Frank N Stein- ZX Spectrum Half A Walkthrough

All the best monsters are hand built. Prof. Stein's life-long ambition has always been to build his own monster - but first he needs all the bits! You guide him around the dungeon picking up the bones in the right order then activate the monster by throwing the switch. You then have to deactivate it again in the next level when it runs amok and try again.

This is a platform game released by PSS in 1984. It's more of a puzzle game than the standard platformer and one of the better games from 84 in my opinion. Thought I'd have a go at finishing it but level 25 appears to be impossible without poking so I only got halfway through the games 50 levels. This is all at 6x speed.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• ZX
• SPECTRUM
• SPECCY
• WALKTHROUGH
• FRANK
• STEIN

[AlvoOroszlan]

This means we must walk less! This doesn't sound that obvious, considering that if you run into a monster, you lose a life, but you continue the level from the same point (you still have the parts you got) & the Prof. will be at the top platform! So we could save some time with this.

Don't know if this works, haven't tested it yet, but there's gotta be a solution, 'cause I remember completing the game without cheating. Okay, I had infinite lives, but here you have 5, so it must be enough :-)

[9Pix9]

@AlvoOroszlan I tried everything I could think of but if you figure it out let me know. Maybe there were two different versions?

[TobyTheTissue]

I'm currently doing a remake of this. Quite pleased with it so far - even though it's taken me a year to do!

[Term1nat0r]

My name is Colin Stewart the author of Frank N Stein.

It seems that it is not possible to complete level 25 on a ZX Spectrum emulator, it's only possible on the real ZX Spectrum hardware. I have made a change to level 25 so it can be completed, let me know the file type you use (.tap / .tzx) and I'll send it to you.

[AlvoOroszlan]

@9Pix9 the-tipshop.co.uk - this site mentions 'Original PSS and Monser S.A. releases' and 'Special Programs release (Mr. Dracula)'. This second one is in Italian, but I've never seen that until now. I don't know if there is any different between the other two, but the pokes on the site are for both versions, so they're probably identical.

Anyway, I'll try my best and I'll surely tell you about it if I somehow succeed :-)

[AlvoOroszlan]

Hi,

I'm also stuck at level 25, but I've just made a highly interesting discovery.

Right at the beginning, I fell down, walk right to the spring, jumped up, paused the game and I saved it (I use Spectaculator 7.0.1). Then I got my stop-watch, and made two measurements from this point until time ran out. One time, I was just standing and doing nothing, the other time I was walking back and forth on that upper platform during the whole time.

Without walking: 2:56

With walking: 2:40 !!!

[w4tkn]

Thanks for posting this, it brings me back to my childhood. My Mum and I used to play this together as the controls were very simple -left and right. 5 years ago I got married and left home. I got a spectrum emulator and we played those last few weeks together playing Frank and some others, it was very special.