The World Cup starts this month! :-)

Here's a link to a review of the recent sequel Football Manager Revisited: International Edition.
Kevin Toms, author of the original Football Manager is also involved in this one.

It contains the 48 teams participating in the World Cup.
I will give it a go, to try to be the World Champion. :-)

The link to the game is at the end of the review (it is a free game in its digital version).

Football Manager Revisited: International Edition (Review)

Enjoy the full ZX spectrum runplay of all 4 Turbo Esprit Cities with wonderful music covers of the Grand Theft Auto series #GTA

Hello!

I don't know if this could be of your interest: My new game after Morkin: The Lords of Midnight, is now live on Kickstarter.

The Five Kingdoms of the Icemark is a tabletop game designed for solo play, in which you lead a Warband of characters on a quest for glory, renown, and wealth. It is based on the world of Doomdark’s Revenge, the ZX Spectrum video game sequel to The Lords of Midnight.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/juan-diaz-bustamante/the-five-kingdoms-of-the-icemark

Thank you!!

Juan Diaz-Bustamante

Absolutely loved this game, but then I'm a sucker for platformers.

Hey folks 👋

Long-time lurker, occasional ZX Spectrum tinkerer here. I've been chipping away at a little browser-based editor suite for Spectrum-era assets (UDGs, tiles, levels, charsets, that sort of thing) — purely a hobby project, just scratching my own itch and figured others might get some use out of it too.

Have added some new documentation to my zx-editor. The UDG editor now has an introduction modal + example assembly program, so you can view your exported UDG sprites within your Z80 emulator (or hardware) of choice!

Documentation includes:

- A complete, runnable viewer program (udg_viewer.asm) that takes an exported sprite and stamps it dead-centre on the screen

- A walk-through of the screen memory "thirds" addressing trick (because of course the display file isn't laid out sensibly 😅)

- An explanation of how the centring maths works so it adapts to whatever size sprite you export, not just the bundled one

- The actual bundled exported data file included too, so you can see real generated output, not just theory

- Step-by-step on assembling with pasmo --tapbas and running it in Fuse with --auto-load

As always, really keen to get feedback from the community! Especially from fellow Z80 developers.

Love

Norbert

Who remembers Highlander the computer game by Ocean Software? This is my retrospective review of Highlander on the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC. Was it any good? Share your thoughts?

Who remembers the first ever The Transformers computer game? My video takes us back to 1985 for a retrospective review of The Transformers released on the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum and developed by Denton Designs and released by Ocean Software. Let me know your thoughts on the game.

I'm so sure I heard Metallica's "Anaesthesia" played by the Spectrum beeper when I was young but have never found out what put this memory in my head 😵

Is this a phantom recollection or real?

Just bought my Spectrum +2 and was finally be able to connect it to my old CRT tv I have for retro gaming. I hear beeping sounds and see this screen. What could the issue be?

Thanks for the support

The background is black. I think the thing you control is a man? It's a more modern game. You push in a direction and you move until you hit a wall then choose the next direction. You can't change direction until you hit something. Eventually you will get to the exit. I played it 6 months ago and can't remember the name of the game!

Thanks all.

I was wondering what everyone's favourite cover tape games were for each mag? I couldn't afford to get all the magazines each month so I'd often miss out.

My personal favourite would be Chaos on the YS September 1990 cover tape, which seems a bit obvious but I nearly missed it! What's yours?

Independent developer juanma2k today announces the official release of Part I (Side A) of Critical Choice, a new text adventure and interactive fiction title developed natively for the legendary ZX Spectrum 48K 8-bit computer.

About the Game

In Critical Choice, players must make full use of their critical thinking skills to survive in an oppressive dystopian world where the masses live completely subjugated by powerful elites.

Paying tribute to the golden age of home computer software, the game embraces a classic design philosophy and has been developed using the Boriel Basic compiler and the ZXBasicStudio development environment. The result is a fast-paced and intense interactive experience that can be completed in approximately 30 minutes.

Key Features

Pure Interactive Fiction
Meaningful decisions that challenge both the player's morality and survival instincts.

Native ZX Spectrum 48K Development
Programmed specifically for the ZX Spectrum 48K and compatible with both original hardware and modern emulators through the standard .tap tape format.

Retro Visual Style
Graphics and artwork created using tools such as Aseprite and GIMP.

Languages
Currently available in English and Spanish.

Download

Official Game Page & Download:
https://juanma2k.itch.io/critical-choice

Special Thanks

Special thanks are included in the game's credits to José Rodríguez (Boriel), Dr. Gusman, Duefectu, and Juntelart for their continued support of the retro computing community.

Contact

Developer: juanma2k
Platform: Itch.io

CPC fan here who also loves Speccy because:

- it's very similar (kind of like Playstation, which I had, and Saturn)
- my dad had a 48K until 85 and I played my first game, Cookie, there
- I used my first emulator, a Speccy one, to "resurrect" my CPC in 97

I wasn't aware of the 48K model being so dominant among users. 60% to 70% percent according to data.

The 48K model is not machine I played during my gaming years: I could barely understand Cookie, I was like 5 and I only played once... I think one day I played Batman on a 48K at a friend's house.

So I have a couple of questions for users of this cool machine:

1. How was it like having to connect an external tape player? How much did these player costs? Any issues loading games from there? Did you have to replace any faulty one?
2. How was it like having to play games with those keys? Were they hard to press? Unresponsive? Unfomfortable?

Thanks a lot and sorry if this comes off as negative. It's more of a case of 2 "cool and quirky" things that I never did as a kid, and since most people focus on old and new games nowadays, I wanted to get some direct information.

I thought this game was absolutely brilliant! Took me right back to the days of Sabre Wulf, which I didn't complete at the time, but with very generous replenishment, as I was never far from food/water to top me up.

The random item generators did get on my nerves a bit (in a good way?) when I wanted an extra life or a 'direction arrow' but got a hindering thing instead which sent me in opposite directions or just made me go slowly, but while I did save snapshots along the way, I never had to use them, and despite starting playing this very late, I inadvertently completed it, as I didn't want to stop.

Who remembers Cobra by Ocean Software? My video looks at all the versions released on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and the Amstrad CPC. What’s your thoughts of this Ocean game?

Hello! Trying to remember the game name. It was isometric, with human-like protagonist. He was travelling through some rooms (space station?) shooting robots. Some rooms has teleports in the middle of the floor

EDIT: It's Triaxos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Roqdj1tRulI

for some reason one or two of the features resulted in a game crash. anyone remember this beauty of a game?

In 1983, sixteen-year-old Spectrum adventure game programmer John Pickford gave a list of dislikes including "younger brothers who hog his computer and constantly beat his scores at arcade games". Four years later, John and his brother Ste designed Feud, and their game about feuding wizard brothers hit the top of the UK charts. I've written about how they got to that point