Zub news #1

Blog posted by Ste Pickford on Thu, 22 Dec 2011
Subject: Zub

For some reason our 1986 Mastertronic ZX Spectrum game Zub keeps on popping up in various different ways lately. Maybe the gods are trying to tell us something?

First of all here's a completely faithful remake of Zub, playable in a browser. This little nugget of goodness has been sat in my inbox since late October, waiting for me to blog about it. Click the link or the image to play the game.

In April last year Rob at Gameshot emailed us to ask for permission to do a Flash remake of Zub. We don't own any rights in Zub so weren't in a position to grant or deny permission anyway, but it was nice to be asked so we gave him our blessing anyway, for what it's worth.

Over a year later and it's finally complete, and it looks pretty much 100% accurate as far as I can tell. The game was always way too hard, so I can't even get past the first level to check if everything else is right, but I'm sure it is.

» Play the remake on Gameshot.org

Tags: indie, remake, retro, pixel, flash, zx spectrum

Follow up post: Zub news #2

View the softography page for Zub »

Permalink to this post: http://www.zee-3.com/pickfordbros/blog/view.php?post=607

One of the nice things about Zub on the Speccy and CPC was once you got a feel for the handling and the game dynamics it felt "right". Very few games of the era had that. It wasn't until the likes of Sonic that it started to become more common.

The remake isn't quite there. The PC remake from a few years ago almost got it spot on but this new remake feels slightly wrong. The baddies return too quickly, the handling of the main character feels wrong.

If someone hasn't played Zub for 20 years then they'll probably think it's fine. But as someone who still plays the original, I'm not keen.

Comment by Guest Chinnyhill, added Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:47:53 GMT

Harsh!

Comment by Ste Pickford, added Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:48:26 GMT