ZX Spectrum Games | The Games of my Life

Back to the ol’ Speccy for a 1985 game I and my friends played well into the 90s: Chaos.

By looking at screenshots, it appears stupidly basic; by watching someone play without explaining to you what he or she is doing, it seems insanely complex. The reality?

The premise is simple: 2-8 wizards trying to kill each other, using a variety of spells, including summoned creatures independently controllable, in a relatively small map (one screen) (sounds almost like Magic: the Gathering, only without the cards…).

The options, however, are many. Should I cast this Giant when the spell has a 20% chance of working? Should I cast it as an illusion, which works 100% of the time, but can easily be dispelled? Should I try to create easier, weaker Law creatures so that the Giant (a Law spell) is easier to cast later? Or should I go towards Chaos instead so I can eventually cast a Red Dragon? Is that guy going to attack me, or can I stay concentrated on killing that other guy? Can a Magic Bolt kill him, or should I save it for when I’m threatened? He’s attacking with undead creatures, and I have none… should I cast a Magic Sword and fight them physically? Trap them with Fire or a Gooey Blob? Create a Horse or a Pegasus, mount it, and get out of here? Create Magic Trees so I can get new spells? Is that Ogre he just cast an illusion?

And all of that in 48 K. Yes, 49152 bytes.

Oh, and the snake on the loading screen looked great.

Incidentally, Jullian Gollop, the author, would later create Laser Squad, UFO - Enemy Unknown (a.k.a. X-Com), Laser Squad Nemesis, and the new Rebelstar: Tactical Command for the GBA.

By the way, you can get Chaos here.

While the Sinclair ZX Spectrum wasn’t my first “games playing system”, it was surely my first computer. While it was released in 1982, I got mine (well, my father’s) in 1983 - I was 9 then. Man, I feel old…

And this - Penetrator, from Melbourne House, was the first game I played on the Speccy. At the time, the name didn’t sound “suspicious”, like it would today.

It’s basically a Scramble (an even older arcade game) clone - you fly a ship, which can shoot forwards, and drop bombs beneath you, in an apparently physics-reallistic sort of way. The first level is on open air, with just mountains to dodge, and missiles which try to hit you, but from the second level onwards, the game is inside increasingly complex caverns, so the ceiling is also a danger. And new enemies, of course.

Of course, the graphics seem laughable now, but reviews at the time said great things about them - they were impressive, for the time.

It would take years before I was able to beat the game without cheating, but I did so. My first Spectrum game…

If you want to try the game yourself, it’s perfectly emulated.

Of course, soon I would have a much harder challenge ahead of me: The Hobbit. My first text adventure game, at a time when I didn’t know any English. But that’s for another post…

The Games of my Life

Archive for the 'ZX Spectrum games' Category Page 2 of 2

Chaos (ZX Spectrum, 1985)

Penetrator (ZX Spectrum, 1982)

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Blogs

Other sites

Categories