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Happy Birthday Spectrum!

Xàbia Shrimper

Co-founder of ShrimperZone
Joined
Oct 24, 2003
Messages
13,804
Location
Xàbia, España
25 years ago today, Sinclair launched the ZX Spectrum. I can remember how thrilled I was when I finally got hold of one, "upgrading" from the ZX81. I can clearly remember the screeching noise as the programs loaded from tape. *skrreeekkekekkkchhh* The games were simple; I remember we used to spend Saturday typing a game from the pages of a computer magazine (in BASIC of course); the end result wouldn't raise an eyebrow these days but at the time it was hot stuff. Any other memories?
 
Never owned a Spectrum, my progression went:

Mattel Intellivision
Acorn Electron
C64
Amiga

All great machines.
 
Spectrums really were a highlight of the 80's, those rubber keys were so daft they were cool.

I had a ZX81, with 16k ram pack, then a Vic20 (crap) and finally a newer model ZX Spectrum with the plastic keys before moving onto an Amiga later on.

Games to remember : Lotus Esprit, 3d graphics!, Skool Daze! Elite! and of course the cause of many nights up until 6am at aged 14 - Football Manager by Kevin Tomms!
 
ZX80 > ZX81 > ZX Spectrum > ZX Spectrum+ > Commodore 64 > Vic 20 (****e) then I split between PC and games consoles > Sega Master System (SMS) > Sega Mega Drive I & II > SNES > Nintendo 64. I still have all of them apart from the ZX81. I only still use the N64.
 
I had a +2, them were the days. I never forget the utter shock when one of the games "spoke" to me (I think it was Twin Turbo V8). Unfortunately by the time I had a Speccy, most of my mates were now onto Amigas/ST's and other such platforms that had games in Colour!

My brother in law got my sister a SNES for Christmas, MarioKart and SuperTennis still play really well to this day.

My route of Consoles was something like : MSX, Atari 500, Spectrum +2, Sega Master System, Megadrive / Amiga, SNES, then swapped my SNES back to a Megadrive. PSOne /PC, PS2/PC
 
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I remember spending hours writing a simple card game from a magazine...Took me ages to recheck ..I thought I was the dogs bollix then I was Computer Programming.....Im sure that was in Basic to Mike.

In fact I only remember Basic and Pascal then
 
My brother and I used to spend weekends typing out great reels of code from Computer Magazine into our Spectrum and BBC. We were a team, one calling and the other typing (I was always the caller).

I dont think one of the games ever worked, we corrected coding for what seemed like months but the swines would always come back with a syntax error.

Had great fun on the spectrum tho. Games made by Ultimate were seminal and way beyond their time.
 
I used to love my Spectrum 48k -

Dad of Dts got me one for my 6th birthday I think and I loved it. My best game was football manager - It had a database of 18 players including Alvin Martin and you got allocated 11 at the start of the season so it made the transfer market somewhat dull but god I love that game.
 
I used to love my Spectrum 48k -

Dad of Dts got me one for my 6th birthday I think and I loved it. My best game was football manager - It had a database of 18 players including Alvin Martin and you got allocated 11 at the start of the season so it made the transfer market somewhat dull but god I love that game.

Ah yes! That was the one that used to play "highlights" of the game, which was actually a bunch of static stickmen on a bizarre pitch with weird perspective and a square ball bouncing backwards and forwards. Excellent game! You can still play it with an emulator!
 
I remember spending hours writing a simple card game from a magazine...Took me ages to recheck ..I thought I was the dogs bollix then I was Computer Programming.....Im sure that was in Basic to Mike.

In fact I only remember Basic and Pascal then
I did that several times, painstaking hours spent typing out lines of basic code. Unfortunately most of the games turned out to be utter tripe which you only played for about ten minutes having wasted several hours when you could just type:

10 PRINT "BUM"
20 GOTO 10

Hours of entertainment.
 
My brother and I used to spend weekends typing out great reels of code from Computer Magazine into our Spectrum and BBC. We were a team, one calling and the other typing (I was always the caller). I dont think one of the games ever worked, we corrected coding for what seemed like months but the swines would always come back with a syntax error.

Yep! Same here! CM used to print apologies in the next issue with corrected text which was somewhat belated especially after spending four weeks trying to work out the part of the code that was causing the error. It was quite satisfying on the rare occasion that you did.
 
Ah yes! That was the one that used to play "highlights" of the game, which was actually a bunch of static stickmen on a bizarre pitch with weird perspective and a square ball bouncing backwards and forwards. Excellent game! You can still play it with an emulator!

If you can post a link I may break the habit of a life time and give you some positive rep. ;)

The stick men were awful and there was only about 4 goals they could score which was a joke really. Still at age 6 it was the best game ever.

Other great games were as follows:

OPERATION WOLFE
GREEN BERET
YA-HA KUNG FU
RAMPAGE

Loved em all.

DtS :angel:
 
I used to love Desert Strike on the Mega Drive ....But that was of course long after the Donkey Kong classics on Nintendo..And my favourite Arcade game Missle Command, The table top version.
 
Just as a matter of interest do any of you remember Wizzard Computers in London Road Leigh ?
 
'Desert Strike' was one of those games that my younger brother was awesome at but I was always crap, which annoyed the hell out of me. However I was THE king at 'Defender' and 'Galaxians' (still am, thanks to MAME32) and was never beaten as "Davey Jones' Locker'.
 
It certainly rings a bell althoug I normally used to go to a place in Southend High Street which for the life of me I cannot now remember the name.

There was one shop in Leigh I remember near the Grand ..Called Platium i Think...


As for Wizzard it was near Belfairs High......There was a Black cave you were allowed to play in and it was top notch for up to date games . They were the first to introduce Trade in's for old games.


A secret to tell if you know that shop.:confused:
 
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Nope. Not the same shop I was thinking of then. I think there used to be a shop close to the old milk dairy in London Road opposite Fillebrook Avenue. I've a feeling it became an Indian take-away (which has the best name ever: "Curry in a Hurry"!)
 
Nope. Not the same shop I was thinking of then. I think there used to be a shop close to the old milk dairy in London Road opposite Fillebrook Avenue. I've a feeling it became an Indian take-away (which has the best name ever: "Curry in a Hurry"!)


Close to that Chinese by Chalkwell Schools Fukk In or something similar.
 
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