JASON RAILTON
Manic Miner
The original and greatest challenge ever made for the Spectrum. Perfectly designed rooms, spot-on rubber-key controls and challenging difficulty. Speccy perfection.
I love the idea of a laid-back shoot 'em-up that just lets you enjoy playing it. Too many action games have that arcade mentality of trying to kill you off as quickly as possible, when at home there's no-one waiting to stick another coin in. Sublime.
Yes, I still play it, and still enjoy playing it! I wouldn't have written it if I didn't! But no, I'm not going to blow another choice on Agatha Christie's Parrot.
The biggy, the ultimate shoot 'em-up. I tend to play the emulated arcade version these days, but the Speccy version is still well worth a go. It's a fantastic bit of technical work to get those colourful graphics moving around and with nearly 80% of the screen in use, all the playability's there. I remember waiting for this to come out, and I was finally given it as a parting gift from the computer shop where I was doing my school's 'Work Experience' programme. Or 'Child Labour Exploitation Fortnight', you could say.
Super Hang-On
If I can only have one racing game, it'd be this. Too many Speccy racers have quite a narrow road with iffy collision detection when passing other cars. Even OutRun delights in making corners appear out of nowhere, throwing you into the wrong lane before you can react. I've never ridden a motorbike in my life, but you seem to have more control of this one than any racing car.
Space Harrier
I was addicted to this game the moment an arcade machine in a Mablethorpe seaside arcade tipped me backwards as it started up, and I've just played and played every version I can get hold of. The Speccy one is a bit weak compared to what I've got now on my DS, but it's the fastest and smoothest of the 8-bit micro conversions. If you'd shown me it running in full colour on a GameBoy Micro back in the day and told me one day I'd have that in my pocket, it'd have blown my mind!
If I can't watch Star Wars then I'll settle for the next best thing. No, not the slow and jerky official version but this slick adaptation of the classic Atari cockpit arcade machine! And the sequel on Side-B of this pack is something of a bonus, though I rarely rate compilations. I bought Solid Gold as it was on the shelf in Boots in Kettering, right there next to Gauntlet, and it only cost $1 more to get Winter Games, Ace of Aces, Leaderboard and Infiltrator as well. I still consider that $1 wasted to this day.
Zeus Assembler
Nice toolkit for programming the Speccy in machine code. I'm guessing I'm not allowed a laptop as my luxury item so any coding will have to be done on the machine itself. It's what I used way-back-when, and can't fault it. Though technically it was my (now late) elder brother's Christmas present (we lost him to Hodgkin's Disease while the two of us were still students, leaving me the somewhat unprepared eldest of four brothers). I'd unwisely been taken in by the disaster that was White Lightning for Christmas the year he got Zeus. I should have gone for more LEGO instead...
Not a book but a print-out. Thomas Scherrer of Z80.info created an alphabetised list of all the Z80 machine-code instructions, the bytes that make them up, and the time they take to execute. As a programmer I'm constantly referring to it, more than any other reference. You can see it for yourself at http://www.z80.info/z80code.txt
Much as I'd love to say the original (and best!) rubber-keyed 48K model, I've got so used to emulator loading times now I'd have to go with the +3 for the disk drive. Hang on, does that mean I get stuck with the 128K version of Chronos with the awful AY sound effects? Well, if you could guarantee its reliability I could go for a 48K with a Rotronics Wafadrive, but it's a pipe-dream that the tapes wouldn't all snap within the first week!
As it's a desert island I should probably say a ruddy big "that's not a knife, that's a knife" sort of a knife, but that's not really Speccy related. Or a diving mask so I can free-dive for lobster - I have my own monofin too; can that come in a bundle with a snorkel as well? Still no? Right then, a boxed LEGO 6980 Galaxy Commander from 1983. Twin cockpits, bristling with antennae, splits in two - everything an awesome spaceship should be. And I need the original box in mint condition to keep the pieces in, obviously. Well, at least it's retro; I had a Speccy at the time!
How well will you survive on the island, practically?
Well, I was in the Scouts, and I've watched Bear Grylls' Island thing on the telly, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to starve now without that knife. Or an offshore support team. Or a hotel.
...and the isolation?
Not that bothered - might actually get some stuff done. You know the strobing title screen for Buzzsaw+ was written on a pocket-sized netbook whilst sat in Corfu, overlooking the sparkling azure blue of the Ionian Sea. Sounds delightful.
...and if you could only take one tape?
Probably Manic Miner - the finest Speccy game ever written.
Any coding ambitions you want to finally fulfill?
Coding something in proper 3D. I'd like to try for something like Cyber Sled - it's NAMCO's take on Battlezone but faster, with twin eight-directional joysticks.
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