20 Mods, Clones & Re-Cracks, part 1

I’ve made a point of dealing equally with classic and modern era games on this site recently, to keep things as fresh as possible and to showcase the whole, if you will, 'spectrum' of Spectrum software. And if I can shoehorn in a feature that deals with both old and new together in some way, I’m a happy little blogger. These days, some clever programmers take it upon themselves to tinker with olden games and make improvements here and there, or sometimes just do something really silly to them. It’s all good entertainment, so I’ve picked out 20 notable examples to see just what heresy might have occurred.

3D MONSTER MAZE

(J.K. Greye, 1982 & Paul Farrow, 2016)

I must have only been about 9 when I had my first home computer, the good old ZX81. It was great for really simplistic games, not big on graphics, colour or sound but at the time it seemed pretty bitchin’. I didn’t possess any of the best games for it, like the Software Farm titles or this one, which a certain Malcolm “Don’t Call Me Trashman” Evans produced for the mysterious J.K. (Gandalf the) Greye.

So I never played this at the time, and it’s fair to say things have moved on considerably since then. But for the time this was absolutely breathtaking stuff. Mr. Evans has always enjoyed tinkering with 3D effects and quite how he produced this with such limited material beggars belief. The main dino graphic is hellablocky, sure, but must have been really impressive and genuinely terrifying back then, I’d have thought. Okay, play it now and it’s not quite the same, but compare other ZX81 games to this and you can see true genius at play.

Paul Farrow seems to enjoy converting ZX81 games to the Speccy, an unusual hobby but why not? He’s had a few goes at this game, one in colour which looks quite nice even if I can’t find it anywhere. The version I played seems to be a straight convo, but does add a rather lovely colourful loading screen. It’s an interesting look back at how things were when all this were fields.

AFTER THE WAR

(Dinamic, 1989 & Rafal Miazga, 2012)

And here’s me thinking this was a tune by ‘80s axe hero Gary Moore. But no, it was also a game by insane Spaniards Dinamic which must have made its way to these shores at some point, as Sinclairs Your and User both reviewed it, giving it roughly 7/10 on average, which ain’t bad. While MicroHobby gave it a “Nuevo!” and “Scorchio!” I’m sorry, there was no excuse for that. With this being Dinamic, I’m afraid I’m contractually obliged to wheel out the usual tired references to games being stupidly difficult and often featuring artwork which includes at least half a nipple. There, I’ve said it now, we can move on.

Does it also feature a gung-ho macho soldier with a flat-top? Why, yes it does, how did you know that? His name is “Jungle” Rogers (brilliant) and he’s stuck in 2019 Manhattan after a nuclear war. I don’t remember that, I must be suffering from long covid. Mr. Jungle has to spray bullets at mutated survivors and reach a ship to get him off this godforsaken planet, ‘cos you can do that in 2019. There are 2 loads to this, loads of levels and 20 different ways for your hero to move, according to the inlay. But mostly it’s shooting and a bit of jumping here and there. Dinamic certainly give you value for money with the size of their games, but they’re evil and don’t want you to get off stage 1 generally.

It’s been a short while since I’ve mentioned Rafal Miazga’s name, but he’s going to feature quite often in this here… feature, as he loves nothing more than colouring in old monochrome games with his felt-tip pens and making them all shiny like. He then calls the re-cracked game “(Whatever) Reimagined” which might be a bit of a stretch to be honest, but he sure does make some of them real purty, so well done him. And this game looks a real treat in glorious technicolour, so he’s done a great job there. What else can we get him to do, let’s think… how about something straightforward like KNIGHT LORE?

ARCTIC ATAC

(Ultimate, 1983 & Highrise, 2022)

Oh awesome, a Xmas mod! There have been quite a few Xmas-themed games for the Spectrum over the years, but really very few decent ones. And more recent efforts have tended to be good, but rather generic AGD platformers. But this looks very intriguing. Taking one of my absolute fave Spectral titles, not to mention one of the very rare games I actually managed to finish legitimately, and throwing a shedload of snow over it. Sounds like frantic festive fun or my name’s not Bernard.

Do I have to explain Atic Atac? I suppose this bit will be a bit short if I don’t. You, dressed up as a knight, serf or wizard, are stuck in a big old house, like the one in Resident Evil, and you have to find 3 pieces of the ACG (stands for Ashby-de-la-Zouch) key to get out, as some bugger has locked you in. Different characters have access to different areas, you can throw axes at monsters, and you’re permanently starving like you’ve got some disease. It’s amazing, even if the ‘blerp’ noise it makes every time you enter a room gave me nightmares when I was a kid.

And this add-on looks so darn pretty and snowy, it's gorgeous. It gives you the chance to re-play an absolute banger with a new twist, and it's so good it begs the following question. Please can someone invent a snowy mod that throws a 5h1t-ton of snow onto any game at all? I'd be impressed by that. Commando in the snow. Delta's Shadow in the snow. Elite in the snow of space. I'd also like a TV device that gathers together all the Xmas specials of your fave progs too while we're at it. Netflix isn't sentient enough yet to manage that. Well it doesn't hurt to ask for these things...

BOMB JACK +

(Elite, 1986 & 4th Rock, 2018)

As we know, B.J. was very popular in the mid-'80s, as it is today. No seriously, the arcade game was well reproduced on the Specco, and we also had the dubious privilege of the sequel to follow it up. There was also Mighty Bomb Jack on consoles, a less fun side-scrolly affair, and in 1993 Bomb Jack Twin came to the arcades. Who cares, I hear you say. Well, a few years back someone decided to recreate B.J. Twin on the Speccy using a B.J. Editor made in 2005 by badass BadBeard, a software pirate if ever I’ve heard one.

Bomb Jack always struck me as a great fun, really pointless game. You jump around defusing bomb after bomb, dodging enormous grasshoppers, turning them into faces so you can gobble them. And keep doing just that until you get bored after half an hour or so. But it’s hard to deny that by that point you’d have had a highly entertaining time. A little like Bubble Bobble I would say. It was nice and simple in essence, and that’s probably why it converted really well to our fave micro computer. Apparently the C64 version was bobbins.

So what does this mod add? No music or graphical alterations as such, but you do get some new screens and layouts to enjoy, so it’s all good. I managed to find a few before running out of talent, but I wonder how many there might be in total. One was green, one was rather minimalist and starry and one had Tower Bridge on it. And I consistently lost one life on each screen, so that all adds up to not many screens being found. But still, not bad, not bad.

BRUCE LEE RX

(U.S. Gold, 1985 & Allan Turvey, 2019)

As this feature will illustrate, some people really dig doing conversions and mods of games, even re-cracking them if they’re particularly vicious, and Allan Turvey is one such. He’s done Asteroids, Lunar Rescue, Roust as well as his own creations, plus one more to come in this list. What does RX stand for though? My guess is RemiX but that’s almost certainly woefully incorrect.

Bruce Lee was a mega hit back in the day of course – one of those rare times that U.S. Gold got it just right. Two player fun was guaranteed and even if you were playing on your tod, the antics of Green Yamo and the Unnamed Little Guy With A Big Stick frequently caused hysterical outbursts as they died over and over and over and… Playabilitywise you couldn’t knock it, so what’s the point of re-doing it then, eh?

Well, a new coat of paint never hurt anybody as far as I’m aware, and this new version looks very fancy. There’s a new load screen with the man himself, even though the original's was mighty impressive, plus a better font, and generally it’s like a load of glitter has been emptied over the original game. And thankfully now Green Yamo really does live up to his name, while there are new sprites for Bruce and Stick-Ninja Dude too. Wonder if they ever did a version of this game for the Dragon? The ad would have practically written itself.

CRYSTAL KINGDOM DIZZY 2017

(Code Masters, 1992 & Evgeniy Barskiy, 2017)

Dizzy games have always been rather Marmitey. Loads of people love them, while older cynical types tend to opine that they’re nothing new and it’s all been done before. There were certainly enough of them, and Crystal Kingdom Dizzy was his seventh adventure to date when it was released back in 1992. If the Spectrum hadn’t run out of steam, they’d probably have carried on indefinitely. Indeed, in 2020 a new game was made called Wonderful Dizzy, so the character clearly holds some enduring affection for many.

This time round those Yolk Folk have been negligent new-age types and have had their crystals stolen from them, and now their chakras are all misaligned. Dizzy must play the Good Egg once more and get them back. So off he goes doing favours for the locals, swapping objects, somersaulting impressively about the place (bet Magic Knight couldn’t do that, but then he was rather weighed down by armour) and doing what he always does in every game all the time.

But he does do it well. In 2017 five top programmers, including Ol-egg (geddit?) Origin, went on a mission to overhaul Dizzy’s seventh symphony. I think I’m right in saying the game remains the same but they’ve certainly made it shine. The graphics look dramatically better with even more colour than the original, and the music sounds pretty darn nice as well, plus there’s a new loading screen to boot. ‘New’ Crash loved it and gave it an understated 98%, which might be a tad exuberant, but it’s still one of the better mods around without any doubt.

DONKEY KONG: ARCADE EDITION

(Ocean, 1986 & Stuart Campbell, 2019)

How many goes did Ocean want at Donkey Kong games? I owned their certainly unlicensed first Kong effort as one of my very first Spectrum games, and it really wasn’t too bad, if as difficult as you’d expect. Then they actually did bother to get the official ‘Donkey Kong’ licence in 1986, but it didn’t differ that dramatically from the ’83 version, and by then no-one much was interested in the game any more. Fun fact – he was originally called ‘Donkey’ merely to convey the fact that he was stubborn like a mule. But the name stuck, as ridiculous as it seems, and D.K. has gone from strength to strength ever since. And he still hates Mario, but that’s totally understandable.

As Mario’s earlier incarnation Jumpman (that name really wasn’t very inspired, was it?) you have to get your gal back from that damn dirty ape, climbing ever upwards through the levels while avoiding barrels, oil and monkey scat which Kong throws at you from time to time. As the game repeatedly quizzes you, to a highly annoying extent, “How high can you get?”. They clearly haven’t seen Jay and Silent Bob tackle this game yet.

I’m not too au fait with Ocean’s 1986 rendition of the arcade classic, but it seems that this mod is just a bit of a re-paint to make the game resemble the original a bit more authentically. Ocean’s version does seem a bit overly magenta by comparison now. It’s as much or as little fun to play as any version, depending on your viewpoint, but personally I’ll probably stick to playing the Donkey Kong Country games, which are surely the best platformers in the Nintendoverse. Eat it, Mario!

LODE RUNNER III

(Software Projects, 1984 & Biotech Software, 1995)

Way back in Orwellian 1984, Software Projects released surely the first ever mini-AGD game with Lode Runner. Most people liked it despite, or maybe because of, the teeny tiny sprites, which bucked the trend really when most people preferred their games not to have UGDs that looked like they came from a Sinclair Programs type-in. But it was certainly different and the game’s playability won a lot of people round. And now look, there are loads of tiny graphics games! Plus ca change, as the French say, and no I’m not going to translate that.

You’re a galactic commando whose mission is to recover all the gold ingots stolen by the Bungling Empire (Tories) from the peace-loving folk. You have a laser drilling pistol which you can use to chew through rocks up to a point, and naturally you have to avoid the Empire’s bungling minions who hate your face. The game had 150 screens over 2 separate loads (lodes?) and also an editor, so if you could possibly think up a configuration not featured in those 150 screens, then you could have at it.

Apparently Lode Runner 2 was a PC game, so ignore that. In 1995 Russians Biotech Software kindly gave us Lode Runner 3, in which your little cyan stick man has to go round collecting all the round yellow… lodes? So pretty similar, but again highly playable. The enemies are quite intelligent so trying not to get yourself cornered is always the challenge. I rather liked this after I’d managed to complete a few screens, so once again playability has triumphed over good looks it seems.

MAZOGS

(Bug-Byte, 1982 & Paul Farrow, 2017)

It’s hard to imagine how things were back in ’81 nowadays, and I doubt whether I’ll ever see a bigger breakthrough in computerising than the leap from the mute black and white ZX81 to the noisy, violently colourful Spectrum. It really was a mindblowing upgrade. But for a while I was perfectly happy with my ZX81, since I was only 9 or so at the time. Don Priestley’s Mazogs was one of the top games at the time, though in honesty I was totally unaware of its existence. I did enjoy Maziacs of course, most people did, with its quirky sense of humour and amusingly animated monster fights, so this game is where all that began. And ultimately Don’s obsession with enormous sprites. Can I get a fnar?

You’re on the search for treasure (like Terrance and Phillip) and have found what looks like a huge maze. That’s because it is a huge maze, but predictably it’s full of nasty monsters who want your head on a plate. They call themselves the Mazogs. They probably don’t but that’s what you’ve decided to call them, and a catchy word it is too. You can find swords dotted around the place to dispatch said Mazogs with, and there are little sneaky eyes in the wall who can tell you the right way to go to get the stashes. There are a few different variations on the basic game available on the main menu, plus a randomly generated maze each time. Heady stuff for 1982, when a youthful Bug-Byte released it.

Like Monster Maze, Paul Farrow seems to have made a coloured version of this game as well, but the version I tried out was a faithful black and white reproduction of the original, aside from the rather lovely load screen. A chap called Russell Marks appears to have attempted the same before him too. It’s still not a bad little game despite the intervening 42 (gulp) years and a timely reminder that there was indeed life before the Spectrum. Maybe not much, but some.

PAC-LAND REIMAGINED

(Grandslam, 1989 & Rafal Miazga, 2014)

Namco were determined to milk as much out of the cheeky yellow cheese as possible, but who could blame them when Pac-Man was such a phenomenonenomenon? At least this game isn’t a direct rip-off, unlike Ms. Pac-Man. Grandslam converted it to the Spectrum in 1989 and lo, people deemed it to be “yeah, alright, I suppose”. Our pal Rafal took it upon himself to give it a bit of a splash of colour a decade ago, as the original did lack it somewhat. Good lad.

Pac-Man has to return a fairy to Fairyland. Odd, but true. So he has to venture in a rightwise direction through four different landscapes, from his home in Pac-Land, but those pain in the ar$e ghosts still won’t leave him alone. Can you name them? Pinky, Stinky, Malinky… Actually it’s Blinky, Inky, Pinky and… Clyde (an afterthought clearly). They’ve even rented planes and automobiles, like Steve Martin, so they can stick it good to the Edam on legs. Can he ever catch a break?

There were a few million Pac spin-offs for this Speccy, I recall the 3D Pacmania among others. I’d not played this, but despite its fairly extreme simplicity it gets to be quite fun after a bit. You just go right, jump over the odd thing, avoid the odd thing, get a powerpill then run like stink. I think the colour is the only addition to the original, but it works well and gives extra eye candy which is always welcome.

END OF PART ONE

TEN MORE TO COME NEXT TIME!