Sinclair Spectrum 30 years old!

[Neil]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-17776666

It was my first machine and I remember it incredibly fondly!

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/showscreen.cgi?screen=screens/load/j/gif/Jetpac.gifhttp://binaryzone.org/thorpe/rambo.gif
http://i291.photobucket.com/albums/ll300/LucidFlight_album/The-Hobbit-Spectrum-loading-screen.pnghttp://www.brainygamer.com/.a/6a00e39824440288330133f474d0ed970b-800wi

[Sammich]

Never had one of those, but back in 83 I started out on a TI-99/4A. It was a real drag because all of the cool kids had Apple IIs along with all of the games so I spent the entire summer vacation learning BASIC with the belief I was going to make my own games. I ended up entertaining myself by writing a d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, d20, d100 dice rolling program the Dungeons and Dragons with pretty graphics. Only problem is that since the thing wasn't portable (you needed a t.v. and cassette tape player for storage) I never got to use it in an actual game.

The positive thing was that fall when I took the BASIC programming class in high school I knew more than the teacher and ended up being the teachers aid. During that time the school board had a belief that PC's were a passing fad and refused allocate any funds to buy computers so the school only had 8 Apple II's bought through fundraising for a class of 20 kids.

[Rancid Carcass]

It was my first machine and I remember it incredibly fondly!


Same here. I remember saving up my pocket money and heading off into town to pick up some completely awesome game from the £1.99 range (Dizzy FTW!), great days - thank goodness for emulators!

[Kaos]

Was just talking to Brett about this computer. Not really sold in the states since the black and white version never really got off the ground here. Even though I think the C64 and the Atari 800 were superior machines, this computer looked like it was scrappy and did its very best to give the others a run for the money. The games that were made for it looked really fun too. Wouldn't mind giving the Dalek game a few tries.

[Neil]

Was just talking to Brett about this computer. Not really sold in the states since the black and white version never really got off the ground here. Even though I think the C64 and the Atari 800 were superior machines, this computer looked like it was scrappy and did its very best to give the others a run for the money. The games that were made for it looked really fun too. Wouldn't mind giving the Dalek game a few tries.
It came out before the C64 and was cheaper (I believe).

[Kaos]

It came out before the C64 and was cheaper (I believe).

Oh, it was no doubt cheaper (and quite a value). That is what I meant when I said it gave the others a run for the money.

The Atari 8 bits came out in 1979 and were exceeding capable graphically due to the dedicated ANTIC chip. The 800 was much more expensive than the ZX (but no where near as expensive as Apple 2 computers) .

The Atari 8 bits and the C64 had the deepest penetration of users here in the US, but I think the ZX Spectrum would/could have done wonderfully here given that it was a fantastic computer and an extreme value. The support of this computer in the UK was admirable, and it had a very long period of commercial software support that should be the envy of any 8 bit fan.

[Neil]

^^ I still remember speach recognition software and the like on the Spectrum - be it just 3-4 words. But it was amazing what people were doing on it!

[Tricky]

Ah 30 years! I might go and stick my head round the door to see if its loaded the game yet! :p

[shootemindehead]

No. It got all the way to the end and crashed.

Used to love the Speccy though. Despite the inferior graphics (colour clash...ugh), the games themselves were genius sometimes. 'Jetpack', 'knightlore', 'Gunfright'...brilliant.

[SymphonicX]

I used to own the 48k version, rubber keys and external cassette player....then we pushed the boat out in the late 80s and bought the 128k version. This one had plastic keys and an attached cassette deck. Phenomenal.

With the 128k version came a lightgun and games such as Operation Wolf, and Bullseye (the darts gameshow). Amazing. Still can't believe such a primitive system had a lightgun, but there you go.

There were some amazing games for it back then. Really got the imagination going.

Dizzy, Robocop (with real sound! for like 5 seconds...), Jetpac, Blind Panic, Scrabble (with incomplete dictionary and ability to make up your own words), Hang On (superceeded by Super Hang On)...god there were so many I've fogotten them all...

Great system...miss it loads...emulators just aren't the same as hearing that modem sound load through the telly and the black and white stripes dancing behind the splash screen....