Be Excellent To Each Other

I thought somebody had posted a topic about this, but I couldn't find it when I searched.

Anyway - http://myspeccy.com/. Not only can you play Speccy games in an on-line emulator, but the clever little thing saves your scores and uploads them to an online high score table. Compete with Spec-chums from around the world and realise how crap you really are!

I'm playing this more than my 360 at the moment.

It's like LIVE! for the Speccy, in your browser, or something. I'm on it as CUS, if anyone wants to befriend me there; I've seen some other familiar folk about.

Befriended!

This was mentioned on WoS, but for some reason I didn't bother to sign up. On it now as Joans, eager to find out how much worse I am at speccy games than I used to be.

Very good, but I think I'll wait for myc64 though

This is awesome:

That's excellent. In other news, I just worked out how to use lifts in Dan Dare - only took me twenty years or so.

Just signed up as Klatrymadon. I love that the default avatar was Batman.

(Do kinda wish online Java-based stuff supported USB controller input, though. As blasphemous as that may sound. )

I played "Way of the Exploding Fist".

I doubt I will ever visit an emulator site again. It was dreadful. I genuinely can't believe that a human being would have ever parted with money for something so utterly unplayable.

There's a reason it's called progress...

Steady on, mate. You don't want to sound like a 15-year-old American Halo fan. Try another game; loads of Speccy stuff still holds up well.

(BTW: anybody who thinks videogames have 'progressed' as an art form beyond 1994's Super Metroid is wrong.)

I interviewed Jops a couple of weeks back, and he made the point about comparing the progress of videogames between 1985 and 1995 with that of 1995 to 2005. Just thinking about that is pretty depressing.

People paid money for Rise of the Robots 10 years later and for 15,000 clones of Nintendo Brain Training now... nothing's changed there. 90% of everything is still crap, now we can go back with hindsight. That said, I do agree, the average game now is massively better than 10 years ago, and even more so over 20.

Meh, if you like first-person games, I don't see why that should be so terrible. 1980-1985 or so is when 'everything happened' - everything since has been a repeat, in more and better dimensions. (erm)

I was just being facetious, and a massive fanboy, but I certainly don't think any game has been more intelligently designed (in terms of the area layouts - which are always wonderfully interconnected, for those looking closely enough - the art direction, the hands-off 'storytelling' and the sheer scope for repeat play-throughs) than SM.

I don't want to derail the thread, though, so I'll happily retract that statement if any Wrongoloids kick up a stink.

To clarify, Jops was saying "look at the massive amount of progress games made between '85 and '95", referencing all kinds of new gameplay types—God sims, etc.—and then compare that to the utter stagnation between '95 and now. His thinking is that there's basically been no progress at all since 1995, with a few exceptions, due to an ultra-conservative market. I really wish one of the mags would 'buy' my more general interview stuff with him, because he has some great stuff to say. Maybe I'll get it on Revert to Saved one day.

I bid £2!

Yes, sorry, bit of an overreaction by me there due to having drunk too much wine and stuff.

Can you (or anyone else) please recommend some games from that site that don't suck?

In return, I really recommend not playing "Way of the Exploding Fist".

This and your subsequent post should form the basis of an interesting new thread.

*nods*

Well, if (and that's a big if) I get the time to write the thing up, it'll be free on Revert to Saved. However, I've got 6000 words of Jops stuff that's unused, so that's a lot of work. (Same goes for my Alexey Pajitnov and Mike Mignola articles, although I might do something on the latter for the Hellboy II release date.)

It's good to see that time hasn't affected my speccy gaming skills.
(I'm still rubbish)

I'm devilman on there too.

I think it's mostly a matter of nostalgia. It's unlikely I'm going to play anything on there that I didn't play 20+ years ago (weeps) unless someone recommends it.
Chuckie Egg is quite highly regarded and I've just had made it to the giddying heights of number 13 on the leaderboards far surpassing anything I ever managed when I was a kid (wait, the birds and that duck are after me? *runs*).

Oh, and Manic Miner. If you don't like them, then it might not be for you.