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<INTRO> ORGANISER IVAN SANCHEZ AND LEADING COMPETITORS TALK ABOUT THE RECENT ZX-DEV 2021 CODING COMPETITION </INTRO>
<BODY> “Every time I finish one, I end up feeling exhausted in terms of time invested,” says Ivan Sanchez (IvanZX) as he completes his fourth ZX-Dev competition. “I saw how the MSXdev was successful and brought a lot of action and competition, so I was wondering if I could do something similar for the Spectrum.” With sponsorship from Sintech and donations towards the prize fund, Ivan tells us, “The more donors there are, the more attractive the competition gets. [Sponsors] play the games and compose the jury that will decide the winners.”
This year’s theme was Demakes and Media. “I normally choose themes that are somewhat flexible and can generate interesting games,” Ivan says. “I also choose themes that are attractive to me, for example, conversions, as it is very interesting to see how coders can adapt games that were created on superior machines to the Spectrum.”
Pat Morita Team finished joint first with Tokimal (based on Toki) and third with Shovel Adventure (also winner of the CPC Dev Compo 2021). Coder Antonio Perez, having competed in the previous two competitions, tells us, “I love this kind of competition, and they motivate our team even more.” There was time pressure, with Tokimal’s development taking 18 months in total. “Shovel was finished soon, so no problem with the deadline” continues Antonio, “but Tokimal was finished only a few days before. We finished on time, but the last two weeks were intense.”
“For the sake of having enough time I took a vacation from work,” says Sergei Smirnov, coder of joint winner Nothing which expanded on the original PC game. “Developing the game from scratch took exactly one year and thirteen days. When I decided to participate, I didn’t know until the last week whether I would have time to do everything I wanted to.”
Another impressive demake was Hallowed Knight, based on Hollow Knight. Creator Eduardo Villalobos (EJVG) says, “I had been programming for about eight months, and I s
