The most technically ambitious ZX81 game I’ve ever seen?

Описание: A look at City Patrol on the ZX81 — a 1982 16K game that pushes Sinclair’s little machine far beyond what most people think it can do. The surprisingly smooth parallax-style movement, and the alien attack mechanics that make this one of the most technically ambitious ZX81 titles ever created.

City Patrol was released in 1982 for the 16K Sinclair ZX81 and published by Macronics Systems. It’s widely associated with programmer Don Priestley, a developer known for squeezing surprising performance out of early Sinclair machines. Before moving on to his famous oversized‑sprite games on the ZX Spectrum, Priestley produced several technically ambitious titles for the ZX81, and City Patrol fits right into that lineage.

The game was originally sold on cassette and often appeared bundled with another Macronics title, Sabotage. What made City Patrol stand out at the time — and still does today — is how far it pushes the ZX81’s limited hardware. The layered cityscape, the smooth parallax‑style effect, and the multiple moving objects all happening at once were far beyond what most ZX81 games attempted.

Despite being overshadowed by later Spectrum releases, City Patrol remains one of the most impressive examples of what a fully expanded 16K ZX81 could achieve, both technically and stylistically. Watch me score an impressive 1070pts. Can you do better???