Distorted bar in MASK 3: Venom Strikes Back (timing issue?)
The game (https://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0003045) uses some trickery so that, in the menu, the horizontal green bar with the text "Gremlin" goes through the border on both sides. This is how it looks in FUSE, emulating either a 48k or a toastrack or +2 (loading it in 128k mode, which adds AY sound):
However, in +2A/+3 mode it looks like this:
which is how I remember it on my (no longer functional) +3 back in the 80s, since I just had the tape version. However, the DSK version (from WoS) was apparently adapted for it and shows the bar correctly again in FUSE's +3 mode.
On the Next, from the same .TAP file, it looks like this in 48k mode:
and almost the same (it's slightly different on the left side) in 128k mode:
I'm using a VGA monitor at 50 Hz (tried both mode 4, which looks the best on my monitor, and mode 0, the game's bar stays the same between both VGA modes).
The game itself is perfectly playable, I'm not complaining. :) But this may help you in diagnosing and fixing some timing differences from the original hardware.
Versions: distro 1.3.2 / NextZXOS 2.06I