This week has certainly been one to impress, especially with Doom being shown on the Atari ST, and the more recent Turrican 128k remaster for the Amstrad CPC. Now it's time for the ZX81 to get in on the action, as trawling through the latest Twitter posts, we've just come across a game called 'Cosmic Payback' for the ZX81, ported over from the 2020 ZX Spectrum release. A game which originally had "a unique Mode 6 graphics engine that allows for smooth movement and a sense of momentum, with different tiles affecting the player's exploration pod in various ways". To coincide with this news, we've got the latest footage of the game below.
While feedback has been extremely positive such as "Wow! That is seriously impressive. Trailblazer meets bounder " and "Incredible work on such a limited system". Here's the latest from the website about the game. "After the original ZX Spectrum release of Cosmic Payback, I began to wonder if the ZX81 might be capable of running the game. The thought lay in my head from early 2023 until about late 2024 when I started to work seriously on it. Now in 2025, the game is complete, and my idle thought has become reality".
- Bounce your way through fifteen levels of challenging gameplay and fast 3-D action with Cosmic Payback on the 16K ZX81!
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Once upon a long time ago I was given a ZX81 (1K) for free when a friend of mine decided to get a Coleco Adam computer. I typed in a few games from a magazine and was not impressed. I considered it an overglorified calculator compared to my C64 I had at the time. Into the closet it went for eternity. 16K and some expert coding makes a big difference as this game proves. It took 42 years, but I'm finally impressed by something on this little machine. Congrats to the dev.
ReplyDeleteWHAT!
ReplyDeleteVery impressive!