ZX CARROM is a fast-loading carrom board game for the 48K Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It brings striker shots, coin pocketing, queen-cover drama, match scoring, and four robot players to a machine with 48K of RAM and absolutely no patience for wasted bytes. The final release is a turbo-loaded TZX tape image for ZX Spectrum 48K systems and emulators. You can play ZX CARROM online or visit the itch.io release page.
The build starts here; one Python script gets the glamorous job of doing everything:
python3 build.pyIt builds the game with Pasmo, checks the result, and writes the finished tape image to dist/zxcarrom.tzx.
zxcarrom-3.5mb.mp4
Under the bonnet, ZX CARROM is mostly hand-written Z80 assembly, with a little Python doing the chores: making the loading screen, checking memory limits, putting the loader together, building the TZX, and giving the finished tape one last poke.
The game is made for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, a computer that treats spare memory as a character flaw. Somehow, all this still fits:
- a turbo-loaded loading screen followed by the game from the same TZX;
- a full carrom board with striker, queen, white and black coins, pockets, rebounds, scoring, returns, and Due handling;
- four autonomous robot player styles with turn handling, shot planning, and queen-cover awareness;
- match, board, and points counters designed to stay readable on a Spectrum screen;
- continuous 1-bit game music, short effects, and nanobeep-family title/result audio; and
- one release file:
dist/zxcarrom.tzx.
The build uses Pasmo to assemble the source as-is, then builds the loader/bootstrap, makes the Spectrum loading screen, and writes the final TZX. Quite a lot happens before the first coin moves, which is traditional for both software and actual carrom tournaments.
(c) 2026 Supratim Sanyal of SANYALnet Labs. Proprietary rights reserved except as expressly licensed. Attribution Required.
See LICENSE. Third-party notices are in THIRD_PARTY_LICENSES.txt and loader/ZQLOADER_LICENSE.txt.