Thanks for the feedback guys! I didn't realise modern gfx cards didn't support lower resolutions any more (thanks for the pointer nuclear, much appreciated!) -- it runs fine on my laptop with integrated gfx and I assumed if that could handle it, anything could! I've uploaded a revised version which includes a windowed mode (scaled 2x to 640x480-- hopefully that doesn't violate the "no post-processing" rule!).
Canopy: It's written in Purebasic, I haven't got time to get a video capture before the end of the contest but if needs be I may be able to get it done in a few days! (hopefully this new version will run on other PCs though!)
spitfire: Cheers!
Originally it was going to be even chunkier -- the original concept was to have 32x24 UDGs to match the ZX Spectrum's display but that was just a bit too lo-res. And originally the colour scheme was going to be the Spectrum's colours (blended using overlapping UDGs as in the final version), but I eventually saw sense and went with a nice purple instead!
combatking0: The text size and the horizontal scroll speed are pretty much set in stone really, but if it's the sine speed that's making it hard to read then I can certainly include some way of tweaking this while it's running!