Speccy

Break Space

Dave

Mpk

SPECCY Alex Cooper PWYW / $2 Dave's Review I nearly fell off my chair when I saw 'Speccy' announced on Planeta Sinclair's website: "Here is the first game created from scratch with The Spectrum". It set my mind racing. How did we know? How was it recovered from 1982? How was it verified (and I don't mean VERIFYd)? Why doesn't it look like a 2p type-in? It transpired that the claim is actually to be the first game written on and for newly released 'The Spectrum' console from Retro Games Ltd, and that might well be true. Speccy is also Alex Cooper's first game release. His aim was to make a platform game in BASIC, shunning UDGs in favour of ASCII. Thankfully his aim was true and with liberal use of colour and some excellent line DRAWings it avoids the risk of 'naff' and hits the bullseye of 'charming'. It's the well-worn but incredibly durable platforming drill: guide 'Speccy' (magenta ampersand), collect the coins (yellow full stops), avoid the nasties (red asterisks), flip the odd lever (red backslash), and get to the exit – in this case the Sacred Four colours of the ZX-Spectrum: red, yellow, green and blue. Complete all four levels and 'buy' the colours, and you'll get a much coveted The Spectrum. Well I'm on board – I've been on back-order with HMV for bloody ages now! Given that it's BASIC, and there's a few things happening on the screen, you'll know what to expect: some clunky physics and the occasional unresponsive keypress, but it plays pretty well. We've all been stung by BASIC howlers in the past and this is not one of them. The author is very open on how he coded it, but has chosen to include a machine code anti-BREAK routine, so you'll need to know a few tricks if you want to read the listing (or just use BASin!). I've never had the patience to create anything meaningful using PLOT, CIRCLE and DRAW, but I'm glad Alex did. They may add a bit of time to the screen render, but seeing a C5 with a deadly plasma exhaust makes it worth the wait. It's proof that the best pictures are not on the radio, but on the ZX-Spectrum, because, well-it's got the best pictures. There are two modes of play: easy and 'not'. Start with easy to get a feel for it, and realise that it's not a walk in the park. It's worth playing in both modes as each has a different ending –complete it on easy and you'll receive a put-down that'll make you feel like a dog; complete it on hard and you'll get a screen display worthy of a God. There's only four levels-can't be that hard, can it? I think I'll check the HMV lead-time...

"a C5 with a deadly plasma makes it worth the wait"

The C5+++ never made it to market fortunately

The best pictures are on The Speccy.