Five people will read this. And four of them will be me. I don’t care – to me, this is mindblowing and I’ve got a little button called ‘publish’ that means I can spew out any old nonsense and it just appears on the site. Magic.
So what’s up? Well, remember Goldeneye – the best first person shooter that’s not Halo (or whatever your game of choice is)? It had a fully functional ZX Spectrum emulator hidden inside it – and it’s just been discovered. Rare – I love you even more now.
“By feeding it a proper Spectrum monitor program and calling menu 25 to load a snapshot, any Spectrum 48x program can be run,” says the dude that found it.
“The emulator started life as a side project to see if Spectrum emulation was possible on N64 and was hooked into GE, the current game in development. It was supposed to be removed before release but was only made inaccessible and inoperable. All the registers, dependancies, and script required to run the emulator still reside in retail GoldenEye carts.”
Looks like there’s a few embedded games in there – they’re all Ultimate (Rare’s earlier life) titles too. Sabre Wulf, Atic Atac, Jetpac, Lunar Jetman, Alien 8, Gun Fright, Underwurlde, Knight Lore, Pssst, Cookie, a 16k ‘monitor program’ and Mire Mare.
I’m kidding. Knight Lore’s not in there.
Boom! Or whatever it is you’re supposed to say.
Via TheRWP.
tyrant161
Click the link for fully playable zx spectrum games through your browser….just click on the year and then the game you want to play…..brings back the memories lol
http://www.zxspectrum.net/
cc_star
Playing Alchemist, Pole Position, Chuckie Egg, Way Of The Exploding Fist, EnduroRacer, Rastan, Operation Wolf, Atic Attac, Jetpac & Cookie but should be working.
Forrest_01
Ah, way of the exploding fist – Now THAT takes me back! :D
ron_mcphatty
This is like discovering a signed copy of the bible! Only slightly lower on the scale perhaps, depending on how much you get out. Still, I’m amazed by this news, hopefully this spews a wave of N64 home brew! I’m hitting eBay up now…
Bilbo_bobbins
this is quite unbelievable but cool at the same time. I think someone has way too much time on their hands too.
justboy
That’s mad that it remained hidden for so long. Even more so that Rare staff haven’t let it slip after all these years!
Watchful
I’ve still got Pssst on one of the Speccy’s funny little ROM cartridges around here somewhere (along with the plug-in expansion to take it, obviously).
Tuffcub
Surely they would of had to include a illegal copy of the speccy ROM? So we’re celeberating piracy now are we? Hmm? Hmm? Just sayin.
nofi
Illegal? They own all the code.
Tuffcub
For the games yes , for the speccy roms required for emulation? Er no..
nofi
The ROMS are public domain, have been for ages. Amstrad approved, etc.
Crocadillian
That shoots you down… B)
colmshan1990
Was it legal when Goldeneye came out on the 64 in 1997 though?
nofi
Will check. I think so though.
baggyg
This would be more cool if the Spectrum emulator had a PS3 emulator inside that
Ed the Penguin
Oh nice! Glad this wasn’t posted on April 1st as I wouldn’t believe it. I wont be fooled again after your PS3 Speccy Emulator post a few April’s back!
justinjh
I must admit I had to double check it wasn’t April 1st myself…
aerobes
That’s amazing. The N64 and Goldeneye just became even more precious to me.
Kaminari
I’m surprised NOBODY has reacted at the mention of Mire Mare.
Mire Mare is the “lost” third part of the Knight Lore trilogy (the second one being Pentagram). The game was ready, but its publication was cancelled when Ultimate sold their assets to US Gold in 1986 and became Rare. It has been missing in action FOR YEARS.
Has it been really confirmed that Mire Mare is present in GoldenEye, Spectrum emulator?
Kaminari
Okay, looks like Alex mixed up Knight Lore and Mire Mare. Another crushed hope…!
nofi
I was just kidding, to see if anyone noticed! Sorry!
sabrecheeky
I noticed… I still have dreams of what Mire Mare might have been!
And when Rare jumped from Nintendo to Microsoft, it was only a fraction of the betrayal felt when Ultimate started doing Commodore 64 games. Noooooooooooooo!