Awesome video, sir :) As someone who grew up in the states, I find the Speccy to be a fascinating creature. We didn't really have a micro at this price point, not a successful one, anyway.
Fantastic video ! Regarding Elite and Beyond the Ice Palace/Thundercats, I was the graphics developer for Thundercats (working at Gargoyle). One teeny tiny correction if I may... Thundercats wasn't anything to do with Samurai Dawn... this seems to be an internet myth that's sprung up from somewhere. Samurai Dawn was just a title; we never developed a single pixel of it. One of the magazines at the time ran a screenshot and simply 'guessed' that it was going to be called "Samurai Dawn" if I remember. That basically summed up gaming journalism at the time. Thundercats was in fact based on a game we'd only just started developing, with a working title of Wolf. We took the walking man animation from Tir Na Nog, and played around with it to get it running and swinging a sword. We'd seen that Rygar in the arcades was popular, so we started making a similar game to that, when Elite came to us in a panic just before Christmas, and the rest is history. Brilliant video though, thanks for making it. Stu.
Thank you for your work, I have fond memories of playing Thundercats. BTW, I'll take "gaming journalism at the time" over gaming journalism today, any day.
Absolutely fantastic video Kim.As a 50 year old gamer I love these informative vids of times gone past.I can’t help but think that arcade conversations were the downfall of the 8-bit computers.Lots of talent used to copy games instead of designing new games that could better utilise the hardware of the legendary 8-but computers.
Ha, cheers for the shoutout! One curious thing about the unreleased Trojan... the music for the game ended up on Rampage on the Amstrad. So, Midway's Rampage, released on another computer, and published not by Elite, but by Activision. Bizarre!!!
I, too, read that same book on US Gold. I noted Geoff Brown having repeatedly scoffed at Elite Systems having been located over a fish and chip shop in Walsall. However, said company offices were in actual fact located over a Chinese (or maybe it was Cantonese) takeaway in the town of Aldridge which is within the borough of Walsall.
I will say, the game might not be up to much, but the parallax scrolling in LED Storm is absolutely amazing for the Spectrum. Incredibly smooth and fast.
Ya just can't beat the Speccy for games that may not resemble the arcade counterparts in sound and vision, but *do* have the feeling and heart of the original games.
Fantastic video :D There were some genuinely brilliant ports for the Speccy back in the day! :D Can't praise the legend that is Jim Bagley highly enough!
I immediately hear the absolute banger theme from NINJA on the Atari whenever I see the name Mastertronic, haha. Where I lived there was no conceptualization of budget publishers since basically every game cost about the same at the stores, so I was surprised as an adult to learn Mastertronic had been seen as a lesser company. Definitely created a lot of good times in my childhood!
OMG! Gunsmoke! That was one of two arcade machines in the Spanish hotel on our first family holiday abroad in the mid-80s. I shoved a lot of pesetas into that thing!
I have been binging your videos for the past week. What I love most, in the absolute depth you put into them and long long they are. You deserve SO MANY more subscribers and if I can find out how, I am joining your patreon. It's crazy the amount of content you have!
As someone who's never touched a Spectrum game (I grew up with C64 and Amiga 500), Commando looks like a brilliant port! I need to start looking into the Speccy!
the problem I have is the questionable color scheme can hurt my eyes or make it hard to see my character. this makes me appreciate the Nes, sega master system even more.
as I mentioned on Twitter, Capcom changed the name from "Bionic Commandos" to "Bionic Commando" pretty late on, some of the cabinet art still showed Commandos, as did the most of the flyers, including the Electrocoin UK one. I don't think you can blame those porting it, they were probably supplied with the same materials.
It's also kinda interesting that LED Storm was also a port of what is considered a prototype version of a Capcom arcade , LED Storm Rally 2011, which is very different to the final release more commonly known as Mad Gear. This suggests that Software Creations had access to an arcade where Capcom games were being tested, and possibly even played the version of Bionic Commando where it still had the Bionic Commandos title.
LED Storm Rally 2011 also feels like a halfway point between Last Duel, and the final LED Storm Release, there are even earlier versions of LED Storm 2011 which feel closer to Last Duel, it's one of the most interesting points in Capcom's History.
Amazed that the Spectrum did okay to good ports of the CPS1 games (except for a couple of games) hopefully we'll get a Namco and Williams/Bally/Midway Spectrum ports vids in the future
It's very interesting watching these, I have no experience whatsoever with computer gaming in the 80's and 90's especially from a UK perspective, yet I still love watching your videos, thanks for making them.
I wonder how some of these games released by US Gold would have played if designed by either Elite or Ocean. I always felt a lot of US Gold games were rushed and poorly designed, maybe to reach deadlines. I tended to avoid their games in general same as Go! who released dross like Wizard Wars and Bravestarr. Nice insight into Capcom games, Kim as always you obviously do a lot of research
I was a c64 owner in the day but still enjoyed the whole video. Tiertex name brought tears to ya eyes when u read up that they were gonna butcher your fav capcom game on all systems.
Tim Follin music shows up when you least it expect it sometimes. It's like he's a mercy composer, giving mediocre or crap games ridiculously great music to compensate. When I first heard he did the crazy good music for Pictionary on the NES, I laughed my head off. It's like "Tim, calm down, it's only Pictionary!" Gotta be honest about that Ghosts 'n' Goblins port too... the sprites are kind of adorable with their single color doofy proportions. 😅
You'd be surprised how many home computer ports of Strider there were back in the day. I came across a video once that was footage from all the versions of the game that exist and it was about 35 minutes long.
Strider and Forgotten Worlds. Couple of my favourite arcade games, and ports to Megadrive also excellent. Forgotten Worlds I pretty much only play my moded xbox arcade port nowadays though, as has the rotary controls I like on the analogue sticks. UN Squadron is another favourite on arcade, though I don't recall even playing or loving it on arcade until after I'd played it on my SNES. But as you say, some of the arcade favourites, on Speccy are not as you remember them. Certainly would like to see some remakes done on the ZX Next though with a bit more polish to them
I owned a copy of LED Storm, really enjoyed playing it. Managed to complete it too. Those monochrome background graphics used to play tricks on my eyes when driving the car fast. I think I was playing this around the time I upgraded from my secondhand 48k+ to a new 128k+2 and as mentioned, I discovered the music on the menu screen, which is superb. I also had Ghouls and Ghosts which was great and another of a minority of Speccy games I managed to complete. Shame I never bought 1943 or Cabal as I think I would have enjoyed those.
Love your vids! Your voice is so perfect for this type of documentary! In someway soothing like the voice of your best friend while late at night during a sleepover!
I loved LED Storm on my C64, the music was so awesome (so was BCommando’s)!!! Too bad it was so hard - could never finish it, always running out of fuel.
I know the artist who worked on SF2, they asked to have their names removed from it.. Alan Smithie style.. funny as hell back in day to see it on his resume when interviewing him
I don't know why, but I love how you say "arcades" as a short form for "arcade games". Anyway, keep up the great work. I'm always happy to see a video from you.
I had the big boxed version of street fighter 2, I only played it a couple of times, my friend had it on the A500 so I was a little embarrased when I tried to show him the z128 version.
Oof.... the days of when "arcade perfect" was pretty much impossible. Unless you bought a neogeo or arcade itself! For the equivalent of a couple of grand in todays money.... At least back then- this is why you went to the arcade; because your home version was pretty much a 'souvenir' of that arcade game.
I so wanted the commodore 64 version of last duel back in the day but could never find it. Back then mail order was difficult and expensive and took months
Having a C64 I was simultaneously not interested in the Speccy as the C64 could chuck things around and scroll smoothly. But also jealous at how ‘hi res’ everything looked - operation wolf jumps into my brain for some reason as perhaps suiting the ‘high res mono’ look of the spectrum
There were pratically identical versions in both Speccy and C64 in many genres like isometrical games or the Manic Miner/Jet Set Willy/Dizzy clones . Spectrum had 256x192p res only while C64 used mostly the socalled "multi-color' LoRes, 160x200 with 4 colors per character, 16 max and a 2x1px area (pixel fatter) but it had lot more other resolutions rarely used like the hi-res mode 320*200px that was the one for the ZX spectrum pixel perfect port experience. There were identical but for the pastel color palette of the c64. C64 could replicate all the ZX Spectrum versions..but the C64 users preferred more colors than better resolution.I had a ZX Spectrum and i liked more the ZX Spectrum games (for me the graphic of the Sabreman saga was simply mindblowing) even if the c64 had better sound and rich palette.For me ZX Spectrum and C64 weren't comparable because they had really different exclusives and different strong points. Today the ZX Spectrum graphic aged better in the retro-feel design while the C64 fat blocky pixels aren't so trendy
During the intro you showed Street Fighter 2 artwork of blanka and chun li while mentioning it was at the end of the consoles lifespan. I don't know if it was intentional or not but it felt apropos as the artist Mick McGinty just passed away this past September.
US Gold was pissed about Commando being ported to the ZX Spectrum by another 3rd party? US Gold would have screwed it up if they did the port themselves. Lol
Slight bit of Midlands pedantry here but U.S. Gold were from Birmingham and Elite were from Aldridge so Elite were from the Black Country, not U.S. Gold.
Kim you should check out the C64 port of LED Storm. Way better than the Speccie port. The soundtrack is a rendition of Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple which sounds great with the futuristic racing action.
Commando... I can't be the only one who prefers ZX version to any other. C64 has got nothing on it! Fast, aggressive, non stop action. I teach my kids how hard the games used to be using this as an example.
Gotta say before I started watching more uk youtubers I've never heard of these system before the c64 which weirdly enough I owned as a kid. My dad was a traveler. Anyways I'm an american guy and seeing these games definitely piqued my interest I definitely get game and watch vibes. But I gotta admit these ports are interesting especially seeing indirect sequels to capcom classics.
Those first 2 just shows the breadth of opinions when it comes to Speccy games. Commando I think is one of the best arcade conversions ever. I liked the 48K version on the Speccy but love the hack which adds the AY music to the game, making it even better. Ghosts & Goblins on the other hand I think is terrible. I might have cut it some slack if there had been a version taking advantage of the AY sound to add some music and some decent spot fx but nstead I just find the game as released to be too damned hard and visually and sonically unimpressive. Yes it has scrolling but the price to pay for that for me was much too high. But I also know I am probably in the minority on this. Great video as always though.
Originally they specialised in releasing U.S. stuff and promoted their titles as "All American Software." I remember that on my C64 tapes. Obviously that changed over time but they never revised the company name.
I loved Capcom back in the day. Great upload of my favourite machine even to this day! One more thing. Why do a lot of English youtubers say Anywho and not anyway? (The English way of saying it) 🤔
Yeah, I don't think you can call Aldridge the black country. Where Centresoft isn't either, that's just around the corner from Aston. But the definition of the area is a bit hazy at best.
Speccy version of Ghost'n Goblins is the best one? I'mma need a fact check on that one. The C64 was very convincing for the time and the second level felt pitch perfect. Everything looked right and moved right. In the speccy version everything behaves WRONG, how zombies get out of the ground, how the red demon & bosses move. Arthur's jump is all weird. Nostalgia blinded you on that one.
I remember buying Street Fighter on the Amstrad CPC, which is really the same version as this but even worse. And at the time I knew of the arcade game but I had never played it, only seen screenshots and it looked so great. So I bought it and got home and it was just terrible. And years later I played the arcade on MAME and realised it really wasn't that much better so that's one Tiertex somehow nailed.
If you play sf2 on an emulator and over clocked the z80 I wonder if would become playable, I actually do this with one of the Amstrad CPC emulators and a lot of games do become playable even if it does mess up the sound some times.
