NEW VID: The 20 WORST RATED ZX Spectrum Games from the Big 3 Mags
Added 2025-05-29 21:14:44 +0000 UTCI've done vids like this for the Amiga, but here's one for the Speccy...the 20 games that scored 10% or lower from the big 3 mags -- Your Sinclair, Crash, and Sinclair User. Some of these titles are already well known as terrible games, while others aren't quite as infamous -- and the worst one is right down there with Sqij.
A MASSIVE thanks to the awesome Pete Prodge, who compiled this list originally from ZXDB and posted it on SpectrumComputing: https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11073
Comments
Kosmik Pirate is as awful as you say. Line 120 has the INPUT statement, 1 Attack 2 Evade 3 Reccomend. No variable though! The subroutine at 8801 does the key detection, and on return sets the variable "i". It expects this to be 1 or 2. In fact it is 11 or 22. If you press "9" or "a" or something, you get 0. But sometimes you get 0 if you press 1. Or sometimes you get 11. If did a bodge fix and got past it, and it then asks you what's what. The easier fix is to change lines 126 and 127 to accept 11 and 22. It's still gash though.
WhatHoSnorkers
2025-05-30 07:16:19 +0000 UTCThat Blip... the background is really pretty and clever. But just because something's pretty and clever doesn't mean you want to use it. Not quite as bad/pretty/clever as Destiny Mission's double parallax scroling background of course, but it's like hiring a Page 3 Stunna to stand in the middle of the Monopoly board while you're playing. Nice to look at, but she gets in the way of the Community Chest.
WhatHoSnorkers
2025-05-30 06:49:57 +0000 UTCIt's definitely worth a trip on the naughty step, aye. I wasn't sure myself if the code in Battlecars was for the whole game or whether it was just for the menus, although the flickering between moves is also kind of a BASIC thing.
Kim Justice
2025-05-30 06:37:33 +0000 UTCSurprised to see Battlecars but I understand the explanation. I was a fan of it as a kid! The BREAK thing is poor form though, and is fixable with a little bit of machine code hanging off ERR SP. I'm looking at a game where you can break into it and it's mostly BASIC with some machine code, which isn't a bad way of doing things, as machine code is blisteringly fast but can take you half a day to write a FOR loop!
WhatHoSnorkers
2025-05-30 06:06:29 +0000 UTC
