When I was looking to implement the emulator, I decided early on to move away from creating a ZX Spectrum emulator that could play any Spectrum game. Instead the idea was to produce a Game Harness that could bring the best qualities of these 30 year old games onto a modern platform without the handicap of cajoling the Spectrum along too. So things like removing the Sinclair ROM and the wasteful border were done. Don’t get me wrong, I love the Spectrum to bits, but this project was all about Ultimate’s games.
Each game in effect had its own custom emulator. This allowed the Z80 emulator, the game and the Windows/Phone user interface to be tightly coupled. The games worked with the keyboard, mouse, accelerometer and the touchscreen.
Much care was taken to make sure that the games used as much of these new input methods as possible. For example, the menu items in the games could be selected by using touch. JetPac could be controlled beautifully via the accelerometer or touch screen, or even for that matter, by an old fashioned keyboard!
The high score and highest level could be tracked and the live tile updated when new high scores were achieved…
… and after a reboot those scores were immediately poked back into the original game so the game itself could retain the high scores.
