A regular feature of Your Sinclair, Eldad Petreanu suggested a revival of this section in which readers tell us all about their 8 favourite games, which they would use to keep them company on a deserted island! To start off, lets hear Eldad`s favourite list:
Which eight games would YOU take to a desert island?
Need I say more? Oh well. The best isometric game ever, with brilliant puzzles, hypercute characters that move over, around, and through each other, and polished gameplay. Monochrome never looked better.
Shoot and block aliens and remove obstacles, clearing the path for a weapon you must push along the highway. With the exception of its sequel, this is quite possibly the only game in which your extra lives follow you around, doing their best to get lost before you have a chance to play them!
A whole school in 48K! So real you could actually learn something from it! The little characters with their individual,demented personalities do their worst to make you think school could be fun. But we know better, don't we?
An arcade conversion that was infinitely better than its PC incarnation. This platform game lets you create and destroy the platforms. Though it may seem very difficult at first, there's actually a foolproof method around every screen.
Takes the sliding block puzzle where no sliding block puzzle has gone before. A unique and rewarding experience, and the feeling of completing a complex maneuver to get a piece of the picture to its right place is beyond words. What a shame I'm good enough to complete it every single time.
The unlikely combination of shooting vector spaceships, collecting their cargo to complete anagrams and flying to the time the anagram is needed actually works very well. The brainy bits make a welcome change from the otherwise-monotonous smooth vector graphics. The snap in the ftp sites is corrupted, so can anybody who still has the original make a .TAP of it? PLEASE?
Dash frantically through the castle, trying to prepare whatever your master feels like munching on, be it boiled slimies or eyeball crush. HUGE graphics and a convincing game world set this one apart, and Berk is so cute you'll want one (of whatever he is) as a pet.
Fly all over the world, clean whatever country you're in until you can see your face in it, and make enough money for your next air fare. The countries all have their distinct 'look and feel' - the way to lose the KGB agents in Moscow has little to do with the technique to avoid falling coconuts in Samoa. And with the ability to choose your route this means there's a lot of gameplay in there. The classic 'traveling salesman' problem may well have its roots in this game!
There are quite a few sites on the 'net with Spectrum software, but none of them is good enough the others can be content with simply mirroring it. Some come close, but all in different ways. The definitive Spectrum archive is still a long way from completion.
What can we do?
game
demo - of the graphics/sound variety
gamedemo - if the whole game is not available, or a demo contains stages
not found in the complete game, the demo should be here
business - word processor, databases...
utility - any software for creating software
hardware - hardware-specific software (the kind that's bundled with
digitizers/light pens/whatever)
anything else I forgot?
inside each directory, subdirectories for the different machines can be found:
16
48
48AY - runs in 48K mode, but plays 128K music if available
128
+3 ?
What do you think about this directory structure? Again, this is just off the top of my head, and your suggestions may be much better.
Is this plan really that far-fetched? Or can it some day become a reality? Oh. Well, never mind. It was just a thought.
Some good ideas there on how to organise the Speccy scene! I agree on many of his points, although using TAPs a standard may alienate users of Emulators which don`t support this format. Any more suggestions anyone? ED.