Memoirs of a Spectrum Addict, by filmmaker Andy Remic, documented the memories of a few key players in the early Spectrum years. Over the course of a year Andy interviewed many Spectrum programmers, gamers and fans of the spectrum and filmed all their chats. They shared their experiences in programming, game development, playing and collecting everything Spectrum. (For a full and impressive list of interviewees see the bottom of this article.)
Interest in Andy’s idea was so huge that it smashed its initial funding goal of £1,000, eventually making over 6 times the goal amount on Kickstarter. The film came out to much acclaim from the Spectrum community, and there will even be a Spectrum panel featuring many of the interviewees at Play Expo on Sunday 15th October.
Spectrum Addict: LOAD “FILM 2” is a new Kickstarter crowdfunding project about the Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer, which is running throughout October in order to earn pennies in order to make the film. The Kickstarter has just gone live now!! (Friday 6th October). You can find it here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyremic/spectrum-addict-load-film-2
Based on the current revival of all things Spectrum, this is going to be huge!
The first film, Memoirs of a Spectrum Addict, met with critical acclaim and lots of nice people said nice things about it, like Retro Gamer Magazine who awarded it Pick of the Month and said, “There’s a heart and personality to Memoirs which is missing from many of its peers” and “It’s a delightful labour of love”.
Please take the time to drop by the LOAD “FILM 2” Kickstarter campaign and see what it’s all about.
If you would like to pledge support to Spectrum Addict 2, the Kickstarter campaign is here:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/andyremic/spectrum-addict-load-film-2
You can also follow Spectrum Addict on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/speccyaddict
Spectrum Addict on Twitter :
https://twitter.com/SpectrumAddict
If you would like to buy the original film, Andys personal site is : www.remicmedia.com/speccyaddict
Original interviewees from Spectrum Addict 1:
Scott Adams – co-founder of Adventure International, and programmer of Adventureland (1978), Pirate Adventure, Voodoo Castle and the Questprobe games, amongst many others. It could be said Scott was the driving force in creating the format we know as the classic text adventure today!
Jas Austin – games developer at Automata and Martech, and author of fabulous games including Pi-in’ere, Nemesis the Warlock, Slaine, Altered Beast, and the classic platform bullet hell shooter, Rex on the Spectrum.
Gary Bracey – former Software Manager at Ocean Software.
David Bradley – groupEditor-in-Chief of SFX and Total Film magazines, former Games Editor on PC Format, a Spectrum fan and gamer since 1982, and tech and entertainment journalist on various other Future Publishing titles.
Simon Butler – graphic artist at Imagine, Denton Designs and Ocean Software.
Luca Bordoni – current Spectrum developer who created the much (and long!) awaited Ultimate tribute game and unofficial sequel, Miremare.
Jonathan Cauldwell – a current Spectrum programmer, author of the popular Egghead games and the current Arcade Game Designer.
Ben Daglish – amazing musician who worked on many retro platforms including C64 and Spectrum.
Mevlut Dinc – games developer and author of Gerry the Germ, Prodigy and Last Ninja 2 for the Spectrum.
Bruce Everiss – veteran games industry marketer, and formerly of publishing giants Imagine, Codemasters, and now Kwalee.
Oliver Frey – Book and magazine artist, cartoonist and illustrator, co-founder of Newsfield (CRASH Magazine), resident CRASH artist and former publishing director of Thalamus Software.
Lord Arse – AKA Mark Howlett…Retro Fan with one of the largest user base of retro followers on Twitter in the world! This man lives, eats, drinks and breathes everything retro.
