I actually struggled to keep up - with the flurry of new games released for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum over the festive period of 2009, as those Speccy developers made sure that the last Christmas of the 'naughties' was definitely one to remember.

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Starting with the Spanish-based Mojon Twins, its production Uwol: Quest For Money, does almost exactly what it says on the virtual cassette sleeve, in that you control a retro videogames wholesaler Uwol who, after making his fortune in the expanding industry by reselling cassette games at a tidy profit, sets off on adventure to keep the cash rolling in.

This means guiding him through a binary pyramid built by an eccentric millionaire next to his mansion, and plundering the treasure therein, in what is a rather polished and beautifully pixelated 2D platform game.

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In Jonathan Cauldwell's Batteries Not Precluded, you have received four battery-powered remote control toys to play with on Christmas morning. These are car, a speedboat, a rocket and a hot air balloon, with all but the hot air balloon requiring rotational controls (and that has inertia movement).

Starting with the remote controlled car, the task is to drive it around set obstacles, which is easy enough in itself, except for opponents' cars appearing every few seconds and following your exact path. In order to survive and move onto the next level, you must manoeuvre your car so that it avoids all the hazards on the screen (including the cars that appear and follow your path), and also set those giving chase on a course to crash into each other.

When there are fewer than two opponents remaining, you move onto the next stage. Basically, later levels generally conform to this format, but with a slightly different feel and speed to the controls for each of the toys. There are also races to break up the action.

For fans of Jet Set Willy (JSW) - and let's face it, Matthew Smith's original games were big hits - Miles' Mad Mission is a true community (as in the World Of Spectrum community) project for the 128K machine. It's basically a warped version of JSW, if that can get any more warped, which sees you controlling our hero, presumably called Miles, through the WoS manor and its surrounding area. With WoS forum frequenters posting level ideas and helping to sculpt the game, there are a lot of in-jokes, so you may be advised to join in the madness by signing up to the World Of Spectrum forums, but even without this inside knowledge, the game is great fun that fortunately doesn't include the infinite leap of death bug from Smith's original.

Finally, I'd like to mention two Bob Smith projects, and both are puzzle games. The first was again released over Christmas, called All Present And Correct. The task is to guide the walking presents into the sack, but all is not that easy since each can only walk up, down, left or right on the screen and will turn if a wall or relevant marker is reached, and you may set the markers yourself, but you will only have so many per level. Adding to the mischief is the pitfalls and roaming hammers, both of which must be avoided.

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The second project from Bob is actually for the Sinclair ZX81, and is a conversion of his Speccy game Dominetris, which is a Tetris-alike game with dominoes. The task is to match each side of the domino that falls down to a well, but by the same number. So, for instance, your sixes must be grouped either horizontally or vertically by six or more to clear the well. The exception is for the ones, which quickly clutter the play field; groups of these can be removed if they are touching a successful match - for instance, five fives.

Many of these games, and the ones that I've not had the chance to mention, will be reviewed over the coming weeks, but until then, you could try searching the WoS archives, or point your web browser at www.mojontwins.com for Uwol: Quest For Money, members.fortunecity.com/jonathan6/egghead for Batteries Not Precluded and finally Bob's Stuff for All Present And Correct and Dominetris. Miles' Mad Mission is available through the WoS search facility previously mentioned, and Bob Smith has his own Facebook fan club if you want to search for that through the popular social networking site.