“Little benownst to the world all this time, GoldenEye (N64) has a fully-functional ZX Spectrum 48x emulator built into it. By feeding it a proper Spectrum monitor program and calling menu 25 to load a snapshot, any Spectrum 48x program can be run. The emulator started life as a side project to see if Spectrum emulation was possible on N64 and was hooked into GE, the current game in development. It was supposed to be removed before release but was only made inaccessible and inoperable. All the registers, dependancies, and script required to run the emulator still reside in retail GoldenEye carts.”
My first thought was, “It’s not 1st of April yet!?”… But seriously, how cool is this!!!
Well done to the devs who managed to get this past the publisher’s QA
Can’t get to the original article as the server is “too busy at the moment”(really? in 2012?) but, the computer in question was only ever referred to as a “ZX Spectrum 48K”. There was a 16K version (I had one of these, quickly upgraded to 48K) and there was a load more after, but it was never sold or marketed as a “48x”.
I urge all North American (and possibly non-European) readers to check out the Speccy (as we used to call it) as it was extremely poor graphically, had crap sound in the original models, but OMG, did it have games worth playing. Recommended: Jet Pak, Pssst!, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Atic Attack.
Lords Of Midnight.
Still play it. So obsessed with it in fact that I wrote an online version
Like you I had the 16K model which then got updated to 48K so that I could play The Hobbit, Penetrator (no laughing at the back) etc etc. And then LOM came along and all else was forgotten…
Happy days.
Never did like GE though – it used to give me seasickness due to the bobbing motion when walking! Quickly traded it in for some other game (I forget which).
My home LAN is called ^A'Midnight^A' and it^A's a reference to this game.
Doomdark^A's Revenge was much bigger ^A'n^A' better, but I liked Lords of Midnight more.
DDR is indeed bigger, but I’d say it’s not nearly as good due to being too big and the place names being too similar. The way it handled army visibility was much better though.
Incidentally, Chris Wild (who did the DOS remakes which were bundled with the flawed LOM3 – the Citadel) is now working on an iOS/Android/etc port of LOM, in collaboration with Mike Singleton, LOM’s author. Yep, an official remake is coming out over 2 decades after the originals
Chris’ blog is at: http://http://www.icemark.com/blog/
Indeed, DDR makes it very easy to lose the overview.
I played the C64 version, but LoM and DDR had kind of Spectrum graphics. I think Spectrum graphics, while regarded not as good as the C64, actually worked well to stimulate fantasy. Skool Daze wouldn’t be as cool with better graphics. I guess you have to be an 8 bit computer user to understand this.
I completed both LoM and DDR. LoM by moving all armies to one citadel while using the single characters to recruit more armies. The enemy kept attacking the citadel, but even though my men were dead tired they’d win pure on numbers. They enemy didn’t mass troops, it just attacked when it arrived. When they were all defeated I just moved to the enemy citadel.
DDR was even more easy, I ran in to Shareth by accident in the ice mist and killed her. This was quite early in the game! But it’s more cooler to sneak up north will with a sense of fear watching banners of enemy armies in the distance moving south.
Ah yes, the old “Everyone pile into Xajorkith” routine. That’s how I first won too. After that it was pretty much defeat after defeat as I tried new and daring (and ineffective) strategies. Great stuff.
PS. Come on over to Midnight/MU – multi-user turned-based LOM and DDR online (plus new maps). How could you resist?
So I have lived for years and years thinking I was clever and original and you you destroyed that self imagine. :-p
Well, I’m a married working father, which is very bad for personal hobbies.
But I saw a clip on the link you gave me and LoM on the iPad looks rather cool. The animation when moving is nice and should give you more sense of where you are.
Oops, sorry!
I know the feeling! My wife and kids do wonder why I am so enthralled to such an old game. A man’s got to have his little foibles though. Heh.
I recently played Wizard of Wor with my 8 year old son. It was a very special moment for me.
If you weren’t in to 80s computers it’s hard to believe those computers have personalities and souls. Games weren’t games, they were pieces of art. Programmers managed to keep pushing the limits and to do amazing things with very limited hardware.
While I type this I’m listening to music from my Internet radio. Apparently it has over a billion stations, but I only listen to Absolute 80’s. In the 80’s people said I was born much too early and I should live in the future. Turns out I was born at the right time and lived in a period of time I’m happy I didn’t miss and would love to return to.
Thanks for the additional info. I’ve heard of the Spectrum, but wasn’t quite sure what the article was referring to. I thought it might have been a code name for a chip in the Super Nintendo. I didn’t realize the Spectrum and any good games worthy of playing.
(just to join in the fun)
Also… Quazatron, Tir-na-nog, Dun Darach, Tau ceti, Skooldaze, Spellbound and many more!
Jet Pak, Pssst!, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Atic Attack.
These are the earliest and poorly done games.
Later games from Probe, Imagine, Ocean, Pete Cooke were awesome.
Edited 2012-03-29 18:18 UTC
Poorly done? What are you talking about? There’s nothing poorly done about these games.
I mean these games are too simplistic on the art and code sides compared to later speccy games.
Edited 2012-03-30 10:44 UTC
Sorry, I don’t agree with “too simplistic”. Too simplistic for what?
Both Atic Atac and Jetpac are fun to play and looks good, even in comparison to later games. Sure, it’s not Knightlore, Dun Darach or Sabre Wulf but I wouldn’t say that makes them “too simplistic”.
There was a lot of speccy games after 1985, like cybernoid, zynaps, savage, wec le mans, robocop, tau-ceti, dizzy, barbarian, led storm, etc. Really good coding and gfx+music that I appreciate.
These games you mentioned can offer some uber-retro feel that might be enjoyable for someone, just but not me.
Edited 2012-03-30 15:54 UTC
The problem with later games are that they were generally ports. So, the C64 or Anstrad version would look nicer, play better or have better graphics. But it was games like Atic Attack, Jet Set Willy and such that made the system a hit in the first place. Just the fact that Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy are absolute cult games still, pretty amazing. Both were released on the first on the Speccy (though legend is Matthew Smith wrote manic miner on a Z80 based Tandy and ported the machine code to the Spectrum.)
Do someone knows if this could be related to Donkey Kong 64’s Jet Pak minigame? Rumors says that Rare used a actual emulator for this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if you are right. Rare was once known as ‘Ultimate Play the Game’, makers of Knight Lore, Alien 8, Sabre Wulf, Underwurdle etc and of course Jet Pak which you mentioned. They changed to ‘Rare’ when they started to develop games for NES (Snake Rattle & Roll, RC Pro Am I & II, Battletoads etc).