Forty niner ZX81

[Kanizatime]

It reminds me of game O'Riley's mine for C64. 

[bukster1]

It was interesting how you could get a higher res graphics just by programming your own picture generation routine. You can't do that with modern computers.

[weegerri1sm]

I had this game.

ZX Spectrum resolution graphics (albiet without the colour) on a ZX81. :)

The picture on this game used to wobble a heck of a lot on my ZX81 though!?!!

[thesman32]

i did not know you got a ram pack that big for the zx81 i had the 16k one and this game ahh the memories

[shalroth]

I remember an advert in Sinclair User from 1982, for ZX81 memory expansions - the title was "How to grow up to a megabyte micro." Looked like you bought a base unit for the edge connector, and just stacked up your memory on top as you bought it (each module had a through connector).

Don't fancy trying to bank switch a megabyte of RAM into a 64K address space, myself.

[vntr2006]

Is it just me or did we have a better time creating our own little games rather than the graphic heavy ones today? Even getting a few blobs to move around the screen was amazing in those days. BBC Basic was the best for speed.

[MrModulator]

The funny thing is that this was perceived as high res! Depends on what you are used to. It was high res for the Zx 81, but it had very low res graphics compared to most computers at the time. Should have been called pixelmapped graphics or something (as a contrast to the character based "normal mode").

[NotATube]

If it used the same technique as other hi-res packages for the unmodified ZX81, then it would have given you 256 x 192 pixels, albeit with some limitations.

That's the same resolution as the ZX Spectrum and high-res by the standards of the time.

[reverendcutterx]

We all sat in silent awe at this round at some posh kids house once. Hacks aside, by the end of the 81's life you could get high res packs, sound packs and colour packs (from DK-Tronics and Prism I think). But the thing would have cost twice the price of a spectrum by the time you soldered, blue-tacked and stickle-bricked them on. You'd have to write your own games for them too, which might have slowed you down a bit.

[NotATube]

As far as I'm aware, this did run on a standard 16K ZX81 though. I even came across adverts for games like this in old computer mags- see my comment elsewhere for how at least one software-based hi-res package managed it. (I assume this game used the same technique).

[NibblesBigNuts]

Great games, great times. Home computing used to be real fun back then. Happy days :D

[238FRN]

What memories!! The days of pushing very limited tech to the limit....too bad today with so many Gbs and Ghz...one can get lazy!

[dreamcastII]

Very nice. Glad to see this.

[ChromeRed]

ZX81 my first computer with a rampack 56k. It cost me £73 (90 USdollars).

Those were the days !

[Simmo188]

One thing was worse,typing pages of pages of code and wobbling the rampack :/

[starsky2112]

There was nothing worse than typing all that stuff out then getting a 'Syntax error' Grrrrr..

[MoneyPenny70]

This was awesome. I remember that the first "hires" game I ever saw was written by this young kid, typed it in from a magazine and couldn't believe it when I saw it. Thanks!

[b6gm6n]

good christ look at that...

[starsky2112]

Yes it is a shocker, You mean you had a ZX81 and never heard of these games, You missed out ;-)

It's not a fake, It is a Bog standard ZX81 with 16K ram pack, There were 4 hi-res games by software

farm, Forty niner, Rocket man, Booster, Z-Xtricator

[kingarthurpendragon]

How did they get a ZX-81 play with high-res? It´s fake!? Or an improved hardware version?

[NotATube]

No, it's not fake, such games exist. I never played any hi-res games personally, but I remember an actual high-res graphics toolkit demo running on a normal 16K ZX81. I believe that this worked by changing the row of (8x8) being drawn on *every* scan line, rather than waiting for all 8 lines to be drawn. By selecting a different combination of chars for each scan line, you got almost hi-res, although you could only have the patterns of pixels already in use as parts of letters.

[nickthesafe]

No fake there. Had this game myself - it was a software innovation, once we figured out the code even us schoolboys were writing it into our programs :-)

[ueberRegenbogen]

The ZX-81's video output is software driven; a program (normally in ROM) constructs the video stream. (In slow mode, other processing can only occur during vertical blanking. Fast mode foregoes video output in favour of more CPU for other things).

Hi-res is achieved by a programme in RAM taking over building video. It's actually a slightly simpler process; but, of course, you need more memory (up to 6k for 256×192) for the frame buffer.

[starsky2112]

Yup, With that lovely flat keyboard, Then there was the curse of the 'Ram pack wobble.' Arghhhhh

[malad1]

Remember those dark silent nights playing stuff like this?

[starsky2112]

LMFAO, Funny, Gosub 10

[lumsdot]

10 for a=16384 to 16384+128

20 poke a,255

30 next a

RUN

[MichaelCapelle]

How RETRO can you GET???

[starsky2112]

lol, Any requests ?

[Ranxerox2006]

great vid, thanks for posting this. I love watching zx81 games

[starsky2112]

Yes, There's meant to be no bloody sound on it, lol