ZX Spectrum addons and a slice of Pi

Yay, it looks like June is going to be a great month for new tech toys.

Firstly, I received and update email  from Poland to advise that my new DIV IDE board for my ZX Spectrum’s has been shipped. I ordered this way way back in November last year and had the choice of having the, then, current model or wait out for the new and improved version. Not in any rush i decided to wait but as it happens, production has taken longer than expected. As a gesture of good will, the guy responsible for creating these little beauties has also included a brand new Spectrum joystick adaptor with pass through edge connector so it can be used without tieing up the Sepctrums cartridge port i.e can use a joystick and DIV IDE on older model ZX Spectrum.

So what is a DIV IDE? Well it’s a mass storage device (SD or CF) for ZX Spectrum computers allowing for software to run directly from modern storage cards almost in an instance. Just think how many games will fit on a single 4gb SD card!

For more info, and to place an order yourself, please visit Lothareks Lair 

…and secondly, after waiting flippin ages and ages since sitting in the kitchen at stupid O’clock in the morning on the infamous  release day of the Raspberry Pi, mine has finally been shipped and expected any day now. Many of my friends have already recieved there’s and I for one  cannot wait to mess around with it.

 

Crash Magazine #15 (Kindle Issue) – April 1985

It’s been a while since the last digitally transcribed edition (Kindle/.mobi format) of Crash Magazine has been released but issue 15 is a well worth the wait and as blind luck would have it, coming so close to the Speccy’s 30th anniversary there’s the start of a four part interview with Sir Clive Sinclair himself.

Pick up a copy for your Kindle, Kindle app or .mobi file reader and go back to 1985.

http://www.crashonline.org.uk/

ZX Spectrum 30th Anniversary booklet.

It’s been a busy few days here and haven’t had much time for gaming despite having a nice and silent-ish iCade. However, I didn’t miss the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum the other day and managed get a few old tape games running on my 16k to mark the occasion and a new dollop of Blu-tak for the Ram pack

The internet has seen a whole bucket load of ZX based articles and it’s been a real blast to read them and see, even after 30 years, the continuing passion for Uncle Clive’s little black box.

Alot of these are wrapped up around the  World of Spectrum website which must have a received staggering number of visitors of late as their usually stable FTP servers seem to be taking a hammering.  Things seemed to have quietened down a little today so I was able to grab myself a copy of their 30th Anniversary  Souvenir booklet.

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/sinclair/extras/30thAnniversary/ZXSpectrum30thAnniversaryCommunitySouvenir.pdf

Happy belated Birthday from StiGGy

Moon Cresta – ZX Spectrum

If i had to pick only a handful of classic arcade games who sounds effects immeditately takes me back to the arcade halls of the eighties, then Moon Cresta would surely be included for it’s familar intro ditty and Space Invader-esq bullet effects.

On the humble ZX Spectrum, these familar effects are somewhat restricted and nowhere as memorable as its arcade parent – although they do emit those classic early Sinclair mono, baseless sounds.

ZX Loading screen.

So if the sounds aren’t there, what’s left then?…well, how about one hellava great old school shooter that’ll keep you bashing a way up the high score table. Incentive Software really have done a stirling job creating this faithful port included most of the elements from the game including the ship docking bonus sequence. Both keys, joys and take in turns 2-up modes are available.

Sinclair User magazine didn’t score it very well due to the fact that by 1985, games like Moon Cresta where looking a bit dated and games had advanced on the Spectrum at this time. Back then I might have agreed, but today, it’s still remains a great shooter no matter what the age.

The enemy ships in the first two waves are probably the hardest to defeat as they zoom around at random proving difficult to hit. Once you do, they split into Klingon ‘Bird of Prey-esq’ ships and swoop down to destroy. Watch your back here as a ship might appear to be off the screen at the bottom but might pop up again for a dirty cheap shot.

After four waves, you get to try the docking bonus for increased score and firepower. This is one tough cookie to pull off and much much harder than the arcade original. Kudos if you can do it.

D’oh, didn’t make it (again). Loose a ship and the next has more firepower, but is larger and less agile. Tactics win!

Outside of Mame, the chances of getting to play on an original cabinet these days are pretty slim (if you own one I’m not jealous at all ) but Moon Cresta was ported to many home computers so finding a copy shouldn’t difficult.

ZX81 ZXPand AY adaptor playback

I’ve been running some truly outstanding tech demos on the humble ZX81 just lately thanks to the ZXpand interface board including some that take advantage of the AY sound chip.

I’ve also been playing with this rather funky music tracker by SirMorris for playback of .pt3 music files.

Ok, so it’s not exactly a stock ’81 but flippin eck, it can’t half bash out a good foot tappin-tastic chip tune!

Old and new – Sinclair ZX81 and ZXpand

Thanks to my good friend Jon who has kindly loaned me his ZX81, I’ve been playing around with this little black box of joy these past few days and I must say, despite it infamous dodgy keyboard, I’ve been totally blown away by this thing. I’m now starting to understand why my friends and colleagues at the Retro Computer Museum have such a huge soft spot them.

Jon had also included his ZXpand board so i’ve been able to load upteen images from SD card as well as play some of the homebrew games created just rescently. 30 years on and folk are still making software for it! Gotta love retro!

Just messin -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QlrhB6K0Yic&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Also, whilst waiting for the above video to upload to YouTube, I started playing around with Pixlromatic on my iPad using one of the ZX81 photos i’d taken earlier on. I’ve had another idea, but for that I’ll need my trusty Photoshop.

In issue 99 of Retro Gamer, there was a great article on 3D Monster Maze for the ZX81, a game that I’ve never actually played myself, so that’s on my list of titles to play next. Does anyone have anymore recommendations?

ZX81 – Red Alert

Fantastic looking box art from this vintage ZX81 game – Red Alert. I found it whilst trawling through a few items on eBay. I’m loving the mock ZX81 keyboard at bottom of the screenshot and as I’ve since found out since,  SoftSync did a few other similar covers. o.k, so they’re not as good as this one but some of them do contain the same keyboard artwork. I might have to look at RCM’s archive the next time I’m down there, as they would be great to see it close up.

Red Alert appear to be some kind of Star Trek/Scramble clone and intrigued by the screenshot I thought i’d track down a copy of the game file and run it via emulation.

Hey, you know what, it’s actually quite a good game! Try playing it with the speed setting set to  number 9 though!

Incidentally,  EightOne is such a great emulator for  a wide range of Sinclair/Timex computer including the early ones like this and the ZX80. I like the way you can inverse the ‘colours’ and mess around with the TV emulation to add noise and ghosting just like the original picture used to look on those old crappy black and white tv’s back in the day. It even emulates the infamous rampack wobble

 

http://www.aptanet.org/eightyone/

 

 

Submarine – ZX Spectrum

Loading up Submarine and you’s think, hmm that doesn’t look like much of a game does it? In fact, even for a game made in 1984 it looks, well…..a bit pants – try not to laugh too hard when you hear the ‘music’ However, what Submarine does do really well is recreate those silent moments of suspense found in nearly all Sub vs Boat movies. Ok, so you have use your imagination a little bit so i suggest an afternoon viewing of Das Boot, Enemy Below or Hunt for Red October.

Played from the prospective of the boat Captain (shame it wasn’t the other way around), you have to sniff out what you fear is lurking somewhere down there in the deep below, before he detects you and sends up an invite to join him in the darkness.

Yikes!

Press keys 5 & 8 to steer your boat, Capt.

Press key 0 to activate your sonar and listen to the sound pitch. Low pitch means there’s nothing below and a high pitch means you’re bouncing off metal and you all know what that means!

Steer your ship so that the Sonar signal is the strongest and listen to the timing between beeps between your ship and the sub below.

If there’s a short delay between beeps, then he’s not far below you and a longer delay means he’s lingering further down.

Set the timer delay on your Depth Charge accordingly using keys 6 & 7.

Let one rip with key 2 (although I don’t believe that’s the correct Naval term )

That’s a miss. Adjust position and/or timer delay and launch again.

Boom! Got him!

Victory is short lived as your warning alarms scream out..Torpedo in the water. Do you stay still hoping that it was just a wild shot or move and run the risk of being in harms way?

Damnmit, should have moved. ‘Woot woot, all hands abandon sh….glug glug’

Scoring is based on the amount of times your ship is moved and also the number of Depth Charges used. The less of both used equals a lower (but higher) score.

Here’s my best so far.

iXpectrum on iPad.

After much research, um’ing and ar’ing, more research, a coffee…another coffee and then a walk around the block…i’ve decided to jailbreak my iPad2. Well…actually that was yesterday and because I’m writing this very post on my iPad shows that all went well and I didn’t end up with an iBrick

I’m still new to all of this Cydia app business and am sure I’ll be pouring over all of those apps that Apple don’t want you to use….although I’ll be staying away from the really iffy ones.

For me, as a retro gamer, emulation is what I really want from my jailbreak whether it’s on my large iPad screen, iCade support or mobile versions of handheld cartridge games I own to play on my iPhone.

There’s so much to choose from and have purchased the SNES and Atari 2600 emulators (currently loving the homebrew port of Berzerk for the 2600).

Some of the emulators are free and the one I’ve been trying out today is the simply amazing ZX Spectrum emulator called iXpectrum.

Having both a Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum emulator my iPad is such a wonderful thing to have to hand, especially if I want to show the latest hombrew releases to my friends at RCM.

Up until now I’ve used ZX Spectaculator for iPad and although you have to mess around quite a bit to import your own games, it has served me welI so far. iXpectrum offers the same emulation functionality but has two key features that ZX Spectaculator doesn’t have. Firstly, iXpectrum emulates 48k, 128k, +2 and +3 Spectrum models and secondly iXpectrum has the ability to import games directly from the World of Spectrum website. No messing around transfering files from PC to iPad, editing config files and control sets, just download, load and play!

Here’s a few screenshots.

Emulation options. You can also set independent options for iPad portrait and landscape modes.

The familiar boot screen.

Testing it out with a few early Spectrum titles.

Moon Alert by Ocean Software and one of my favorite 8-bit home conversions of Moon Buggy

Portrait

Fullscreen landscape mode with large but unobtrusive controls.

Another favorite that’s been copied and remade so many times – Bomber by Llamasoft.

One of the handful of Homebrew games packaged with the emulator. Albatrossity by very talented Jonathan Cauldwell is a rather excellent puzzle/crazy golf type game. Released only a few years ago, shows that Speccy’s are still fun and much love series of computers.

Search result from the World of Spectrum running within the app, simple click on file link (includes .zip support) to download and import into the emulator. Couldn’t be simpler!

You can even delete games from within the app too.

I’ve only scratched the surface here and can’t wait to try out some of the other features. I’d type more, but I’ve just got Target Renegade to run

For further information, check out the iXpectrum homepage

http://code.google.com/p/xpectrum/

Your Sinclair – Christmas Advent Calendar

Strolling along the web visiting various vintage computer magazines of the 80′s (I’m on the hunt for those quintessential Christmas editions) I happen to come across the website for Your Sinclair magazine and have been lost for the past hour in the their Christmas advent calendar feature. Each day celebrates the Speccy Christmases of the 80′s and focuses on the big games at the time coupled with music, documents, interviews and tv clips of the period. You even get a naff advent calendar chocolate each day

It’s such a wonderful look back and highly recommended..especially if you’re a brit/speccy owner!

http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/cgi-bin/advent.pl

Dec 1st – Robocop