There can’t be many all-time classic videogames that originated on the Sharp X-1.
But Bousou Tokkyuu SOS (literal translation “Runaway Express SOS”) is definitely one of them. Or the only one of it. Of them. Whatever. But anyway.
It’s been almost two years since I wrote the totally definitive list of the 100 best arcade conversions (both official and unofficial) on the ZX Spectrum, to mark 30 years since the original Your Sinclair All-Time Top 100 – also compiled and written by me – was published in 1991.
Obviously stuff has continued to happen on the Speccy scene since then, so it’s now, in some senses, not quite so definitive. Or at least it wasn’t, until I updated it, which I’ve just done, so now it is again. Of it. Or something.
(I appear to have a debilitating compulsion to write top 100s for no very good reason. There’s also this one, and I’m currently working on yet another as a distraction from the wretched state of politics, so fans of subjectively-numbered lists of extremely old videogames should definitely stay tuned.)
I also wanted to have it all in one post rather than five, so now if you want to see the videos of the original arcade games you’ll have to click the titles of each entry – only the Speccy videos are embedded within the article, so the page SHOULD now actually load up without falling over.
There are loads of new entries, a few position adjustments – don’t get TOO excited, Bomb Jack fans – and a bit of general tidying, but I haven’t rewritten the entire thing because it’s 33,000 words and I’m not a lunatic, although those two facts are mostly unrelated. So if you haven’t seen it before, go and get a cup of tea and some biscuits, because this might take a while.
The 16K ZX Spectrum was definitely the ginger stepchild of the family of micros that defined home computing in the UK in the 1980s. With far less memory available to coders (just 9K) than a 16K ZX81, the £125 cost of the entry-level model – shockingly the equivalent of £416 now – didn’t get you all that much bang for your buck when it launched, even by the standards of April 1982.
The vast majority of purchasers wisely chose to save up the extra £50 for the 48K version (£175, or a hefty £582 in 2023 money, although still peanuts compared to the Commodore 64’s launch price of £1,327 equivalent), and the 16K Speccy very quickly fell out of favour. In fact it was withdrawn from sale after barely over a year on the shelves, with old stocks cleared at £99.
(There are no official figures for how many of the 5 million Spectrums sold were 16Ks, but Home Computing Weekly reported in May 1983 that 300,000 machines in total were sold in the first year, and in August 1983 Popular Computing Weekly reported that the 48K had outsold the 16K by two to one, so we can make a reasonable guess at somewhere between 120,000 and 150,000 units of the 16K in the year and a bit it was on sale, or roughly 3% of all Spectrums.)
But even in its very brief life (the vast bulk of these titles were released in 1983), the 16K machine amassed a library of fun games that left the catalogues of many better-specced computers in the dust. And for no particular reason other than that 40 years have passed since it abruptly met its fate, we’re here to celebrate them.
So sit yourself down with one of the last cans of Lilt (or don’t, because it’s full of poisonous artificial-sweetener chemicals now), get ready to fondly remember a few old favourites, and hopefully also discover some lost gems for the first time.
As alert readers will know by now, there’s nothing I like more than preserving weird old videogame stuff that’s in danger of being lost to posterity, unless perhaps it’s seeing games ported to strange formats they were never designed to run on, years or even decades after those formats ceased to be current.
So man, what a stroke of luck!
What’s all this, then?
I was as pleased as a big fat walrus with a free bucket of haddock today to be able to contribute to the week-long one-off revival celebrating the 25th anniversary of the start of the majestic Digitiser.
Especially when I got a lovely new Panel 4 picture from Mr Biffo (instead of money). But I got a bit distracted in the column, and forgot to talk about the thing I meant to talk about, so I'm going to talk about it now.
…is Hell Yeah! – Wrath Of The Dead Rabbit, which is out today on Xbox 360, PS3 and Steam for PC at the bargaintastic price of around £9.99. It's a heady, super-sexy crush of Sonic The Hedgehog, Super Metroid, Bangai-O, Wario Ware, Pokemon and FIFA 13*, made by the people who brought you the splendid Pix'n Love Rush plus me. Essentially, if you don't buy it you're a complete dick and I hope you die.
Extremely selective review quotes follow.
As the sun made its first appearance of the summer at the weekend, Wings over Sealand wasn’t slow off the mark. On the “B” of the “BANG!”, we leapt onto a train for a scenic two-hour journey to the seaside, specifically the lovely south-coast town of Weymouth. It’s a remarkable place, changing character every time you turn a corner.
The front is a traditional resort promenade, with beaches and ice-cream stands and arcades. Just behind it is a picturesque working harbour town, tatty fishing boats mingling with some extremely fancy millionaires’ yachts. (Don’t miss the tasty and gigantic battered faggots at Bennett’s On The Waterfront fish and chip shop, by the way, the closest thing you’ll find to haggis in an English chippy and heavenly with a splash of onion vinegar.) Adjacent to both is a scruffy but bustling town centre, almost entirely free of the empty shops littering every other urban conurbation in Britain.
And if you embark on about five minutes’ leisurely stroll from the western end of the prom or the busy, noisy harbour and marina, you’ll find the town’s only sizeable area of public green space, in the form of the beautiful and peaceful oasis that is The Nothe.
If there's one thing we all love here at WoSland, it's a good old-fashioned All-Time Top 100. And from a critic's standpoint, we've long thought the gold standard was the 1991 Your Sinclair chart for the ZX Spectrum. Not for its writing, or even (so much) the games themselves, but because the list showcased an incredible breadth of game types, such as we never thought we'd see again in mainstream commercial gaming.
That was until iOS arrived, of course. Now, for the first time in 20 years, it's once again possible to create a legitimate one-format Top 100 in which there are barely any two games in the same genre. And to prove it, that's just what we've done. But there's something even more special about this particular list.
Returning from the shops yesterday, I picked up an unexpected A4 envelope from the hallway by the door. Angry letters from debt collectors aren't usually A4, so I opened it. Inside was a short note from my mum saying "This isn't The Dandy as I know it", attached to something so odd that I instantly knew I had to scan it for posterity and share it with my beloved viewers.
Mums are always right about stuff.
There are lots of great writers. Even within the professional community, let alone the general public, you’ll have a hard time getting two people to agree on who was the best ever. Was it Shakespeare? Orwell? Joyce? Sega Zone-era Jonathan Davies? The arguments echo timelessly through the ages.
I’ve got many heroes and inspirations of my own – Steven Wells, Miranda Sawyer, Barbara Ellen, Craig Kubey, Rosie Boycott, Douglas Adams and more. (Including the fictional composite entity Lloyd Mangram.)
But the greatest writer of all time is someone whose name I don’t even know, and who to earn the accolade only had to write a single word.
The world moves alarmingly fast nowadays, doesn't it? But right now, at this particular moment in time and until something else shiny and exciting comes along (probably around lunchtime), this is the best game ever.
With a certain amount of irony, then, (and for no very good reason that I can immediately discern), it's called Forget-Me-Not.
Wings Over Scotland is a thing that exists.
