We are talking about the original ZX Spectrum here or the slightly upgraded Spectrum plus. We are not including the Spectrum 128, the plus 2 or the plus 3 as they were blessed with the decent AY sound chip.

Both machines (the Spectrum and the Spectrum plus) were blessed with a paltry 'single channel beeper' to generate sounds and music. Owners of other machines would laugh and point at the Spectrum's 'poor' sound.

Well, clever developers managed to push the beeper way beyond it's capabilities and the good old Speccy managed to created some decent music.

Here are just a few....

Hyperactive was a free game - given away on the front cover of Sinclair User.

It's a sort of defender type arcade game which was developed by Spectrum legend Joffa Smith. For a free game it's not bad - and it was developed over a matter of days.

Keith Tinmans pumping menu tune is excellent here!

Fahrenheit 3000 was a flick screen platform game from Perfection Software and is up there with the best of the platform genre.

The menu music was the famous Toccatta and Fugue in D Minor - and it doesn't sound too bad at all!

Cobra was a humourous side scrolling platform game which featured 2 channel music. Drum beats overlayed by the tune was miraculous on the single channel beeper.

It was quite revolutionary back then!

Technician Ted was one of the greatest flick screen platform games to grace the ZX Spectrum. It was polished, playable, addictive and technically impressive.

Hewson managed to implement a nice version of The Blue Danube walz with vibrato and slide. Not bad at all.

Another one from Hewson - the classic scrolling shoot em up.

Another polished and addictive game that was slick and professional. The title music for this took the 'synthesizer' style of music that was popular in many Spectrum games.

Ping Pong was a good conversion of the Konami arcade game by Imagine Software. It's probably the only table tennis simulation that was released on the Spectrum.

More 2 channel wizardry from Martin Galway and Jof made the games menu screen far more interesting. Note the ending!