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ZX SPECTRUM 1982-2016: 5½ hours with 600+ top quality colorful games!

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This video features 5½ hours with some of the best programmed ZX Spectrum games. As a minimum there are 10 games for every year, but many years have many more games.

This is a tribute to the ZX Spectrum and this video shows what this home computer can do if it is programmed correctly, so games that is a big mess of color clash and monochrome games where it is impossible to see what is going on is not included. Unfortunately the ZX Spectrum got a lot of arcade conversions that looked like crap and played like crap. These games were also made for the C64, Amstrad CPC, Amiga and Atari ST and the easiest and fastest way to convert them to the ZX Spectrum was to make a dull monochrome version, so if you download an emulator and some of the most known titles from the eighties you will probably be very disappointed. There is also a lot of videos on Youtube where those games is being compared and makes the ZX Spectrum look like a poor machine, but that is quite unfair because it is the programming and not the machine that is poor. In this video you will find a lot of games similar to those arcade conversions …all done in color! A few monochrome games is also included because the C64 and Amstrad CPC also got some monochrome games or games with few colors, so to totally exclude all of these games would be unfair.

This video is also a travel through time showing the evolution of games, because what happened is that people never stopped using the ZX Spectrum, and therefore this computer have had many titles released for it every year since 1982. We are starting way back in time in 1982 at the beginning of video gaming and we are meeting clones of classic games like Space Invaders (Space Raiders), Pacman (Gobbleman) and Centipede, and as we travel through time we also meet some of the biggest newer titles as Doom and Mortal Kombat in 1997 and Wolfenstein in 2004 and we end up with the modern games that offers a lot of new gaming concepts.

In 1993 the last games produced by western companies was released, but companies from Czech-Slovakia / Slovakia released some great games from 1992-1995, and in 1995 a lot of people from Ex-Soviet started producing ZX Spectrum games – this continued until the era of retro gaming / retro programming took over, and companies like Cronosoft and World XXI Soft Inc started producing commercial games for the ZX Spectrum again.

I have included more than 600 games, but I do not know every single game for the ZX Spectrum, so there is probably many more high quality games available for the system. This is not any kind of Top 10 or Top 20 list for every year, so there is a lot of well known games that is not included because focus is on the best programmed games and not on the best sold games. The video has been made to show some of the best programmed games for the ZX Spectrum, and to show fans and enthusiasts what is available for the system.

If you search on Youtube for the games in this video you will find walkthroughs for most of them, and do not let it fool you that some of the games can be completed in 10 minutes, because it will take a long time before you are able to do that. For example Ghost’n Goblins can be completed in 6 minutes …but who can do that ? Talking about Ghost’n Goblins, the Spectrum version was very poor and is not included in this video, but the similar games: Soldier of Fortune (1988/2003), Hobgoblin (1991) and Invasion of the Zombie Monsters (2010) that is of much better quality is included, so if you are into Ghost’n Goblins you should check out these games.

Today the retro programming scene for the ZX Spectrum is HUGE, in fact this is the home computer with the biggest retro programming scene, and lots of games of a very high standard is being produced every year.

The ZX Spectrum have also got it’s second youth with the releases of “Recreated ZX Spectrum”, “ZX Spectrum Vega”, “ZX Spectrum Next” and “ZX Spectrum Vega+” so the future is looking good for the ZX Spectrum.

Facts about this video:

All the games is, of course, ZX Spectrum games running on 16/48/128k hardware, and all the music / sound fx is from the actual game played. Seven games that uses the General Sound sound card interface is included but a note tells you that you need this interface for these games.

So… YES – Doom is also a ZX Spectrum game running on 128k, and YES – Wolfenstein is also a ZX Spectrum game, programmed to use multicolor, running on 128k. And the games from 2013-2016 that are having more colors than the ZX Spectrum normally can show, is also ZX Spectrum games produced with Nirvana / Nirvana+ / Bifrost multicolor engines.