...

[Anonymous No.8578824]

>>8578810
Only a few of those films are really shocking. Most of them are just weird and Italian. The banning made them seem so much cooler than they really are.

[Anonymous No.8578825]

>>8578810
So now you're gonna cry about fictional stuff?
KWAB

[Anonymous No.8578845]

>>8578825
>look at me, throwing stones in glass houses again
See:
>>8578732
Guess who's responsible for most of the whining, pansy?

[Anonymous No.8578852]

>>8578845
>deflecting to a schizo activist instead of looking at his own bong nanny state enforced censorship of media and speech
KEK. Bin it up nigel

[Anonymous No.8578860]

I think the BBC was the better computer, it was certainly a lot faster (2 MHz 6502 is faster than 3.58MHz Z80, just compare at how Elite performs on the two), but the ZX Spectrum was the much cheaper option. And I'm not sure why, but the Speccy has smoother 2D graphics. You got really smooth looking shmup and side scrolling games made for the speccy, but the BBC was really flickery for some reason. Also, the basic Speccy model had 48K of RAM while the BBC only had 32K, so there were tons of nicer games on the Speccy. Stryker's Run, Elite, and Exile are absolutely great though.

[Anonymous No.8578870]

>>8578860
they skimped on RAM because the BBC needed expensive high speed chips for its CPU

[Anonymous No.8578871]

>>8578852
>implying some board is representative of a nation
Cuts both ways, mutt. Keep crying.

[Anonymous No.8578883]

>>8578852
>nanny state enforced censorship of media and speech
Nobody watches the BBC, and Biden is going to strip you of every right you hold dear. Which party do you think gives big tech their marching orders, you spastic?

[Anonymous No.8578889]

>>8578860
>BASIC Computer Games
that infamous book. yuck.

[Anonymous No.8578905]

>>8578852
>yes, some board is obviously representative of a nation
Cuts both ways, mutt. Keep crying.

[Anonymous No.8578906]

>>8578870
That's an unfortunate trade off. The 64/128K B+ didn't have many programs made for it and was actually incompatible with a lot of the original 32K's titles. And also it was really expensive.

[Anonymous No.8578910]

>>8578905
The irony of your post. Look in the mirror

[Anonymous No.8578921]

>>8578883
>Which party do you think gives big tech their marching orders
None? They're pretty much rogue corporations owned by billionaires, and they're doing whatever is the most profitable for them. The majority of dems want antitrust bills against big tech, and that's certainly not profitable for those corporations.

>>8578889
It's very useful for teaching you programming. Bare metal coding of course was the preferred choice for action games. Many RPG games and other slow games were coded in BASIC though, it was easier to keep track of.

[Anonymous No.8579049]

>>8578889
Was it like pic?
>kid computer geek.
>looking at all the computer books at the library.
>computer games. fuck yeah. borrow that shit.
>most generic, cross-platform code, non action games, could probably be played on a teletype terminal
>disappointment.

(yeah, I get the importance of the programs not being too platform specific. even back then, but still.)

[Anonymous No.8579068]

>>8579049
There was a Spectrum-specific edition of this book.

[Anonymous No.8579073]

>>8579049
it was mostly like that. you were expected to customize the games for your machine.

[Anonymous No.8579096]

>>8579049
The author mentions that the games in here were written in GW-BASIC and have some features specific to it such as the RANDOMIZE statement, and that Spectrum BASIC uses a different string handling method. This would also be true of Atari BASIC but it's not mentioned in there, he mentions the Apple II, IBM PC, Commodore machines, Sharp MZ, BBC Micro, TRS-80, and Spectrum.

[Anonymous No.8579098]

>>8579068
Move over King James edition, there’s a new Bible in town.

[Anonymous No.8579106]

>>8579068
typing in 200 lines of BASIC statements on that keyboard must have been hell

[Anonymous No.8579112]

>>8579106
And the best part? If you made an error, you get to check through every single line, every single character, to see where you went wrong

[Anonymous No.8579126]

>>8579096
it's from 83, I don't even know if the Atari 8-bits were sold in the UK then. it seems to me they only sold the XE machines there in 85 onward. but yes Atari BASIC used the HP BASIC string system while Microsoft BASIC used the DEC BASIC system which created problems converting string-heavy programs.

[Anonymous No.8579150]

>>8579106
somehow they did it and dealt with its unreliable analog tape storage (Commodore, Atari, and Amstrad used far more reliable digital recorders)

[Anonymous No.8579162]

I'm American so I've never even been in the same room as a Spectrum, but I got myself a ZX Omni and have been enjoying the hell out of it. If you like 8-bit games then the Spectrum is a treasure trove, I really don't understand all the shit flinging between burgers and bongs over what machine is good and what machine is shit. Every computer from the era has its own charm and games worth playing.

[Anonymous No.8579176]

>>8579162
Is there like an essential romset or something available for the Spectrum? I have basically no idea about this thing's library, so it'd be fun to just download a big folder of games and start trying things out.

[Anonymous No.8579189]

>>8578282
>I think Nintendo was happy with their success in America and was overlooking the European market which is very dumb. Why leave money on the table?
They weren't leaving anything on the table, because they made all their money from software licensing, and no one was going to license software to sell in Europe because sales were abysmal because everyone just pirated everything. That's why consoles never got popular until they were CD based and you could pirate them as easily as PC games.
Yuropoor isn't just a meme, when people with extremely little income are making a non-necessity purchase and given the option between a locked down console that played only games that cost at least $50, and a computer which had other uses and an endless amount of software to easily copy, the choice was obvious.

[Anonymous No.8579194]

>>8577724
>No NES love in bonglandia?
Certainly not the sort of twisted love that makes someone bring it up when people are talking about calculators. Might also have to do with bongistan having a significantly lower rate of mental illness than mayrioland.

[Anonymous No.8579196]

>>8578921
>and they're doing whatever is the most profitable for them
Like censoring, and then banning the most followed world leader in the history of social media? Does intellectual dishonesty come natural to you, or is it something you've learned over time?
>The majority of dems want antitrust bills against big tech
Or:
>I know this is unenforceable; a smokescreen created to keep the free speech faggots off our backs while we utilize tech giants against our political rivals. Sshh... Tell no one...

[Anonymous No.8579204]

>>8579176
You can get the complete Tosec ROM set on archive.org, I've kinda just been going through that and trying out all the games that sound interesting combined with the ones that I hear about from folks are big into the Spectrum.

[Anonymous No.8579205]

>>8579096
Yeah. It's been decades since I've seen the book, so I don't recall what it did regarding certain discrepancies between BASIC implementations.

Random number generation, almost essential to games, varies widely between computers. RND(9) on some computers returns an integer number from 0-8, others use that parameter as a seed and returns a decimal between 0-1. (and I think in AppleSoft, RND(0) will repeat the last value generated.)

[Anonymous No.8579206]

>>8579176
No. This could be of help, though.
https://worldofspectrum.net/games/index.html

[Anonymous No.8579217]

>>8579205
most Microsoft BASIC implementations use RANDOMIZE for rng, the 6502 version doesn't. on Atari BASIC the RND function only produces a whole number from 0-65535.

[Anonymous No.8579229]

Compute! were famous for their type-in BASIC games but they were mostly Commodore/Atari fanboys and didn't give a shit about the Apple II and whatnot.

[Anonymous No.8579231]

>>8579217
Applesoft BASIC was actually developed by Microsoft. Apple's own Integer BASIC was by Woz (and returned 0-x for RND(x))

[Anonymous No.8579236]

>>8579196
>Like censoring, and then banning the most followed world leader in the history of social media?
To avoid lawsuit? Yes. And what leader are you talking about? Narendra Modi? You're not talking about that elite slave who became the most followed world class retard in the history of retards, right?
>I know this is unenforceable; a smokescreen created to keep the free speech faggots off our backs while we utilize tech giants against our political rivals. Sshh... Tell no one...
Do you have any fact to back that up?

[Anonymous No.8579267]

sound on the Spectrum works exactly like the Apple II so you cannot have background music as the whole CPU is needed to drive the speaker. however Spectrum BASIC has a command for sound generation while Applesoft has none and you just have to PEEK(49200) to operate the speaker, except BASIC is too slow for anything but a low buzzing sound so you end up needing to use assembly language anyway.

[Anonymous No.8579293]

>>8579267
It's generally harder to get a game up and running on the Apple II because the graphics are rather illogical and the CPU is weaker and it takes more code to do something than it would on the Spectrum. Also syncing the graphics on the Apple is annoying since the method of detecting the vertical blank is different on each model of Apple II.

[Anonymous No.8579305]

>>8579236
You know who I'm referring to. And no, I'm not citing anything in this thread while the Gestapo are moderating. You know which board to visit if you want your query answered. Not m fault that half of them are nuts.

[Anonymous No.8579338]

>>8579293
http://apple.bikibird.com/appleIIeMemoryMap.html

The HGR page on the Apple II sits smack in the middle of memory and your program code has to jump around it. Kind of annoying considering the bitmap page on the Spectrum is at the top of memory so you can have a continuous block of code running from $5B00 to $FFFF.

[Anonymous No.8579361]

>>8573354
Slap some (slightly) better art and formatting on it and it would read exactly like a 00s webcomic

[Anonymous No.8579362]

SOVL

[Anonymous No.8579438]

>>8579338
Basic also put your program code where the text/lores page 2 resides (not that many people programming basic would ever do anything with two lores screens.)

[Anonymous No.8579614]

>>8579305
>You know which board to visit if you want your query answered.
Right. Bunkerchan here I go.

[Anonymous No.8579884]

>>8578743
I got a bunch of british snes mags and they seem to imply that nes and were launched not far apart and nes was simply for people who wanted a cheaper snes. They were reviewing games from the 80's in 1992.

[Anonymous No.8579892]

>>8579362
not as S0VL as this

[Anonymous No.8579901]

>>8579884
Imagine posting such a lie, and thinking no one would call you out for it... You stupid motherfucker... Post evidence - or FUCK OFF.

[Anonymous No.8579939]

>>8579901
The pickaninny might not be lying. A massive percentage of the population of Britistan was very poor and stupid in 1992.

[Anonymous No.8580024]

>>8579194
No one said mayrio back then, that’s full retarded.
People used the half retarded version /merio/
Not me though since my family is Italian.

[Anonymous No.8580051]

>>8573331
>open video
>bald Brit surrounded by toys
>Lego marvel
>Star wars funkopop
>framed comic books with BOOTA on the cover
I wouldn’t trust this limey fuck as far as I could throw him, opinion discarded.

[Anonymous No.8580053]

>>8580024
My fuck up friend from New Jersey says merio

[Anonymous No.8580059]

>>8580051
>ad hominem attacks
If you can't tell which is the better version from a comparison of the gameplay footage of both, then there's no hope for you.

[Anonymous No.8580061]

I've always called it a SNEZ and I always will

[Anonymous No.8580080]

>>8580059
>2 dogshit conversions of chase hq
>c64 has colors and actually appears to be playable
>muh speccy looks like a toddler ate a pack of crayons and threw them up
>controls must be absolutely miserable because no one sucks that bad at chase hq
>c64 underutilized the sid chip but the spectrum is mostly just square wave beeps
>speccy wins because speech samples
Yeah… now I’m just mad I actually bothered watching the rest of this.

[Anonymous No.8580086]

Did anyone use the speccy for actual computing

[Anonymous No.8580091]

>>8580080
You're a child with no concept of the programming skill involved in overcoming the hardware limitations to produce that port or any other for that matter.
>>>/v/

[Anonymous No.8580112]

>>8580091
>it was hard to make that means it’s good
I know Geoff must have drank litres of tea while slaving over that wonderful keypad you call an input device but that doesn’t mean it was worth it.

[Anonymous No.8580453]

I think the funniest thing I have learned from this board is that brits are poorfags who had been stuck for a decade with some half-assed home computers playing shovelware and missed out on the golden age of video games. That said, even after PSX came, they were playing only footy and Colin McRae. I think at this point Britain should be treated like Africa, we should just leave this hopeless nation on their island to live in their primitive ways and send them food aid.

[Anonymous No.8580460]

>>8573297
perhaps if you had any understanding of its context.
a cheap home computer never designed for graphics or games that was embraced and its limitations worked around creating a platform that bred innovation and creativity in a quantity never seen again.
but i guess you need your little 2d sprites to look very slightly better in order to get invested.
im looking forwad to your pc thread about monochrome green screens

[Anonymous No.8580462]

>>8573331
Better comparison would be Galaxian on the Spectrum versus the C64 "port"

[Anonymous No.8580472]

>>8574183
funny but at the time c64 players were mocked for being dumb shmp fans as thats where the 64 performed slightly better

[Anonymous No.8580475]

>>8574505
wow another 15 year old history professor

[Anonymous No.8580478]

>>8580460
>but i guess you need your little 2d sprites to look very slightly better in order to get invested.
"Yes."

[Anonymous No.8580482]

I find the clickity sounds in Spectrum games charming, possibly because I used to play a lot of CGA PC games.

[Anonymous No.8580501]

>>8578860
i owned both, the bbc had better capabilities but speccy had all round better feel and gameplay.
commando is a good example, nothing on bbc was as fast and responsive and playable as that game on speccy

[Anonymous No.8580507]

>>8580472
We didn't have those in America, our C64 stuff was all dungeon crawlers and flight sims.

[Anonymous No.8580509]

>>8579162
its all about the looks.
better graphics is all that matters to people who pretend to like video games. i have a friend who is still like this and hes a fucking filthy casual

[Anonymous No.8580515]

>>8580478
you are a filthy casual and should go away

[Anonymous No.8580517]

>>8573367
>>8578775
LOL

[Anonymous No.8580532]

>>8579362
>>8573354
A fucking MS Paint comic has more graphics than the thing it's mocking. Speccyfags have my pity.

[Anonymous No.8580543]

>>8580509
The fact that the spectrum doesn't have things like smooth scrolling or music in a lot of games is a much bigger barrier of entry than just "graphics". Even compared to the gameboy, it feels absolutely limited in terms of what you can do with it.

[Anonymous No.8580554]

>>8580543
The Spectrum 128 solved the music issue.

[Anonymous No.8580575]

>>8580453
Normalfags have normalfag tastes. The Fifa and cars people are just the British equivalent of the Madden and cars people. What else is new?

[Anonymous No.8580671]

just ordered one from those ebay sellers in egypt recently. Why the fuck are these so hard to acquire in the US? Anyways, they claim it works. Where can i get a new keyboard membrane for a spectrum+ and are there any essential mods for this model? Is this going to be some arabic branded shit where i need to replace the rom?

>>8577376
>Is shitting on speccy just American memeing about stuff they have no experiences about, like being salty about us Euros having superior SCART connectors?

I swear it's actual limeys gaslighting americans into hating it to have some discussion. No on in the US even knows/cares about the spectrum. most people don't even know the timex versions exist and i'm pretty sure they sold those at radioshack.

It would be the same if we had a large number of japs making endless msx vs c64 threads but we don't. People naturally discover the msx and just acknowledge its influence and usage, but brits can't just leave their iconic micro on the sidelines.

[Anonymous No.8580724]

>>8578775
>dual 16-bit graphics processing unit chipset and CD ROM
Yeah totally the same thing

[Anonymous No.8580774]

the early Spectrum stuff when it was basically just VIC-20 games was more fun than the later stuff when they tried to make it do NES games, which didn't really work

[Anonymous No.8580835]

>>8579162

Neat!

[Anonymous No.8580894]

>>8580024
Back when? When some schizo decided to jump into a conversation about calculators with his mayrio love? Or are you talking about way before you were born when the NES was current?

[Anonymous No.8581132]

>>8579438
>>8579338
I disassembled some Apple II games (simple single load stuff) and yeah there's a giant hole in the middle of them where the HGR page goes.

[Anonymous No.8581163]

>>8579939
>A massive percentage of the population of Britistan was very poor and stupid in 1992
And the spasticated American wonders why the rest of the world sees him as an insufferable cunt... Once again, post evidence - or FUCK OFF.

[Anonymous No.8581309]

>>8581163
You're evidence that a massive percentage of the population of Britistan was very poor and stupid in 1992. You may have been born a decade later but you're not poor and stupid because you were dropped on the head as a baby. You're stupid because you inhereted it from your parents and you're poor because you come for a long line of poorfags.

[Anonymous No.8581349]

>>8580671
I just like to meme on the Speccy because it's fun (and it pisses off annoying old farts who think Chuckie Egg was better than Mario). In all honesty, I think it's kind of cool, and I'll probably even play it one day.

[Anonymous No.8581365]

>>8581349
The best part about the Speccy is that you can buy a modern clone built from 100% brand new parts, SD card storage built in, boom you're good to go.

[Anonymous No.8581371]

>>8580024
>mayrio
>merio
Why do you people always do this? Neither of those sound like things people actually say.
Americans say Maario(long A), and normal people say Mario (short A).

[Anonymous No.8581552]

>>8581371
Canadians say Mary-o, I’ve never heard anyone in the US pronounce it that way.

[Anonymous No.8581594]

>>8581552
>Mary-o
Like the virgin Mary?

[Anonymous No.8581617]

>>8581594
The Virgin Mary, Mary Magdalene, take your pick.

[Anonymous No.8581694]

>>8581371
This. I know for a fact that this anon has interviewed every single American and run through scientific tests on how they pronounce Mario. And all in the short 12 years he's been alive. Truly impressive.

[Anonymous No.8581696]

>>8581694
Find me one person who says fucking Mayrio.

[Anonymous No.8581708]

Although technically somewhat lacking, the biggest advantage of ZX Spectrum was it's availability to masses, thus giving the oportunity to get first experience with computers to many. It was something like people's computer.
It was also so easy to copy, that it spawned many unoficial clones (sometimes enhanced), especially in the Eastern Europe.

[Anonymous No.8581784]

>>8581708
So you're saying it was the poorfag machine?

[Anonymous No.8581849]

>>8581552
New Jersians pronounce it wrong for whatever reason.

[Anonymous No.8582041]

>>8581552
Millennials and zoomers seem to be more aware that English is not actually the official pronunciation for every name of every language, but back then it was maryoland

[Anonymous No.8582480]

>>8581594
Even Maria is not pronounced like that

[Anonymous No.8582535]

>>8573792
Well this board has one autistic screecher (you know who) who will tell you that speccy is better than anything else so Horace became a hard counter to his schizophrenia.

[Anonymous No.8582575]

>>8573297
oh look, another nintenturd.. how the cult these days.. watery eyed for another rehash of Mario and Zelda?

[Anonymous No.8582619]

>>8581365
All you gotta do is hookup a keyboard to a Texas Instruments calculator

[Anonymous No.8582676]

>>8582575
It's still better than Mr. Wino.

[Anonymous No.8582684]

>>8581696
Dudelet. If you ever left your room or talked to grownups you'd know several. I know I do.
It's truly hilarious how one minute zoomies will be spewing talking points like "lived experience" and the next denying that there's a reality other than the one that only exists only in their vacuous head.

[Anonymous No.8582691]

>>8582684
May-rio? Like the month of May and the city of Rio? No one says that.

[Anonymous No.8582701]

>>8582619
>I said it again!

[Anonymous No.8582715]

Well I can say you weren't forced to pay 50 quid for a Spectrum game and have it forced to comply with arbitrary Nintendo content guidelines. You read what they did to Maniac Mansion?

[Anonymous No.8582723]

>>8573305
why are people still making games for this
autism?
fun to code?

[Anonymous No.8582729]

>>8580460
>monochrome green screens
You do know that Apple II had a 16 color composite pallet right? You do know that Commodore 64 and Amiga are american products right?

[Anonymous No.8582735]

>>8582723
it's easy to get a game up and running. probably the simplest of all the major retro systems to understand.

[Anonymous No.8582740]

>>8582729
OIII B-BUT ME SPECCY

[Anonymous No.8582803]

>>8582735
the Apple II is pretty simple but the graphics are rather convoluted and the CPU is weak. though it's probably faster than the Spectrum (Z80s are powerful but pokey) It takes less code to do something on a Z80 however, so Spectrum games on average can be smaller than the equivalent on a 6502 machine.

[Anonymous No.8582810]

>>8582803
>so Spectrum games on average can be smaller than the equivalent on a 6502 machine
is there a specific reason for that?

[Anonymous No.8582824]

>>8582810
Z80 has a better instruction set and importantly 16-bit registers. Trying to do 16-bit arithmetic on a 6502 is really annoying and takes a lot of zero page acrobatics. Also the Z80 has block copy instructions that work sort of like a DMA memory move. On average you'll probably need 20% more code to do something on a 6502.

[Anonymous No.8583364]

>>8581784
You say that like it is a bad thing. Russians and other slavs are poorfags but they are master programmers too.

[Anonymous No.8583526]

>>8578738
have there been any games of note from Europe outside of the ones made by brits?

[Anonymous No.8583691]

>>8581309
>You're evidence that a massive percentage of the population of Britistan was very poor and stupid in 1992
It thinks this is clever. As an Americunt, it would.
>You may have been born a decade later but you're not poor and stupid because you were dropped on the head as a baby
It deflects; it pulls nonsensical shit out of its sodomized tranny backside because it's incapable of providing cogent arguments.
>You're stupid because you inhereted it from your parents and you're poor because you come for a long line of poorfags
It projects; it's been here ever since it first arrived, and here it will stay for the remainder of its days because it is a pariah wherever it goes. It wants so desperately to be loved; to be given validation, but deep down it knows that it is undeserving. It wants to die, but that requires courage - something it will never have. It is such a pitiful wretched fag.
If you ever grow a set of balls; if you ever go through with killing yourself, then please provide links to a live stream. I want to masturbate to it. And from that stream I will ascertain your identity, and make an annual pilgrimage to where you're buried so I can piss on your grave.

[Anonymous No.8583709]

>thread still going
Just goes to show what a popular and beloved system the old Speccy is.

[Anonymous No.8583736]

>>8583364
It's a bad thing for americans because they have an obsession with wealth, fame, and status. Hence they worship vapid celebs and watch shit like jersey shore.

[Anonymous No.8583775]

>>8582729
there we go, thats why green screens were shit and should be erased from all memory.
but
there are better screens than the ones you mentioned out there so yours are also shit by the same reasoning.

[Anonymous No.8583797]

The Spectrum's hardware was weak, but that isn't why it sucks. The 2600's library of classic games is proof of that. For whatever reason - the absence of premium games, the economy and child-raising culture there, inexperienced coders, the game design lessons learned by Atari and Activision not making the jump overseas, a lack of a SMB-tier title to serve as an example, the Giana Sisters c&d - nobody in the UK but Ultimate could make fun videogames.

[Anonymous No.8583805]

>>8582715

Nintendo's requirements were actually a culture shock for British devs jumping to the NES because unlike publishers for 8 but computers, they wanted actual proof that their games could be played to completion.

[Anonymous No.8583868]

I've seen Texas Instruments calculators bought up a few times in this thread. It's ironic that the spectrum was made with cheap components to meet a low price, whereas Texas Instuments' calculators are made with cheap components to sell at a retardedly expensive price.

[Anonymous No.8583879]

>>8583797
It only shows your ignorance about the catalog if all you know is cookie and jet pac.

[Anonymous No.8583906]

>>8578805
>>8578795
What else would you call it?

[Anonymous No.8583912]

>>8573808
>Graphics are irrelevant to decent gameplay.
Always a funny cope

[Anonymous No.8583918]

>>8583364
what is the actual context for this picture?

[Anonymous No.8583925]

>>8583912
Despite being objectively true.

[Anonymous No.8583928]

>>8583925
It's not. A game is ALWAYS the sum of it's part.

[Anonymous No.8583968]

>>8583928
by that logic. All the nes tetris players would have moved to tetris effect

[Anonymous No.8583990]

The best part of ZX Spectrum is that there is still a vivid homebrew gaming scene today.

Just look at this beauty made in 2019:
https://youtu.be/I6nPqgR0PK8

[Anonymous No.8583996]

>>8573297
TI calculators have stronger CPUs than this thing.

[Anonymous No.8584006]

>>8583996
what's odd about the CPU? a regular old Z80 used in the Colecovision, Master System, and countless arcade games.

[Anonymous No.8584012]

>>8583797
>The 2600's library of classic games is proof of that
don't make me link videos of Karate and Warplock

[Anonymous No.8584097]

>>8583990
I recently played through Sword of Ianna on MSX and it was pretty good. Kind of a "blackthorn with swords" if you've ever played that. It's crazy what they did with spectrum version though. I want to play it next:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWMp-PaagDE

[Anonymous No.8584109]

>>8583990
It's really the fastest pure bitmap Z80 system in the market back then. If Sinclair did tons of R&D into making the most optimised games for the system and published their findings in magazines and official documentations, it would have been the supreme 8-bit gaming machine.

[Anonymous No.8584115]

What Spectrum games have the best soundtracks? Is there anything that can compete with the C64?

[Anonymous No.8584126]

>>8583906
Super Nintendo.

[Anonymous No.8584129]

>>8583906
Superlative Nintendo Entertainment Systematica

[Anonymous No.8584161]

>>8583906
rubbish

[Anonymous No.8584164]

>>8584109
>It's really the fastest pure bitmap Z80 system in the market back then
Japan had a lot of machines like that such as the PC-8801 but they're slugs and run action games at like 15 fps, also they were expensive.

[Anonymous No.8586118]

>>8573354

holy shit the speccy re-plastered his walls for the price of one £12 game.

[Anonymous No.8586575]

>>8573297
A part of me feels pity for the poor kids that had to amuse themselves with this piece of shit. They didn't know any better

[Anonymous No.8586643]

>>8573302
Speccy out performed snes when it came to graphics. See Final Fight for proof.

[Anonymous No.8586652]

>>8586643
Your old dad outperformed your mum at sucking cock m8. I paid him extra for the exemplary service

[Anonymous No.8587032]

>>8586575
Yeah same, luckily my dad had the good sense to get me a Commodore 64.

[Anonymous No.8587537]

>>8579189
What the fuck are you talking about? In the UK at least consoles started gaining popularity with the Master System and then Mega Drive. Snes was also fairly popular but it never quite hit the heights of the Mega Drive here. Playstation massively popularised gaming as a whole but that was a worldwide thing, nothing to do with ease of pirating.

[Anonymous No.8587546]

>>8582691
I don't think I've ever heard a yank say that. I've heard maw-rio quite a bit but never may-rio.

[Anonymous No.8587552]

>>8580061
That's because you're correct.

[Anonymous No.8587554]

>>8580575
You're talking to a spacking baitmaster. Don't bother replying.

[Anonymous No.8587558]

>>8573297
OI, TALKIN' SHIT 'BOUT ME SPECCY?!

[Anonymous No.8587581]

strange nobody ever talk about Spectrum's large Spanish scene

[Anonymous No.8587792]

>>8587581
The only Spanish games I can think of is Abu Simbel Profanation and Fred. ABS is pretty standard platformer, but Fred has to be one of the most unoptimized games for this system.

Abu Simbel Profanation
https://youtu.be/PR_y7iYNqzA

Fred
https://youtu.be/lfJ6talHtgo

Any recommendation on good games, either old or new?

Also, see >>8584097

[Anonymous No.8587803]

>>8587581
>>8587581
The only Spanish games I can think of is Abu Simbel Profanation and Fred. ASP is pretty standard platformer, but Fred has to be one of the most unoptimized games for this system.

Abu Simbel Profanation
https://youtu.be/PR_y7iYNqzA [Embed]

Fred
https://youtu.be/lfJ6talHtgo [Embed]

Any recommendation on good games, either old or new?

Also, see >>8584097

[Anonymous No.8587805]

>>8587581
Those games are just Zniggy but worse.

[Anonymous No.8588009]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpKGZ7dMpIc

This looks kino, I might order it on cassette

[Anonymous No.8588037]

>>8587803
Spirit was great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UaT3LjcQSag

Other good spanish games I remember were Goody, The Abbey of Crime, Navy Moves, Fernando Martin Basket and Camelot Warriors.

[Anonymous No.8588073]

Spain was mostly Spectrum and Amstrad country back then, Commodore were never really a thing there.

[Anonymous No.8588101]

Serena...

[Anonymous No.8588308]

>>8588037
These games seem to be fond of medieval/Gothic themes.

[Anonymous No.8588313]

>>8577376
Almost every C64 game uses the multicolor mode which looks like ass. Monochrome mode with overlaid sprites looks MUCH better.

[Anonymous No.8588319]

>>8588308
Yes, it was a very fashionable thing in the 80s.

The Abbey of Crime was a (pretty awesome) unofficial adaptation of The Name of the Rose novel. They tried to have Umberto Eco's approval but he refused, so they changed the name but the game was the same.

[Anonymous No.8588402]

Former Czechoslovakia also had quite lively ZX Spectrum scene. There are two honorable mentions:

Boovie (1994)- Czech logic game with nice graphics and music, where you control cute alien trying to push white square to white platform. Something like a mix of Boulder Dash and Sokoban. (At first I had problem because me being novice with ZX Spectrum, I couldn't figure out how to restart the room. Later I found out I need to use the BREAK key)
https://youtu.be/Bi-EoxEciuw

Kliatba noci (1993) ("Curse of the Night" in the English version from 2012) - Slovak action/adventure game with awesome graphics and music set in old cursed castle.
https://youtu.be/ggjD8uJXR5I

[Anonymous No.8588410]

>>8588101
>panties

[Anonymous No.8588425]

>>8588402
Eastern Europe were using commie Spectrum clones for a decade after the Berlin Wall fell, nobody could afford a PC until around 2000.

[Anonymous No.8588426]

>>8588308
Sword and Sorcery stuff was popular then. That’s why I lot of medieval styled games from the time period all used similar Frazetta inspired artwork. It was in vogue. That and for a lot of games it was to mask the animu

[Anonymous No.8588472]

>>8573297
only bongistanis care about this shit system

[Anonymous No.8588775]

>>8577297
The Spectrum is an objectively better games machine than the Apple II. I have both and the A2 is truly awful for games.

[Anonymous No.8588782]

>>8588425
You can still buy brand new ones from Russia on eBay which is pretty cool. You can't put together a C64 clone without custom ICs, but the Spectrum can be cloned perfectly with entirely off-the-shelf parts, which gives it some legs, especially now with retro gaming being so mainstream.

[Anonymous No.8588784]

>>8588775
the Apple II can do more complex games (particularly when we're talking RPGs and stuff of that nature) since it has more memory, 80 column text, and disk storage. it's not arguably better at action games than the Spectrum and probably worse in some ways.

[Anonymous No.8588798]

>>8588784
Basic Apple 2 only has 48K max. But yes the disk drive gave a huge advantage. Companies other than Apple somehow fucked up at disk drive R&D in the 8 bit era.

[Anonymous No.8588818]

>>8588798
>Basic Apple 2 only has 48K max
Memory expander cards to put 64k in them were available by 1980-81 and the IIe (which accounted for about 60% of all Apple IIs ever made) had 64k-128k out of the box. However most games were designed for 48k until about 1984 and the later period stuff that can use 64k-128k are mostly RPGs and whatnot rather than action titles.

[Anonymous No.8588827]

>>8588775
>A2 is truly awful for games.
It has some great ones. Oregon Trail, Prince of Persia, Wiz/Ultima, Sabotage, hell even Mario Bros. port was great. Just because it doesn't have the games you like doesn't mean it is awful for games

[Anonymous No.8588842]

the bitmap screen on the Apple II is not all that nice or intuitive to manipulate; there's a reason it doesn't really get any modern homebrew and in general is pretty irrelevant in the retro community. people prefer machines with hardware graphics acceleration, the Spectrum gets a pass here because it's easier to code on than any other computer without it.

[Anonymous No.8588854]

>>8588798
>>8588784
The Spectrum 128 would solve the memory issue and it has an actual sound chip and decent keyboard, but then again still has tape storage which isn't so good for strategy/RPG/adventure games.

[Anonymous No.8588860]

>>8588798
>Basic Apple 2 only has 48K max
In real terms it's actually a little less memory than the Spectrum has because the bitmap page is 8k while the Spectrum's is 6k (well, 7k when you add in the color attribute map) and 6502 code is also more space-consuming.

[Anonymous No.8588863]

>>8588827
>>8588827
Of course, I don't disagree at all on those points. The A2 does indeed have excellent games, but it's not a great gaming platform on the whole imho; the Atari, Commodore, and Sinclair machines all have superior games libraries (not general purpose software, A2 wins that handily). It's the best 8-bit computer of the era for pretty much everything else, which is why so many still keep one on their desk. The IIgs is super rad for games, but has a teeny-tiny library, a real shame.
>>8588842
The A2 community is enormous and some of the most technically gifted coders in the entire retro-scene, they just don't make games.

[Anonymous No.8588870]

>>8588842
Yes the CPU was slow and the screen display can't run at the same time as the CPU when it accesses the memory or something. It's really bad for action games without intricate programming techniques.

>>8588854
128K is enough for NES JRPGs. The Spectrum 16K had cart slot too.

[Anonymous No.8588873]

>>8588863
Meant to reply to >>8588784 as well, oops.

[Anonymous No.8588889]

>>8588870
>Yes the CPU was slow and the screen display can't run at the same time as the CPU when it accesses the memory or something.

Absolutely not. If anything the Apple II avoided the issue that plagued a lot of other 8-bit machines where the video hardware would slow everything down because Steve Wozniak cleverly figured out that since the 6502 only accesses memory on even-numbered cycles, he could just have the video circuit access it on odd-numbered cycles. As a result, the CPU always runs at full speed while on Atari 8-bit, C64, even Amiga the CPU is slowed down 20% when the active screen render is in progress (it's at full speed only during the blank).

[Anonymous No.8588892]

>>8588863
The IIGS was miserably slow. ST and Amiga were much better.

[Anonymous No.8588894]

>>8583709
RIP Are Clive

True visionary

[Anonymous No.8588903]

>>8588870
>128K is enough for NES JRPGs
For early stuff like Dragon Quest 1 but many later RPGs used 256k-512k of ROM.

[Anonymous No.8588921]

https://www.xtof.info/hires-graphics-apple-ii.html

This explains how the HGR mode works. The most ridiculous part is how everything is reversed from how it appears on the screen. Hence what's actually stored in memory is this.

[Anonymous No.8588924]

Wew. The smell of shart and grease in this thread

[Anonymous No.8588925]

>>8583879

I've tried several times to give the Speccy a chance. It has a lot of interesting games, and two (Rex and Quazatron) that actually come close to being good, but interesting isn't the same as fun.

I can only recommend it for people are so burnt out by vidya that novelty is the only thing that can get a reaction from you anymore, because the Speccy has novelty in spades. It's a dead end evolutionary line.

[Anonymous No.8588962]

>>8588921
it's like the Atari 2600. they said only about 100 programmers in the world really knew how to get results out of it.

[Anonymous No.8588965]

>>8588889
So what's going on here then?
Atari
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbZ-chrOgGg

A2
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1r5uGm5F3h8

[Anonymous No.8588983]

>>8588009
That is kino

[Anonymous No.8588989]

>>8588965
For one thing the Apple II has no hardware acceleration so the CPU has to do all the pushing. The Atari is relatively fast because its CPU is 1.79Mhz and even though some cycles are eaten by the ANTIC, that's made up for by the hardware scrolling. What ROF does is it uses the DLIs to set bitmap mode for the playfield while the rest of the display is char mode and it just scrolls it around/feeds in pixel data.

[Anonymous No.8589015]

The Spectrum is also relatively good at those kinds of games since it's Z80 so the CPU has a lot of muscle eg. 16-bit registers and the bitmap screen can be manipulated at a low cycle cost.

[Anonymous No.8589028]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMfKRhLnLy0

As a counter example, Buzzard Bait. Despite all the stuff moving around it's still quite fast and doesn't slow down. This game was also not on the A8 or C64 because their limited hardware sprites aren't enough to handle all this.

[Anonymous No.8589070]

>>8588892
I've always thought of the Macintosh as more of a contemporary of the ST and Amiga. The IIgs is definitely an oddball / black sheep, but it plays a mean Arkanoid and has an extremely powerful sound chip. It was definitely more of a niche machine for people hanging onto the ways of the II. Very cool to revisit now at any rate, and the demo scene is awesome.

[Anonymous No.8589075]

>>8587558
You think fights ever broke out on the playground over speccy vs nes?

[Anonymous No.8589706]

>>8588962
That's a ridiculous claim. It's a very simple system and a yuge amount of people back then were masters of the sort of low level programming it requires. This isn't to say that all those people were making 2600 games or that those who were weren't shitting out 4 low quality games in the time it would take to make one good one.

[OP No.8589880]

Hey bongs I only made this thread to have some fun at the expense of your meme machine. Thanks for the laughs and for the informative discussion old chaps, I just downloaded the fuse core to give the speccy a try.

[Anonymous No.8589965]

>>8584115
Glider Rider, Amourote & Starglider on 128k

[Anonymous No.8589990]

>>8587537
And in America consoles gained popularity with the Atari

[Anonymous No.8590074]

As an American, I can't understand the hate this lil shit gets.
It was an absolute budget computer that people made decent(for the early-mid 80s) games on. Why hate that? Makes no sense.
I like making fun of yurofags and their PC/demoscene stuff on occasion but I'm being a retard and faggot when I do so. That's the point.

Spectrums seem really GOOD IMO for what people got. We got Ghostbusters and Karate Kid on NES. Dear fucking GOD shoot me.

[Anonymous No.8590089]

>>8590074
Nice try aussie. Almost got past me on that one

[Anonymous No.8590094]

>>8590089
Atari was ASS and SHIT, and the NES wasn't much better, that is a fact.
Atari was ungodly awful, like how do you spend more than 5 minutes playing this fucking shit? And the NES had so much moviefaggotry it was obscene. SMS fared only a little better, TG16 was the first proper home console.

[Anonymous No.8590104]

>>8590094
Take your meds aussie it's not that serious

[Anonymous No.8592032]

>>8589880
This is what /vr/ is all about, convincing people to play Speccy. Try the shmups, Moon Cresta is fun.

[Anonymous No.8592038]

>>8590074
And we paid $60 dollars for them, at least bad Spectrum games were dirt cheap and you could share literally everything with your friends.

[Anonymous No.8593763]

>>8588921
Completely reversed? I thought it was reversed on the byte level. So if your pixels were: 0123456789abcd
It would be stored in memory as x6543210xdcba987, (x being the high bit that controlled the palette)

[Anonymous No.8593783]

>>8592032
Always been fascinated by the Spectrum. Combination of how primitive the hardware is, the look of its graphics from color clash, and how many popular titles got ported to it. Though after watching a lot of videos during the pandemic lockdowns, seems a lot of them were garbage (pic unrelated.)

[Anonymous No.8593787]

>>8589880
If you tried this with n64 instead of spectrum, janny would ban you in an instant.

[Anonymous No.8593808]

>>8593787
Based. He knows what's up . Good guy janitor

[Anonymous No.8593847]

>>8593783
Same. It’s definitely a “Ship of Theseus” situation. Look at titles like SF2 and Double Dragon and how much was carried over and smashed into the limited palettes, while still being labeled as the same game. Interesting stuff.

[Anonymous No.8593849]

>>8593808
Both spectrum and n64 look horrible by today's standards. Speccy actually looked better than n64 considering the competition it was up against at the time. Psx and Saturn completely mog n64 graphics.

[Anonymous No.8593860]

>>8593849
Hmm I thought the point of this thread was that graphics don't matter. So they only matter if it goes against Nintendo is what you're saying?
Really makes you think

[Anonymous No.8593984]

>>8593847
With 8 MHz Z80 and something like extra 256K slow banked RAM, it could definitely run SF2 with the same graphics comfortably.

[Anonymous No.8593995]

>>8593847
>Ship of Theseus

[Anonymous No.8594327]

>>8593783
The Spectrum is one of those "you had to be there" things, because part of the appeal is just how 80s it is: futuristic aesthetics, vibrant neon colors and strong contrats, surreal atmopshere in most games thanks to hardware limitations, etc. Instead of trying to be a 16-bits machine, it was its own thing that keeps fastinating people today despite resentment of a few american trolls.

Most of the games were fine if you played as a kid in those days, and the surreal graphics made your imagination run wild.Trying to enjoy it nowadays as if we were in the 80s is useless, although you can have a good time still if you have the patience and a good display (CRT monitor or good shaders).

[Anonymous No.8594370]

luv me atic atac
luv me sabre wulf
luv me deus ex machina
simple as

[Anonymous No.8594668]

>>8594327
>The Spectrum is one of those "you had to be on it" things

[Anonymous No.8594690]

>>8587032
C64 is the same shit. Hope you enjoyed those neverending loading screens. Cool kids had an NES, not this shit.

[Anonymous No.8594719]

>>8594668
When your only experience playing video games was in the arcade (And costing money every minute) being able to play the most mundane shit at home was mindblowing. You think Speccy games look shit compared to the 8/16 bit eras but compare it to the likes of the Atari 2800 and you'll see what a huge leap it was.

[Anonymous No.8594857]

>>8594690
>Cool kids had an NES, not this shit
How did you enjoy your watered down Boulder Dash and Lode Runner with chibi graphics? And your censored Maniac Mansion?

[Anonymous No.8594898]

>>8594857
Maniac Mansion is barely censored, and it's the best version of the game despite that.

[Anonymous No.8594906]

>>8594857
also those NES "ports" of Ultima

[Anonymous No.8594923]

>>8594898
>and it's the best version of the game
That would be the Amiga, but...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvzAzxX3Y5M

[Anonymous No.8594934]

>>8594923
Fairly sure the creators even tout the NES version as the best, having music in the game is helpful.

[Anonymous No.8594939]

>>8594923
Wish they'd have actually bothered giving it 32 colors instead of copypasting the EGA PC graphics.

[Anonymous No.8594942]

rip sir clive fuck yanks

[Anonymous No.8594946]

>>8573297
>Never THE computer
>Never drew a dime
>Heavy graphical constraints (two colors per each 32x24 grid leading to attribute clashes)
>Shit chiclet keyboard
>Shit RAM capacity even by 1982 standards
>Needed exploits and performance enhancements to make games work
>Later revisions with increased memory broke compatibility with older games and higher failure rates
>LAN system used by nobody, not even schools
>Software mostly stored on cassette tapes that can break easily and can be copied by literal whos having an audio equipment
>Microdrive used by nobody as it's too small and has even more brittle tapes
>Controllers can only emulate keyboard input
>Only one controller can be used for games, except for a limited number of ZX Interface 2 games
>Is the computer equivalent of that one insufferably mediocre middle manager whose sole professional """""""achievement"""""" is using the same shitty machine for over 30 years
>Spent the later life of the system's lifetime buried by superior computers and gaming systems
>The biggest impact it had on the business was millions and millions of shovelware that piggybacked titles originated on higher performance systems and having its legacy siphoned by a failure of an electric vehicle.

[Anonymous No.8594956]

>>8573372
I was outed for playing bomberman during math class when the teacher asked “any questions?” And I blurted out to my friend “fuck how do you switch weapons?”

Good times with the TI-84

[Anonymous No.8594964]

>American game development sucks because for a long time it was a top down process driven by executives who didn’t play games. In England they had the ZX Spectrum and this is where a lot of 15, 16, 17 year old kids honed their skills in the 80s. Then you get guys—real genius coders—like Matthew Smith, the Stamper brothers and the guys at Rockstar coming through and completely changing the landscape. All of these guys cut their teeth on the Spectrum and the British micro-computer scene. We never really had that back home.
—John Romero, creator of Doom, speaking at the 2012 GDC Europe

[Anonymous No.8595010]

>meanwhile in burgerland

[Anonymous No.8595073]

I always found the music in NES Maniac Mansion annoying and I just turned it off.

[Anonymous No.8595189]

>>8594946
48k RAM was totally reasonable for 1982, and later models had 128k which was absolutely the standard for the mid-80s.

[Anonymous No.8595252]

>>8594946
How could you forget this amazing peripheral...?
Why yes of course it doesn't use any sort of normal paper for printing like some pleb but a special aluminium coated foil thing that is specially manufactured for this device and this device alone.

[Anonymous No.8595270]

>>8594690
No the NES was pretty much an expensive toy, cool kids had computers. Also >not having a disk drive

[Anonymous No.8595334]

>>8573305
28:43 absolute kino music

[Anonymous No.8595342]

>>8594857
Boulder Dash and Lode Runner are best on NES

[Anonymous No.8595351]

>>8588894
LEGENDS NEVER DIE

[Anonymous No.8595372]

>>8595270
>No the NES was pretty much an expensive toy, cool kids had computer
>cool kids had computers
Wait are you talking about America or Bongland?
If America, your post is revisionism, trolling, or underage. School yard bullying was absolutely a thing if you didn't have Nintendo by '89.

I had half my 6th grade class show up to my house every afternoon just to take turns playing SMB2 when I got it for Christmas. Nintendo fever was everywhere.

Meanwhile computers had a nerdy stigma which was unfortunate. Mostly due to text adventure games

[Anonymous No.8595398]

>>8595010
Honestly, the crash was testament to the Speccy’s popularity. In a lot of ways, the Speccy suffered the same issues that the 2600 did, as well as the gaming market as a whole. The games were butt ugly, played awkwardly, were shit conversions and the market was being absolutely flooded with low quality shovelware (in this case, often programmed by literal children). Yet whereas the 2600 imploded on itself and nearly dragged the entire market down with it, the spectrum powered on despite these issues. In fact people often cite those issues as positives! I guess Brits just have a high tolerance for that sort of stuff. Whatever, luv me speccy

[Anonymous No.8595467]

>>8594690
>Hope you enjoyed those neverending loading screens
All 8-bit computers had awful load times except the Apple II. It was one of those endearing quirks you got used to.

[Anonymous No.8595481]

>>8595398
Bad games on the Spectrum were cheap. Bad games on the 2600 were really expensive.

[Anonymous No.8595601]

>>8595467
The music made it bearable on C64. Fastloader could be used, although it increases the chance of tape loading error a little bit. Also early in the 90s there were cool stuff like this one. Loading games from digital devices like CD player reduced the load time to mere seconds.

[Anonymous No.8595624]

>>8595601
We had no such thing in the land of the free. You just stared at a blank screen for 15 or so seconds as the game loaded from disk.

[Anonymous No.8595661]

>>8595481
That too. Didn’t Pac-Man cost $60 back then which was a lot of money?

[Anonymous No.8595686]

>>8595661
$60 back then would be $167.95 apparently

[Anonymous No.8595697]

>>8595686
This is why I never understand why people are mad that games cost $60 today, games have gotten drastically cheaper than they used to be, and continue to do so. It's wild to think about how much an Atari rig and a few games would have cost in today's money when it launched.

[Anonymous No.8595774]

>>8595697
Actually that reminds me, does anyone know any accurate sales figures of Virtua Racing on Genesis? That cost $100 back when it came out which would be $190-ish in today money. Surely such a steep price would’ve pushed away consumers, no? I understand that’s why Earthbound sort of tanked as well, including a massive strategy guide can’t have helped either

[Anonymous No.8595958]

>>8594719
Cherry pick much? Why would I compare it to the 2800 when that was obsolete garbage that came out after the C64, NES, and other systems that are massively superior to the spectrum. And if you'd git gud and stop dying every minute arcade games wouldn't cost you every minute.

[Anonymous No.8595965]

>>8595958
say you what? the 2600 came out in the 70s, it was long before C64 and NES.

[Anonymous No.8596001]

>>8595958
>>8594719
>Atari 2800

[Anonymous No.8596002]

>>8595965
Don't even engage with the Aussie he is clinically retarded

[Anonymous No.8596079]

>>8595965
We got the Atari in 78, that was only 5 years before the Spectrum

[Anonymous No.8596281]

>>8596001
>probably not what they meant

[Anonymous No.8596414]

>>8593860
I'm talking about janny and his favouritism.

[Anonymous No.8596502]

As a yank, how much is reasonable to pay for a Speccy? It intrigues me and I'm willing to pay a bit for one, although I know next to nothing about it as a device. If there are more modern clones, should I buy one of those instead?

[Anonymous No.8596534]

>>8596502
Like £20, a bit extra if you want a refurbished one. They’re more very common and most people don’t tend to rack up prices like with every other system at the time

[Anonymous No.8596557]

>it's weekend again
>I'm still alone
>/vr/ still doesn't like the Spectrum or british stuff in general
Fuck.

[Anonymous No.8596572]

>>8596534
Appreciated Anon. Time to start searching ebay.

[Anonymous No.8596617]

>>8596557
It's just banter m8

[Anonymous No.8596623]

>>8596502
>>8596534
You'll have a hard time finding them on eBay in the US, and international listings cost a fortune to ship. You can get a brand new 128k machine built from all new parts with SD card storage, an AY sound chip, and joystick ports on board for ~$150; retroradionics sells them and they rule. You can even pick the colors of everything or get a laptop version, or run the desktop on batteries, it's really wild for the price. If you were to buy a Speccy, composite mod it, get a Kempston interface, SD card thingy, it would cost way more than just getting the clone.

[Anonymous No.8596630]

>>8596557
I bought 2 Timex Sinclair 2068s and a Spectrum clone this past year anon, and I'm american as apple pie. They're very fun.

[Anonymous No.8596638]

>>8596617
>>8596630
I could believe you, but.... the fact I'm alone is very true.

[Anonymous No.8596640]

>>8573297
fockin wanker
best you sod off an shove a nezz up your arse
cunt

[Anonymous No.8596901]

>>8596502
if you can do some basic soldering I'd personally recommend grabbing a raspberry pi, a repro speccy case and an sd with zxbaremulator on it. Then you won't have to deal with 240v 50hz issues.

[Anonymous No.8596917]

>>8596502
https://youtu.be/1dwUrC5ooDg?t=243
this video gives a rough idea on how it should look

[Anonymous No.8597136]

>>8596638
The other Timex is NIB and packed away at the moment.

[Anonymous No.8597156]

>>8596502
>not シンクレア
They just gave up with all the Japanese parts?

[Anonymous No.8597245]

>>8595965
>say you what? i came out in 2006
>they stopped teaching kids to read long before that
>>8596079
>the Atari
>>8596001
>bitches don't know bout my atari 2800
Zoomies, zoomies everywhere.