I always rotate the joystick 45° when playing isometric games so that it matches up with the direction your character moves on screen. It works better on sticks with a symmetrical handle and buttons on the base, like the Atari 2600 controller, or the Competition Pro.
I had this on my Atari XE and had a similar "no idea what I'm supposed to do, but it looks and sounds cool" experience - I had a legit boxed copy but the instructions weren't really a lot of help, although it's entirely possible I was just an idiot.
The problem with isometric games is that they slow down dramatically the more moving objects you have in play. Not having more than one bomb at a time was probably a technical limitation.
Let's hear it for Dads who are into scifi but have no adult friends who are so you are their designated geek buddy. My grandpa, dad, and his brothers were all like that
I used to play this game over at my mate David's house (he did not have a lot of games), we could never pronounce the name, so we just called it "The leggy anus game"
What are the differences between flies and wasps? Head/Eyes Flies: Large, moveable head with large to very large eyes. Wasps: Head not so large in proportion to body and eyes usually large. Mouthparts. Flies: Sucking or piercing and sucking. Wasps: Chewing (sometimes modified) Antennae Flies: Short to very short antennae (except in some species such as crane flies). Wasps: Variable antennae - can be long and/or curled or relatively short. Wings This is the most obvious difference between flies and wasps, but wings can be hard to see when they are moving. Flies: One pair of forewings, which are the only functional wings. The hindwings are reduced to club-like halteres. Wasps: Two pairs of wings, with the hindwings smaller. Thorax (mid-body section) Flies: Middle segment of thorax (mesothorax) enlarged. Wasps: Thorax not enlarged. Waist Flies: No distinct waist (except in some wasp/bee mimics). Wasps: Distinct waist (except in sawflies) Colour/markings Pass... LOL
Finds a haunted house and a ghost appears: "Oh dear, its so spoopy i appear to have dropped my soap! I better bend over and pick it up, i sure do hope you're one of those prudish ghosts~"
I also used to watch the same shows and movies with my dad but I've never played this game And by the looks of it never will ha ha, The stoger is a funny thing And some things just don't hold up today But some are even better than you can remember
I had the same experience of this back in the day as you it seems. I remember being blown away by it at the time but not really understanding what was going on, and it was soon put to one side. Then just a few years ago I fired it up again, actually figured out what to do and thought..."is that it?" That said, I did persist with it, not sure I completed it but got a fair few levels in. Chasing the flies (they are flies, surely!) around for ages until you got that lucky shot in was sort of meditative, for a while at least :-)
The PT-PT-PT-PT noise of on board sound Spectrum is a soundscape never used on any system ever again. It would be interesting to release an indie game with 48k sound for a real retro kick. Would love to see the reviews as modern reviewers who have never heard of Sir Clive Sinclair collapsed into a black hole of anger and disgust as every single step they took lets out a far, far too loud "PT!" noise 😂
Amazingly enough, last night I couldn't sleep and thought of this game. No joke. I spent far far too long playing this game, but never got very far as shooting was so frustrating. By the way they are wasps, definitely wasps!
It's slightly easier -- but only _very_ slightly -- to line up the bomb shots if you let the wasp get close enough to your vehicle that it will start to follow you. They key is to do this without getting so close that you take damage. Then if you have enough space to move away in a single direction you can outpace the wasp before doubling back slightly and lobbing a bomb onto it. With practice judging this distance becomes second nature. But if you change direction mid-chase, due to another wasp or an obstacle, it's far more likely that the wasp will lose interest and start wandering off again. This turns the completely random into the borderline tactical as you look for areas of map with long unobstructed stretches (roads are ideal) onto which you can lure a wasp. It doesn't completely eliminate the repetitive and frustrating nature, but it suppresses it a little and limits the number of times you have to wait for a missed bomb to bounce halfway across the map. I never completed this game but I did clear out a few cities before the boredom got to me.
That's right. Allow the workers to follow you then suddenly turn back to lob a bomb at them. Sometimes it bounces over them which is annoying, but with practice you can hit them more often than not. Once all the workers are dead collect the super bomb and kill the queen. Next level. I played this a lot as a kid. As has been said, it was impressive for a budget game.
As I remember it once I figured out the distance you need to hit a fly it was a fairly easy game. I could hit the critters with a pretty decent hit rate. However, you are right that the mechanics could easily be improved quite substantially. On the other hand... Those clunky controls made the game unique for whatever that's worth.
Thanks for bringing back the memories. This game was fantastic for 10 minutes… then went into the pile of Mastertronic games I played once. The pile of disappointment.
The story of Barnes Wallis and him coming to terms with the devastation of what he created, should certainly compete with Oppenheimer for best film. Only a shame that it would be an impossible mission to cast Peter Graves
With that upbringing I swear we're brothers. 😳 But still, all they needed to do was make it so that pressing the button a second time when the bomb was out made it explode across a 3x3 tiled area, giving it some randomness but also some skill, and they'd have transformed it. But there were a lot of these beautiful but awful games on the Speccy. I of the Mask anyone? 😵💫
@@RoseTintedSpectrum Good news: 1) You play this game completely WRONG! You should kill all flies first then kill the queen! Because flies chase you ONLY when the queen is alive! And when the flies chase you it's way easier to kill them! (They also say that you should kill flying flies ASAP) 2) There's a version with selectable controls such as Kempston or Sinclair 3) There's a version with "FAST BOMBS" - when you can fire a new bomb whenever you want. Now for the bad news: Nobody managed to combine two.
I just didn't understand it as a kid, the Amaurote cover art sucked me in as an 8yrs old! but i couldn't fathom what to do, Seeing that 'Queen Screen' 4:11 was a first, Infestation also stubbed me, appreciate the coverage !
Visually very impressive! The bombs shoud just explode after the second bounce (you can't see them any further anyway). Boom! Game fixed. Sometimes, it is not the "extra mile" the developers should have gone, but just the extra inch.
I never found isometric games a problem because they followed the same natural rule which is:- Top right is up, bottom left is down, top left is left n bottom right is right..... which sounds confusing as hell when written down but made total sense because we read left to right and scrolling games go from left to right..... which still doesn't make any sense as to why it feels natural/right BUT IT IS HONEST!
Honestly, visually this is the best spectrum you've shown me. If you replace the Hippoboscidae's with robots and you can probably rebrand this as a early Ghost in the Shell game?
There's a certain class of games, of which this is one, that just couldn't seem to get out of their own way, giving you great presentation and a fun premise and then neutering themselves somehow with dumb controls or ammo limitations or whatever. Pilot a mech to defend Earth from aliens!!!.........by slowly bouncing a limited number of easily avoided balls at them.
You went wrong by destroying the queen before all the insects. The insects stop following / chasing you after the queen is dead, which makes it stupidly difficult to kill them as they move randomly then. I played this game to death back in the day.
Infuriating game. The ability to remote detonate (which makes sense given the "one bomb at a time" mechanic) which could "stun" the wasps caught in the explosion, allowing you to line one up properly would have made this a much more enjoyable experience. That said - if the game was any better, it wouldn't have been a 2.99 game. For a couple of quid though - deffo one of the better premium budget releases. Was happy to splurge my paper round wages on this back in the day.
I think i'd have fixed it by having the bomb vanish when it leaves the screen and shooting done by holding down the fire button to keep firing and then pressing the joystick in the desired direction. This would of course mean you can't move and shoot.
Never, _ever_ expected a scolding for ghosts in this episode, but it's well-deserved. When _WILL_ they start shoving things up people's butts? Absolute _cowards...._ Shame about the sphincter bombs in this game though, huh? I feel like, _surely,_ there must be a spiritual successor-type game out there that was heavily inspired by this, but just lets you shoot lasers or something like a normal game. It seems like something that would've left a big mark on others who would later go into game development, and there were so many isometric and top-down shooters coming out of the UK back in the day (though, I guess stuff like Loaded, Reloaded and Machine Hunter were probably influenced more by the Chaos Engine/Soldier of Fortune or something). I'm curious if there's a game like this out there now, but plays better. Seems like too cool of a premise to settle for such janky sphincter bomb throwing vehicles, tbh... Of course, it's hard to focus on that now that I'm thinking of ghosts being lame. No one can start a video like you, RTS! Anyway, can't wait to see what games you end up showing us in 2024!
Not that I have any intention of doing this (or indeed, any knowledge of Z80 machine code which would help me) but that bomb thing feels like something which must be only a few POKEs away from being fixed, even if it's just destroying it after a few bounces or when it leaves the current screen.
The primary challenge is disassembling and understanding the code enough to make such modifications. Z80 doesn't give much away. Using tools within an emulator to look for memory locations which change when a bomb is released (but remain constant at other times) would be a good starting point, then searching for instructions which contain these addresses. Still an uphill battle from there, however! 😉
Fair play to you for finishing it! That must have been a slog, but you're right, for the price it's a solid wee game with a few issues that, in today's eyes, just seem like daft oversights.
Had to find a video of someone doing a complete walkthru of this game: ua-cam.com/video/K-M_a4VbuWk/v-deo.htmlsi=NtmEwVu9LSqoCHhy It's about 3 hours long. Be warned though: You will probably be pissed by the fact that he kills virtually every insect with one shot. Maybe it just takes a ton of practice?
Rzx Archive uses rollback methods to record the footage, so basically they'll keep "rewinding" a missed shot until they get it to land, all you see on the recorded end is the shot that landed. This means that even though the video is 3 hours or so, the amount of time it took to record it is probably way beyond, to the point I'd want to cry myself to sleep
@@RoseTintedSpectrumAh, didn't know that! And I looked again and you're right. It's mentioned right there in the video description. (At least he's honest about it).
@@JustWasted3HoursHere Yeah, RZX (now sadly deceased) was the host of the site but he would take entries from various folks who were just putting together playthroughs of the entire games - pretty much all of them are rollback but they're a great resource to see the full games which you likely never will in real life because they're Spectrum games and they hate you.
@@RoseTintedSpectrumThat's sad, but at least he lives on forever on the internet. I have to admit I've used a rollback feature on an emulator or two (aka save states) over the years. Never owned a Spectrum (they weren't that big here in the US), but I've heard that their games are sometimes difficult to finish.
@JustWasted3HoursHere half the issue is difficulty, and the other half is generally having no clue what the actual objective is. Spectrum games were obtuse to say the least.
I always have done and love your channel however you have made a flaw in your judgement of this brilliant game ,Why is that I hear you shout retro Robbins😂 yes I'm hearing things if you kill the queen early then the Flies will not chase you and they become very hard to kill because they move out of the way , every level has a select number of flies all alien flies if you like , Try playing it this way and , kill all the Flies first then the Queen lust you will find the game a lot easier , keep up the great video buddy loved it
The game looks and sounds so great, such a shame it shit the bed with the controls and weapons mechanics. Instead of bombs it needed a giant rolled up newspaper to swot the bastards😂
Ah but if it were easier they'd have to balance the game to be more difficult again. And when it comes to budget games...they got the engine running and didn't bother balancing it. See L.A. Swat :D lol
Relax, I have no expertise on flies, bees or wasps. I would like to say that my childhood hatred for Spectrums and the games on it is being constantly justified with your videos, so... Thanks! I suppose.
Right.... that intro, your build up, the graphics, premise...all of these things made me think bugger me, how did I miss this game? Then you explain the movement...fuck that. Great video though 😊
I don’t recall a clue on the cassette label. I think they meant the cover art. The runes on the hour glass Zendos is holding spell his name. This gives you the runic symbols for six letters of the alphabet.
@@MaxSpender Ironically, I never got to play the game because it constantly failed to load back in 1984. But I always remembered the clue mentioned in the instructions, for some bizarre reason. There is 0.1% chance that I did play the game but completely forgot. Clips of the game elsewhere on UA-cam don't look familiar at all. I think I moved onto Jet Set Willy.
@@AntonyRG1 No worries. I could never figure Runes out when I was younger, but managed to complete it years later. Never really liked JSW. Loved Manic Miner 😂
I always rotate the joystick 45° when playing isometric games so that it matches up with the direction your character moves on screen. It works better on sticks with a symmetrical handle and buttons on the base, like the Atari 2600 controller, or the Competition Pro.
Saying "sometimes Quantum Leap" then showing Dr. Who with The Good Life music broke my brain a little. Well done.
The one before it was the Sliders intro with the music from Clarissa Explains it All, I think only one person has noticed that so far, haha.
@@RoseTintedSpectrum my lack of culture has once again become my nemesis.
I remember playing this game just for its amazing music and the animation at the beginning. Then I’d wander around with no idea what to do lol
I had this on my Atari XE and had a similar "no idea what I'm supposed to do, but it looks and sounds cool" experience - I had a legit boxed copy but the instructions weren't really a lot of help, although it's entirely possible I was just an idiot.
The problem with isometric games is that they slow down dramatically the more moving objects you have in play. Not having more than one bomb at a time was probably a technical limitation.
I loved Tom Baker's era of Quantum Leap. lol ;P
Let's hear it for Dads who are into scifi but have no adult friends who are so you are their designated geek buddy. My grandpa, dad, and his brothers were all like that
I used to play this game over at my mate David's house (he did not have a lot of games), we could never pronounce the name, so we just called it "The leggy anus game"
What are the differences between flies and wasps?
Head/Eyes
Flies: Large, moveable head with large to very large eyes.
Wasps: Head not so large in proportion to body and eyes usually large.
Mouthparts.
Flies: Sucking or piercing and sucking.
Wasps: Chewing (sometimes modified)
Antennae
Flies: Short to very short antennae (except in some species such as crane flies).
Wasps: Variable antennae - can be long and/or curled or relatively short.
Wings
This is the most obvious difference between flies and wasps, but wings can be hard to see when they are moving.
Flies: One pair of forewings, which are the only functional wings. The hindwings are reduced to club-like halteres.
Wasps: Two pairs of wings, with the hindwings smaller.
Thorax (mid-body section)
Flies: Middle segment of thorax (mesothorax) enlarged.
Wasps: Thorax not enlarged.
Waist
Flies: No distinct waist (except in some wasp/bee mimics).
Wasps: Distinct waist (except in sawflies)
Colour/markings
Pass... LOL
The Silence of the Lambs.
Ah remember buying this with mum in boots back in 1980s, only play it a little.
What else was she wearing?
I know, Boots... Sorry, Dad joke imperative.
lol @@K.F-R
Finds a haunted house and a ghost appears:
"Oh dear, its so spoopy i appear to have dropped my soap! I better bend over and pick it up, i sure do hope you're one of those prudish ghosts~"
I also used to watch the same shows and movies with my dad but I've never played this game And by the looks of it never will ha ha, The stoger is a funny thing And some things just don't hold up today But some are even better than you can remember
I had the same experience of this back in the day as you it seems. I remember being blown away by it at the time but not really understanding what was going on, and it was soon put to one side. Then just a few years ago I fired it up again, actually figured out what to do and thought..."is that it?" That said, I did persist with it, not sure I completed it but got a fair few levels in. Chasing the flies (they are flies, surely!) around for ages until you got that lucky shot in was sort of meditative, for a while at least :-)
The PT-PT-PT-PT noise of on board sound Spectrum is a soundscape never used on any system ever again. It would be interesting to release an indie game with 48k sound for a real retro kick. Would love to see the reviews as modern reviewers who have never heard of Sir Clive Sinclair collapsed into a black hole of anger and disgust as every single step they took lets out a far, far too loud "PT!" noise 😂
Amazingly enough, last night I couldn't sleep and thought of this game. No joke. I spent far far too long playing this game, but never got very far as shooting was so frustrating. By the way they are wasps, definitely wasps!
It's slightly easier -- but only _very_ slightly -- to line up the bomb shots if you let the wasp get close enough to your vehicle that it will start to follow you. They key is to do this without getting so close that you take damage. Then if you have enough space to move away in a single direction you can outpace the wasp before doubling back slightly and lobbing a bomb onto it. With practice judging this distance becomes second nature. But if you change direction mid-chase, due to another wasp or an obstacle, it's far more likely that the wasp will lose interest and start wandering off again.
This turns the completely random into the borderline tactical as you look for areas of map with long unobstructed stretches (roads are ideal) onto which you can lure a wasp. It doesn't completely eliminate the repetitive and frustrating nature, but it suppresses it a little and limits the number of times you have to wait for a missed bomb to bounce halfway across the map. I never completed this game but I did clear out a few cities before the boredom got to me.
Aha! That does make things a little better in that case. I was trying to stay as far off as possible because of the sluggish movement.
That's right. Allow the workers to follow you then suddenly turn back to lob a bomb at them. Sometimes it bounces over them which is annoying, but with practice you can hit them more often than not. Once all the workers are dead collect the super bomb and kill the queen. Next level. I played this a lot as a kid. As has been said, it was impressive for a budget game.
As I remember it once I figured out the distance you need to hit a fly it was a fairly easy game. I could hit the critters with a pretty decent hit rate. However, you are right that the mechanics could easily be improved quite substantially. On the other hand... Those clunky controls made the game unique for whatever that's worth.
I think I had this on a cove tape, as I had zero idea what to do too…
Thanks for bringing back the memories. This game was fantastic for 10 minutes… then went into the pile of Mastertronic games I played once. The pile of disappointment.
Holy crap! For 1887, on a Speccy, that is a killer intro!
Indeed quite impressive for 1887 considering that the integrated circuit wasn't even invented until 1959! ;P
@@JustWasted3HoursHere 🤣🤣 damn my clumsy fingers 🤣🤣
Non-fiction adventure flicks? I want to live in the world you do ❤😂
My dad liked that stuff too, including sports (literally anything). He bought me my specky too. ❤
The story of Barnes Wallis and him coming to terms with the devastation of what he created, should certainly compete with Oppenheimer for best film. Only a shame that it would be an impossible mission to cast Peter Graves
youtube recommended this to me, I'm glad it did! I like your style, and the game is really interesting
Glad to hear it!
I appreciate Rosie explains it all
5:22 Totally thought the same!
With that upbringing I swear we're brothers. 😳 But still, all they needed to do was make it so that pressing the button a second time when the bomb was out made it explode across a 3x3 tiled area, giving it some randomness but also some skill, and they'd have transformed it. But there were a lot of these beautiful but awful games on the Speccy. I of the Mask anyone? 😵💫
I, of the Mask was great until you touched the keyboard.
Having the bomb explode on demand would probably have made the game too easy.
You'll love Micronaut One
It was my favotrite game. You probably have missed something important about flies.
What if I make a patch?
So long as the patch makes them DEFINITELY flies and not bees or wasps, I'm all for it.
@@RoseTintedSpectrum Good news:
1) You play this game completely WRONG! You should kill all flies first then kill the queen! Because flies chase you ONLY when the queen is alive! And when the flies chase you it's way easier to kill them! (They also say that you should kill flying flies ASAP)
2) There's a version with selectable controls such as Kempston or Sinclair
3) There's a version with "FAST BOMBS" - when you can fire a new bomb whenever you want.
Now for the bad news: Nobody managed to combine two.
@@ZXSpectrumHotel I play every game wrong. It's my niche.
I just didn't understand it as a kid, the Amaurote cover art sucked me in as an 8yrs old! but i couldn't fathom what to do, Seeing that 'Queen Screen' 4:11 was a first, Infestation also stubbed me, appreciate the coverage !
They're beach flies, you can tell by their shades 😎
Visually very impressive! The bombs shoud just explode after the second bounce (you can't see them any further anyway). Boom! Game fixed. Sometimes, it is not the "extra mile" the developers should have gone, but just the extra inch.
I never found isometric games a problem because they followed the same natural rule which is:-
Top right is up, bottom left is down, top left is left n bottom right is right..... which sounds confusing as hell when written down but made total sense because we read left to right and scrolling games go from left to right..... which still doesn't make any sense as to why it feels natural/right BUT IT IS HONEST!
The presentation is amazing for a Spectrum game, what a shame they fucked it up with a single gameplay mechanic.
Honestly, visually this is the best spectrum you've shown me. If you replace the Hippoboscidae's with robots and you can probably rebrand this as a early Ghost in the Shell game?
I suspect this game did something to Mr Roses' brain, as there is a substantially above average number of mentions of anuses and things in this video.
I wrote it while I was on the toilet
Happy New Year. I continue to enjoy your nonsense. Underrated channel etc. etc.
Happy new year!
They’re bees, because flies don’t have a queen you steaming great erm… person.
But they're ALIEN flies, so maybe alien flies DO have a queen. Because they're aliens.
@@RoseTintedSpectrum true, maybe they are Nibbleepibblees after all and not an earthly species.
There's a certain class of games, of which this is one, that just couldn't seem to get out of their own way, giving you great presentation and a fun premise and then neutering themselves somehow with dumb controls or ammo limitations or whatever. Pilot a mech to defend Earth from aliens!!!.........by slowly bouncing a limited number of easily avoided balls at them.
Sphincter cannon, lol!!!
You went wrong by destroying the queen before all the insects. The insects stop following / chasing you after the queen is dead, which makes it stupidly difficult to kill them as they move randomly then. I played this game to death back in the day.
Infuriating game. The ability to remote detonate (which makes sense given the "one bomb at a time" mechanic) which could "stun" the wasps caught in the explosion, allowing you to line one up properly would have made this a much more enjoyable experience.
That said - if the game was any better, it wouldn't have been a 2.99 game. For a couple of quid though - deffo one of the better premium budget releases. Was happy to splurge my paper round wages on this back in the day.
I really like watching how other people play this game, I like it a lot but can't play it at all 🤪
Happy New Year to you too 😁
You know, Clarissa Explains it All really went off the rails when she started sliding.
This was quality! The sarcastic humour seemed tanked up to max 😄 The game looked impressive bar the gameplay lol
MSX version had a bug that made the game think you were pressing down, even on the menus, totally unplayable. Love the music still.
I think i'd have fixed it by having the bomb vanish when it leaves the screen and shooting done by holding down the fire button to keep firing and then pressing the joystick in the desired direction. This would of course mean you can't move and shoot.
Never, _ever_ expected a scolding for ghosts in this episode, but it's well-deserved. When _WILL_ they start shoving things up people's butts? Absolute _cowards...._
Shame about the sphincter bombs in this game though, huh? I feel like, _surely,_ there must be a spiritual successor-type game out there that was heavily inspired by this, but just lets you shoot lasers or something like a normal game. It seems like something that would've left a big mark on others who would later go into game development, and there were so many isometric and top-down shooters coming out of the UK back in the day (though, I guess stuff like Loaded, Reloaded and Machine Hunter were probably influenced more by the Chaos Engine/Soldier of Fortune or something). I'm curious if there's a game like this out there now, but plays better. Seems like too cool of a premise to settle for such janky sphincter bomb throwing vehicles, tbh...
Of course, it's hard to focus on that now that I'm thinking of ghosts being lame. No one can start a video like you, RTS!
Anyway, can't wait to see what games you end up showing us in 2024!
Not that I have any intention of doing this (or indeed, any knowledge of Z80 machine code which would help me) but that bomb thing feels like something which must be only a few POKEs away from being fixed, even if it's just destroying it after a few bounces or when it leaves the current screen.
Go on, Wolfie! Let's make it better!
The primary challenge is disassembling and understanding the code enough to make such modifications. Z80 doesn't give much away. Using tools within an emulator to look for memory locations which change when a bomb is released (but remain constant at other times) would be a good starting point, then searching for instructions which contain these addresses. Still an uphill battle from there, however! 😉
And as it's a live action game it's probably full of interrupts and that. Skoolkit might be a good place to start. @@zxpresh
A. Pickford and D. Whittaker gave me the creeps. For £2.99. In black and white. But on my Atari 800XL not the Speccy.
One bomb 😂😂😂
I think it is one of the few games I finished. It has flaws but it is a budget game that was better than a lot of full price games I had :)
Fair play to you for finishing it! That must have been a slog, but you're right, for the price it's a solid wee game with a few issues that, in today's eyes, just seem like daft oversights.
Whats the music at around the 9 minute mark?
It's the old BBC Boxing theme
ua-cam.com/video/16--lnTAF5U/v-deo.html
Damn that looks frustrating. I remember the reviews but never played this game. Glad I didn't!
I tried to play this on the Atari 8-bit, and that port is just the same disgrace.
Somebody could fix it now.
Had to find a video of someone doing a complete walkthru of this game: ua-cam.com/video/K-M_a4VbuWk/v-deo.htmlsi=NtmEwVu9LSqoCHhy It's about 3 hours long. Be warned though: You will probably be pissed by the fact that he kills virtually every insect with one shot. Maybe it just takes a ton of practice?
Rzx Archive uses rollback methods to record the footage, so basically they'll keep "rewinding" a missed shot until they get it to land, all you see on the recorded end is the shot that landed. This means that even though the video is 3 hours or so, the amount of time it took to record it is probably way beyond, to the point I'd want to cry myself to sleep
@@RoseTintedSpectrumAh, didn't know that! And I looked again and you're right. It's mentioned right there in the video description. (At least he's honest about it).
@@JustWasted3HoursHere Yeah, RZX (now sadly deceased) was the host of the site but he would take entries from various folks who were just putting together playthroughs of the entire games - pretty much all of them are rollback but they're a great resource to see the full games which you likely never will in real life because they're Spectrum games and they hate you.
@@RoseTintedSpectrumThat's sad, but at least he lives on forever on the internet. I have to admit I've used a rollback feature on an emulator or two (aka save states) over the years. Never owned a Spectrum (they weren't that big here in the US), but I've heard that their games are sometimes difficult to finish.
@JustWasted3HoursHere half the issue is difficulty, and the other half is generally having no clue what the actual objective is. Spectrum games were obtuse to say the least.
I always have done and love your channel however you have made a flaw in your judgement of this brilliant game ,Why is that I hear you shout retro Robbins😂 yes I'm hearing things if you kill the queen early then the Flies will not chase you and they become very hard to kill because they move out of the way , every level has a select number of flies all alien flies if you like , Try playing it this way and , kill all the Flies first then the Queen lust you will find the game a lot easier , keep up the great video buddy loved it
Beetles
The game looks and sounds so great, such a shame it shit the bed with the controls and weapons mechanics. Instead of bombs it needed a giant rolled up newspaper to swot the bastards😂
Ah but if it were easier they'd have to balance the game to be more difficult again. And when it comes to budget games...they got the engine running and didn't bother balancing it.
See L.A. Swat :D lol
Was that "Clarissa"? Staph 😂
I forget, but can also guarantee that is most likely was, haha
@@RoseTintedSpectrum banger show! Love the Easter eggs sprinkled through your vids!
Looks like Wasps to me.
Relax, I have no expertise on flies, bees or wasps. I would like to say that my childhood hatred for Spectrums and the games on it is being constantly justified with your videos, so... Thanks! I suppose.
Right.... that intro, your build up, the graphics, premise...all of these things made me think bugger me, how did I miss this game? Then you explain the movement...fuck that. Great video though 😊
Sounds like standard isometric movement surely? The 💣 thing is the big issue!
The Runes of Zendos. What was the clue on the cassette label?
I don’t recall a clue on the cassette label. I think they meant the cover art. The runes on the hour glass Zendos is holding spell his name. This gives you the runic symbols for six letters of the alphabet.
@@MaxSpender Ironically, I never got to play the game because it constantly failed to load back in 1984. But I always remembered the clue mentioned in the instructions, for some bizarre reason. There is 0.1% chance that I did play the game but completely forgot. Clips of the game elsewhere on UA-cam don't look familiar at all. I think I moved onto Jet Set Willy.
@@AntonyRG1 No worries. I could never figure Runes out when I was younger, but managed to complete it years later. Never really liked JSW. Loved Manic Miner 😂