It was Christmas 1984 when I got my ZX Spectrum 48K 'home computer'. It was an exciting Christmas for me, setting up the Speccy (It's what it is was referred to back in the day) to my black and white portable TV in my bedroom. I felt privileged to have a TV in my bedroom, and a computer too!
I had a tape recorder that I could use to load the software from, little did I know how important cleaning the tape heads was, which caused many a R Tape loading error, 0:1.
The first thing I recall was the keyboard, it was rubber! I only ever used a BBC Computer at School. It was also different in the way you typed the commands of the BASIC language and loading games.
Instead of typing out the full word you pressed a key that had the command on it. For example, pressing the J key would print LOAD to the screen but it soon it became second nature. I do remember though when I was at college I was having to type all of the words out of the commands in the UNIX command prompt.
I guess also that is why I can "touch type" quickly and can spot typos much quicker!
Because of this Christmas present, it started my career in "Computing", though I didn't know it as yet.
Soon after I got the Speccy I started to grow my games collection, though I can't fully recall all the games I had, I got rid of all of the games (Shock!) but I will explain why later.
Games that spring to mind and I don't know why where 1984 - A government management game, I played for hours but no idea why I liked it so much. It turns out that I like strategy type games and others as well.
The Hobbit kept me up late/morning trying to solve the puzzles but also having fun being carried around by Gandalf. I think this game started my love for Adventure games, text or Text/Adventure and later full on graphical Adventure games.
Later on I was hooked on Sherlock from Melbourne House, a simply wonderfully created game, took the Hobbit to the next level. I am not saying Sherlock was easy, it was not! It did start to help my problem solving skills which really did help me later on in life. Take a look at my memories of the game.
The games in the image above, are just a small number of the games I collected over the months, but I don't know to this day what happened to them or the ZX Spectrum!
Football Manager was one of my favs just playing and playing, watching those matchstick footballers 'run' around the pitch to score. Match was graphically better, but it was an arcade style of a game which allowed me to play with a joystick, though I think I recall just using the keyboard. My Joystick took a lot of wear and tear when playing Daley Thompson Decathlon game.
There were so many games I liked playing (mostly from 11pm to 1 or 2am) that I think my sleep pattern was broken back then! Lords of Midnight got me hooked, perhaps my first RPG? The game seemed massive, playing multiple characters, recruiting soldiers along the way and so many other features. One being you could win the game via battle or via quest. I never completed it but was so close before I gave up. I have played it on an iPhone as well :-)
Playing these games allowed me to escape from reality which unfortunately was a bit broken. Soon I was at college and still into my games, but I started to learn BASIC, as at college we were able to use a BBC Computer to type programs into, which started the need to understand programming. Totally self-taught, from magazine listings, cassette magazines and breaking into games written in BASIC. I do also remember playing around with Z80 Assembler, though the most advanced thing I did was to modify a machine code clock to run whilst I was in the BASIC editor - amazing, multi-tasking on a ZX Spectrum!
What followed on from BASIC programming were Text Adventure games. I had already played several of them such as The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, Hulk (Scott Adams), but I thought I wish I could write one. Then I think I started to create a game in BASIC, but I spotted The Quill. The text adventure writing system. So, I set about creating a game; but then I also spotted in a magazine a new text adventure writing system - Graphical Adventure Creator (GAC). I went about learning GAC and started using the graphic editor to create some nice graphics for a game I was writing. I completed the game and so proud of it I sent it off to Incentive Software. A small package with my cassette enclosed was delivered, with a nice rejection letter. Oh Well I had fun creating it.
Through the years that followed I got married and my first child was on her way. It was then that I decided to get rid of everything apart from the magazines. I don't recall the reasons but moving into a one bed flat might be one of the reasons and nor do I recall where they were dropped off, no eBay then!
I remember the time that my Speccy broke! It would not start up, this filled me with sadness but I remember taking it to a computer repair shop which was a bus ride away. About 2-3 weeks later it was ready to be picked up. Those 3 weeks was not too bad, yes I was reading the magazines and thinking about what games to buy next (or to save up), it did mean I was out playing football.
Eventually I got the call to say it was ready and went to pick it up the following Saturday.
It was like getting another Christmas or birthday present, I was happier now!
I only ever had 2 peripherals for the ZX Spectrum 48K and they were the Rotronics Wafadrive and the Currah µSpeech.
The Currah µSpeech was for me about trying to say stupid things and never really used it for much. I can't recall any games I had were Currah µSpeech enabled. There is a wiki on it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currah and a link to hear how it performed!
The WafaDrive though was something that for me was a huge upgrade from tape to "Wafa" drive.
I recall the Wafas were catridges of tape, though much faster than the conventional cassette tapes. There was also the Microdrive which was faster than the WafaDrive but for some reason I opted for the WafaDrive, probably on special offer.
It was simple enough to use, plug it straight into the back of the Speccy and away you go. There were variations to the commands usually reserved for tape operations, such as LOAD "filename" became LOAD * "filename".
I had a lot of fun with this, created a catalogue of games which was written in BASIC :-)
