Flashback ZXLevel 1 · the jungle · ZX Spectrum +3
Loading the emulator…
Keys
| OP | walk left / right |
| QA | jump up (held under a ledge: climb onto it) / crouch |
| ENTER | draw / holster the gun — with the gun out Conrad cannot walk, but he can still roll |
| I | the next item becomes the current one (top right) |
| U | use the current item: a key, card or cartridge in its lock, at a generator; crouched, put it down |
with SPACE held
| SPACE | at the top of a jump: grab the ledge; aiming: fire; at a switch or a person: use it, talk |
| + OP | run |
| + Q | long jump; running: running jump; hanging: climb up; on a lift: up |
| + A | back to an edge: drop down; hanging: let go; running: roll; crouched on an item: pick it up; on a lift: down |
Click the screen first so it has the keyboard. On a touch screen the pad under the screen has the same keys (GUN is ENTER, ITEM I, USE U), and Fullscreen puts it over the picture.
What this is
- Flashback’s first level on a ZX Spectrum +3. Conrad runs on the DOS game’s own state tables, interpreted by a Z80 engine, move for move as the original.
- All 26 jungle rooms, each the original picture fitted to the Spectrum’s two colours per 8×8 cell. 128K cannot hold a level, so the level is a 720K +3 disk: the +3 boots it from its Loader menu and the engine reads each room off the disk as Conrad enters it. The machine here is an emulated +3 whose drive turns the disk in real time, so the loading is a real +3’s (Fast disk speeds it up).
- The disk is built from the freely distributed 1993 PC demo of Flashback, whose first level is the whole jungle.
In the level
- Objects. The items lie where the original puts them — the holocube, the cartridge, a key, stones, the teleporter, credits — and the inventory starts with the gun, the shield and some credits. Locks, the switch, the generators and the force-field bridge work, as do the four doors and the five lifts: their floor sensors call them, and 1 / 2 call the lifts on screen up / down as a helper. The wounded man and the old man talk and hand things over. The level’s exit plays the fall down the shaft.
- Enemies. The guards spot Conrad, aim and shoot, standing or crouched; each takes three hits.
- Conrad cannot die (yet). A hit knocks him back, but he gets up every time. Walking off the edge of the built world puts him back at the start.
- No saving yet. The save station is there, but there is nothing to restore; Restart starts the level over.
Found a bug, or something that plays differently from the original? Please open an issue.
The disks
flashback-l1.dsk for a +3: any +3 emulator, or a real +3 with an 80-track double-sided drive A (the 3.5″ upgrade; a drive setting in Fuse, ZEsarUX and the like). Insert it and pick Loader.
flashback-l1.trd for a Pentagon 128, or any 128K with a Beta 128 interface and TR-DOS: 640K, 80 tracks both sides; in TR-DOS, RUN. The same game; this page plays the +3 one.