The Need For Speed

Posted on December 06, 2023 by Rev. Stuart Campbell

Earlier today I happened to pop into to a ZX Spectrum forum I used to frequent to look for a bit of info about an obscure old game, and my eye was caught by a post there.

It regarded an article called “20 Indie Games That You Could Beat in the Time It Would Take You to Watch That Hbomberguy Video”, which is about an almost four-hour-long YouTube video that gamer types are currently talking about on social media, relating to plagiarism by someone or other, but which I’m not going to bother watching or linking to because (a) it’s by a monstrous arsehole, (b) it sounds really really boring and (c) it’s almost four hours long.

Like the forum poster I was disappointed that the headline didn’t mean you could beat ALL of those 20 games in less than the video’s 3h 51m 09s running time, but merely that you could beat any ONE of them, which didn’t seem much of a fun fact.

But it did seem like a bit of a challenge, so to liven up my afternoon while I listened to some lawyers also droning on tediously for hours I thought I’d try to find out how many old Speccy games you could complete, one after the other, in the same timespan.

The rules were that they had to be proper commercially-released full-price games (or budget games with a review average of 80% minimum), they had to be at least quite good (review average 70%+ for full-pricers), and there had to be some notional sort of story in them, ie you couldn’t count beating the first level of Pac-Man.

So, arbitrarily chosen and in descending length order (all times are actual-gameplay times, not including any menus, intros or credits), here we go:

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PYJAMARAMA (Mikro-Gen, 1984)
Average review score: 87%
Completion time: 17m 32s

?

SIR LANCELOT (Melbourne House, 1984)
Average review score: 82%
Completion time: 15m 55s

?

DYNAMITE DAN (Mirrorsoft, 1985)
Average review score: 84%
Completion time: 15m 45s

?

MANIC MINER (Bug-Byte, 1983)
Average review score: 91%
Completion time: 14m 50s

?

I, BALL (Firebird, 1987)
Average review score: 80%
Completion time: 12m 45s

?

ALCHEMIST (Imagine, 1983)
Average review score: 84%
Completion time: 12m 14s

?

KINETIK (Firebird, 1987)
Average review score: 77%
Completion time: 11m 20s

?

GLIDER RIDER (Quicksilva, 1986)
Average review score: 81%
Completion time: 11m 10s

?

H.A.T.E. (Gremlin Graphics, 1989)
Average review score: 78%
Completion time: 10m 30s

?

TRANS AM (Ultimate Play The Game, 1983)
Average review score: 80%
Completion time: 9m 40s

?

RAPSCALLION (Bug-Byte, 1984)
Average review score: 76%*
Completion time: 9m 30s

?

*discounting an absurd 1/3 score in Big K, which wasn’t a proper magazine.

SABRE WULF (Ultimate Play The Game, 1984)
Average review score: 93%
Completion time: 9m 28s

?

THE SACRED ARMOUR OF ANTIRIAD (Palace, 1986)
Average review score: 87%
Completion time: 9m 10s

?

EXTREME (Digital Integration, 1991)
Average review score: 85%
Completion time: 8m 40s

?

COBRA (Ocean, 1986)
Average review score: 75%**
Completion time: 8m 38s

?

**distorted by a ridiculous 3/5 from the clueless idiots at Sinclair User.

THE HOBBIT (Melbourne House, 1982)
Average review score: n/a (predated review scores, but award-winning)
Completion time: 6m 50s (depending on your typing speed)

?

TRANTOR: THE LAST STORMTROOPER (Go!, 1987)
Average review score: 73%
Completion time: 6m 22s

?

UNDERWURLDE (Ultimate Play The Game, 1984)
Average review score: 89%
Completion time: 5m 34s

?

GHOSTS’N’GOBLINS (Elite, 1986)
Average review score: 85%
Completion time: 5m 10s

?

RENEGADE (Imagine, 1987)
Average review score: 84%
Completion time: 4m 47s

?

ATIC ATAC (Ultimate Play The Game, 1984)
Average review score: 88%
Completion time: 2m 26s

?

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That’s 21, so we’ve already beaten the target of 20 and we’ve only used up 3h 28m 36s. We’ve still got 23 minutes and 7 seconds spare – enough to complete Death Wish 3 (Gremlin Graphics, 1987) an impressive 63 times with 1 second left over.

?

But that has a review average of 66%, which doesn’t quite meet the criteria for our list, and in any event it turns out there’s something even swifter. Bugaboo The Flea (from Quicksilva, 1983, review average 81%) can be defeated in just 19 seconds, meaning we could beat it exactly 73 times and hit our 3:51:09 mark right on the button.

?

I’m not quite sure what any of that proves, but all of the above are definitely a better use of four hours of your life than listening to either dickhead YouTubers or Scottish Government lawyers, so maybe give them a bash if you’ve got some time to kill.

Category investigative journalism, playing guides, videogames
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blucey

9 months ago

Jack and the Beanstalk is one of these. It’ll take you 30 years to beat it but in theory it can be done in about three minutes.

Marc

9 months ago

What an unexpected delight. Weirdly enough, there’s talk of a Burnout – thing – and the comments over at Eurogamer were full of fuckwits professing Takedown to be the best. I looked for your article on that, that explains succinctly why they are fuckwits, then checked here as well. And new Speccy articles! The shitty new year is a tad less gray. Hope you are well sir.

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