New versions of Spectaculator are available today on Google Play (v2.1) and the App Store (v6.1).

The Android version has been updated to the same set officially licensed ZX Spectrum games as the iOS version.

iOS Game Controller Support

Spectaculator now works with iOS game controllers such as the Moga Rebel, Mad Catz C.T.R.L.ⁱ, SteelSeries Stratus and many more.

The touch screen controls of all existing games are intelligently mapped onto the game controller buttons and sticks.

ZX Spectrum games should always be played using physical controls and now you can, finally, on iOS!

Improved support for physical controls and gamepads

Spectaculator for Android now supports the extended set of buttons, sticks and triggers on modern gamepads. This support extends to devices with built-in physical controls such as the JXD 7800b (above).

Availability

Spectaculator is available now on Google Play (v2.1) and the App Store (v6.1).

In April 1982, Sir Clive Sinclair launched what was to become one of the most popular home computers ever made – the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.

Spectaculator is a ZX Spectrum emulator that takes you back to the 1980s – to the golden era of 8-bit gaming!

Includes the officially licensed ‘Stephen Crow Anthology':
©1983-2013 Stephen Crow. All rights reserved.

• Factory Breakout
• Firelord
• Laser Snaker
• Starquake
• Wizard’s Lair

Features:

• Desktop quality ZX Spectrum emulation – games and other programs run just like on a real ZX Spectrum.
• Play in portrait or landscape orientations.
• Save your game progress (four saved game slots per game).
• Enter pokes (cheats) for infinite lives, shields etc.
• Lookup game hints, tips and maps.
• Play in black and white with TV screen simulation for the ultimate 1980s experience!
• Type on a virtual ZX Spectrum keyboard.
• Use external Bluetooth or USB keyboards.
• Choose authentic cassette loading or fast play.
• Program in Sinclair BASIC.
• Play using an external arcade controller (Bluetooth or USB gamepads such as an Xbox 360 controller or iControlPad).
• Use gestures (pans, taps and swipes) to control games.

Additional Features In The Full Version

Add your own games!

• Upload and play .TAP/.TZX cassette files and .SZX/.Z80/.SNA snapshots

Get an additional 19 officially licensed ZX Spectrum games to play (included in the upgrade):

• 3D Starstrike by Realtime Games Software
• Auf Wiedersehen Monty by Gremlin Graphics
• Avenger by Gremlin Graphics
• Bounder by Gremlin Graphics
• Cyclone by Vortex Software
• Dynamite Dan by Rod Bowkett/Mirrorsoft
• Highway Encounter by Vortex Software
• Jack The Nipper by Gremlin Graphics
• Krackout by Gremlin Graphics
• Jekyll & Hyde by Zenobi Software
• Metabolis by Gremlin Graphics
• Monty On The Run by Gremlin Graphics
• On The Run by Design Design
• Revolution by Vortex Software
• Tau Ceti by Pete Cooke/CRL
• The Way Of The Tiger by Gremlin Graphics
• Albatrossity by Jonathan Cauldwell
• Battery’s Not Precluded by Jonathan Cauldwell
• The Fantastic Mister Fruity by Jonathan Cauldwell

… with more available from the in-app shop.

Additional Game Packs

The following officially licensed game packs are available from the in-app shop:

Design Design Games Pack

• 5 Games. Includes Halls of the Things, Dark Star, Forbidden Planet

Gremlin Graphics Vol. 1

• 6 games. Includes Wanted! Monty Mole, Skate Crazy, Thing Bounces Back

Gremlin Graphics Vol. 2

• 5 games. Includes Jack The Nipper II: In Coconut Capers, North Star, Grumpy Gumphrey – Supersleuth

Gremlin Graphics Vol. 3

• 4 games. Includes Switchblade, Trailblazer, Percy The Potty Pigeon, Monty Is Innocent

Odin Computer Graphics Anthology

• 9 games. Includes Nodes Of Yesod, Robin Of The Wood, Heartland

Realtime Games Pack

• Starstrike II
• 3D Tank Duel

Vortex Anthology

• 6 games. Includes Alien Highway, Deflektor, T.L.L. (Tornado Low Level)

Zenobi Adventure Pack Vol. 1

• 6 games. Includes Aura-Scope, The Gods of War, Leopold The Minstrel

Zenobi Adventure Pack Vol. 2

• 6 games. Includes The Khangrin Plans, The Krazy Kartoonist Kaper, A Murder Mystery Weekend

Zenobi Adventures Vol. 3

• 5 games. Includes The Apprentice, The Bardic Rite, Jester Quest, Knight Life, Mutiny!

The following single games are available from the in-app shop:

• Carrier Command
• Dynamite Dan II
• Frank N. Stein
• Laser Squad
• Lords Of Chaos
• The Lords Of Midnight

Download Spectaculator now and start playing the games of yesteryear all over again!

Added an additional 12 classic ZX Spectrum games from Mike Singleton, Odin Computer Graphics and Gollop Games:

• The Lords Of Midnight (1984)
• Laser Squad (1988)
• Lords Of Chaos (1990)

Odin Computer Graphics Anthology

• The Arc Of Yesod (1985)
• Crosswize (1988)
• Heartland (1986)
• Hypaball (1986)
• I.C.U.P.S. (1986)
• Nodes Of Yesod (1985)
• The Plot (1988)
• Robin Of The Wood (1985)
• Sidewize (1987)

An additional five games have been added, courtesy of 1985’s Golden Joystick Awards’ ‘Programmer of the Year’, Stephen Crow.

Stephen Crow Anthology

• Factory Breakout (1984)
• Firelord (1986)
• Laser Snaker (1983)
• Starquake (1985)
• Wizard’s Lair (1985)

All games ©1983-2013 Stephen Crow.

For text adventure enthusiasts, Zenobi Software’s Adventure Pack Vol. 3 contains another five classic games.

Zenobi Adventures Vol. 3

• The Apprentice
• The Bardic Rite
• Jester Quest
• Knight Life
• Mutiny!

An additional nine games have been added, courtesy of Vortex Software.

Three additional games have been added to Spectaculator itself (free to existing users):

• Cyclone
• Highway Encounter
• Revolution

A further game pack, Vortex Anthology (six games) has been added to the in-app shop:

Vortex Anthology:

• Alien Highway
• Android One
• Android Two
• Deflektor
• H.A.T.E. (Hostile All Terrain Encounter)
• T.L.L. (Tornado Low Level)

iCloud® Save States

An exciting new feature in this version is ability to save your progress to iCloud.

Each game now has a 5th slot with a cloud symbol next to it which is used to save and load to/from iCloud:

This is really useful for situations where you’re playing a game on one device (e.g. your iPhone whilst on the tube) and then want to continue playing from your current position on a different device (e.g. your iPad when you get home).

Other changes:

• Fixed a layout issue with the in-app shop in some countries (thanks Arjun!).
• Thumbpad now displays as a digital joystick or analogue joystick depending on the game.

This is probably the biggest update yet. An additional 26 games have been added, courtesy of Sheffield’s finest – Gremlin Graphics.

Eight additional games have been added to Spectaculator itself (free to existing users):

• Auf Wiedersehen Monty
• Avenger
• Bounder
• Jack The Nipper
• Krackout
• Metabolis
• Monty On The Run
• The Way Of The Tiger

A further three game packs (six games each) have been added to the in-app shop:

Gremlin Graphics Vol. 1:

• Wanted! Monty Mole
• Skate Crazy
• Thing Bounces Back
• Dark Fusion
• Future Knight
• Moley Christmas

Gremlin Graphics Vol. 2:

• Jack The Nipper II: In Coconut Capers
• North Star
• Grumpy Gumphrey, Supersleuth
• Alien Evolution
• The Final Matrix
• Impossamole

Gremlin Graphics Vol. 3:

• Switchblade
• Trailblazer
• Super Scramble Simulator
• Percy The Potty Pigeon
• Monty Is Innocent
• Super Cars

Other changes:

• Added support for ZX Spectrum +3 disk-based games (Super Scramble Simulator, Super Cars & Impossamole).
• Now supports iPhone 5 and iPod touch 5th generation screen.
• Added ‘Mimic TV Screen’ option to simulate a 1980s TV screen.*
• Added ‘Black & White TV’ option.*
• The ZX Spectrum screen is now much sharper on Retina-equipped devices.
• Added leaderboards for Monty On The Run, Krakout & Bounder.
• All games now have higher resolution cassette box artwork.
• Fixed a few typos in the help.

Gallery

A gallery of screenshots of the new version is available here.

[*] The irony of this is not lost on the developer who himself aspired to a better picture in 1984 than the one on his crusty old 14″ B&W portable TV.

The monitor/debugger in Spectaculator is probably the one feature I’ve never really been happy with. It works, but it’s pretty basic.

For Spectaculator 9, the feature has been completely overhauled making it much more powerful and useful.

I’ve been using it extensively to create the dynamic patches for the games included with the iPhone/iPod/iPad version (these patches automatically configure the game control on-the-fly amongst other things).

Breakpoints

Breakpoints have had a big overhaul and now come in two flavours – Memory Read/Write/Execute and I/O Read/Write:

Additionally, a condition can be set using C-like expression syntax. The breakpoint will only break if the address it hit and the expression evaluates to true.

Other new features include:

• Enabling/disabling of breakpoints.
• Making breakpoints memory page-specific.
• Breaking after a certain number of passes over the breakpoint.
• Setting a label for easy identification.

Version 2.0 is now available from the App Store.

This is the first of a series of updates being made to the single game releases (Rocky Horror Show, Dynamite Dan II, Starstrike II and Frank N. Stein).

This version now contains all the latest updates made to Spectaculator during the past 18 months:

• iPhone 5/iPod touch 5th generation support
• The whole app now runs in portrait or landscape modes.
• Improvements have been made to the original game code to make skipping the intro sections more reliable.
• iCade and iControlPad (external arcade controller) support has been vastly improved.
• App settings have been moved into the app itself.
• Brand new retro look-and-feel.

Changes to Controls

In previous versions of Spectaculator, control selection (Keyboard/Kempston Joystick/Sinclair Joystick etc.) was pretty much like it is on a real ZX Spectrum – you were required to navigate a game’s menu and select the correct option.

In 4.0, this is now unnecessary:

• The correct controls are automatically selected for each game and locked so they can’t be accidentally changed. This applies to all the built-in games as well as those available as in-app purchases.
• In most cases, simply tap the red button to start a game (rather than having to pop-up the keyboard.
• The original cassette images of the games have not been modified – for those of you who like to wait three minutes for your games to load, you can still do this

These changes should make the games more accessible to retro gamers around the world who have never owned a ZX Spectrum.

Jonathan Needle, March 2012.

I’d previously posted on Twitter that I’d added support for the iPhone 5’s and iPod touch 5th gen’s bigger screens.

It was pretty easy to do:

• Create a new launch screen image of the right dimensions and name it Default-568h@2x.png (iOS 6 spots this and enables fullscreen on the iPhone 5).
• Make some minor changes to reposition some of the screen elements.

All in all it was pretty painless as I’d been sensible and designed the UI to scale anyway.

As Xcode 4.5 can no longer generate ARM6 code (required to support the older iPod touch 2G), I went back to Xcode 3.2 to make the final build and submitted it.

A few minutes later I got this message back from Apple:

Invalid Launch Image – Your app contains a launch image with a size modifier that is only supported for apps built with the iOS 6.0 SDK or later.

Hmm.. bit strange. After googling for a bit it turns out you have to use Xcode 4.5+ if you want to support the bigger screens. Doing so, of course, means iPod touch 2G users can no longer upgrade.

Most people will tell you this isn’t a concern as these users don’t buy anything from the App Store anymore.

To be sure, I had a look at the server logs for the in-app purchases and found there were a few of them still out there buying stuff – “a few”, in this case, meaning “not many”.

I resubmitted with Default-568h@2x.png removed to disable the bigger screen support and Apple approved it.

Oddly though, they’ve still put the bigger screenshots on the App Store which is a bit misleading:

In the short term, my current plan is:

• Ship 4.0 which will still include support for iPod touch 2G users (this is currently in review).
• Once approved, I will submit 4.1 which will enable support for the iPhone 5/iPod touch 5th gen screen.
• The iPod touch 2G will then be no longer supported.

Apologies in the meantime for the inconvenience to any iPhone 5/iPod touch 5G users out there.