r/zxspectrum

👾 The alien invasion is back on the ZX Spectrum — and this time, you don’t have to face it alone!

I’m very happy to present Space Invaders Co-Op Edition, a new take on the arcade classic that keeps the original tension and pacing intact, while adding full 2-player simultaneous couch co-op on the same screen. 🚀

The goal was simple: stay faithful to the arcade feel, while adding a few modern touches to make the experience even more fun and replayable:

✅ True local 2-player co-op, with both players sharing a pool of lives while battling for the highest score.

✅ End-of-game awards based on your performance, including distinctions like First Blood, Terminator and UFO Hunter.

✅ Separate high score tables for 1-player and 2-player games, plus a dedicated Hall of Fame.

✅ Tape Save/Load support, automatic SD Save/Load support, Kempston 2 joystick support, and 4 overlay modes, including ULA+ support.

Huge thanks to Craig Howard for the fantastic loading screen, Lee Bee for the brand new sound effects, and Alan Allan Turvey for the ULA+ routines.

You can watch the co-op action here:

📺 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpPu0K_4Ong

I hope you enjoy playing it as much as I enjoyed making it.

first and second image is my current tv that works enough with my sinclair, using RGB via scart, but only with vertical sync, no horizontal sync, i feel like the tv decoding horizontal sync itself causes the pixels to blur sideways,

the third image is a tv that seems to not be able to decode horizontal sync itself on rgb, and the fourth is that same tv but using composite mode, as there is no video signal going down pin 20, only vsync, it gives me a ghostly image, but its able to decode horizontal sync?? idk its really weird stuff.

asking for advice on if connecting pin 20 on scart to the Csync pin on the sinclair will remove the sideways blurring, or if thats another issue entirely, i have a diagram on the wiring which i wanna know if its accurate or not too included,

thanks

when i first got my sinclair a month ago, recording wasnt working and i didnt know why, until i opened it up and realised the little tab thats supposed to push the switch.. wasnt there, so i tied a bit of stick to the spring via a brass wire, and a ziptie to the switch, works.. just wanted to show this off.. its funny.

my sinclair is getting me into learning a lot of electronics engineering and stuff its very helpful. a stick being the only thing stopping me from saving my data is really funny to me, you couldnt do that on modern hardware. (i also just printed out a 208 page manual on it so i could have physical documentation)

Back in 1986, on a CZ-Spectrum (a local Argentine clone), I fell in love with Art Studio. Decades later, I wanted to revisit my retro pixel art roots on an emulator, but I hit a wall: I didn't have the Lenslok prism to get past the copy protection.

Simon Owen built a brilliant C++ Windows utility (LensKey) to solve this years ago. Since I'm on a macOS environment and wanted something without dependencies, I extracted his original mathematical transformation matrices and ported the whole thing to a modern, client-side web.

It's completely free, runs locally in your browser, and handles the screen capturing workflows smoothly.

You can use it here directly: https://www.bustelo.com.ar/apps/lenskey-web/index-en.html

Or check the source code on GitHub: https://github.com/sbustelo/lenskey-web

Huge thanks to Simon Owen for the original reverse engineering. Hope this helps someone else trying to play Elite, Tomahawk, or Art Studio today :)

I got this one working around Christmastime, cleaned the board replaced the belts but had the scart issue with no 128k sound and left it at the time intending to fix it.

Had it in cupboard until 2 weeks ago, took it apart without testing it then realised I had the wrong resistors, ordered new ones then ripped a trace so left it until I worked out how to fix it, I think I fixed trace (ran wire from via, to a capacitor leg on same circuit. put board back in and got a messed up screen.

Tried a diagnostics rom and it says upper ram failure, other ram test said I had 16k available.

Have attached a few pictures and will upload the actual reference later, I did notice a few darkened pads when I took board out so I reflowed them at time so may of broke something.

I love the Spectrum, and I love James Bond. Had to get this when I saw the seller only wanted 100 quid for it =)

The outer box does have a funky odour though sadly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJq76kCHjEA

Download: https://theshich.itch.io/death-chase-faster-zx-spectrum

Please share your thoughts.

Ok, not really. It's just a conversion of a Gears 5 wallpaper into speccy graphics.
I did, however, write a blog post showing how to move a ZX Spectrum .scr file from a memory location into the screen memory using BASIC and Z80 assembly language, which is an old trick that I used to do when I was a kid.

I'd rip the screens from video games and put them into my own. I remember I made a really awful top down scrolling car game in BASIC but it had the main screen for Chase HQ surrounding the play area! I thought I was a coding god at 12 years old or something!

The code and the writeup is here: Gears 5 ZX Spectrum

Enjoy!