anyone else owned one of these belters?

no end of tapes and pokes on this brilliant little 48k machine.

and who remembers this?

I had one
It was my life.

But I can't remember what that was now

clue: it was an anti-piracy device for one of the all time great games of all time great games. of all time.

yTib wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:03 pm

clue: it was an anti-piracy device for one of the all time great games of all time great games. of all time.

Jet Set Willy?

Rosehill Claret wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:06 pm

Jet Set Willy?

bing bing bing we have a winner.

mnmnmnmnmnmnmnmnmnmn symbol shift.

which game am i describing?

yTib wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:08 pm

bing bing bing we have a winner.

Ha ha, as soon as I saw it, it instantly brought back memories

I had 2, and a 3rd still boxed and unopened in my parents attic. Dad used to teach computers at school so I had all sorts of fun with the bloody things. Daley Thompsons decathlon doing the 100m in about 6 seconds using a golf ball to run is my lasting memory but it ruined the rubber keyboard (hence needing a second one!)

my snooty pal allan williams refused to play on mine as it was 'inferior' to his commodore 64.

otherwise he was a good lad though.

Bit before my time - Commodore 64 was my first venture into the computer world. Tapes were rubbish though, but the C64 had an add on that let you play cartridges, and a friend had Terminator or Terminator 2 in glorious monochrome.

i did upgrade to a commodore amiga 500.

at the time i thought it miraculous.

I loved the amiga 500, and I missed it so much that I eventually swapped my first playstation for one.
Tremendous machine, and the gameplay would still hold up today I reckon.

distortiondave wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:28 pm

I loved the amiga 500, and I missed it so much that I eventually swapped my first playstation for one.
Tremendous machine, and the gameplay would still hold up today I reckon.

a great machine but the snes and the mega drive were just that much more better for games.

the amiga had great music apps though (before they were called apps).

djs were still using the amiga 30 odd years later.

Quite a few A500 games were ported over to console - cannon fodder, worms, zool, xenon 2 (megablast!) and the like.

Never got on with A600, A600+ or A1200 though.

Had a Dragon 32

first time i saw doom was on a 1200. changed my perspection of what can be done on a computer.

and xenon 2 - greatest soundtrack ever. though stolen from john carpenter.

Spijed wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:36 pm

Had a Dragon 32

a friend of mine had a vectrex.

a mental machine far ahead of its time.

Jeez.. my 1st computer was the ZX81
When the Spectrum came around it was different class
Loved it
Manic Miner being the best

manic miner was so difficult.

eugine's lair was as far as i could get.

Treasure Island Dizzy was a favourite in our house on the Spectrum.

‘Soccer Double’ - a management game, would take a good few hours of my childhood also.

burnmark wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 10:04 pm

‘Soccer Double’ - a management game, would take a good few hours of my childhood also.

brian clough's football fortunes was another great management game but easily cheated.

Kings Keep and Daley Thompsons Decathlon were popular in my house!

yTib wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 8:56 pm

anyone else owned one of these belters?

no end of tapes and pokes on this brilliant little 48k machine.

and who remembers this?

I remember that, mainly because I spent a whole lunch break at school copying it onto graph paper with felt tip pens! An attempt to stop piracy that was never going to stop a determined 14 year old.

distortiondave wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:16 pm

Bit before my time - Commodore 64 was my first venture into the computer world. Tapes were rubbish though, but the C64 had an add on that let you play cartridges, and a friend had Terminator or Terminator 2 in glorious monochrome.

Known as the ‘Cumodore 64’ to us Speccy owners. Although to be fair they called our machine the ‘Spunktrum’.

martin_p wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 10:39 pm

I remember that, mainly because I spent a whole lunch break at school copying it onto graph paper with felt tip pens! An attempt to stop piracy that was never going to stop a determined 14 year old.

my uncle transcribed it numerically for me. it must have taken him hours.

if mark drinkwater is looking well done sir.

I had a BBC model B with 2 floppy disc drives, planetoids used to drive me insane

Lemmings on the C64.

Very frustrating but equally rewarding.

I still have a cd with 1k speccy games on it, which I could play on windows10 and earlier.
Sadly obsolete but it's still there if anybody has a use for it.
Barmy burgers and manic miner were my early pleasures.

Ah, the ZX Spectrum.

The home computer for kids whose parents didn't love them enough to buy them a Commodore 64...

I had a Zx81 followed by the spectrum. You put a game on to load and went for your tea, when you came back, if you were very lucky, the game was loaded!!

Absolutely and the Commodore 64 and Commodore Vic20 before it... Blitz was the go to lol

Addictive Games - Football Manager by Kevin Thoms. If put your players up for sale and refused 2 bids they became injured, but by the next game had gained ten energy points, so you could have a Dyche fit team all the time. You can still play the C64 version online.

My progressive route as a kid was

Acorn Electron
ZX Spectrum
Commodore 64
Amiga 500

Use to love playing football director as a kid

Chucky Egg
Donkey Kong

Aw the memories. Happy days.

I had an Amstrad CPC 464. Looking back, it was the lesser of the three when compared to the Speccy and Commodore but still gave me some great years gaming as a kid.

Bomb Jack, Footballer of the Year, almost anything by The Oliver Twins, Boulder Dash, Barbarian, Rock n Wrestling, Cauldron, Who Dares Wins 1 and 2 and Sorcery are the ones that stand out for me.

I preferred the spectrum over the c64, was quite happy to swap colours for clearer unblocky graphics tbh. Remember playing the great escape in isometric view, spent hours on that.

The Amiga 500 was the dogs nuts though, so many great games. Actually sold my old one from my attic for £250 last year. It made me sad but I needed the money. Quite a lot of the disks still worked amazingly.

yTib wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 9:09 pm

mnmnmnmnmnmnmnmnmnmn symbol shift.

which game am i describing?

Daley Thompson's Decathlon?

My first was an Amiga.

Favourite games were:

Mad professor Moriaty
Lemmings
Zool
Cannon Fodder
TwinWorld

Great memories!

For anyone interested in wallowing in the nostalgia of the C64, this is a nice bit of kit

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Séga-RGLA01-UK ... B0764BK6L1

(link from Amazon - other online stores are available)

Unlike some of the other “mini” consoles, this one has a USB port, so you can download any game you can find online onto a USB stick, and just plug and play.

Unfortunately, there’s no Spectrum equivalent (yet) as far as I’m aware.

I moved from a ZX to a Amstrad CPC464 before moving to my favourite computer of all time the Amiga 500, always wanted a 1200 but we couldnt afford it.

moved to console gaming after that really.

I remember playing a game called Asteroids. You were a small triangular shaped craft in the middle of the screen that you could rotate clockwise and anti-clockwise, to shoot asteroids that were floating around and headed towards you. I think you could also select hyperspace and it would move the craft to another part of the screen. There were also random UFOs that went across the screen that you could shoot for bonus points. I somehow managed to get to one small asteroid that was moving vertically to the far edge of the screen, out of range of the centrally placed craft. So i spent what seemed like hours just shooting the passing UFOs without being able to hit the last asteroid. I racked up something in excess of 1 million points where my previous scores had been a few thousand and eventually the game shut down!

There is a great 90 minute drama on You Tube called ‘Micro Men’ starring Martin Freeman and Alexander Armstrong.

Covers the birth of the Acorn Electron and Sinclair Spectrum.

Doesn’t paint Clive Sinclair in a fantastic light.

4:20 wrote: ↑

Wed Jul 17, 2024 8:26 am

I had an Amstrad CPC 464. Looking back, it was the lesser of the three when compared to the Speccy and Commodore but still gave me some great years gaming as a kid.

Bomb Jack, Footballer of the Year, almost anything by The Oliver Twins, Boulder Dash, Barbarian, Rock n Wrestling, Cauldron, Who Dares Wins 1 and 2 and Sorcery are the ones that stand out for me.

Who dares wins are massively underrated games, spent hours on those! thanks for the memory.

Boulder dash was decent too.

Thinking back how many had a cheap joystick to go with the computer that often snapped when you got the slightest bit angry, or better still concave keyboard lol, or maybe that's just me lol. Great memories.

loved my ZippStick joystick

Altered Beast another played a lot

I was always an Acorn/BBC child myself, but was very jealous of the Spectrum and C64 games.
I had BBC B, B+, Master 128 then the Acorn Archimedes.

Happy days indeed, Elite was an absolutely outstanding game.

Bought my daughter a Spectrum 48k
Even my wife liked Horace Goes Skiing!

martin_p wrote: ↑

Tue Jul 16, 2024 10:42 pm

Known as the ‘Cumodore 64’ to us Speccy owners. Although to be fair they called our machine the ‘Spunktrum’.

Ugh, that's so disgusting, How crude, etc, tell me more

I got a spectrum, Christmas 1983. Happy days and the rivalry in the school yard between speccy and C64 kids was sport in itself. Going round your mates with a c90 cassette full of games and copying them - someone with a tape to tape stereo system was the king of the school.

On a similar note, I recently acquired a Sinclair C5 for no reason other than I always wanted one when they were launched in 1985