The ZX Spectrum.

The 48k Spectrum was the first computer I ever owned. It was an amazing piece of kit at the time and I spend countless days alone with it, quite sad really looking back now.

It was more than just a computer though. It doubled as a trampoline for my toy soldiers (yes, I know it's sad, but I used to play with my soldiers and used to pretend the rubber keys were a trampoline), and for those very cold nights, the transformer made a very good foot warmer.

Games List - Click any to play them onlne NOW!!


Army Moves

Avalon

Bolder Dash

Bombjack

Booty

Bubble Bobble

Byte Bitten

Cauldron

Chase HQ

Chuckie Egg

Cobra

Combat Zone

Death Chase

Dizzy

Driller

Dynamite Dan

Enduro Racer

Exodus

Gauntlet

Ghostbusters

Harrier Command

Head Over Heels

Horace Goes Skiing

Icicle Works

Invincible Island

Jasons Gem

Knight Tyme

Manic Miner

Pacmania

Paperboy

Sentinel

Spy Hunter

Star Glider

Turbo Esprit

Transformers

Toobin

Vectron

WEC Le Mans

Yie Ar Kung Fu

Zaxxon









If you're looking for an emulator so you can play the games offline, take a look here.

It’s quite staggering now looking back at a computer that had only 48K of RAM, and that was more than enough. Also one thing that still gets me to this day is that I actually had the patience to wait for games to load from tape. As anyone who owned a Spectrum can appreciate, just waiting for the game to load was not enough. It was a temperamental beast, and the length of time a game took to load was directly proportional to the chances of it crashing during the loading process. You would sit there, perfectly still, holding your breath just in case the change in air pressure would be the factor that would cause the infamous R TAPE LOADING ERROR message to appear.

You may think I’m joking, but I can guarantee that any person who owned a Spectrum knows exactly what I’m talking about. We were afraid to move.

In fact, it was so much of a joke, that one game called Brian Bloodaxe actually prompted you to blow on the keyboard once it had loaded. You may think that only an idiot would do such a thing, but countless Speccy owners wafted a sample of breath over the rubber keys not wanting to tempt fate. If you didn’t blow on the keyboard, the computer rebooted. We all know now that it was a random thing, but at the time, you just didn’t want to take any chances.


You may think I’m sad for even letting this thought enter my head, but imagine if we still had to load games and programs from tape. I have often wanted to calculate exactly how long these days it would actually take Microsoft Windows to load. Thankfully though, reality takes a grip and I start to worry about more important things.

If anyone has actually decided to calculate this (I know there’s bound to be some sad muppet out there), or if you knew the transfer rate from tape (bytes per second), please get in touch.

The Speccy did have crap graphics. It had 8 colours, but you could only have two of them in any 8x8 pixel block. What it lacked in graphics, it certainly made up in gameplay though.




Despite the power of today’s computers, many of us still want to reminisce in the good old days. There are plenty of Spectrum Emulators out there, and plenty of the games available for download.





Since the Speccy is the only computer I owned at the time, I am underqualified to write about the other machines that were around at the time. If you owned another computer and want to help me put another section together, get in touch with me. I don’t want someone who is just going to provide a few facts and then get bored. If you want to get involved, you must be willing to put some effort into it and see it through to the end. So, if you want your own little section you can call your own, here’s your chance.



Want to prove you’re the saddest muppet at work? While everyone has sarcastic messages and flying windows bouncing around their screens, remember the good old days with this Spectrum Classics Screen Saver.



Right, enough of this waffle. If it’s Speccy games you want, then Speccy games you’ll get. Listed near the top of this page are some of the all-time classics. I have over 1,000 of them to add eventually. More and more will be added each week (time permitting of course), so make sure this is you’re weekly stop for Speccy nostalgia.

Each game description contains some screen shots, instructions if available, and most importantly with most of them you can play the actual game on-line through your web browser!

If there’s a game you remember, let me know and if it’s in my collection I’ll chuck it up on the site.

Added:  Saturday, June 25, 2005
Reviewer:  admin
Score:
hits: 78005
Language: eng