Guru Larry Fat Cunt

[Guest]

ZX Spectrum graphics remind me a lot of those Tiger handheld games. You'll have an outline of a character but then you can also see the background through the character for some reason.

That is the stereotypical image of ZX Spectrum game, but they didn't all look like that.
The reason why this ended up happening so often is called attribute clash. Basically pixels on screen are divided into 8x8 blocks, and all pixels of the same block can only ever have the same color. If you want to have moving pixels in color, you better make sure that the sprites have been drawn with the blocks in mind, else things start looking messy.

Every ZX Spectrum game I've ever seen looks like that. Did the majority look this way, or have I only seen the crappy ones somehow? It seems like it must've been difficult to make the graphics look good on that machine.

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

It was just way easier to use transparent sprites and a colored background.

An example of a properly-evolved ZX game would be a tie-in for the claymation series The Trap Door. Every single frame has so many things going on has been carefully designed to align with those 8x8 blocks, creating a game that fake nerds would never even associate with the ZX Spectrum.

[Kugelfisch]

It's peak performance looks still worse than shitty C64 games.

[Guest]

I would argue whether this

still looks worse than the bottom-to-medicore range of C64's video game library (by the way, Commodore got this ported too, only it's much more laggy there).

Also we're looking at this from today's gay perspective of muh stunning visualz. People back then were happy to get any computer at all. As long as you were able to distinguish things on the display, it was enough. What mattered was whether the game had well-designed mechanics, was fluent enough and not critically broken - same as with non-electronic games. The instruction booklet contained some story/outline, the artwork on on the box looked cool (usually). The mentioned Driller included a cardboard model of game's map, to assist the gameplay - neat enough.

People were expected only to use their brains and not to be autists. What a wrong turn had things taken to end where we're now.

[Kugelfisch]

The C64 was still much better. The keyboard alone made it vastly superior, especially if you wanted to code something in Basic or do any other computer things with it.

[jpakke]

Bongs also always had pretty damn shit taste in games, for example, they've barely made any rpgs, and I don't think they were popular at all in bongland, same with a lot of strategy games, at least that's my impression of them.

[Liar Revealed]

The C64 was still much better. The keyboard alone made it vastly superior, especially if you wanted to code something in Basic or do any other computer things with it.

Yeah. My problem with Brit YouTubers is that they'll review a game, and tell you that it was ported to ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, and Commodore 64. They might give you a glimpse of the Amstrad and C64 ports, but for the rest of the video they use the Spectrum footage. And it looks like shit.

[Guest]

Why the fuck are you watching Brit YouTubers? Sounds like you got what you deserve tbh.

[da PAC Nigguh]

That's part of why Black Mirror Bandersnatch was so lame. It was all about shitty 80s bongs making shitty 80s bong games and shitty 80s bing tv hosts reviewing them.

[Liar Revealed]

Why the fuck are you watching Brit YouTubers? Sounds like you got what you deserve tbh.

They seem to be the only ones that review Commodore 64 stuff.