Horace Goes Tweeting

The Inept Reviewer: Irrelevant ramblings of the retro games of yester year. On YouTube: youtube.com/Collieuk On Twitch : twitch.tv/collieuk Bluesky: collieuk.bsky.social Follow-me-do ... or Follow-me-don't A big thanks to all my followers past and present

@RetroBrothers @PixelCNinja I saw this running on one of those Archimedes at school that they got from the Computers for School token campaign. I never got to play it myself but it looked good. There were a couple of other games on it too. No follow up sequel to Granny's Garden on the BBC Micro though!

@PixelCNinja I remember seeing this running on an Archimedes. I was massively impressed and it was genuinely jaw dropping. My jaw dropped again when I saw how much an Archimedes cost 😃

In Virus (originally released as Zarch on the Acorn Archimedes), you are essentially fighting a losing battle against a biological alien invasion. Created by David Braben (the mind behind Elite), the game is a masterclass in Newtonian physics; your hovercraft doesn't just "move," it thrusts, drifts, and tumbles. If you tilt too far, you’ll crash into the procedurally generated landscape before the aliens even get a chance to infect the flora! This game holds up well even by today's standards, I cannot state how good the controls are. When this came out, there was nothing quite like it. I originally played this on the Atari ST, but the Amiga version rocks too.

I've been playing a lot of Helldivers 2 recently. It's a very fun game when you want to vent off some steam. Also, I just bought Over the Top WWI, a 200 player multiplayer shooter which seems to be absolute chaos and craziness and lots of moustaches. I hope it does well.

@Tweetophon @UltimaCodex Make sure the ledges are moving to make the jumps nearly impossible. That's how most of us remember U8 back in the day.

@UltimaCodex But how will the avatar jump from little ledge to little ledge... how can exult capture the true joy of u8?

The "Ultima 8: Exult" team have implemented another area of Tenebrae from "Ultima 8" in the "Exult" engine.

@RetroBrothers My first computer was also the ZX81. The keyboard wasn't kind to my infant fingers. The games we had were terrible. Luckily we got a Spectrum a couple of years later. I had no idea the ZX81 was even capable of something like 3D Monster Maze.

So, the first machine I ever used, the #ZX81 turns 45 today. My friend had one, complete with 16K RAM Pack. Seeing it run Sabotage and then later, 3D Monster Maze opened up a whole new world to me... I've been hooked ever since. #retrogames

Haven't done a beer review for a while. This is Old Tom Beer by @robbiesbrewery . A distinctly dark, malty beer originating from a 1899 recipe. At 8.5% it's not an everyday beer, but goes down well, without or without a hearty meal. Definitely one I could enjoy again 8/10

@MaestroDrake1 He's such a legend.

Ready the broomstick! The fight is on!

@RetroBrothers Generic Monochrome Sideways Space Shooter 2000 by Generic Soft.

Name the #ZXSpectrum game and publisher. Level: medium

@zx_spectrum_30 Haha brilliant. She is absolutely tone deaf. Voters want the change they voted for... No shit Sherlock. Instead they did the exact opposite and thought it would be better to bankrupt the economy and put the prices of everything up and ignore everyone. Idiots.

Nothing says ‘It’s time to really listen” like turning replies off 🤦‍♂️

@exQUIZitely Ultima 7 is the series highlight in my opinion. Such great depth. Combat is rubbish but the characters and storytelling is great. Weakest is U9. Took forever to release and buggy as hell. Should have been a 3D Ultima 7 but they lost their way somewhere along the line.

Ultima I was released in 1981. Ultima IX came out in 1999. It’s arguably one of the best - if not the best - roleplaying franchises of all time. Among the options below, which was your favourite and which did you consider the weakest? My favourite was Ultima IV; it felt very different (and still stands out as pretty unique today). I wasn’t a fan of Ultima VIII anymore and subsequently never touched Ultima IX.

@exQUIZitely Ultima 6. A good 50+ hours before I need to move on to another game. I got it for Christmas around 1992 and I was hooked.

You wake up and it's 1990. Which of these games are you playing first? And yes, they're all from 1990. Easy to forget how epic that year was...

@RetroBrothers D-Day Dizzy.

Easy peesy. Name the #ZXSpectrum game.

@Jamie_Dodger_ @PaulPag46852754 She's not been the same since her good friend Jeffrey died.

@PaulPag46852754 FERGIE HAS LET HERSELF GO...

@RetroBrothers I have absolutely no idea what this gif is about. You're welcome.

Stop stuffing my feed with irrelevant crap!

@zx_spectrum_30 @RetroGamer_Mag I never see Retro gamer in any shops now. Didn't know it still existed.

Beautiful!

@jlocraf @ultimadragons @theonetrueHRLN @thegrimscalper @philomancer76 @DungeonNoir @RichardGarriott U6 got me hooked on the Ultima series but U7 is the pinnacle of them. It's crazy how underappreciated it is in gaming circles when it created a living world full of interesting & unique characters and had an incredible plot. It's fun to go back to it & rediscover all the secrets

@theonetrueHRLN @thegrimscalper @philomancer76 @ultimadragons @DungeonNoir @RichardGarriott Ultima Underworld and U7 are still some of the best games ever made. Both were responsible for making me a gamer. It's been 30 years and I still think about U7 at least once a week, or randomly find myself whistling the music

What version of Ultima 4 is this? I don't remember it looking this good. newyorker.com/culture/cultur…

@MaestroDrake1 Never heard of it but looks a lot more interesting than that other movie.

@Collieuk Try this!!!!!!!!!! youtu.be/nWF0bBKhe6o?si…

As a favour to someone I had to go see the Markiplier #IronLungMovie the other day. As a 40 minute short, this could have been decent. But its tiny content is stretched over 2 hours. I fell asleep twice and had no idea what was going on. Very stylish for the budget though. 4/10

Get the original 3D survival horror game and its 2 sequels for free at Gog.com. Alone in the Dark is still a very atmospheric game, the terror slow and menacing. The sequels are incredibly brutal and tough thanks to awkward gunplay. But for free worth a play.

@Gee38826606 @ZX48kSpectrum Snap. All the games I had for it were utterly basic. Never thought it could do much until a few years back. Check out Bob's Stuff on itch.io he has made versions of Ant Attack and Crossy Road for the ZX81. Crazy!

@ZX48kSpectrum I used to have a ZX81 but never thought it can run games like this.

“We dig up diamonds by the score A thousand rubies, sometimes more But we don't know what we dig 'em for We dig dig dig a-dig dig Heigh-ho…” Manic Miner #ZX81 #SnowWhite

@DanteNDigitalis Someone made a great comment about the lack of people's awareness or empathy with the Iranians being killed by their government. It was "they're waiting for the media to tell them how to react". Everything else is so one sided in the news and the villains are clearly stated.

#IranRevolution #SilenceIsComplicity instagram.com/reel/DTWATVtEu…