I've a vague memory of playing a Spectrum game that had a menu option that let you pick whether sprite or background colours took priority over the other. I think it was a Dizzy-style platform/adventure game, where you had to pick up objects and take them to the right locations to solve puzzles.

Not much to go on I know, but does anybody have any idea what the game was?

Do you remember this gem? One of my favourite games: you are a guard in a bank and you can't let the bad guys get through, you must not shoot good guys. I play it on emulator even nowadays sometimes.

Hi everyone,

I’ve been working on a project that sits at the intersection of retro reverse-engineering and modern software architecture. Like many of you, I grew up obsessed with 8-bit text adventures created with the Professional Adventure Writing System (PAWS).

While I love the nostalgia of these games, we all know the classic frustration: the rigid Verb + Noun parser and the dreaded "guess-the-verb" bottlenecks. To bridge this gap, I’ve built a modern interpreter and a transformation pipeline to bring these classics into the 2020s.

The Reverse Engineering Challenge

Since original source databases for these games are rarely preserved—only Z80 emulator snapshots remain—I went down a heavy reverse-engineering rabbit hole. I’ve implemented a tool in Ruby that extends the concepts of legacy extractors like unPAWS to achieve 100% data recovery.

My pipeline now dumps the entire game logic into a clean, highly readable JSON file. This includes:

• Full vocabulary, messages, and logical instruction blocks ("condacts").
• User-defined charsets.
• Original vector-based graphic primitive commands (points, lines, fills, and patterns).

To streamline this, I built a Model Context Protocol (MCP) tool to interface directly with the ZEsarUX emulator. This allowed me to automate memory dumps, compare state changes, and handle disassembly through a high-level orchestration layer.

What the Engine Does Right Now:

• Web & Terminal UI: Play classic games natively in a browser with modern typography and full fidelity.
• Semantic Intent Layer: I’ve added a middleware layer that acts as a translator. If a player types a natural language sentence, the engine performs a semantic mapping to rewrite it into the precise syntactic command the original logic expects (e.g., translating a complex phrase into exactly SAY TO EDDIE "DANGER").
• Dynamic Visual Reinterpretation: The interpreter reads original Spectrum vector commands and uses modern neural rendering models to reinterpret them in real-time. You can switch visual styles (pixel art, digital painting, etc.) while maintaining the original composition.
• Developer Tooling: Includes a feature-rich visual debugger to trace flags, full playthrough transcription, and autoplay for integration testing.

Next Steps: A Modern Authoring Tool

Because the core engine decouples the game logic from old hardware and runs entirely on readable JSON, it has evolved into a full framework. You can already write a brand new adventure entirely in JSON from scratch.

My next big milestone is a Graphical Adventure Editor to facilitate the creation of new narrative games using this reimagined interpreter.

I’m posting technical updates and devlogs here: 👉https://shorturl.at/MsziX

I'd love to hear your thoughts on the architecture, the challenges of preserving vector-based graphics, and what features you’d like to see in a modern JSON-backed adventure editor!

is rca and composite video the same thing or is it compatibile with composite modded spectrum?

My retrospective look at Bonanza Brothers including arcade, all ports and spin-offs. What’s your thoughts of this 90s game?

Today we’re going back to 1984 to take a look at one of the most unique movie tie-in games of all time: Ghostbusters for the ZX Spectrum, by Activision.