On The ZX Spectrum is a monthly Spectrum gaming newsletter written by me, Wizwords.

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To help you get a flavour of On The ZX Spectrum, here’s the first newsletter, sent out to 183 initial subscribers back in June last year.

Hello and welcome to the first On The ZX Spectrum, a newsletter dedicated to Sinclair’s marvellous microcomputer – or, more to the point, its games!

Let’s get straight into it with a Favourite Five.

Favourite Five... Games Set Underwater

Did you know that yesterday was World Ocean Day? Approximately 71% of the Earth’s surface is water, most notably our vast and often mysterious oceans. I’ve always dreamed about exploring underwater, so here are my five favourite Speccy games that let you do just that. Well, kind of.

5. Titanic by Erbe
There are a handful of Titanic-themed games on the Speccy, and US Gold’s budget arm, Kixx, re-released this Spanish effort in 1989. You play a marine explorer who, having discovered the final resting place of the stricken cruise ship, sets off to discover its secrets. Like most Spanish games, it’s horrendously difficult in places, but it has some sweet graphics and a spooky atmosphere, especially once you reach the famous wreck.

4. Devil’s Crown by Mastertronic
This little budget game from Mastertronic was an impulse purchase back in the Eighties – I remember seeing a lukewarm review in Crash, but its similarity to the Firebird classic, Booty, persuaded me to part with my pocket money. It’s a fun little adventure inside a sunken pirate ship; unfortunately, deadly homing fish and undead pirates constantly sap your oxygen, making mere survival difficult, let alone retrieving the valuable jewels.

3. Glug Glug by CRL
While comparisons to Jet Pac may not have cast it in a favourable light, I still love playing Glug Glug just as much as Ultimate’s classic. This time, you’re in a retro deep sea diver suit, oxygen supplied by a line to your boat above. Glittering treasures lay unclaimed on the sea bed and are hauled back to the boat one at a time. Naturally, numerous underwater critters (piranhas, squid, sharks and so on) take exception to this intrusion into their domain.

2. Hydrofool by Faster Than Light/Gargoyle
Gargoyle was at the top of its game in 1987, and this twist on the old isometric genre is a neat little sequel to 1986’s Sweevo’s World. Hydrofool thrusts Sweevo into the wet realm of Deathbowl, an underwater planet slowly becoming too polluted for life to exist. The dramatic solution is to pull out the four plugs holding the water in, and it’s no easy task. Full of nasty serpents and other enemies, Hydrofool was another smash hit for Gargoyle, scoring highly in all three leading Speccy magazines.

1. Scuba Dive by Durell
I absolutely ADORE this game. Programmed by Mike Richardson (of Turbo Esprit, Harrier Attack and Thanatos fame), the lack of weaponry may have irritated some gamers – but for me, it’s a hugely atmospheric and evocative exploration game that boasts one of the Spectrum’s most beautiful and memorable enemies, a giant octopus, guardian of the lower caves where even greater treasures await.

Game Of The Month

In the first of this alphabetical series looking back at famous Speccy games, I tackle the numbers and Elite’s home port of Capcom’s brilliant World War II shoot-‘em-up, 1942.

Game: 1942
Publisher: Elite Systems
Developer: Syrox (Dominic Wood)

The Background
Elite were riding high by the end of the summer of ‘86. Just look at this trio of arcade hits: Commando; Bomb Jack; Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins; each a Crash Smash and mega-hit. More big games would follow with Scooby-Doo, Paperboy and Space Harrier, but in September of 1986, everyone was keen to see how the Midlands-based publisher would fare with Capcom’s legendary shooter.

The Game
While not exactly original in terms of gameplay, Capcom’s 1942 at least set a precedent with its WW2 scenario, something of a rarity back then among a cosmos of space-based shoot-‘em-ups. As in the arcade original, the player’s plane takes off from its aircraft carrier to tackle a massive fleet of enemy fighters and bombers. Power-ups are snagged by shooting down the phalanx of red planes that occasionally appears, and your fighter can perform a nifty loop the loop whenever things get a little too hot.

The Reception
Sinclair User’s Brenda Gore loved 1942, calling it a ‘taught aerial dogfight drama for all Red Barons’ before awarding the Elite game five out of five stars. Your Sinclair was a little more cautious, admitting that 1942 suffered from dodgy collision detection yet still handing out a solid eight out of ten score. Finally, over at Crash Towers, things were a little more, well, critical. “This must be one of the worst games to come out of the Elite offices in yonks,” declared one incredulous reviewer. Surprisingly, the other reviewers disparaged not only the Elite game but also the arcade original. It was no great surprise when 1942 clocked in at 63%, distinctly under-par considering the software house’s recent output.

1942 Today
1942 is not a terrible game, but it’s not a great one, either. The poor collision detection mentioned by Your Sinclair is indeed unhelpful; personally, I found the sluggish movement of the player’s aircraft the most significant drawback, and one that makes even the first level more of a challenge than it needs to be. I think even Crash over-rated 1942 a touch: I’d go for 59% - and I love the arcade original!

Hidden Gem Of The Month

It’s a numbers game again as I look at a hidden Spectrum gem that I think is worthy of your time.

Game: 1999
Publisher: Summit Software
Developer: Ice Cool Coders (Chris Pile, Balor Knight, Stephen Corry)

Summit was Alternative Software’s slightly pricier range, retailing at £2.99. Most of its games were utterly forgettable, but I’ve always had a soft spot for this Nemesis/Gradius clone from 1987. In a novel twist, the player is an alien mercenary hired to strike back at the human menace of the People’s Allied Centre for Mankind and Neighbours (I’ll leave you to work out the acronym there!). 1999 scrolls horizontally, and what strikes you is the level of presentation: synthesised speech, some great sound effects and impressive graphical flourishes pepper the game. It plays pretty smartly, too, with the player’s craft sharply moving across the screen, and I like how the power-ups are limited to an uncomplicated four, of which the added firepower is undoubtedly the most useful.

1999 is far from easy – the wall-dodging section in particular requires speedy reactions and timing – but it’s a very decent effort for a budget shoot-‘em-up.

Dev Chat

Finally, given the subject of this month’s Favourite Five, I thought it was appropriate I had a quick chat with the legendary Mike Richardson about his scuba diving epic, erm, Scuba Dive.

Wizwords: Hi Mike! The little boat in Scuba Dive always reminds me of Quint’s boat in Jaws – was the Steven Spielberg film an influence?
Mike: Well, I’d seen Jaws many times in the cinema when it came out – I probably paid to see it more times than any other film before or since. So it may well have had an influence. But Scuba Dive really began when Robert White [Durell owner] suggested we did a game like Frogger. After some discussion in the office, Scuba Dive is what we ended up with.

Wizwords: Did you design and create the entire game yourself?
Mike: On the Spectrum, yes. Other people were working on versions for other machines, but I think they came after.

Wizwords: The graphics in Scuba Dive are wonderfully detailed – how did you go about designing them?
Mike: There was no internet back then, so I would have used books that we had lying around the house. I did go fishing as a teenager, so I had a good general idea of fish shapes and movement, although with the large sharks, I definitely had Jaws in mind, with 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea as a reference for the giant octopus. The jellyfish, for sure, came from an article about the Portuguese Man-Of-War in an encyclopedia I got from school. I spent a long time filling in squares on graph paper, converting them to hex, typing in and trying it out.

Wizwords: Why did you use rotational control for the diver?
Mike: Because it gave better precision when manipulating them. For example, when gathering pearls, the player can approach horizontally and then rotate to collect. Using direct controls, it would not have been possible to turn without moving forward, which would have had unfortunate consequences in some situations.

Wizwords: Scuba Dive famously eschews any combat – how did you work to engage players instead?
Mike: I thought there needed to be some sort of urgency – the air running out – and reward. One of the rewards for exploration was seeing something new and the treasure chests. I think the game does give a feel of alternating growing intensity and panic – can I get past this octopus? Will I run out of air before I find a new tank? – and short-term relief when you make it back to the boat but have to then dive again.

Wizwords: The atmosphere in Scuba Dive is particularly impressive - how did you achieve this?
Mike: It's mainly by the animation of the diver, I think - he's never completely static. Plus, the floating boat and swimming fish, of course. Some bubbles would have been nice, but that never came about - I ran out of memory before I could add them.

Wizwords: You could save your high scores in Scuba Dive – pretty unusual back then.
Mike: I've always felt that just getting a high score is not a great incentive to play a game. But losing your hard-earned high score when the machine is turned off would be heartbreaking for those who take it seriously. So I saw it as an essential feature.

Wizwords: Your software catalogue varied greatly – were you deliberately trying out your skills in different genres?
Mike: Yes – I deliberately wanted every game I wrote to be different from the last, primarily so players didn’t get bored. It wasn’t necessarily a good idea from a business perspective, but I wasn’t really interested in that!

Thanks to Mike for his time. That just about wraps things up for this first edition of On The ZX Spectrum, and I hope you’ve enjoyed my Speccy-related ramblings. The next one will hit inboxes at 5 pm on Friday 7th July.

Until then, stay safe, Spec-chums, and don’t forget you can subscribe to my Patreon to get extra little Spectrum missives and giveaways. This month, my Patreons will be reading all about my love of a certain darts game from Mastertronic. Head on over to https://www.patreon.com/OnTheZXSpectrum to sign up.

Oh, I almost forgot – if you enjoyed this newsletter, please help On The ZX Spectrum by spreading the word. Until the next time, keep it cyan!