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The year 2007 was a personal milestone for me, in that I had been writing this column for five years, and still to this day, one of the developments I mentioned in my very first column way back in 2002, Xeo3 for the Commodore Plus/4, is yet to be finished and released. Okay, so now the project is being created on the Commodore 64, Sinclair ZX Spectrum and just lately, unofficially to the Amstrad CPC 6128 now, rather than just the +4. But, as a shoot-'em-up fan, I'm quite eager to finally play it, as it's looking pretty damn good. So, to read the latest about this, head over to www.xeo3.org.

Thankfully, the year hasn't just been filled with half-finished games that are both great to see progress on and frustrating as you just want to be able to play -them. Make no mistake, this has been a big year for new software on aged technology, and it's the Speccy that has had something of a vintage year.

It's not just been Jonathan Cauldwell who has created fun-filled binary worlds to escape to, although he started off strongly with the release of Izzy Wizzy Vs. The Mutants, which followed up his earlier hit game Gloop! The game featured hero Izzy trying to stop the evil hoard of mutants from building a time machine and heading back to 1982 to cancel the launch of Sir Clive's rubber-keyed wonder.

Other releases from Jonathan have included Blizzard's Rift, for the 128k machines, which is a multi-screened Thrust-alike game, Big Baps, a Burger Time clone and very recently Egghead: Round The Med. A special mention must go to his creation Quantum Gardening, released in the summer, and not just because of the quality of this particular production, but for being one of the most original games in ages. Mixing the traditional 2D static-screen platformer with a board game and throwing in tulip growing to the proceedings wasn't just a sublime piece of thinking, but turned into one of the best games this year. Many of Jonathan's games can be purchased from Cronosoft, and there are also some free to download software from his website.

Also keeping the Speccy software scene healthy were the group CEZ Games Studio (CEZ GS). This Internet-based group develop for other Z80 8-bit machines such as Amstrad's CPC and the MSX, as well as the odd remake for the PC. On the Spectrum, though, they've had a good year with Cannon Bubble and BeTiled keeping puzzle fans happy (BeTiled being a particular favourite of mine), and Phantomasa 2: In The Land Of The Grunge Wizards, which was a platform game. Although I wasn't overly keen on the latter, the game has scored 8.73 at the time of writing through CEZ's own voting system. Looking across to the CPC for a moment, CEZ GS released the game Aqua, in which a trapped air-bubble must escape from the depths of the sea to the surface. Best of all, CEZ GS games are freely available from their website.

For more, head over to the website http://cezgs.computeremuzone.com/eng/ As there is so much to talk about, I'll continue my look back on 2007 next issue. Far now, I hope that I've reminded you of a few games, or pointed out those that you might have missed.

So head over to the websites mentioned and get downloading.