My Spectrum Games

I have been a huge Spectrum fan since I got my first one in 1983, to replace my aging ZX81.

Apart from the games I was always interested in writing my own games, but never quite managed to get my head round Z80 machine code.



Because of that I spent most of my time writing adventure games in BASIC just for my own pleasure, and it wasn’t until much later (about 25 years later) that a brilliant utility allowed me to create full machine cade games with little programming knowledge.

The utility in question is AGD (Arcade Games Designer) written by Jonathan Cauldwell. It runs on the Spectrum (or emulator) and allow you to build games in a fast and easy use system. It is not like the early Spectrum game creation programs like HURG or Games Designer, but much more flexible.

There is some programming involved, but once picked up, it is quite easy to get a simple game up and running.

My first game released using this tool was Kyd Cadet in 2010, quickly followed by Kyd Cadet II. In 2011 my next game, Chopper Drop was released and there are more on the way…

Check out AGD

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, I like your game Chopper Drop on YouTube! It's nice, clean and simple. Nice sound fx too! It reminds me of my game called Chopper Mission that I wrote in Z80 assembler back in 1985. You can catch it on YouTube (by zxspectrumgames4). Those were the days! Feel free to contact me on manjinder@inbox.com.

Nice one!

Fuzz Face said...

Chopper Drop is really great, I am wondering if its based on an older game or if its an original idea? Its the sort of game that would have probably done very well back in the day! I was in the same boat always wanted to make games but never got anywhere with machine code beyond typing in scrollers from magazines!! Thanks to your vids Im trying out AGD now and it is fantastic, I just need some original ideas!! Cheers

Paul (Random Kak) said...

The original idea was to make a game similar to the Flash game made on an episode of 'The Gadget Show' a few years back called Heli-Golf (I think). That proved a bit too optimistic so I modified it a bit into the game as it is.
Glad you like the tutorials - hopefully we'll see more Spectrum games being released.

Anton Dohrn Cafè 2 said...

i love this game! and the kid cadet series too!

Abrimaal said...

Who created music for your games Space Disposal, Kyd Cadet 1 & 2, Chopper Drop etc?
Would you like a nice beeper theme for Kyd Cadet 3 in style of Ben Daglish' beeper music?

Paul (Random Kak) said...

Hi, I did te music for those games. I may contact you again if I need music for any of my new games. Thanks.

Unknown said...
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Nige said...

Hi. I was wonering whether you had ever come across a Doodler Lightpen from FE Electronics.
I had one of these, and it had all of the functions and tools that were missing from the DK Tronics pens that you reviewed previously. not only was everything done by using the pen and onscreen icons (no need for keyboard presses), you could, magnify, use spray paint, fill, undo, load up your favourite loading screens and tweak them. it was a truly fantastic bit of kit.

Keep up the fantastic work

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