Best 100 spectrum games

Dandy - Electric Dreams Zzoom - Imagine Avenger Way of the Tiger 2 - Gremlin Graphics Pippo - Mastertronic Gauntlet - US Gold Dark Star - Design Design Match Day - Ocean Avalon - Hewson Universal Hero - Mastertronic Starstrike II - Realtime Games.

Scuba Dive - Durell The Sentinel - Firebird Rex - Martech Gunfright - Ultimate Midnight Resistance - Ocean Rogue Trooper - Piranha Jack The Nipper - Gremlin Graphics. Finders Keepers - Mastertronic Impossible Mission - US Gold Night Gunner - Digital Integration Ghosts 'n' Goblins - Elite Harrier Attack - Durell Formula One - CRL.

Atic Atac - Ultimate Tau Ceti - CRL Head Over Heels - Ocean Instead of bashing someone to oblivion and depleting their energy bar, players must secure solid hits against their opponent to obtain yin-yang symbols.

Land a solid punch or connect a kick against your opponent for a full icon, or bag a half icon for a sloppy attack.

Get two symbols to win. Apart from the symbol thing, this is a method of scoring actually used in Karate. Pull off epic kicks and attacks, and try your hand in a one-hit-punch bull attack mode…. Target: Renegade takes the 8th spot in this list of the best ZX Spectrum games of all time. As the front cover might suggest, players control one or two street fighters on a rampage. The aim of the game is to lay some sweet revenge on Mr Big, a crime lord that killed your brother. The ZX Spectrum is one of the only ports to have a multiplayer mode.

I guess its a one-up against the poor graphics, and these types of games are always fun when battling through with a friend. Brutal men and women try to stop our nameless protagonist at every turn, and its up to you to pull off gnarly combos to beat them back. Jetpac is actually one of the best looking games on the console. Build, refuel, fight, refuel, repeat.

Chase H. Check out our list of the best Master System games to compare. Gamers take the fearless Tony Gibson around a series of tracks as he chases down bad guys. Cruising in his Porsche 98 hard to tell in a black and white car tootling along the yellow brick road, I know , Tony must catch up to speeding vehicles and ram them into submission, stopping criminals from getting away with their shady business.

Atic Atac looks a little like a nightmare I have on a recurring basis. The gameplay consists mainly of unlocking doors and searching for a golden key, all while avoiding mushrooms, devils, and other nasty enemies. Items are spread throughout all of the different rooms in this game, but the catch is that you can only carry three at a time.

Gamers can play as a wizard, a peasant, or a knight. I toyed with putting Elite in the top spot just to comply with the opinion of the masses. From the wire-frame 3D graphics to the cool cockpit view and crosshairs, Elite is one of the earliest and best space shooting games that would go on to inspire the likes of Rogue Squadron and Lylat Wars. Players control Commander Jameson as he flies through the universe, trading galactic currency to buy the biggest ship in the galaxy.

Like Number 2 in this list, the world and the universe in this case is your oyster. You can do as little or as much as you want outside of the main core of the game. Go all Miner er on asteroids or kick back with a space smoothie and just watch the world fly by. This is another Spectrum title that did great business and is considered successful on pretty much every console imaginable. Push past the old-school graphics and immerse yourself in this interstellar title!

Heck, I love anything that Tolkien has created, from Roverandum to the Silmarillion. We used to play lots of illustrated text adventure games at Junior School, but never anything as exciting as this.

Actually more puzzle game than platformer, it's just one of the most addictive things ever. That's all. Well, forget it, because Rafaele Cecco was an even bigger cult. The difference is that poor Raf only ever wrote one really good game, and this is it. It has to be said that flip-screen shoot-'em-ups with add-on weaponry aren't the stuff which legends are usually made of. But the imagination, playability and attention to detail of this one lifted it way above its origins and into the realms of the unforgettable.

It's worth getting just for the huge maces which swing around your ship and pulverise everything, but it's a fab game too. Great though they can be, budgies tend to be simple rehashes of previous successes.

This game however, broke the mould and later inspired programmer Tim Closs to write one of the best bit games ever, Kid Gloves.

Don't blow 12 quid on this month's latest crappy unoriginal licenced rubbish, scour the bargain bins and find yourself a copy of this instead. I promise that you won't be disappointed. Two loads full of stunning graphics and a synchronised audio soundtrack including proper real-life stars like Frankie Howerd and Jon Pertwee, coupled to a madly over-the-top story of totalitarianism and genetic engineering, made Deus Ex Machina an experience the like of which had never been seen before or since.

Genuinely affecting and disturbing at times, this is software as art. Knight Lore was the game which pioneered the 3D isometric graphic style, later to be imitated into oblivion by a hundred lesser designers. It took Spectrum graphics into a whole new world, and up to a level which simply hadn't been believed possible, even by the machine's creators themselves. The game was conveniently brilliant too, and the traditional Ultimate Play The Game polish gave the whole thing a shine which was almost blinding.

Impatient gamers besieged shops for months until it finally appeared, and no-one was disappointed. It's a superficially simple platform epic set in Willy's surrealist mansion with some of the most tortuous timing traps in the history of computer gaming and a genuine 'being there' feel which has rarely been topped. It looks a bit slow today, but the superlative gameplay will soon make you forget about that. Ultimate's incredibly tough moon-based alien-stomper was their first attempt at a game using the Speccy's expanded 48K wow!

Hugely clever and funny, it was also the game which you simply had to be able to play if you wanted to have any peer status at all in Funny how things turn out, isn't it? John Phillips' beautiful tower-ascending game featured amazing rotational scrolling, but the truly staggering thing was that it was overshadowed by the overwhelming addictiveness of the absurdly addictive gameplay. Climb up, fall down, climb back up again and that was about it.

It just goes to prove if there's still anyone out there who doesn't believe it that the simplest ideas are always the best. Some remain so. Especially if they've been playing Think! So said top twentieth century playwright Samuel Beckett sort of. And he was right too, because this 'board-game-you-couldn't-play-on-a-board' is one of the most brain-torturing ever devised by mere mortal.

The whole balance of the game can alter with a single move, and if you can beat the computer you've done something you can be proud of. Party time! If you're going to play this with a chum, take your boxing gloves. Computer games have taken some strange approaches to bomb disposal, but having robots roving around in strange gravitational fields throwing the things through windows to each other has to be the most ridiculous yet.

It was all so tensely gripping that players were completely hypnotised. If you're after some seriously weirdo cyberpunk thrills, give Deactivators a try. A need for speed? Well, sod off. We don't need any of that Tom Cruise nonsense round here, we're all too busy having fun playing this immensely wonderful motorbike racing game to be bothered with any dim-witted macho posturing.

Super Hang-On is even more thrilling than going for a ride with Andy O, and that's really saying something. Fast slick and stomach-churning, this is the real thing brought to life on a Spectrum with a vengeance, and with some pretty spiffy graphics to boot.

If you were born to be wild, grow up with this. FTL managed to pack this brilliant vertically-scrolling shoot-'em-up with more colour than is actually physically possible on the machine, and made it one of the very few Speccy games ever to truly have the feel of an arcade game.

Lightforce plays as good as it looks. Lots of games can claim such an accolade, but this is one of the few where it's actually a compliment. The first real Speccy platform game, Manic Miner's character, sense of humour, brilliant design and mammoth addictiveness in fact, it's even more addictive than a mammoth made it one of the first true computer gaming legends.

It's still a great game, almost nine years later, and I doubt if we'll be able to say the same of any of today's games in the year Come to that, in the year I'll probably still be playing Manic Miner. This sequel was so good that it improved on even the coin-op. The fast moving solid 3D graphics are, with the possible exception of the Freescape games, still the most impressive the machine's ever boasted, and the game itself took Star Wars a step further and added a non-intrusive strategy element to the space blasting.

Stunningly impressive, stunningly atmospheric, just stunning, really. Much-feted programming team Denton Designs had their finest moment with this mostly black and white Colditz-style arcade adventure. It captured the POW camp feel perfectly with the aid of an innovative design. The automatic ability to wander around the camp simply obeying the rules and touching the controls only when you wanted to do something naughty was a stroke of genius. Even your score was calculated in medals!

If your dad thinks computer games are a waste of time, show him this. They'll be instantly converted to the Speccy gospel. Amazingly fast and incredibly well programmed, Chase HQ turned a mediocre arcade game into a Speccy classic.

Even the title sequence was bursting with character, and indicative of the kind of loving care that so few people bother to put into Spectrum games any more.

The added plot gives Chase HQ an element of compulsion which lifts it into the realms of the special. A treat. Explosions don't count. If not, you've obviously never played Alien. On the Spec, Alien was a tension-filled strategy game where you controlled the entire crew of the Nostromo in an attempt to blow the evil beastie up and escape to safety.

Just like in the film, the alien was wont to appear without warning from air vents and munch a member of your team in seconds. The game was so taut that when you did stumble across the old ET herself, even the neighbours three doors down could hear you scream. Spy Vs. Spy is a supremely entertaining game. But try two-player mode and you'd better be ready to experience ecstatic triumph and crushing despair in a minute.

The traps which the witless spies blunder into are alternately hilarious or teeth-grindingly infuriating, depending which side you're on. The split-screen display meant you had no excuse for not spotting what your opponent was up to - all you could do was get back up and perpetrate some of the same slapstick violence in return.

If both of you somehow forgot what the actual point of the game was in all the excitement, well so what? In the sequel to the brilliant Skool Daze, Microsphere added a school full of girls to the original formula of sneaky backhanded japery and unusual escapades with amphibians. This was obviously a good thing. They ended up with a game which provided many a Spectrum owner with some of the happiest days of their lives.

The wonderful atmosphere of Skool Daze was just part of a recipe which also included incredibly devious puzzles, a whole cast of genuine characters and superb graphics. Add a combination of platform dexterity with beat-'em-up violence and strategic planning for a game with a feel of completeness that's never really been bettered. Time for bed, everyone ', said Zebedee once, and Underwurlde fans knew exactly what he meant.

Ultimate's brilliant platform arcade adventure had only one real difference from the thousands which the Speccy's played host to. The nasties didn't kill you, they bounced you around the screen in an attempt usually successful to send you plunging to your death down a mineshaft. The stratospheric level of frustration made this at the same time the most-loved and most-hated computer game of its day. If you play it now, you'll see why. Nevertheless, his knack for writing superb software was undisputed.

This hybrid of Underwurlde and Atic Atac was fast and frantic, with a target which was difficult but attainable. Brimming with playability and addictiveness thanks largely to the attributes previously mentioned , Starquake was Steve's finest hour. To this day many people maintain that it's the Speccy arcade game's finest hour too. A classic in the truest sense of the word. The all-time classic space trading and blasting epic, Elite combined Star Trek with Minder that's what it boils down to in a game for which the word 'legendary' seems like a severe understatement.

Deeper than space itself, Elite created such a believable world that players immersed themselves into totally, and the sneering ranking system 'What do you mean, I'm "Harmless"?

It was big, it was hard, and it was clever. That's good enough for me, matey. Companies boasted of games with 20, then 50, then , then levels, but Beyond stunned everyone. Not surprising really 'cos there were no less than 32, accurately-mapped views in this complex and wonderful strategy wargame. For the first time you really got the feel of being lost in a huge land in another world. This overwhelming sense of atmosphere was pretty spooky and it went a long way to ensuring that Lords of Midnight was a colossal and deserved success.

The graphics were made up of simple blocks and the characters were unremarkable stick men and women. But if ever a game deserved the accolade, it's this one.

Completely unique and utterly wonderful, Ant Attack was one of those games that took the Spectrum a step further than it had ever been before. Chuckie Egg was converted for just about every machine under the sun, but the Speccy incarnation was the original and best. A straightforward platform game with the emphasis on speed and playability, Chuckie Egg rose above its daft title and total lack of promotion to become the longest-running chart smash until Robocop, some six years later.

If you want to see how thought and care can transform the most basic concept into a classic, take a look at this. For Rainbird to even consider for a second that this stunning bit epic would ever make a Speccy game was quite obviously self-delusion of the second highest order.

Luckily, like the bumble bee which can only fly because it doesn't know that the laws of aerodynamics forbid it, they went ahead and, in the process, brought one of the most engrossing games ever to the Spectrum in all it's glory.

Absolutely nothing from the original version was left out, leaving this monster of sea-going strategy and shoot-'em-up action as the most playable warfare experience ever seen this side of Davy Jones' Locker. For Infogrames to even consider for a second that this stunning bit epic would ever make a Speccy game was quite obviously self-delusion of the very highest order. Luckily, like the bumble bee which can only fly because it doesn't know that the laws of aerodynamics forbid it, they went ahead and, in the process, brought one of the most compulsive games ever to the Spectrum in all it's glory.

Absolutely nothing from the original version was left out, leaving this monster of municipal planning and political manoeuvring the most compelling strategic experience that anyone ever lost a night's sleep over.

Solid 3D full-colour graphics, scrolling smoothly and swiftly in eight directions, stunned everyone. Testing gameplay and perfect playability made it a game worth having in its own right over and above the sheer 'Gosh, wow'-ness of it all. If some incompetent tells you your Spec can't handle more than two colours at a time, even in some poxy 2D arcade shoot-'em-up conversion, show 'em this and watch them die of shame.

Well, it can as long as you're playing Boulder Dash. The classic underground and diamond-collecting epic relied heavily on calculating the effects of gravity on piles of dangerous boulders. Fiendishly-designed levels and extra baddies complicated matters to a horrendous level. While based on existing concepts, Boulder Dash transcended its roots and turned out to be one of the most original games in years.

That it's one of that select group to be converted from the Speccy to the Game Boy proves the broadness of its appeal. The adorable graphics, lovably naff music a pocket-calculator version of Somewhere Over The Rainbow , instinctive gameplay and a level of hidden depth that would shame the Pacific make it all but the perfect arcade game. Unfortunately, on the Speccy the graphics are just a little bit too indistinct for comfort on the later levels, making it a real bitch to complete in a slightly unfair kind of way, but that's its only flaw.

With keen eyes or a really good monitor, this is just about the only game you'll ever really need. How did you manage it? By absorbing energy from trees and converting it into boulders to stand on and raise yourself ever higher until you could absorb the big guy himself and move on to the next of 10, landscapes, of course. Twice as weird as it sounds and fifty times as fun, this is a game no-one with a brain should be without.

An impossible conversion, the programmers flicked two fingers at the world and produced a game with non-stop high-speed frenzied blasting, huge graphics exploding literally with colour, and a near-perfect replication of the arcade gameplay.

The Speccy's finest shoot-'em-up by a mile, indeed almost certainly the best shoot-'em-up on any 8-bit machine ever. Every time I see this, I still refuse to believe it's possible. It's quite possible that this game represents the peak of the game designer's art full stop, it was monstrously cute and gorgeous-looking. Head Over Heels toyed with the player's emotions as he struggled to join up the two independent heroes, only to have the joy of success cruelly shattered by another problem which could only be solved by splitting them up again.

Mind-wrenchingly devious but always tantalisingly solvable, this is so addictive it hurts. I certainly think so. The Japanese influence of Oriental programmers Hudson Soft shone through like a beacon. Your gorgeous mop-headed hero swash-buckled his way across the roof of a speeding train, killing bad guys by throwing plucked birds at them! The graphics were impossibly bright and lovely and the gameplay hugely addictive. But the very best thing was the way that the demo mode consisted of a re-run of your last game in its entirety.

Pure arcade beauty. The crude graphics and mostly purple screen ensured that most gamers gave this a wide berth, which is a shame as it's an unrivalled classic in the espionage field. Sneaking around an enemy complex, letting off bombs to distract guard dogs, stealing stuff from deaf guards' pockets, breaking into locked warehouses to steal important documents, bribing the enemy with money looted from their fallen comrades' bodies, every devious trick you ever wanted to try was catered for in this enormously entertaining piece of software.

Too compelling for words. Before Julian Gollop's epic, wargaming was a minority interest characterised by tedious number-crunching and amateur programming. Then came Rebelstar, turning it into an experience unrivalled for thrills by all but the most adrenalin-pumping blaster. The battle for the rebel space station was fast-moving and violent. But best of all, the incredible glow of satisfaction you got from beating the thing at the top level was incomparable.