Happy Birthday Spectrum!

[Xàbia Shrimper]

The Foo King! Nice take-away actually ...

 

[Yorkshire Blue]

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:

I sort of remember Wizzard. Still can't place where it was (just along from Wings and Wheels?). I think there was a Wizzard club or something as I think I found a newsletter when I last dug out my old Amiga.

 

[Cricko2]

Mentioning Missile Command earlier .which I played the death out of and was Unbeaten...Later in life I wanted it back and contacted London leisure I think it was and managed to buy two for my home. They were both damaged badly and only ended up as one and I had to bribe Terry Flynn at Wonderland to sell me a Board to run them ..Bar steward charged me the earth for it.
The screen was very damaged having been in a pub most it's life, so I contacted Atari in there Uk base, which was in Ireland at the time to purchase a new glass top. This was if i remember correctly about a Wednesday .....By the next Tuesday the top arrived from America and although I had offered to pay for it ..Atari never charged at all.

 

[RobM]

I never got past the snapping toilet seats in Manic Miner!

 

[steveo]

I remember we used to spend Saturday typing a game from the pages of a computer magazine (in BASIC of course

What a sad individual you must have been. I remember doing exactly the same thing myself.

How aobut when you had typed loads of stuff into your ZX81, and the additional memory moved slightly and you ended up with just a c prompt left.

 

[Lester Bangs]

I used to frequent a computer shop in the Victoria shopping centre (in fact there were 2). Its the one thats on the right hand side as you go up the escalator from Victoria station.

Used to get all my spectrum games from there - that place was ace!

 

[davewebbsbrain]

ZX Spectrum with the DKTronics cover which got rid of the pants rubber keyboard.
Amstrad 464
Megadrive
PS1
PS2

Now have my trusty PSP, with chipped firmware and all the games I could ever wish to play on my hard drive, including all the old favourites..

Defender
Galaxians
HERO
Sonic


Just waiting for Manic Miner to be added to the list..

 

[Napster]

Never owned a Spectrum, my progression went:

Mattel Intellivision
Acorn Electron
C64
Amiga

All great machines.

Similar to mine

Atari 2600
Acorn Electron
Amiga
N64
PS2

 

[BrettieAngell]

C64
Master System
Mega Drive
Mega Drive II
32X
PlayStation
PC

 

[Kenny]

Just as a matter of interest do any of you remember Wizzard Computers in London Road Leigh ?

Yes!

Many a lunchtime/after school visit from Belfairs for a few games of Street Fighter 2 in said cave. I even signed up to be a member and I recall there being a newsletter?

I'll never forget my glee when I traded in Sonic 1 and Wrestle War for the original John Madden.

The owner was always playing PGA Golf against his mate.

 

[Cricko2]

Yes!

Many a lunchtime/after school visit from Belfairs for a few games of Street Fighter 2 in said cave. I even signed up to be a member and I recall there being a newsletter?

I'll never forget my glee when I traded in Sonic 1 and Wrestle War for the original John Madden.

The owner was always playing PGA Golf against his mate.

Shsss That was me the owner. Was a great time I have loads of pics from then and the Carnival float we did.

 

[A Century United]

Brilliant site here, listing the chap's top 100 spectrum games:

http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/estate/dh69/wos/world/ys/top100.htm

and I am delighted to find that his #1 Spectrum Game is the one I loved best....


3D DEATHCHASE (Micromega)

To remind you what this game involved....

No apologies, no regrets. Y'see, Spec-chums, I've been playing computer games for as long as computer games have existed. I've played thousands of them, from coin-op games to ZX81 games to Apple Macintosh games and all points in between, and the simple fact of the matter is that there isn't one in existence that's as exciting, as gripping, as tense, or as downright thrilling as this is. Written in 1983 in just 9K of memory, Deathchase puts you on a motorbike in a forest, with no other purpose in life than to chase other characters on motorbikes and kill them for bounty money. Your enemies don't shoot back at you (not even the bonus-point tanks and helicopters), there are no power-ups, no end-of-level bosses, and the only things which can kill you are the trees of the forest itself. They don't TRY to kill you, of course, they just stand there, growing leaves and photosynthesising and doing whatever it is that trees do over the countless millennia, and wait for you to crash headlong into them at full tilt. And you will. The inanimate nature of your only enemy gives Deathchase addictive qualities which are almost unimaginable to anyone who hasn't played it. Y'see, when you get killed in Deathchase, it's nobody's fault but your own. The trees don't move, nothing shoots at you to distract you, it's possible to slow down or stop to catch your breath anytime you like, there just isn't any excuse for getting yourself splattered all over the forest except your own carelessness and impatience. Which means, of course, that the next time you play, you won't make any of those silly mistakes. Will you? Well, of course you will. The thing is, the game is so utterly simple (I mean, 'avoid the trees', it's almost insulting) that you don't see any reason to slow down, you can't accept that your skills as a games player aren't equal to such a laughably straightforward task. So off you go at top speed again, whizzing through the forest in fine dramatic style until you remember that you've got enemies to chase, swerve after them with your bullets zipping past just centimetres away, edge just that bit further over to get them into your sights, and BLAM! Another faceful of bark.
There's more to Deathchase than this, but not much more (as a wise man once said, more or less). For one thing there's the sound. Not that there's a lot of it, all you get is a scary siren effect at the start of each level and a jarring screech when you collide with one of those ubiquitous giant redwoods. The result, though, is so effective you wonder why no-one does it more often. The silence as you whip soundlessly between the trees just makes the sudden explosion of noise all the more terrifying - this is a game that'll make you jump off your seat in fright if you play it at night with the lights off. And that reminds me - there's night time too. Every second level of Deathchase is a night level, with the same number of trees as the previous one but with the light blue sky turned pitch black. Theoretically it shouldn't make things any harder, but the atmosphere is so gloomy and oppressive that you find yourself crashing almost on purpose out of sheer subconscious despair. The coming of dawn (when you finally manage to nail the level's two bikers) heralds an increased level of danger, but the relief of being back in daylight is so great that you almost welcome it.
And then finally there are the 'bonuses'. Every now and again a tank or helicopter cruises slowly across the horizon from left to right. They don't shoot at you, they don't get in your way, they don't drop reinforcements for the bad guys, they don't do you any harm at all in any way. Except that sometimes they're just too much of a sitting target to pass up, and you deviate from your path just for a second to bag the juicy points bonus you get for shooting them, and...BLAM! Time to leave your teethmarks for posterity once more. They never hurt you, but you'll grow to hate them.
Doesn't sound like much, does it? Bikes, trees, bonus targets and crashing. (Lots of crashing.) Only two real controls, hardly any sound, totally basic character-square graphics and gameplay your dog could probably learn. I'm probably talking rubbish, all those years in front of flickering screens have probably destroyed my mind. It can't be that good really. So why not prove me wrong? Why don't you give it a try? What have you got to lose? Except the rest of your life, that is...

Now where's that emulator gone.... :D

 

[Cricko2]

Somtimes I worry about you ACU:p

 

[A Century United]

Somtimes I worry about you ACU:p

You and my wife both... :fart: :D

 

[Mad Cyril]

I used to buy the Games for my Commodore 64 (after carefully reading the review in ZZap 64) from a camera shop down Queens road.

Later on I used to use the shop in Vic Circus (not Estuary, the other one). I don't remember what it was called.

 

[Slipperduke]

I was devoted to my rubber-keyed Spectrum. Match Day was like FIFA 97 on tamazepan, but it rocked in 1986.

Tracksuit Manager was the forerunner to Championship Manager and took months of my life away.

Daley Thompson's Decathlon was the death of my keyboard.

Jet Set Willy was nearly the death of me. I found a map to that game the other day and apparently, I'd nearly completed it. What an epic.

Ghostbusters was the best movie/game of all time, built like a business sim but, y'know, with ghosts and stuff.

And Chuckie Egg, off course. Still playable now.

http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/

 

[The Flying Scotsman]

We had the rubber keyed Spectrum and loved it.

Favourite games:
Daley Thompson's Decathlon
Test Match Cricket
Manic Miner
Chuckie Egg

When I passed my 11+ my mum and dad bought me a Spectrum 128k with Laser Gun. Used to have a ball playing Bullseye, James Bond, and even just a bit of Clay Pidgeon Shooting. Also quite liked the Batman game, although that was very advanced and took a while to load.

 

[Mad Cyril]

I was devoted to my rubber-keyed Spectrum. Match Day was like FIFA 97 on tamazepan, but it rocked in 1986.

Tracksuit Manager was the forerunner to Championship Manager and took months of my life away.

Daley Thompson's Decathlon was the death of my keyboard.

Jet Set Willy was nearly the death of me. I found a map to that game the other day and apparently, I'd nearly completed it. What an epic.

Ghostbusters was the best movie/game of all time, built like a business sim but, y'know, with ghosts and stuff.

And Chuckie Egg, off course. Still playable now.

http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/

There was a bug in Jet Set Willy that meant it could not be completed!

 

[number11]

We had the rubber keyed Spectrum and loved it.

Favourite games:
Daley Thompson's Decathlon
Test Match Cricket
Manic Miner
Chuckie Egg

When I passed my 11+ my mum and dad bought me a Spectrum 128k with Laser Gun. Used to have a ball playing Bullseye, James Bond, and even just a bit of Clay Pidgeon Shooting. Also quite liked the Batman game, although that was very advanced and took a while to load.

Was Test Match cricket the game where the only decisions you had to make were whether to run or not? The cricket game my brother and I had basically consisted of an overhead view of the cricket pitch, stick men players,and the ball and shot were played automatically and you would press either y or n depending on where the shot went.....

The representation was similar to the football manager game I loved.....stick men, line representing the ball direction, but it had european competitions and cups etc, and I seem to remember I could have Falcao and Socrates in my Liverpool team.

Also remember a player manager type game, where each fixture you were told how many shots you would have (1,2 or 3) and you would decide if you wanted to play or not (think you had to 'buy in' to play a match so you would only spend your credits if guaranteed 3 shots or was big game and would go for the two shots....think the shots basically were then a pre runner for the play for your club screen...... Hours were spent on the simple formats above....I can barely play Pro evo on my own now to be honest.

Progression then lept from 48k to Amiga....Kick Off, Kick Off 2 (at the time I would buy any football game, but Micropros soccer, Fighting soccer, and the lamentable Brian Cloughs football fortunes were woeful)...and then the awesome sensible soccer. Rigged up the amiga few years ago to play against a mate and it was still highly playable.

Graham Taylors football manager was a good little management game...first one were you could ultimately get offered the england job and had all the players details through all the league (was legendary Southend team of the era). Bad choice of brand association though probably did for it and allowed Domarks Championship Manager to blow all away.

 

[SUFC_Al]

I used to buy the Games for my Commodore 64 (after carefully reading the review in ZZap 64) from a camera shop down Queens road.

Later on I used to use the shop in Vic Circus (not Estuary, the other one). I don't remember what it was called.

I've been trying to think of the name of this place for ages but for the life of me I can't remember what it is :mad: