Remember these Spectrum games?

[francis]

Anyone remember these free Spectrum games (http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/000053.html)? I had the Thomson Twins one - wasted loads of time and never finished it. Who new that Shakin' Stevens was one of the forerunners of bundled PC content with music?

More fun than typing about:mozilla into the address bar of my favourite browser.

[David]

Ahh - those were the days. I had a Sinclair Spectrum - my very first computer. In fact, if the truth be known, I still have it and it still works - along with a pile of games. I wasted many happy hours in the early 80's playing Dragontorc, Pyjamarama, Nodes of Yesod and others. I also used my Spectrum to learn Basic programming.

Can't really bear to get rid of it although I never use it now.

[francis]

A colleague of mine used to work for bubble bus software; remember them? I loved their Starquake - an amazing game. I used to have some Ultimate games - Underwurlde (sp?) was one that I never finished. Also Manic Miner, Penetrator, Jet Pac.

[David]

Yes, Underwurlde (http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseek.cgi?regexp=Underwurlde) was a classic. I still have a dodgy copy of it on tape and some of the others that followed in the same series.

Hmm, just had a quick look around and noticed how much stuff there is out there on Spectrum games - not sure I want to go there...

[francis]

Oh yeah, there's spectrum emulators out there - fanct playing Horace Goes Skiing on your PC? Also, eBay have got a ZX81 (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3086272474&indexURL=0&photoDisplayType=2#ebayphotohosting), currently going for £10.50. Almost worth it at that price.

[David]

Before we get carried away on a wave of nostalgia, I think it's worth reminding ourselves exactly what we are talking about here. I tracked down some screenshots from some of my favourite Spectrum games (20 years ago!). It's easy to get romantic about the 16 colour display, the poor quality sprites and the chunky pixelated images. No, I'm quite sure I don't want to go back there. Good while it lasted but...

http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/watson/postimages/pyjamarama.gif http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/watson/postimages/dragontorc.gif http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/watson/postimages/nodesofyesod.gif

...no, definately not!

[francis]

ooh, in the middle picture you can see the infamous colour bleeding on the ghost/imp/thing that most/all Spectrum games suffered from when one image got too close to another.

[James]

Those were the days. I got through two keyboards thanks to Daley Thompson's Decathlon.

Despite the terrible graphics, slow game play, and clicky sounds, I spent at least two years of my early teens completely addicted to the damn thing. My mates had Commodore's which were technically better but you can't beat a Speccy game!

Memories ...

[James]

So what games are those screen shots from David?

I think the first one is Pyjamarama, but not sure about the other two.

[David]

You're right, the first is Pyjamarama, the second is Dragon Torc and the third is Nodes of Yesod (I was always convinced that was an anagram).

Try Spectrum Screenshot Heaven (http://members.tripod.com/ssh_web/) for a slice of nostalgia.

Oh, and just for you:

http://www.websitearchitecture.co.uk/watson/postimages/daleythompson.gif

Also, check out these links (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/links.asp?c=949&st=1) when you've got a few spare hours.

What have we started?