Spectrum Games - Chronos - ZX Spectrum retro game - arcade game

Chronos ZX Spectrum
This game was a budget £1.99 release for the ZX Spectrum by Mastertronic in 1987.

In this solid enough scrolling arcade game you had to resuce poor old Chronos (the lord of time no less) who had been imprisoned in another dimension by the Dimension Weavers. The poor bugger.

For a budget game it was actually pretty decent and it also featured some fantastic beeper music.


You had to fly you craft (which looked like the craft from Ultimate's Cyberun!) across the left to right scrolling landscape blasting away at plenty of nasties, many of which were not the sharpest of bad guys. Watch them blindly fly into varying parts of the landscape - saving you the bother of shooting them.

Your ship could move up, down, left, right and of course was equipped with a forward firing lazer.

There were six levels in total (signified by the changing colour of the graphics as you progressed) and in true classic arcade fashion the game became more difficult the further you progressed.

The game went for the monochromatic look (which was probably a good choice) and had two layers of scrolling, which was smooth enough to make the game playable.

There were plenty of different enemies to avoid or destroy such as fighters, ying-yang type floating things, orbs and so on.

There were also laser barriers which had to be destroyed (by shooting the top or bottom part of them) and blastable blocks which had to be cleared away with trusty trigger finger action.

This game does sort of remind me of the classic arcade game Scramble with the maze like levels and constant scrolling.

The game was 'completed' once you breached level 6 and Chronos was rescued - no doubt just in the nick of time.

On release:
Well Chronos was a decent enough arcade game and for £1.99 was value for money. It picked up a bit of a cult status due to the impressive synthesiser style menu music and humorous high score table which would answer you with witty responses should you enter 'naughty words' instead of your name. There were also numerous Chronos cheat codes which could be activated through the high score table too - try typing in Peter Gough for starters.

The test of erm... time
Well it's a simle shooter that is still fairly playable - there are plenty of worse arcade games for the ZX Spectrum. Easy to pick up and play - give it a go to remember that Spectrum budget games could be decent.

Jing it baby!

Download a Spectrum Emulator and download this classic game for the ZX Spectrum. Alternatively you could try and play it online.

Tim Follin's impressive menu music:


GENRE: Arcade game
RELEASE DATE: 1987
RELEASED BY: Mastertronic
DEVELOPER(S): Steven Tatlock, John Tatloc, Tim Follin
PRICE: £1.99 - UK

Onto level 2 in Chronos - classic arcade game action...


Arcade Games, Classic Games and ZX Spectrum Games