Starwake Trail and Bad Apple Demo for the Next

Two of my ZX Spectrum Next projects now have a home on the site: Starwake Trail, a rolling-ball game, and Bad Apple Demo, a conversion of the original Bad Apple demo for the Next. Starwake Trail is on itch.io, and the Bad Apple download is here on the site.

Starwake Trail

Starwake Trail is a playable prototype inspired by the C64 game Trailblazer. Steer a ball along chequered tracks, jump the gaps and reach the finish before time runs out. It has Arcade and Trial modes, 21 courses and three space backdrops.

Starwake Trail: jumping along a chequered track with a blue planet in the background

You can play with the keyboard or a Kempston joystick. O/P steer, Q/A accelerate and brake, and Space jumps.

Get Starwake Trail on itch.io.

Bad Apple Demo

This conversion brings the original Bad Apple demo to the ZX Spectrum Next, with black-and-white animation on Layer 2 and PCM audio. The complete demo is packed into one .nex file.

Bad Apple Demo: a white character silhouette on a black background

Download Bad Apple Demo (ZIP, 7.7 MiB). The archive includes the complete demo, setup instructions and a checksum.

It needs a 2 MB Next running NextZXOS. Extract badapple.nex, copy it to your SD card, then run .defrag badapple.nex in that directory before opening it in the NextZXOS Browser. The demo streams from the card and needs the file to be contiguous. Playback stops on the final frame; reset to leave.

It has been checked in Bizmuth; physical Next and SD-card performance still needs a live check.

There are more screenshots of both projects on the Next projects page.