ZX Spectrum Arcade Ports (inc. R-Type, Green Beret, Renegade, SFII and more!) - Kimble Justice 

What a superb video, from the quick historical summary at the beginning, through to the rather distressing thought of a 20 minute load time for SFII. I still play R-Type whenever I'm having a Speccy gaming session, definitely one of the best games on the platform :-)

Many thanks Kim, a used Spectrum 48k was my first exposure to games - your videos are top-shelf productions and I'm grateful to have found a creator who gives such depth and wit to covering games from any era 👍

There's a free ebook out there called "it's behind you" that tells the story of how the speccy r-type was made. I'd post a link, but youtube doesn't like that.

Subscribed after only watching one minute and fifty seconds of footage. I really like the format! Fantastic video man, it's great to see likeminded people on here talking about the stuff we all enjoy.

Nice video. I recently got a +2, an rgb cable, and a cassete adapter, so Im ready to replay all these games.. It will be my first go after 30 years, cant believe that !

The Lynx seems to have good ports for quite a lot of games, oddly enough.

It was an awesome era to live through in the UK.......never to be repeated and never forgotten!

Your retro gaming videos are excellent, IMHO! The degree of time and dedication you put into them are admirable. And the quality of the "final product" is second to none. They bring back the fond memories of the days past (I too had a Spectrum, and an Amiga, back in the day), and are somewhat addictive. :) Keep up the good work! (And have a good one! :)

Great video! I bought a box of tapes last week, hadn't heard of 95% of the games - though I'd vaguely heard of R-Type... Gonna rev up the ol' Speccy tonight and see how she flies!

That video contains one of the best communicated analyses of the virtues of speccy R-Type, on the web.

Love the video mate.....some great Spectrum greats there. Green Beret, Barbarian 2 and R-Type were my favourites, but also had great time for the Dizzy games; they were the very first rpg-like games imo. Thanks for the upload......great trip down Memory Lane!!!!

Well, a lot of them are in the old school arcade game vein, so they're more about scores than completion. As far as devices go, there was the Multiface which you could use to input POKEs (much like raw Game Genie codes) - you could even do it in the middle of a game if you so wished. The magazines printed loads of them every month.

Subscriber +1 great show man! Kids today don't know the pain of a horrid arcade conversion.

Target Renagade was one of my most loved games as a kid,i remember i had to go out the room while loading the game or it would crash if any one turned a light on or did a brew it would crash,but i lioved it all the same

Many of the arcade conversions were monochrome, not only because of the screen organization, also to keep the speed close to the original. I could say that R-Type was the best conversion from these you presented, but it suffered of no music in game. Definitely the best conversions are Renegade, better gameplay than other computers and Altered Beast not presented here. Kung Fu Master is brilliant, it is slow because the music engine takes most of the CPU power.

I came home from a long day at work, got in bed, and checked my YT subs on my laptop. Seeing the title of this vid along with its author made the stress melt away. Thanks for the trip into Speccy-Land!

What a nice video, and a good proper introduction to the Speccy for me. Some of those games really showed that the bare few colours can make a beautiful landscape if you use them correctly. Btw, congrats on 1k subs :).

R Type was so beautiful for the spectrum!!!!!

If we're talking about truly excellent ZX Speccy arcade ports, I'd add Chase HQ, Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands to the list.

I never had a Speccy, I had a C64 that I loved and I still love with passion but man...how I loved those Spectrum screenshots I watch hundred times in magazines...great video!

FYI, the Speccy port of R-Type was handled pretty much entirely by one single guy, called Bob Pape. He actually released a free ebook all about it awhile back, it's well worth a read.

Thanks, pal! 1: It did have a joystick, though you needed an interface for it. There were several actually - the Kempston interface being the most popular. Some games didn't support joysticks though, so you'd use keys (Q,A,O,P,M being my control scheme of choice)

Never even heard of the ZX Spectrum until this, but I enjoyed your video a lot. You do great work. Keep it up!

As a previous C64 owner, I have to say a lot of those games look like really good fun. Mind you, we only ever had a very limited number of games in our house. Lack of money, I was led to believe. But at least I got to play "Monty On The Run" and as I loved it so much, I'm dying to play "Manic Miner" and "Jet Set Willy". One of our not-so-great conversions was "Wonderboy". Everything about it was great until you realise (years later, in my case) that the C64 repeated areas with more obstacles whereas the arcade and Master System versions did not. At least it played well.

In renegade ,The character sprites and the level designs are very well designed and replicates the arcade game well. The music is really good and sets up a good atmosphere.

Loved my 128k Speccy +2! Thos games were all part of my collection, and played the hell out of them! Great Escape was probably my favourite title that gave me hours of enjoyment. Enjoyed your video and subscribed.

Another cracking piece, Kim - some old favourites and honest views!

Both the C64 and Spectrum are better compared from 1986 onwards when coders were actually digging into the hardware properly.You will find that the Spectrum wins hands down on just about every single type of game genre using the 1986 rule.Also with the advent of the AY chip installation in 128k machines SID chip was not quite the coat-tail it once was even the 48k in the magic year 1986 was blessed with Tim Follins ability to push out the 5 channel "chiptunes" from it's humble beeper.Enduro Racer.Exolon.Cybernoid.Zynaps.Cobra.Head Over Heels.Amaurote.Renegade.Target Renegade.Before any Amstrad owners pipe in about Target Renegade, the Speccy version actually played like a dream in comparison.

Thanks for the insight on the Speccy. Nice video. However, you mentioned Chronos, and gave bonus points to Renegade for having music... man have you not heard Tim Follin's wizardry on the first version of the former? Chronos 48k had one of the most ambitious compositions... on a computer without an actual sound chip! Just a beeper, and Tim pulled out a prog rock suite out of it! And I guess you know, but have you seen the homebrew version of Doom?

This was a great trip down memory lane. It really summed up the Spectrum, nothing special but..... With the system being so basic, and knowing the limitations of the system, meant it made the programmers get creative.

amazing trip to times where we weren't so demanding and we just wanted to have some fun.

Im glad you have evolved Kim. I mean im glad you squish the footage to 4:3

brilliant videos and very entertaining as always. nice to see you in this video too, put a lovely face to the voice x

It's from Street Fighter II for the ZX Spectrum - it's a version of Balrog's theme (although it's the only music in the game)

Nice video, I still have both the 48k and the 128k with the lightgun, good times :)

Oh....and I was blown away by the R-type port back in the day.

Green Beret definitely in my top 20 all time Spectrum games. Probably my favorite in your video too. (Yep and over R-Type) Another good port is Shadow Dancer if you wanna check that out.

fucking amazing video. even barry norman would agree.

Being from Canada I did not get the Spectrum, but I did get the American variant called the Timex Sinclair. Mine had the blister buttons, and I don't remember having the tape drive. I was 6 of course when my Dad got it (he graduated computer science in the late 60's). About a year after this I got a Commodore 64 after a trip to the dentist. Good times.

great to hear that this system supported code manipulation, even while in game. the super nes game genie also did this where you could turn the effects on and off on the spot with a switch on the device

It's SFII's title theme on the Spectrum - a rendition of what's usually Balrog's theme.

Great video man always good seeing someone who knows their stuff :) also i NEED to ask what is that first track from when the video starts?

This is the speccy equivilent of crysis....love it!

Great Video!! Definitely one of your best. As an American I had never really heard of or scene the spectrum in action. I have 2 questions: I noticed the controls on the menu screens were for keyboard. Did the spectrum have a joystick? And you guys didn't have console gaming in Britain until the NES?

I planned to - they were in the script, recorded and everything. But making the vid went on for so long and I had all other crap going on and so I rushed it out with SFII as the ending - I ran out of time :(. Rainbow Islands specifically will get a video of its own in the future 'cause it's the definite king of all ports, possibly even the best game on the whole system (next to Deathchase).

Here, while watching that video, I was just thinking you sort of sound a wee bit like that LarryBundyJR guy and lo and behold, here is he also commenting on the same video :) Nice accent, good quality, well planned game videos with a decent script. Yeah, you got a subscriber here.

Did he just say that Renegade III was "quite good"? One of the most infamously hated games ever relased for the Speccy is described as "quite good"?

Interesting video. Is there a place you can get a TAP or TZX image for Chronos 128? I do have the 48K version and like it a lot and would love to see what they've added for the 128K version. I went on World Of Spectrum but its not listed.

I broke the spacebar on my 48K playing Renegade. Enjoyed the video :o)

The renegade music didn't actually play on the spectrum plus 3. Other interesting fact, in the 48k version you couldn't throw your enemies like in the 128k version

33 years ago, Code Masters released the original Dizzy game, it was a classic, unbeaten to this day in terms of how good it really was IMHO,, we NEED a modern day version of Dizzy I think.

Terra Cresta - The definitive Top down shoot -em-up.Kick ass music for 48k and beautiful graphics and pixel perfect collision detection - ignored by the mags at the time.Compare that with US GOLD 1942 and shoddy Xevious versions - no contest.

Very Good video! You should check hard drivin' for ZX spectrum! it was a very playable good port and i played it a lot ^^ (played the arcade a lot aswell) Also great games are Castle Master type games

I had three suitcases full of speccy games when I was a kid!

There were a ton of good arcade ports on the Spectrum - loved Green Beret and Renegade back in the day - Spy Hunter, Commando and Ghosts N Goblins also spring to mind. Pretty much every style of game you can think of has been done on the Spectrum in some form or other - hell there's even a version of Doom for it.

I owned that. I even got all the way to Masked Warrior once...my god, it was horrendous. Of course, it was still a better port than the SNES version.

I'm Canadian and while we didn't get the spectrum here I had a friend that moved to my city back in the mid 80s and he brought his spectrum with him . After hooking up all the power converters and getting a computer monitor it would work on we got to playing it. I always wanted one because it was so cool looking compared to the c64 because it was black. Now I have more nostalgia for the c64 and found out the games were better on the c64. But I still want one today for my vintage computer collection. Don't get me wrong I'll use it or not bother getting it.they were meant to be used not looked at.

Being an Amstrad with a cousin who owned a Spectrum, we were always pissed off when we look ta the graphics on the back only to find out the pictures were from a Commodore 64.

2: There actually were consoles, but the microcomputers outsold them. The 2600 was the most successful of course, but nowhere near the level it was in the US. The Intellivision and Colecovision didn't come out until '82, and they didn't make much of an impact. The microcomputers even sold quite handily against the NES (it didn't help that the NES was sold by Mattel over here, as opposed to Nintendo themselves).

eswat, why did they make such big sprites but only use a few pixel dots for the face?

I wouldn't mind seeing more content along these lines either, even though I'm a resident and native of the US where the Spectrum never really took off...

Excellent review. Hope to see a few more

Thanks! Relaxation is what I'm here for.

Back then when the idea of actually playing accurate Arcade versions one day at home almost seemed like science fiction it is understandable that people went for these ports. But I do think publishers/developers abused gamers' desire to play an arcade game in their own bedroom/living room and released some very subpar products which outside their title would not have sold otherwise. In general I feel like what some other posters here also said that games 'inspired' by Arcade titles and of course the complete original titles have aged much better than any of these Arcade ports, how acceptable some might have been at the time.

Anyone else notice that "Made in Magrathea" Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference in the Chronos clip?

Great as always Kimble. More Speccy content will be welcome :)

R-Type on the speccy,what a fricken great conversion. You know this Otemidias game you've mentioned a few times,whats so bad about it then?

Grew up playing the ZX and BBC, child of the 80s, lol I would get my mum to buy the ones with the best cover picture. Spy Hunter is arcade one I like although I never played it at the arcade. I fav the bbc more then the spectrum. Spectrum was good as dead at the start of the 90s. Enjoyed the video.

on R-Type - you're spot on!! awesome suff

What's the music at 3:44 onwards. I remember it but I can't place my finger on the game it was from. Thank you.

Diffwences in scweenshots for Aw-Type on the Spectwum.

haha, I notice that the C64 at 3:03 is not a real one, as it has 4 cursors keys :-) During the watching I noticed I saw something strange, few minutes later I went back, and voila! :-)

It seems like on R-type that the movement was limited to character boundaries. That's okay I guess, but the lack of smoothness maybe takes away something, like you are playing a souped up LCD game. One thing that would make this better is if the playfield is bigger than the screen. Maybe.

The era of relying on how the box art appealed to you in the shop!

I would love to get a ZX Spectrum and experience it. Being in the U.S. we never really had them. My father was big into computers and we went from the Vic20 to the C64 and finally an Amiga. While the C64 was obviously a more powerful computer over a ZX it wouldn't have mattered as I was largely not allowed to touch the computer till I was 8 but by then we had the NES so I just played that. I guess I got to play with the Vic20 when the C64 came in, but the only the games we had on cartridge which were GORF (a Space Invaders clone) and Mission Impossible with the latter being a text based game that was very short and easy enough my 6 year old self beat it in one evening. The vast majority of Vic20 games we had were on cassettes but the cassette drive moved to the C64 so I couldn't play those. Oh well, I really hope the portable ZX Spectrum comes out in the U.S. when released. I think that would be the easiest way for me to get my chance to play one finally.

The Spectrum was the grandchild of the 'ZX80' and was designed around the 8-bit (!) Z80 processor....

Is it just me, or does the sound FX in the Spectrum port of Nemesis sound an awful lot like the sound FX coming out of one of those Tiger handheld games?

Great video as always. God i miss my spectrum :(

The Timex Sinclair 2068 had some pretty decent sound and joystick ports and a never used cartridge port. In 1985 I wrote a videogame called Diamond Mike, a Boulderdash similar game that I was extremely happy with. I don't think that I have any copies of game anymore, and I no longer have a 2068. I can't find the game online, but would love to find a copy somewhere. I also wrote the same game for the Atari ST, and I do have a copy of the game, but no longer own an ST. I would love to play this game again.

I'd like to see more on Rainbow Islands. The Brits really love that game, but it went completely under the radar over here in the States.

I agree that it would be unfair to pit Stephen Hawking against Mike Tyson; Tyson's grasp of astrophysics are limited at best.

Good work mate, enjoyed this.

Magic Memories, thank you :-)

Actually the ZX Spectrum 48K had a very good specification for the price upon its first release in 1982.

Look how many sprites there are on the Speccy's Renegade! Wow! Final Fight on SNES could only put 2 enemies on screen at once (a far cry from the CPS1 arcade). Tips fedora to the programmers!

Oh hell NOOOOOOOO. You didn't say that?! 19:03 "Renegade 3 was good"!!!! Just WTF were you smoking when you played that damn game?!!

Have you played Final Fight on the ZX? I can't help but admire US Gold for trying.

R-Type was incredible on the Specy.

How come you didn't compare some of the arcade games that we wanted on the spectrum when it was released, such as Pacman, Space invaders, Galaxians, Gorf, Berzerk, Defender, Missile Command, Battlezone & Donkey Kong? They all have respectable variants on the Speccy! In fact, you could have compared various versions of each Spectrum arcade clone; for instance, there are a bunch of Space Invader versions on the Spectrum, such as Space Intruders & Spectral Invaders to name but two! Heck, I even wrote my own Pacman clone!

the z80 assembler for ZXSPIN does not work. I can't run any programs

I actually find Otomedius being a great spin-off. Not really as good as Gaiden for example, but if you look at the history of the game itself (the one that is not on Wiki) and seeing every of the removed content, you see it was to be a little bit better... but oh well... Aside from that, really good video, I'm a little bit young (17 years) but Speccy is a very interesting machine for me. And yeah... I found Kung-Fu Master worse, even more than Gradius/Nemesis... Nice video as always dude!

I missed out on the ZX I had a C64 but I didn't know any other kids with anything but pong machines.

Game music at 4:00? 99% sure its Xenon. Can't be sure as i only had it on the Atari ST. If it is, its the first time i've heard the music in 30 years.

Another Speccy kid here, just found this video randomly and think it's really well put together. Subbed, and looking forward to the next Speccy themed video you decide to do. On a different note though, Renegade 3 was horseshit compared to the other 2 games. I felt like Ocean scammed me out of a month's saved up pocket money with that one.

I always though Midnight Resistance was pretty great on the Spectrum

yes kidz, gradious nemesis for the zx spectrum was downgraded when was released, that is why of those screenshots

To finish up, the microcomputers finally started going out of fashion in about 1990 - thanks to the new generation of family computers (the Amiga 500 and Atari ST) superseding them, as well as Sega and Nintendo establishing themselves. The Spectrum was officially discontinued in 1992. The C64 lasted a bit longer, going out with Commodore itself in 1994.

great video I remember most of the games in video . green beret. 👍👍

It looked worse on the Master System due to very limited tech but still kicked the crap (obviously) out of the 8 bit computer ports. Back then they could port anything and so long as it loaded, had the name of the arcade original and a decent price tag (for the developers) it was fair enough.

Well, games like E-Swat and Street Fighter II were very demanding on the Speccy hardware to begin with.They wouldn't work out without serious compromises on the sprites, but then they would look nothing like their arcade counterparts.Kung-Fu _should_ work well on the Spectrum, but that was just atrocious programming.For the Nemesis port, programmers had only three weeks to work on the conversion, and it shows.R-Type, Green Beret and Renegade show examples of well-programmed Spectrum games wich you would be glad to own and play.Oh, and the amazing conversion of Chase HQ.A programming feat by itself on the humble Spectrum.