Playing Spy Hunter on the IBM PC

Channel:

Jim Leonard

Subscribers:

3,440

Published on October 20, 2019 11:00:02 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GeAtO6B3ZM

Game:

Spy Hunter (1983)

Duration: 5:31

1,112 views

34

The following is footage of Spy Hunter, published for the IBM PC by Sega in 1984. It is not a complete playthrough, but rather just enough gameplay to serve as a reference for how the game performs on the original hardware it was developed for.

This footage was recorded from an IBM PC (8088 CPU running at 4.77MHz) with a ("new-style") CGA card. The audio was tapped from the PC speaker and the video was recorded from the CGA composite output. The result was post-processed from 30i to 60p; all source frames are intact.

Personal notes: This game cleverly uses the 6845's start address register to scroll the entire screen downward two lines, allowing for full-screen animation in 30fps using minimal CPU resources.

Spy Hunter takes full advantage of an analog joystick (variable speed is honored), which is a good thing because the keyboard controls are quite terrible. The joystick routine is very sensitive, unfortunately, so "gamepads" can't be used (the center drifts in the program). An analog stick with trims is necessary, for fine adjustment even after the calibration is finished.

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