Speccy weccy woo!

[capncnut]

This morning, I picked up my first boxed ZX Spectrum since the early eighties, after answering an ad in one of the local rags over the weekend. Dude was about 60 odd and was selling it, mint boxed, with an old portable Sony tape player, also boxed, and 150 games for just £40. For those of you who forget what a boxed Speccy looks like, here you go. Has the Horizons demo cassette inside, with the manual, cables, plastic cover sheet. Games are all in their original packaging (damn I forgot how big some of those were) including a load of the greats: The Hobbit, Way Of The Exploding Fist, Bombjack, Raid Over Moscow, Daley Thompson's Decathlon, etc. Even has a text adventure writer. Of course I playtested it, infact chose three games at random and all of them loaded without any problems whatsoever. The dude seemed a bit hard up, so my generous side took over so I gave him double the asking price, as the whole package in such good condition is easily worth that. Also, I got a call from my old pal Lee, who says he has another 50+ games that he's willing to hand over for a small fee (i.e. a drink) because his Speccy is broken and can't play them. Oh, and did I mention that I already have an unboxed +2 with about 100 games, original and pirate... Anyway, I know this should be in the games discussion but this is just a little brag, nothing more, so I decided to put it here. Joy!

[kortick]

I never heard of this creation. but by all means do enjoy it. it looks like a brick with buttons on it. did John Titor come back in time for that thing? do you have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow on it?

[MinionZombie]

I think I've had one run-in with a Spectrum (or perhaps it was another, similar type of machine) in my early years. It was over at the house of a family friend, and was perhaps my first introduction to the world of videogaming. I remember a casette tape of a formula one type racing game, and it took forever to rewind and load and so on, but I think at the time I didn't quite 'get' the whole deal of gaming ... I think I must have been like 5 at the time.

[capncnut]

did John Titor come back in time for that thing? No that was an IBM. But he did retrieve your suspenders. Edit: Most of the games work so I'm totally creaming my pants right now.

[clanglee]

Is that thing pre C64 or was it a contemporary? I don't remember the Spectrum. . maybe it was a british thing?

[capncnut]

Is that thing pre C64 or was it a contemporary? I don't remember the Spectrum. . maybe it was a british thing? Yeah the ZX81, Spectrum 16k and Spectrum 48k was out waaay before the Commodore.

[clanglee]

So it was contemporary of the Tandy?

[jded]

Looks ancient. The farthest back I can remember is the Colecovision and the Atari, did you have those in your neck of the woods?

[clanglee]

Yeah the ZX81, Spectrum 16k and Spectrum 48k was out waaay before the Commodore. Actually just looked it up. . .they were released the same year. . . .'82

[capncnut]

Really, I assumed the 81 was out in, erm, '81.

[clanglee]

Yeah apparently the ZX81 was released in '81. . . my bad. . .but the Spectrum was '82 apparently. They appear to be similar products. Weird to me because I always thought the Commodore was popular in England. When I went back in '93 or so. . they still had Amiga games for sale in stores. Not easy to find in the US back then. They were all in PAL format tho. . .I was quite disappointed.

[capncnut]

Well it's kinda like 360 vs PS3. Both were popular, Commodore 64 had a bigger memory, but Spectrum had the games. Also the graphics were kinda blocky with the Commodore, which is strange because while the Spectrum was only 48K, it was much sharper. Turbo Esprit on the Commodore Turbo Esprit on the Spectrum Accurate car dimensions, eh? Edit: And here's Ray Parker Jnr's classic for Bassman.

[Ghost Of War]

That's fucking awesome. I remember getting one, me and my dad would be up all hours playing Jet Set Willy, The Hobbit and Ad Astra. One game that always sticks in my mind is Lords Of Midnight, a Hobbit type game. Aaah, memories...

[capncnut]

That's fucking awesome. I remember getting one, me and my dad would be up all hours playing Jet Set Willy, The Hobbit and Ad Astra. Funny you should mention Ad Astra because I was playing it earlier today. That game is fucking well hard, was playing it for damn near thirty minutes and barely made it past the first wave. And you get five or six lives.

[krakenslayer]

I never heard of this creation. but by all means do enjoy it. it looks like a brick with buttons on it. did John Titor come back in time for that thing? do you have to reverse the polarity of the neutron flow on it? Yeah, Speccies were popular over here in the UK but never took off in the states. Back in the days when IBM systems were uber-expensive, when someone had a Personal Computer they were usually talking about owning either one of these, a Commodore 64, or an Amstrad CPC. In the States, Commodore dominated the market but Amstrad and Spectrum managed to survive, and even thrive, alongside the Commodore in the UK market. As far as I can remember - and earliest memories of such things were truly from the dying days of the C64, Speccy, Amstrad era - they all had followings that were roughly in the same ball-park in terms of size. I remember playing Elite on one of these back in the day. My step brother had one and I inherited it when he got a SNES. I used to sit on my bed at night, wrapped in the duvet (which was, in my imagination, a starship cockpit), exploring a virtually endless 3D (wireframe) universe and thinking that life just didn't get any cooler than this.