Commando on ZX Spectrum

Why did Monty die so fast
Aren’t 3 lives enough to last?
Don’t let Monty die in vain
Press a key and try again…

Another shout out for Manic Miner, also the sequel Jet Set Willy with the weird coloured code card and about 6 thousand software bugs. Ooh and Jet Pack.

Jet Set Willy was great until you fell into the screen below resulting in the death loop!

Loved all those though, Pjamarama was the first video game I ever completed.

also the sequel Jet Set Willy with… about 6 thousand software bugs

Four.

Barbarian was my favourite. Nothing to do with me being a testosterone charged teenager and Maria Whitaker being part of the game.
Manic Minor was good, I was ok at that, but Jet Set Willy was ridiculously difficult.
Green Beret was an awesome game.
Winter Games as well, that was a good multiplayer game, can’t remember if that was on the Amiga or C64.

Cougar I’ve been drinking and I’m susceptible to hyperbole after a glass or two. It seemed like an awful lot more 36 years ago

Kids have it sooo easy with save games these days… TBH the old stuff was crazy pixel difficult. My son was like ‘how hard are these’ when I dusted off the Spectrum.. He runs a SIM GT Racing Team on line these days (in between being a PITA)

A good trick i seem to remember about decathlon was if you had a kempston joystick you could pick it up by the base and just shake it for running.

Golf ball across the keys for Decathlon, ruins the keyboard though!

daviek
Full Member

A good trick i seem to remember about decathlon was if you had a kempston joystick you could pick it up by the base and just shake it for running.

You could do the same with a quickshot, for probably about 2 minutes before the switches broke.

n0b0dy0ftheg0at
Free Member

There’s a PC version these days by same programmer called Chaos Reborn, loved the original, lots of accusations about looking when mates were choosing their spell and whether it was real or illusion.

I played a bunch of Chaos a few years ago, it still stands up. So I crowdfunded Chaos Reborn and wanted to love it and it’s pretty terrible. Like, what’s the best thing about Chaos? Apart from filling the entire map with Gooey Blobs? It’s that it’s really really quick and clean to play. Reborn basically threw a load of little bits of added bollocky complexity like height levels into the mix to make it more modern, and just made it clunky.

Also, in high school Rory Wilson once threw me out of his house because I magic bolted him on literally the first move of an 8 player game. But I didn’t have anywhere else to go so I wouldn’t leave, and he had a sort of rage seizure as a result and started speaking in tongues. Good times.

That e-bike thread set up by Elite was clearly a pyramid scheme.

It’s all a bit of a youthful haze so I might be wrong on the platform but I have very fond memories of Spy vs a Spy and horace goes skiing (actually that just made me angry I think)

Just pressed the rewind button (on the cassette tape game loader) for a bit too long…..

From https://www.retrogamer.net/top_10/top-ten-zx-81-games/

Flight Simulation
Released: 1982
Ask people about their favourite ZX81 game and Flight Simulation almost always charts highly – usually in the number one spot. Maybe it’s because you’d sit there making engine noises as your plane flew towards its landing strip, but we’d say that it was mainly due to the fact that it simply looked astonishing on a machine that normally required you to guide an asterisk through a simple-looking maze. While it was possible to just play the exhilarating final approach it was just as fun to simply take to the skies (you could add wind for an extra challenge) and just fly around to your heart’s content.

Sidenote – we got burgled and they swiped the ZX81. SPEC-TRUM!!!

You could do the same with a quickshot, for probably about 2 minutes before the switches broke.

I had a bit of a cottage industry going at school for a while, replacing broken leaf switches in Quickshit IIs. I used to cut them out of baked bean tin lids in the Metalwork lab.

I’ve no idea why those sticks were so ubiquitous, they were absolute junk. Give me a Competition Pro any day.

I’ve no idea why those sticks were so ubiquitous, they were absolute junk. Give me a Competition Pro any day.

cos they were cheap maybe? We always had Comp Pros but I remember getting through a few of them as well!!

Barbarian was my favourite. Nothing to do with me being a testosterone charged teenager and Maria Whitaker being part of the game.

absolutely loved Barbarian, had it on the CPC, (decapitated) head & shoulders above any other fighting game available at the time. (Relatively) realistic graphics, great music & sound effects… the satisfaction of landing a Flying Neck Chop or when both players did simultaneous Web of Deaths! I had the budget version on tape but subsequently managed to track down the original big box Amiga edition complete with full-size poster… 😃 (interesting factoid… the barbarian on the box art was actually Wolf from Gladiators, when he had a lot more hair!)

I’ve no idea why those sticks were so ubiquitous,

Because Woolworths.

I had a bit of a cottage industry going at school for a while, replacing broken leaf switches in Quickshit IIs. I used to cut them out of baked bean tin lids in the Metalwork lab.

I’ve no idea why those sticks were so ubiquitous, they were absolute junk. Give me a Competition Pro any day.

The microswitches were okay but there was a little coil spring the actuated them that always broke, they were like something out of a shit biro.

On the CPC464 the two buttons would map to different “keys” though which was quite good for Commando funnily enough. Not all joysticks did this even if they were a lot better made.

The microswitches were okay but there was a little coil spring the actuated them that always broke, they were like something out of a shit biro.

They didn’t have microswitches, they had leaf switches. Believe me, I’ve had sufficient joysticks in bits over the years to know. The stick simply pressed a metal contact down onto the PCB.

On the CPC464 the two buttons would map to different “keys” though which was quite good for Commando funnily enough.

I don’t think we’re talking about the same thing, unless there was an Amstrad-specific edition which supplied both inputs.

They didn’t have microswitches, they had leaf switches.

Usually missing at least one leaf.

Usually missing at least one leaf.

… and earning 14-year old me a shiny pound coin for fixing it.

Oooh a specnext , I was vurry tempted 🙂

*coughs* The Quickshot II had leaf switches, was all black and had additional two round fire buttons on the base. The Quickshot II Turbo had no additional fire buttons beyond those on the handle, but came with microswitches and a natty red and black base.

Neither were spectacularly durable, but the Turbo was nicer to use.

I also had a Quickshot Python, looked/felt like how I’d imagine a proper control stick in a spaceship or fighter plane would so was awesome for playing Elite etc, was gutted when that broke 😭 Two independent fire buttons AND an auto fire!!

FFS it was 30 years ago! 😉

I distinctly remember the shitty springs though, they broke all the time.

It was a Quickshot II Turbo i had, it even had a selector for the CPC464, cause all the cool kidz had an Amstrad

Fond speccy memories include

The kempston & it’s crunchy interface

Alien – properly terrifying as a young un

Zoids – no idea what you had to do & literally didn’t get off the first screen

Underworlde, Sabre Wulf, Harrier attack, Kung Fu master, the Hobbit & Combat Lynx

That Barbarian cassette cover

If only there were some way to settle this joystick argument once and for all….

Where’s Steve McNeil off of TV’s Go8bit when you really need him?

I used to have a love hate relationship with Manic Miner on the C64, you knew if it got past a certain time when loading from tape (like 14 minutes?!) it wasn’t going to load so you had to restart it. It seemed like an eternity as a kid, mind you I can’t stand even a 14 second load time on stuff these days :p

Multiload games on tape were basically a weird psychological experiment.

Where’s Steve McNeil off of TV’s Go8bit when you really need him?

**** hate that show, such a missed opportunity, it seems to be made by and starring people who have no love or even recollection of actual 8-bit gaming

Multiload games on tape were basically a weird psychological experiment.

I’m sure I remember using the tape counter to skip levels. Some multiloads were so basic that if you cued the tape forward to the last level it loaded that instead or level 2

Aaaarghhh the Jet Set Willy unescapable deaths blip, blip, blip! Worse if you’d used a poke for infinite lives!

And DT Decathlon javelin, keeping your finger on fire for maximum launch gradient and killing a bird!

It was a Quickshot II Turbo i had

In which case, yes, PJM is correct.

Where’s Steve McNeil off of TV’s Go8bit when you really need him?

My cat hates you.

such a missed opportunity, it seems to be made by and starring people who have no love or even recollection of actual 8-bit gaming

Yeah. One of the big problems with it was there was terrific lag on the screens. They’d get the guests on talking about their favourite games, then have them playing them with a several-second delay between the console and the screen.

Used to be jealous of mates Spectrums, seemed way more games than on my c64, maybe just more pirated games. Then came Paradroid, Uridium and some other great games. Was it commando you could throw a grenade way further diagonally?

My cat hates you.

Panthers never forget. 😉

Thanks for the tip on the Switch Rich 👍🏼

If we’re allowed Amiga games then speedball 2 has to be up there. Spent hours on that game attempting to cripple all the other teams in the league “Ice cream” fun times. Agree with all the Barbarian comments too. Loved the little goblin who would kick the decapitated heads off the screen. I remember being disappointed with the sequel.

I suppose it’s common knowledge that the bloke in Barbarian that wasn’t Maria Whittaker was the guy who went on to be Wolf in Gladiators?

@cougar common knowledge since 5 hours ago when I mentioned it yes 🤣

I suspect you were distracted by the incredibly important Quickshot argument tho 😀

I remember games like Atic Atac, Battle-Cars, Skool Daze, and Spy vs Spy

Ah, I saw MW mentioned a couple of times but must’ve missed that. Sorry!