Once upon a time there was a Spectrum

[Ed Oscuro]

God, and the British, loved this Spectrum very much. And it was...well, it was popular, cheap, and a ton of great games were made for it. (There, and I care enough about grammar that I don't mind my post showing up as "edited.")

I once was of the mind that the NES was about as primitive technology as I could stand. Since that time, though, I've been able to admire the good which came from the glut of microcomputer standards that appeared in the 1980s. There were Amstrad computers, the CBM, the C64 and its brethren. Yet of all these perhaps the most charming was the Sinclair.

I have been working on a site dedicated to the arcade game series Shinobi...and my introduction to the Spectrum, which recieved ports of two Shinobi games, follows.

It is not completely accurate, so keep that in mind if you're going to take it as completely factual. It will be improved as time goes on.

http://home.comcast.net/~edoscuro/spectrum_details.htm

For those who like neat pictures, behold the awesome Shinobi artwork only found on the minicomputer versions (probably was the same among all the different computer versions out, but certainly not found elsewhere). This is from an advertisement, and until I can get ahold of some Speccy games, the best version you'll find to my knowledge:

ftp://ftp.worldofspectrum.org/pub/si.../s/Shinobi.jpg

While we're on the subject...is this one beast of a design or what?

http://www.amstrad.com/default.shtml

[Ed Oscuro]

Oh, god, that HTML page is more embarrasing than I remembered, since I left in my notes. Well, deal with it, I'm done crying myself already. Wait...one last tear. There, really.

[devilman]

God, and the British, loved this Spectrum very much.

Damn right. I grew up with Spectrums. This was before my collecting days but I still had four Spectrums and over 900 games. All gone now though, but lots of happy memories.

Wasn't much for Spectrum Shinobi, mind.

[Ed Oscuro]

God, and the British, loved this Spectrum very much.

Damn right. :) I grew up with Spectrums. This was before my collecting days but I still had four Spectrums and over 900 games. All gone now though, but lots of happy memories.

Wasn't much for Spectrum Shinobi, mind.

I don't doubt that. Spectrum Shinobi, from the one screenshot I sort of looked at for half a second (box artwork much better!) seems to have big problems with sorting out the colors. At least with Ghouls 'n' Ghosts they had the sense to keep Arthur away from colored backgrounds since he's automatically colored the same way.

Oh, and for anybody who cares whatsoever:

It's Ghosts 'n Goblins
and
Ghouls 'n' Ghosts

on the Spectrum. That's a bit different, but that's taken directly from the title screens.

[devilman]

I don't doubt that. Spectrum Shinobi, from the one screenshot I sort of looked at for half a second (box artwork much better!) seems to have big problems with sorting out the colors. At least with Ghouls 'n' Ghosts they had the sense to keep Arthur away from colored backgrounds since he's automatically colored the same way.

The Spectrum wasn't too hot with the way it did colours unfortunately, due to the limitation of only two colours being able to share any 8x8 pixel square (I think it's 8 anyway). Some games worked around this pretty well but in most cases, it was just a splash of colour here and there.

I still prefer them to C64s though.

[Ed Oscuro]

Hmm a technical limit, I didn't know of that before. More work to be done! Thanks for the info of course.