Christmas Surprises, Part Three

Why am I always the last to know about everything?

It turns out a year ago at Crash Live, a sequel to Ant Attack for Next, from the original game's creator, Sandy White, was unveiled. There hasn't been much news about the game since then, but it turns out it hasn't been canceled and there's a chance to see it at a future Crash Live in 2026.

Low-quality screenshot; it's best to watch the game in action.

But that was just the first surprise. Here's the next one.

Antonio Perez has posted a game engine for ZX Spectrum Next in his repository. The Next MS Engine was born from porting Shovel Adventure to ZX Next. The game was originally written using the MK1 engine by Mojon Twins. The Next MS Engine shouldn't stray too far from the MK1 concept, but it puts the full power of Next at the programmers' feet - tiles, sprites, maps, and music, all programmed in BorielBasic. Unfortunately, the gifs below don't work, but everything is ok in the repository.

The only thing that might stop developers - is the documentation being in Spanish, although Google Translate handles that well. So, we expect a flood of new games (and ports) in 2026 :)

Finally, I'll tell you that I dug up a reference to Next in a 2018 HackSpace magazine. It's a small thing, but a nice touch.