Proteus

Proteus is a ZX Spectrum game from 1986 credited to Jorge Pérez. The Spanish name is no coincidence — Spain was one of the strongest Spectrum countries of the mid-eighties, and its domestic scene produced games of its own, independent of the British market that otherwise dominated the platform.

The year 1986 caught the Spectrum in the middle of its golden era. Sinclair's 8-bit machine was cheap, widespread, and its game library grew at a pace unknown to modern platforms. Alongside the big publishing houses, individuals wrote games at home in the evenings — and titles signed with a single name instead of a company logo come precisely from that world.

Little was written about Proteus outside the Spanish scene, which was the fate of most local production of the period. That does not make it unworthy of attention. Games by individual authors from this era are often inventive exactly because no publisher was dictating what they should be.

The platform's characteristics are a given: the famous colour attribute clashes, sound from a simple beeper, and cassette loading in its original form. For a present-day player it is a trip to a time when one person could carry an entire game from code to graphics.

You can judge it first-hand — on OldGame.cz, Proteus boots straight in the browser with nothing to install.