Fat Frumos - vintage Romanian folklore-based ZX Spectrum game
Fat Frumos (or Făt-Frumos, from "făt"-boy, son, and "frumos"-handsome, beautiful) is a Romanian folklore hero. His adventures have this brave young man rise up to the challenge of battling various evils and monsters, toward a righteous goal. He can be compared to a Prince Charming, possessing positive traits such as justice, kindness, compassion.I remember how a good childhood friend showed me the Fat Frumos game on his ZX Spectrum computer. At first I mocked it, but I later became fascinated that a familiar fairy tale had been made into an actual adventure game. Up to that point, all games I'd played were "Western", devoid of any Romanian themes.
Lost
My friend's copy of Fat Frumos became lost in time. For over a decade I looked for this game. At the time of writing this (November 2023), the only information available online about Fat Frumos on the ZX Spectrum is from the website World of Spectrum - and whichever other websites cloned their page.In fact, I was the one who submitted the Fat Frumos page stub to World of Spectrum, in the hopes that someone else might see it and contribute the actual game. At that time, I had nothing else except the title and game type. No screenshots, or anything else.
Found
In 2023, I was able to obtain the game binaries, after about 15 years of searching.Downloads
Fat Frumos in ZX Spectrum TAP tape formatFat Frumos in ZX Spectrum SNA snapshot format
Fat Frumos in ZX Spectrum Z80 snapshot format
Play these on a ZX Spectrum emulator, such as my own zxian ZX Spectrum emulator - which received a "save screenshot" feature, specifically to complement this article with the Fat Frumos screenshots below!
Screenshots
