I can’t be alone in thinking that Freescape was the extent of the ZX Spectrum’s capabilities. But in its 40th anniversary year, two developers have relesed what can only be described as a Quake-style game engine for Sir Clive Sinclair’s amazing little computer.
From the minds and fingers of Alone Coder and Dragons’ Lord, this 3D environment (which may well owe more to DOOM than Quake) moves at a surprising rate (in rough DOOM terms, an 8MB 286 system) on a standard ZX Spetrum 128k.
The video description (below) reveals more impressive speeds for the 7 and 14MHz versions, with WASD and cursor key controls. It might be monochrome, but for a system released in the year of Prince William’s birth, I think we can excuse that shortcoming, don’t you?
A fully playable Quake engine with moving enemies running at impressive speed on a standard 3,5 MHz ZX Spectrum 128k. The engine also has support for 7 and 14 MHz, where the 14 Mhz version also has a second floor. You play with W, A, S, D and cursor keys. Tap and Scl files is available in the download. In this video it is the 7 MHz version that has been played on an original 3,5 MHz machine, and it runs fine, but if you have a machine with 7 or 14 MHz it will run faster.
This engine, even running at 3,5 MHz, totally beats the old Freescape engine that were used in the 80s games. Try it on your Toastrack and be impressed!
The engine / demo game was made by Alone Coder and Dragons’ Lord in 2022.
While personally a Commodore afficionado, I’ve long had a soft spot for the Speccy, with its British design, budget presentation, and quirky cassette storage that made the C64 seem positively stable. But while it is one of three 8-bit computers I spent any significant time with back then, I never imagined seeing anything like this on it.
Who the hell did? Alone Coder and Dragons’ Lord, we salute you.
You can try the ZX Spectrum 3D shooter style engine on your own system (hosted on VK).
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