Manic Miner

The ZX Touch handheld console launched on November 18, 2023, and features a 7-inch IPS touchscreen running at 1024x600 resolution with a 480 MHz ARM Cortex-M7 processor. The FX system is a real-time enhancement that applies dynamic visual effects to games without modifying the original code. For Manic Miner, this includes the Edge Colour Shader, backgrounds that switch automatically between scenes, and the Game Rewind feature that lets you rewind gameplay by up to 60 seconds. These enhancements were added in firmware updates starting with v1.12 and refined in the current v1.13.

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https://www.zx-touch.com

Retro Gamer has called Manic Miner one of the most influential platform games of all time. It has been ported across dozens of systems from the Commodore 64 and BBC Micro to modern mobile phones. The ZX Touch carries 34 built-in licensed ZX Spectrum games, and supports loading thousands more via microSD card or Wi-Fi file transfer.

Manic Miner is the 1983 platformer by Matthew Smith that launched on the ZX Spectrum as a Bug-Byte release in August 1983, hitting the UK charts at number one. Today we are playing it on the ZX Touch handheld with the full FX enhancement system running real-time visual effects, and we are providing full gameplay and commentary throughout. If you are new here, welcome to the channel.

The game consists of twenty caverns, each one screen in size, where your job as Miner Willy is to collect all the flashing objects scattered across each level before your oxygen supply depletes. Once you grab everything, a portal lights up and sends you to the next cavern. The enemies you face along the way are documented in the original 1983 cassette inlay as Poisonous Pansies, Spiders, Slime, and worst of all, Manic Mining Robots that patrol predefined paths at constant speeds.

The game was designed to require pixel-perfect timing. Falls from too great a height kill you instantly, so every jump must be calculated. The controls are straightforward but executing them flawlessly under pressure is the real challenge. Extra lives are earned every 10,000 points, and the difficulty of each successive cavern was designed to drain quarters had this appeared in an arcade cabinet.

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D-Con

D-Con is a two-player arcade shooter released in 1992 by Success Corp, and today we are playing it on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary. If this is your first time here, welcome. This channel exists to cover classic arcade games and retro gaming, and we play them exactly as they were meant to be played.

The setup is straightforward but demanding. One or two players control a spaceship and must defend a city by shooting enemy spaceships across multiple waves of increasing difficulty. The arcade cabinet used an 8-way joystick and 2 buttons for controls. The hardware was solid for 1992, running a Motorola 68000 processor at 10 MHz for the main CPU and a Zilog Z80 at 4 MHz handling sound duties. Audio came from a YM3812 and OKI6295 sound chip combination running in mono.

This was a coin-operated arcade release during the era when arcades were packed with crowd-pleasing shooter games. D-Con never achieved the same household recognition as some of its contemporaries, which makes it a perfect candidate for rediscovery. The gameplay is relentless, the two-player co-op is where the real fun happens, and the difficulty ramp is designed to pull more coins from your pocket if you actually wanted to progress back on the original cabinet.

The MiSTer FPGA is running this at full arcade accuracy, which means the sprite animation, the sound, and the input lag are all faithful to what you would have experienced standing in front of the actual machine. No filters, no upscaling, no modern conveniences. Just pure 1992 arcade.

Tharkys the Knight

Tharkys the Knight came out on the 31st of May 2026 and the Spectrum community has been buzzing about it ever since. Today we are playing it on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary, and if you have landed here for the first time, welcome to the channel. This is exactly what we are here for.

The game was created by Jay-droid133 and runs on ZX Spectrum 128K hardware. It is a free release on itch.io and is openly inspired by two of the most beloved titles from the legendary Ultimate Play The Game catalogue, Sabre Wulf and Atic Atac. The developer has been completely upfront about the fact that the entire codebase was produced using AI tools, with no single line written manually. Custom editors for sprite design, room layout, sound tuning, and music were all built using the same process. The source code is publicly available on GitHub.

The story of the game is embedded within the software itself, so playing is the only way to get it. You take on the role of the knight Tharkys, moving through a world populated by skeletons, ghosts, serpents, and bats across castle buildings and gated environments. Both health and stamina are tracked on an interface styled after both sides of an old pocket watch. When hunger sets in, you can eat whatever junk food you find scattered through the world, but eating rubbish comes with toxic consequences. To reverse those effects and fully restore your health and stamina together, you need to find a well and drink from it. Be careful though, because any active power-up you are carrying gets washed out at the same time.

To recover stamina you rest, but standing still for too long is dangerous because the boogeyman will hunt you down if you give it the chance. Navigation through the world uses a default compass that always points toward your next objective, a magic compass that shows the precise route to take, and a map that appears randomly during play and must be grabbed quickly before the wind carries it off. The game is linear despite the open world feel, meaning objectives must be reached in sequence. There is no time limit, but every passing day the creatures become faster and more aggressive.

The game also supports an English and Spanish language option, keyboard, gamepad, and touchscreen controls, and received a controls update for FUSE emulator compatibility within days of launch. A TAP file is available for use on real hardware and MiSTer FPGA.

One player in the comments described it as the best thing they had played in twenty years. Another completed it in a single session without wanting to stop. That is the kind of reception this one has already earned.
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Available from https://jay-droid133.itch.io/tharkys-the-knight

Poopy Platforms

Poopy Platforms came out on the 18th of May 2026 and it is exactly the kind of game that reminds you why the ZX Spectrum homebrew scene is still one of the best things in retro gaming. Today we are playing it on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary, and if you are new here, welcome. This is the sort of thing we cover on this channel and there is plenty more of it.

The game was created by PuttyCAD, with graphics by Ric Lumb and programming by Nigel Critten of 100 Tin Soldiers. It was built using KWYLL, a newer ZX Spectrum game creation tool developed by Paul Gregory, and no generative AI was used anywhere in its production.

The setup is wonderfully daft. Platform 2 at a railway station has been nicknamed Platform Poo, because a flock of dirty pigeons have taken up residence and will not stop doing what pigeons do all over it. Poor Little Miss Moppet is responsible for keeping the platform clean, and her solution is to hire Slug the cat to drive the station steam train. Why a cat? Nobody really knows. The developers admitted they just thought it would look funny. It does.

Your job as Slug is to fire carefully timed blasts of steam from the train to vapourise the pigeon droppings before they hit the platform. The pigeons have their own response to this situation in the form of Slammy the seagull, who swoops in from time to time dropping heavy weights on you from above. Controls are O for left, P for right, and M to fire the steam. The game was updated on the 3rd of June 2026 with a bug fix and a tweak, so the version you are seeing here is already patched.

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Available from https://puttycad.itch.io/poopy

Nick

Nick landed on the 4th of June 2026, which makes it one of the freshest ZX Spectrum releases out there right now, and today we are playing it on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary. If this is your first time on the channel, welcome. Stick around, there is plenty more where this came from.

The game was developed by David Programa, the same developer behind SkillTeam and several other well-crafted Spectrum puzzle titles. Nick is a road connection puzzle game remade specifically for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, though it also runs on all larger Spectrum models. The original version of the game was designed by LukaszM and first appeared on the Fancade mobile platform. David Programa rebuilt it from the ground up for the Spectrum.

The setup is straightforward. A hurricane has torn through and scrambled all the road pieces. Your job is to move the cursor around the screen, select road tiles, and rearrange them so that every road connects up correctly. It sounds simple until the levels start stacking difficulty on top of each other, and with 50 levels that escalate steadily in challenge, this one gets your brain working fast.

The game was coded using the Z88DK compiler suite, with pixel art handled in Aseprite and sound effects created with BeepFX by Shiru. Level prototyping used a custom web editor, with compression handled by the ZX0 compressor. It runs from a TAP file, a DSK file, or a WAV file for real hardware loading, and supports keyboard, joystick, and gamepad input. Controls are fully remappable. There is also a session code system on the right side of the screen so you can pick up where you left off without losing your progress.

If you get completely stuck on a level, you can skip it, though you only get three skips total across the whole game, so use them wisely.

This is a free release on itch.io and the fact that it came out yesterday and we are already playing it on MiSTer FPGA tells you everything about what this channel is here for. If you want to see more new Spectrum games, retro hardware, and honest commentary, hit subscribe and join the community.

Available from https://davidprograma.itch.io/nick-zx
 

Return to Blacktooth

Return to Blacktooth dropped on the 4th of May 2026 and the story behind it is one of the most remarkable in all of retro gaming. Today we are playing it on the Amiga via MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary, and if you are landing here for the first time, welcome to the channel.

Here is the thing about this game. Developer Colin Porch programmed the original Amiga and Atari ST versions of Head Over Heels back in 1989, and the moment he finished, he started work on a sequel. That sequel has taken 37 years to arrive. Return to Blacktooth is that game, officially licensed by rights holder Atari, and published by British indie label Thalamus Digital. It is a proper isometric arcade adventure in the tradition of the 1987 original by Jon Ritman and Bernie Drummond, built for real Amiga hardware, not a modern port dressed up in retro clothing.

The game spans five distinct planets and more than 300 rooms loaded with puzzles, traps, and hidden surprises. You play as Head and Heels, two characters with completely different skills. Head can jump, glide, and shoot. Heels is fast and can stack objects. Together they are the only way through the adventure. The game supports all Amigas with 512kb Chip RAM and 512kb of any other RAM, runs from floppy disk, and is fully WHDLoad compatible from version 20.0 upward.

The port and mastering were handled by h0ffman, music is by Jochen Virgill Feldkoetter, cover art is by Wil Overton, and the loading screen was created by Ste Pickford. The physical boxed edition is due in Q3 2026. A CD32 version has also been announced.

Colin Porch is 81 years old. He called this a labour of love. That alone should tell you everything about what kind of game this is.

This is a brand new Amiga game in 2026 running on MiSTer FPGA and it is exactly what this channel is here for. If you enjoy Amiga gaming, retro deep dives, and proper commentary rather than highlights reels, hit subscribe and stick around.

Available from https://thalamus.link/rtb-amiga

Arc4nerd

Arc4nerd is a brand new game for the Commodore Amiga, released in 2026, and it is one of the most exciting homebrews to land on the platform in recent memory. We are playing it today on the MiSTer FPGA with full gameplay and commentary, so if you are new to the channel, welcome. This is what we do here.

The game was developed by Gerd Surey of HooGames2017 alongside Tino Menzer, published by APC and TCP, and created to coincide with the Amiga Ruhrpott Convention 4. It is an Arkanoid-style brick breaker built specifically for Commodore Amiga hardware, and it runs on an Amiga 500 or higher with Kickstart 1.3 or above and just 1MB of RAM. You control a movable reflector using either a mouse or joystick and bounce the iconic Amiga Boing Ball into tiles to clear each stage.

What sets Arc4nerd apart from a straight Arkanoid clone is the detail packed into it. The game features over 55 levels, and every single one of them is dedicated to a supporter of the Amiga Ruhrpott Convention. The levels are set in an industrial Ruhr area backdrop, giving the game a personality of its own. Drone-copters and obstacles get in your way, and randomly falling 3.5 inch floppy disks drop power-ups including a gun and a triple-boing ball. Pinball-style bumpers are built into the levels for high-score chasing, and there is a final boss waiting at the end of the run.

The physical edition of Arc4nerd comes in a collector's box that includes the game on floppy disk, a rulebook, a sticker sheet with in-game artwork, a pixel art poster, and a postcard of the ARC venue. A limited Special Edition was sold exclusively at the convention and is completely sold out. The standard boxed and digital versions are available through the Amiga Online Shop.

This is a genuine new Amiga game in 2026 running on real Amiga hardware via MiSTer FPGA, and it is exactly the kind of thing this channel loves to cover. If you want to see more Amiga gaming, retro deep dives, and honest commentary, hit subscribe and join the community. 

Available from https://hoogames2017.itch.io/arc4nerd.