For all its ebullience, and for all its palpable enthusiasm for the medium, there's something deeply weird about UFO 50. The 50-game collection draws its power from constraints: the fictional hardware at its heart, the LX, is an 8-bit system with a 32-colour limit. The resulting aesthetic is immediately recognisable: Everyone knows the Nintendo and Sega systems of this era.
But people are less likely to know about the ZX Spectrum, and I'll bet few are familiar with the Amstrad CPC 464 mascot Roland. Most people know about the Commodore 64, but can they name five games? (And if so, why isn't one of them Mad Nurse?) The systems you never got to play are gaps in the continuum. In the internet age, dipping into the catalogue of the MSX platform, or the PC-8800 series of home computers, feels like visiting an alternate vision of the future that just didn't take.
