Tim Tregear was the writer of the original Driller game from Macmillan software. He was my teacher at Gossops Green Junior school and we had to test it, he also wrote survival and helped on Mercenary, please show Mercenary it was cool Signed Dave
@@SebsPlaceYT Tim Tregear died in a car accident in his Spitfire, big guy tall, voice like thunder , clever as you like. He refined my science antics into something far safer. Sad end to a clever guy
If so it would be no different than today. It's not a direct bribe and more of a "oh we're running a big ad campaign on your website and it would be a shame if something were to change our minds", or "we have a lavish press junket lined up in Las Vegas for our next game launch and all our favourite reviewers will be invited".
Well, the games on this list are all decent titles for the Speccy, so they would have received pretty high scores from reviewers anyway, but yes, the rankings at the top ten are a bit suspect
Great video! I was a regular reader of all three of these magazines, but I haven't even heard of the top 2 games, and I was playing Spectrum games from 1982, all the way up until I got a Megadrive in 1991!
Thankyou! Spent a little too long sat on the loo hiding from the wife and kids perusing this upload. I’ll put some quality time in some point soon! You’ve gained a subscriber
Excellent video! Probably the best ‘ best of’ speccy vids I’ve seen(take note Kim justice) couldn’t help but chuckle at the voice overs of the different magazine reviews! Good stuff. 👌👍
@@SebsPlaceYT my watch later list is 1,300 videos at the mo, which is about 2 months delay HOWEVER i'll try and remember that when it appears in my subscriptions list i'll add it to the much shorter "Urgent Watch" list 🙂 So odd that "Three Weeks" gets the best marks overall when I don't think it sticks in many peoples memories.
Interesting video, never owned or played a Spectrum, so it’s a mystery why I’m so interested in the computer. Don’t play games now, so not likely to play them. The distorted voices of the review quotes annoyed a bit.
Appreciate the feedback. I wasn't sure what to do with the reviews as wanted a different voice to mine to separate them but couldn't convince anyone to read them for me :-)
Three Weeks was a great game, especially considering how many licences and arcade ports are in the list. The Speccy games that are still playable today are the original ones.
Wow that was a complete surprise list compared to my speccy gaming memories. Great video and as usual brilliantly presented, thank you. Everybody knows the top 10 speccy games are 😁...in no particular order.....Starquake, Commando, Dynamite Dan, Way of the exploding fist, Bomb jack, Roller Coaster, 3D Deathchase, JetPac and some randoms through rose tinted glasses Saboteur, Gremlins, Booty, BMX Simulator, Space Harrier, HyperSports, Tir na Nog, JSW and lastly Spy Hunter because my "original" tape wouldn't load unless I held the tape deck at 45 degree angle and stood on one leg chanting.
Hi - Yeah, not the usual suspects but all great games. It's got me interested in the Wally games too, quite a cool set of games although it's a stretch to say that is the best Speccy game :-)
@SebsPlaceYT When you get to your sixties memory starts to fail you . I owned my Sinclair from 83 until 90 when l bought my Amiga . You are probably right , there might be 100 games better
Great vid, I didn’t mind the squeaky voices, thought it was amusing. Some surprises both in inclusion and exclusion from this list. Subscribe button clicked, thanks.
Weird. I was born in 1991, in a country where the Spectrum was only a minor competitor in front of the Atari 8-bit computers and the 2600, and where most people only met video games in the '90s through Nintendo consoles, Sony and MS-DOS/Windows games. Only recently I cared about the Spectrum, and the few games I think are still worth playing today that made it to the list were between 43 and 20. Only Exolon and Skool Daze made it to the top of the list.
Yeah it's a strange list that goes to show there was a big difference between what that magazines all thought were good and what the rest of us thought.
@@SebsPlaceYT I must admit though, some of those top 20 games that I don't consider worth playing today without the nostalgia factor, are indeed good, specially if the Spectrum was your main or only gaming machine and arcade games were anchored to gigantic cabinets. But, today we live in a world where one can get mutant 64-bit IBM PC-Compatibl-ish laptops on steroids for cheap, where most phones are portable ARM Unix-like computers, and both of those can emulate the most popular arcade machines from the 80s effortlessly and even sprinkle the screen with pretty resource-intensive visual effects to simulate CRT displays over fricking liquid crystal displays. In the current scenario, getting a Rainbow Islands port with only 7 colours doesn't look like the best christmas gift. But Cybernoid!? That game seems blessed/cursed to be the greatest it can be on the Spectrum. The NES, the CPC and the C64 versions are cool, sure, but if anything, a bit generic. The uniqueness and psychedelia of the Speccy one makes the experience immortal. It's one of those Spectrum games I play without CRT shaders, just some soft bilinear interpolation at most, the more blocky and colourful it looks, the better.
@Seb'sPlace I remember playing Tau Ceti on Amstrad CPC... I think a good comparison is a Ground Based ELITE. While the comments' about a game that will never be dated are dubious... I am going to be very fair and say that if it got a remake today, it would fit in very well... The premise is Timeless, even though the games graphics are not. It was an astounding game for its time, but JESUS was it hard! Dont want to hear any Soulsbourne fans screaming "Git Gud!" when they have not played OUR ERA OF GAMES... I can tell you right now most of them would turn of Tau Ceti in 5 minutes - And they would blame it being dated and Lod, but we all know the truth - It would be TOO DAMN HARD FOR THEM! You know, Its funny how much of this list also features games that Require THOUGHT... They are not simple "Kill everything is sight" jobs... You really do have to THINK, Not just about a Strategy but about more than that! Could it be older games were more "Innovative" than Soulsbourne games? I dare to say YES!
A really eclectic mix in here, the top 3 are quite surprising. Strange that Elite isn't in the list at all as I remember it being the game everybody wanted and all the magazines rated it highly.
Elite came out just too early for Your Sinclair, so they only ever reviewed it as part of a compilation. Otherwise, yeah, it would have made it for sure.
Ha - thank you! I do get why people find them annoying and if I was to redo the video I would do things differently now but it's all about learning as you go. Thank you for letting me know they worked for you. It's nice that someone liked them! 😍
It just seems so wrong that Atic Atac, Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, Jet Set Willy weren't included - yes, I know it's down to the year of release, but still.....
Finally! A list that admits the best games weren't always the ones that you'd want to show off to jaded audiences 30 plus years later. As someone who didn't even know the Spectrum existed until Retro Gamer threw in a free CD, it's easy to be misled by cautiously cultivated lists that tell the same few feel good stories over and over, until it feels more like just another console library. It was so much more than that. It was a taste of everything gaming could be, sometimes decades ahead of the rest of the world.
Thank you, great comment. I agree, it's hard to do something a little different that shows off some good games that people may have missed. Glad you enjoyed this one.
Disappointed that my all-time favourite Speccy game, Crash Smash and Crash cover stars The Great Giana Sisters is missing. Highly regarded by SU and YS also. They even published readers' hints and tips for the game. What a classic. (Aside: what a swizz.)
😂😂 Yeah....moral of the story..... don't mess with Nintendo! Maybe one day someone will unearth a review copy somewhere........ would love to play it (if it did actually exist.....)
Wow a response from the man himself! I did not expect that @SebsPlaceYT . Thank you very much and I loved that fact you gave Target Renegade and Skool Daze special mentions. Skool Daze is my favourite ever Spectrum game despite never completing it. I also remember saving my pocket money to buy Target Renegade when back then £8.99 (If I remember correctly) was a lot of dosh. I loved the video so many memories. My rule back then was if I couldn't figure out a game in under five minutes it was rubbish so was never a fan of text adventures or isometric games. I think the magazines missed a trick with Renegade. Amazing work well done.
Thanks Stephen, you picked some great games there mate. I think Target Renegade is my all time favourite. Such a great game and not bettered on any other system!
That "criticism" in the Crash review of Dan Dare is peculiar- that is to say it's strange they called it such- leading me to think the editor didn't actually know the meaning of the word.
100% agree for Jack the Nipper, but sometimes games got top marks but weren't awarded mega game, crash smash etc. Jack the Nipper got 5/5 in Sinclair User but no award. If you scroll down two pages. Pyracurse also got 5/5 and the Sinclair User Classic award. It often made no sense. Check it out here: archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine-053/page/n36/mode/1up?view=theater
Wow some real surprises there! No Dizzies at all, no Don Priestley, no Monty Moles, no Jack the Nipper, no Deathchase (maybe that was too early). I thought Saboteur might make an appearance too. Oh, and no one heard of a little game called Elite? Ah well, we all know Rock Star Ate My Hamster was the best anyway
Haha. I used to love that game! I played it more recently and it was definitely a game that fed the imagination as a kid. It's a bit boring now, I was surprised how little to do there is in it. Cheers!
@@SebsPlaceYT It was amazing playing with friends games like : Teenage mutant turtles 2 , double dragon , Bubble Bobble,Ikari Warriors . For single player mode i enjoyed games like: R-TYpe( ofcourse!!! :) ) Arkanoid, Batty , dizzy series, rick dangerous 1;2 , shinobi ,sly spy , an many more
I must admit that I don’t trust reviews from 1990 as I thought reviewers often overhyped and overrated any game that was half decent towards the end of the Spectrums life to try to maintain its relevance.
This reminds me of some old retro gaming drama - A few years ago, someone on a retro gaming Facebook group made a list of late era Amiga games that had got unjustified high scores by virtue of being late releases and the magazines needing to hype them. The sort of stuff that was coming out after commodore was dead and Amiga magazines had been forced to go to a direct subscriber model. The list generated a bit of discussion, with most people thinking the majority of the games weren't great but it was understandable 5hst they'd tried to hype what they could. Then, former Amiga Format reviewer Stuart Campbell (a year or so before he lost his mind over politics) came into the group, got *super* angry about the list, told a bunch of people to "f*ck off" over it and then left the group in an angry tantrum. Point is, apparently Stuart is very sensitive.
Elite never got a review on its own in Your Sinclair and Gunship should have been included but even though it got top marks, Sinclair User didn't give it an award (which sometimes happenned) so it missed out. Both games deserve to be there though 100%
To many good original games on the speccy to make any king of definitive list, even if you made a greatest 100, there would be games missing. In no particular order: Bobby Bearing. Avalon Dragon Torc Astro Clone The entire Ket Trilogy (Text Adventures) BMX Simulator (Better than the offroad title in the list) Fat Worm Blows A Sparky. SPLAT Bugaboo The Flea (A single level of pure frustration) Empire Nether Earth (Possibly the first RTS) Arnem Wizball And the list goes on, are any of these playable today, absolutely.
A flawed list. Starglider is one of the highest rated games of all time (and although I'm biased :D ), all the reviews were among the highest across all the magazines, and even won game of the year in Crash. Your Sinclair never reviewed it when it was originally released as they had done a mega-preview the previous month.
Haha - not biased at all :D ! Gotta get an award from all three magazines, so didn't make the list, but yeah a great game indeed ! Kinda crazy that only 52 games amongst all the games these three magazines reviewed were awarded the top award by all three!
You can basicaly write off most of the coin-op conversions as paid reviews. There are so many better games out there. For me, the best game of the Speccy and possibly one of the best games of all time, Doomdark's Revenge, it's a technical masterpiece.
Like many 70's kids i er.. had loads of backup copies of games and surprisingly enough the only games in your list i played was robocop, back to school and 3 weeks which i didnt like... great list but not my top 40
@SebsPlaceYT I really liked the vid, but found the modulated voices irritating too. Have you thought about reaching out to the community for vocal contributions?
You do realise that these magazines were often paid by games developers to give top rankings. I saw the top three, and I had never seen those games in my life. I remember the third one as I did play that, but the top two pretty much were trash and unheard of. It is a shame that you do not publish the full list, rather than expecting people to sit through a video.
The Sinclair magazine reviews are, alas, completely untrustworthy. They lived off the advertising of the game publishers, after all. Ghosts 'n 'Goblins is pants on the spectrum.
Having given Ghosts and goblins a whirl on the speccy the other day I have to say I dont agree it's rubbish at all. Too hard? Yes, definitely think it's not the best balanced but it's quick and enjoyable enough and quite a feat to get it on there. Why do you think it's bad?
I don’t think it’s pants but it’s missing more than half of the arcade game (if you can manage to get that far). As a single load, it’s good, but if you know the coin-op, it’s merely an impression of the first two levels and then kinda does a simplified third one.
3 Weeks in Paradise?! That came out of left field.
😁
Tim Tregear was the writer of the original Driller game from Macmillan software. He was my teacher at Gossops Green Junior school and we had to test it, he also wrote survival and helped on Mercenary, please show Mercenary it was cool
Signed
Dave
Love it, nice story, cheers. I'll take a look thanks!
@@SebsPlaceYT Tim Tregear died in a car accident in his Spitfire, big guy tall, voice like thunder , clever as you like. He refined my science antics into something far safer.
Sad end to a clever guy
There were big rumours that the magazines took bribes for favourable reviews at the time. This countdown seems to support that.
I never twigged at the time but yeah - listening to the reviews now, they read like full-on promotional material! A bit devious really...
No it doesn't
@@brendanjudge577 it defo does
If so it would be no different than today. It's not a direct bribe and more of a "oh we're running a big ad campaign on your website and it would be a shame if something were to change our minds", or "we have a lavish press junket lined up in Las Vegas for our next game launch and all our favourite reviewers will be invited".
Well, the games on this list are all decent titles for the Speccy, so they would have received pretty high scores from reviewers anyway, but yes, the rankings at the top ten are a bit suspect
Great video! I was a regular reader of all three of these magazines, but I haven't even heard of the top 2 games, and I was playing Spectrum games from 1982, all the way up until I got a Megadrive in 1991!
Same as me pretty much, although I had a SNES and then a MD later on. Thanks for the comment. Appreciate it.
Interestingly, Crash did not score Turbo Esprit a Smash on its launch for Durell, it got 88%, but quite rightly scored the re-release on Encore 90%
Thankyou!
Spent a little too long sat on the loo hiding from the wife and kids perusing this upload.
I’ll put some quality time in some point soon!
You’ve gained a subscriber
Haha, that made me smile on a miserable Monday morning. Love it! Thank you, very kind!
Great idea for a video mate. Nice new angle on a top 50 video.
The top 3 did surprise me though 😮
Me too 😆 cheers Denny
Excellent video! Probably the best ‘ best of’ speccy vids I’ve seen(take note Kim justice) couldn’t help but chuckle at the voice overs of the different magazine reviews! Good stuff. 👌👍
Thanks Damon, really appreciate the kind feedback.
Seconded ☺️
Kim Justice is spoiling ZX Spectrum nostalgia, for sure.
@@lucasoheyze4597 Why is Kim spoiling nostalgia?
Kim Justice's opinions are entirely her own - she's made that abundantly clear. It's ridiculous to ask her to "take note".
Couldn't agree more with the top spot. I loved TWIP at the time and still occasionally go back to it
Nice! I'm gonna do a video about the series soon, so make sure you're subbed! 😉 cheers for the comment.
Great Video and a good way to show some half forgotten titles for a change
Thank you! 😊
A great run through. Must've taken many days to compile and edit all that so congratulations. Your toil is our "yeah it was ok" 🙂
😂 I'll take OK!! I'm working on a similar video now, so let me know if you watch it, if I've improved. Should be out Thursday 🤞
@@SebsPlaceYT my watch later list is 1,300 videos at the mo, which is about 2 months delay HOWEVER i'll try and remember that when it appears in my subscriptions list i'll add it to the much shorter "Urgent Watch" list 🙂
So odd that "Three Weeks" gets the best marks overall when I don't think it sticks in many peoples memories.
yeah, very odd! I hear you on youtube backlog, no worries, cheers for watching!
9:37 Thundera was the Thundercats' home planet that was destroyed in the first episode. It's pronounced thund-air-a
Thanks - I think it was plain to see I was struggling with that somewhat!!
Great vid, learnt a few things here I didn't expect to, thanks.
Cheers! Part 2 (kind of, not really) dropping Thursday 6pm 👍
Had no idea the atmosphere was 90% helium in the 80's and 90's, and I was there. Maybe Aled Jones explains a lot.
😄😄
Turbo esprit is still a personal fav. Fantastic upload. Thanks 😊
Glad you enjoyed it
Interesting video, never owned or played a Spectrum, so it’s a mystery why I’m so interested in the computer. Don’t play games now, so not likely to play them. The distorted voices of the review quotes annoyed a bit.
Appreciate the feedback. I wasn't sure what to do with the reviews as wanted a different voice to mine to separate them but couldn't convince anyone to read them for me :-)
I'm surprised Starquake didn't make the list. Great vid though mate!
Yeah, if Your Sinclair reviewed it, it defo would have been. Thanks for the kind words 😊
Three Weeks was a great game, especially considering how many licences and arcade ports are in the list. The Speccy games that are still playable today are the original ones.
Totally agree 👍
Batman the movie and Renegade should be on the list!!!!... Your channel is the best!!!
Thank you!
Wow that was a complete surprise list compared to my speccy gaming memories. Great video and as usual brilliantly presented, thank you. Everybody knows the top 10 speccy games are 😁...in no particular order.....Starquake, Commando, Dynamite Dan, Way of the exploding fist, Bomb jack, Roller Coaster, 3D Deathchase, JetPac and some randoms through rose tinted glasses Saboteur, Gremlins, Booty, BMX Simulator, Space Harrier, HyperSports, Tir na Nog, JSW and lastly Spy Hunter because my "original" tape wouldn't load unless I held the tape deck at 45 degree angle and stood on one leg chanting.
😂😂 the amount of times I had to stand on one leg chanting was ridiculous. Cheers!
Never in a month of Sundays would I have guessed that top 3! Not a usual suspect in there. Still, Revolution is a bit of a nice surprise. :)
Hi - Yeah, not the usual suspects but all great games. It's got me interested in the Wally games too, quite a cool set of games although it's a stretch to say that is the best Speccy game :-)
How did you find all the original reviewers to record their original reviews, amazing!!
😁😁 it was tough!
I can think of 25 titles better than most featuring on this video .
Just 25?
@SebsPlaceYT When you get to your sixties memory starts to fail you . I owned my Sinclair from 83 until 90 when l bought my Amiga . You are probably right , there might be 100 games better
Surprised Jack the Nipper didn't make the cut, same with Trap Door.
Loved those games :-)
Agreed, both excellent!
The only game on that list I've spent significant time on is Fairlight. I still load it sometimes just for the intro music.
Excellent vid. I remember loads of these!
Thank you, very kind!
Great vid, I didn’t mind the squeaky voices, thought it was amusing. Some surprises both in inclusion and exclusion from this list. Subscribe button clicked, thanks.
Thank you Paul. Appreciate the feedback and the sub!
great video ,enjoy it .keep up the video .thanks
too kind, thank you!
Quazatron, Ultima games, Elite, Heavy on the Magic and Marsport all have fond memories. I notice Marsport didn't make the list?
Your Sinclair didn't review it. Did well in the other two, but Sinclair User didn't give it an award despite tip marks which sometimes happened.
Weird. I was born in 1991, in a country where the Spectrum was only a minor competitor in front of the Atari 8-bit computers and the 2600, and where most people only met video games in the '90s through Nintendo consoles, Sony and MS-DOS/Windows games. Only recently I cared about the Spectrum, and the few games I think are still worth playing today that made it to the list were between 43 and 20. Only Exolon and Skool Daze made it to the top of the list.
Yeah it's a strange list that goes to show there was a big difference between what that magazines all thought were good and what the rest of us thought.
@@SebsPlaceYT I must admit though, some of those top 20 games that I don't consider worth playing today without the nostalgia factor, are indeed good, specially if the Spectrum was your main or only gaming machine and arcade games were anchored to gigantic cabinets.
But, today we live in a world where one can get mutant 64-bit IBM PC-Compatibl-ish laptops on steroids for cheap, where most phones are portable ARM Unix-like computers, and both of those can emulate the most popular arcade machines from the 80s effortlessly and even sprinkle the screen with pretty resource-intensive visual effects to simulate CRT displays over fricking liquid crystal displays.
In the current scenario, getting a Rainbow Islands port with only 7 colours doesn't look like the best christmas gift. But Cybernoid!? That game seems blessed/cursed to be the greatest it can be on the Spectrum. The NES, the CPC and the C64 versions are cool, sure, but if anything, a bit generic. The uniqueness and psychedelia of the Speccy one makes the experience immortal. It's one of those Spectrum games I play without CRT shaders, just some soft bilinear interpolation at most, the more blocky and colourful it looks, the better.
Totally agree. Cybernoid is certainly one of those games. I talk about that game in a little more detail in an upcoming video. Cheers.
How is Jetpac not on the list?
Too early.
I had forgotten that back in the eighties we spoke with weird high pitched voices ......a golden age
Indeed we did! We also experimented with different ideas to use in RUclips videos that didn't quite work and will never be used again.
@@SebsPlaceYT lol love this video and love this channel just excellent
Thank you 😊
Great list.
Head over heels should be number one.
Wally? WTF. 😬
Spoilers!
@Seb'sPlace I remember playing Tau Ceti on Amstrad CPC... I think a good comparison is a Ground Based ELITE.
While the comments' about a game that will never be dated are dubious... I am going to be very fair and say that if it got a remake today, it would fit in very well... The premise is Timeless, even though the games graphics are not. It was an astounding game for its time, but JESUS was it hard! Dont want to hear any Soulsbourne fans screaming "Git Gud!" when they have not played OUR ERA OF GAMES... I can tell you right now most of them would turn of Tau Ceti in 5 minutes - And they would blame it being dated and Lod, but we all know the truth - It would be TOO DAMN HARD FOR THEM!
You know, Its funny how much of this list also features games that Require THOUGHT... They are not simple "Kill everything is sight" jobs... You really do have to THINK, Not just about a Strategy but about more than that! Could it be older games were more "Innovative" than Soulsbourne games? I dare to say YES!
Yes! 100% agree! Thanks for the comment 🥰
Great idea for a video - Fab!
Glad you liked it! Cheers!
@@SebsPlaceYT I really did, Revolution was the big surprise for me, it looked so good!
A really eclectic mix in here, the top 3 are quite surprising. Strange that Elite isn't in the list at all as I remember it being the game everybody wanted and all the magazines rated it highly.
Elite came out just too early for Your Sinclair, so they only ever reviewed it as part of a compilation. Otherwise, yeah, it would have made it for sure.
The voices worked for me. Ignore the nay sayers with no sense of humour who take themselves far too seriously.
Ha - thank you! I do get why people find them annoying and if I was to redo the video I would do things differently now but it's all about learning as you go. Thank you for letting me know they worked for you. It's nice that someone liked them! 😍
They live! One of my favourite films plus it has the longest fight scene in a film.... well it did at the time
Classic 🤩
It just seems so wrong that Atic Atac, Manic Miner, Chuckie Egg, Jet Set Willy weren't included - yes, I know it's down to the year of release, but still.....
Dont forget Chuckie Egg 2, the best collect em up game ever made.
@@VeggieManUK another good 'un.
Finally! A list that admits the best games weren't always the ones that you'd want to show off to jaded audiences 30 plus years later.
As someone who didn't even know the Spectrum existed until Retro Gamer threw in a free CD, it's easy to be misled by cautiously cultivated lists that tell the same few feel good stories over and over, until it feels more like just another console library.
It was so much more than that. It was a taste of everything gaming could be, sometimes decades ahead of the rest of the world.
Thank you, great comment. I agree, it's hard to do something a little different that shows off some good games that people may have missed. Glad you enjoyed this one.
Disappointed that my all-time favourite Speccy game, Crash Smash and Crash cover stars The Great Giana Sisters is missing. Highly regarded by SU and YS also. They even published readers' hints and tips for the game. What a classic. (Aside: what a swizz.)
😂😂 Yeah....moral of the story..... don't mess with Nintendo! Maybe one day someone will unearth a review copy somewhere........ would love to play it (if it did actually exist.....)
No Saboteur II I loved that game.
Sadly not. Only got Your Sinclair mega game, 83% Crash, 3/5 Sinclair User
Wow a response from the man himself! I did not expect that @SebsPlaceYT . Thank you very much and I loved that fact you gave Target Renegade and Skool Daze special mentions. Skool Daze is my favourite ever Spectrum game despite never completing it. I also remember saving my pocket money to buy Target Renegade when back then £8.99 (If I remember correctly) was a lot of dosh. I loved the video so many memories. My rule back then was if I couldn't figure out a game in under five minutes it was rubbish so was never a fan of text adventures or isometric games. I think the magazines missed a trick with Renegade. Amazing work well done.
Thanks Stephen, you picked some great games there mate. I think Target Renegade is my all time favourite. Such a great game and not bettered on any other system!
That "criticism" in the Crash review of Dan Dare is peculiar- that is to say it's strange they called it such- leading me to think the editor didn't actually know the meaning of the word.
Loved 3WIP! deserved a top ten appearance but surprised it took top spot! Why no Jack the Nipper in there?
100% agree for Jack the Nipper, but sometimes games got top marks but weren't awarded mega game, crash smash etc. Jack the Nipper got 5/5 in Sinclair User but no award. If you scroll down two pages. Pyracurse also got 5/5 and the Sinclair User Classic award. It often made no sense. Check it out here: archive.org/details/sinclair-user-magazine-053/page/n36/mode/1up?view=theater
There's a PS4 spiritul successor to Uridium and I wish I could remember the name because it's excellent!
Futuridium.
@@Inaflap Actually no, it's not 3d etc it's the same view as the orig but Futuridium looks very interesting cheers! :-)
Wow some real surprises there! No Dizzies at all, no Don Priestley, no Monty Moles, no Jack the Nipper, no Deathchase (maybe that was too early). I thought Saboteur might make an appearance too. Oh, and no one heard of a little game called Elite?
Ah well, we all know Rock Star Ate My Hamster was the best anyway
Haha. I used to love that game! I played it more recently and it was definitely a game that fed the imagination as a kid. It's a bit boring now, I was surprised how little to do there is in it. Cheers!
HI all , gamer here :)
Welcome! What games did you play on that?
@@SebsPlaceYT It was amazing playing with friends games like : Teenage mutant turtles 2 , double dragon , Bubble Bobble,Ikari Warriors . For single player mode i enjoyed games like: R-TYpe( ofcourse!!! :) ) Arkanoid, Batty , dizzy series, rick dangerous 1;2 , shinobi ,sly spy , an many more
I just started the video and I think the top will be 'R-Type'
lets see...lets see if I am a speccy game nerd
Haha. Nice. I've never had a preemptive comment before 😀
I thought it would be Driller
I liked your video but the weird speech effects didn't work for me.
Me neither 😁
I was a early Speccy user.
Wait, no elite? no stunt car racer?
Hi - Elite really should be, but Your Sinclair never reviewed it. Only later as part of a compilation. Stunt car racer didn't review high enough.
I must admit that I don’t trust reviews from 1990 as I thought reviewers often overhyped and overrated any game that was half decent towards the end of the Spectrums life to try to maintain its relevance.
There's probably some truth in that
This reminds me of some old retro gaming drama - A few years ago, someone on a retro gaming Facebook group made a list of late era Amiga games that had got unjustified high scores by virtue of being late releases and the magazines needing to hype them. The sort of stuff that was coming out after commodore was dead and Amiga magazines had been forced to go to a direct subscriber model.
The list generated a bit of discussion, with most people thinking the majority of the games weren't great but it was understandable 5hst they'd tried to hype what they could. Then, former Amiga Format reviewer Stuart Campbell (a year or so before he lost his mind over politics) came into the group, got *super* angry about the list, told a bunch of people to "f*ck off" over it and then left the group in an angry tantrum.
Point is, apparently Stuart is very sensitive.
No Myth by Sysyem 3? Criminal!
Outrageous!
Didnt see my childhood top games, Elite and Gunship both got 92% in Crash.
Elite never got a review on its own in Your Sinclair and Gunship should have been included but even though it got top marks, Sinclair User didn't give it an award (which sometimes happenned) so it missed out. Both games deserve to be there though 100%
My guess(es): Head over Heels or Treasure Island Dizzy.
Waaay more random than that 😁
@@SebsPlaceYT It sure was. No spoiler alerts here- but I wasn't a million miles off, eh?... I'm off to play it now :)
One mistake in robocop reveiw the sampled speech clearly say "Applecart"
😁😁
To many good original games on the speccy to make any king of definitive list, even if you made a greatest 100, there would be games missing.
In no particular order:
Bobby Bearing.
Avalon
Dragon Torc
Astro Clone
The entire Ket Trilogy (Text Adventures)
BMX Simulator (Better than the offroad title in the list)
Fat Worm Blows A Sparky.
SPLAT
Bugaboo The Flea (A single level of pure frustration)
Empire
Nether Earth (Possibly the first RTS)
Arnem
Wizball
And the list goes on, are any of these playable today, absolutely.
Some great games there!!!
A flawed list. Starglider is one of the highest rated games of all time (and although I'm biased :D ), all the reviews were among the highest across all the magazines, and even won game of the year in Crash. Your Sinclair never reviewed it when it was originally released as they had done a mega-preview the previous month.
Haha - not biased at all :D ! Gotta get an award from all three magazines, so didn't make the list, but yeah a great game indeed ! Kinda crazy that only 52 games amongst all the games these three magazines reviewed were awarded the top award by all three!
Yeah I was expecting Starglider to be there.
A C64 version of this vid could be interesting.
Which magazines would you go for?
great video
Thank you 😊
You can basicaly write off most of the coin-op conversions as paid reviews.
There are so many better games out there.
For me, the best game of the Speccy and possibly one of the best games of all time, Doomdark's Revenge, it's a technical masterpiece.
If there is something I remember from Spectrum magazines is that I hardly ever agreed with their ratings and scores.
😁
Like many 70's kids i er.. had loads of backup copies of games and surprisingly enough the only games in your list i played was robocop, back to school and 3 weeks which i didnt like... great list but not my top 40
No.. I agree, some odd ones in there!
Ha.. good times. Me and a friend down the road used to *ahem* backup each others games on a 'ghetto blaster,' as they used to be called.
Loved Exolon. If you defined the keys to Z O R B A & then redefine them to how you use the keys, you got infinite lives.
Oooh
Starquake? Where is Starquake? Those magazines were not fair!
😁
C64 Carrier command was made as a 2d game and lost something. Didn’t get great reviews. The Spectrum version looked awesome.
Kevin Toms dislikes this video.
Lies....
yeah target renegade still playable today! prob my best speccy game too, the original renegade just doesnt compare imo
Yeah probably my favourite game 😍
owned 3 wip on pirate ,
No chaos?.....the fools
It did well in Sinclair User and Crash. Not sure even reviewed by YS.
I hated rainbow Island and bubble
My all time favourite was Elite. Many hours spent playing that
what no ELITE i am gob smacked i literally left my speccy on for weeks whilst in spacedock as it took ages to load.
Yeah, Elite really should be on the list, but even though they scored it 9/10, your sinclair didn't give it an award. Scandalous!
Those voices :(
Yep, won't do that again.
Wot no 'Starglider...
Yeah same as Elite.... Your Sinclair robbed them.
Top 3 = Never heard of them.
Bungs were had --- big time.
Distorted voices = very hard to understand.
Yep, voice experiment was shorted lived.....
Silly voices ruined this video for me.
Agreed 😁
@SebsPlaceYT I really liked the vid, but found the modulated voices irritating too. Have you thought about reaching out to the community for vocal contributions?
Dynamite Dan looks disturbingly like Matt Smith as Dr Who.
ETA: The Target Renegade reviewer: ew, what a letch!
😂😂
Good job….no need for the voices
Fair
You do realise that these magazines were often paid by games developers to give top rankings. I saw the top three, and I had never seen those games in my life. I remember the third one as I did play that, but the top two pretty much were trash and unheard of. It is a shame that you do not publish the full list, rather than expecting people to sit through a video.
Imagine spending hours making a youtube video and MAKING people watch it. Shocking......
Shame about the voices.
Yeah! See latest video....... not something I would do again. All a learning experience 👍
@@SebsPlaceYT great list and research work though. I bought all 3 magazines when young every month (here in Portugal) and I loved learning all this
Wth
The Sinclair magazine reviews are, alas, completely untrustworthy. They lived off the advertising of the game publishers, after all. Ghosts 'n 'Goblins is pants on the spectrum.
Hi - Yep, definitely some truth in that. Just a bit of fun really.
Having given Ghosts and goblins a whirl on the speccy the other day I have to say I dont agree it's rubbish at all. Too hard? Yes, definitely think it's not the best balanced but it's quick and enjoyable enough and quite a feat to get it on there. Why do you think it's bad?
I don’t think it’s pants but it’s missing more than half of the arcade game (if you can manage to get that far).
As a single load, it’s good, but if you know the coin-op, it’s merely an impression of the first two levels and then kinda does a simplified third one.
TBH the same could be said of Crash and anything Ultimate related. It still grinds my gears I bought Cyberun & Gunfright based on the Crash reviews.