I know I’ve mentioned before that my first computer, despite my friends all having Spectrums, was a ZX81. Not that I begrudge them their good fortune; I caught up in the end after all. In fact I so loved my ZX81 that I’ve now got another one, given it a…
Once upon a time, not so very long ago, Spectrum gaming was so new and, ahem, basic, that software houses felt the need to show off that their latest game was ‘written entirely in machine language, and takes up almost all of the 48K memory,’ thus creating ‘the fastest and…
No, not games inspired by hopeful looking individuals standing near the exit of Strensham Services holding up a piece of card with ‘Islington’ rather optimistically scrawled upon it. For today is Towel Day, when the Universe acknowledges one of its greatest ever occupants, Mr Douglas Noel Adams, author of The…
I’m going to preface this review by saying that my exposure to the Commodore 64 over the years has been, well, limited, shall we say. But for today I’m setting aside my largely irrelevant Sinclair bias to take a look at the latest offering from Chris Wilkins and Fusion Retro…
So here it is, as promised, my retro review of the Spectrum classic Trashman. You have to wonder what went on in some of the pitch sessions at games companies in the 80s… ‘The T. Rex is ancient history, we need a new gaming icon!’ ‘How about some sort of astronaut…
To celebrate the geek in-joke turned global holiday that is Star Wars Day, here’s a round-up of some unofficial (and frequently rubbish) Star Wars related retrogaming you may or may not be aware of. Text adventures A long time ago, before computers had realistic (or indeed any) graphics or sound,…
Having got my newly acquired Sinclair computers up and running, there was only one logical next step; and so I dug out my copy of Paperboy, prayed I had remembered the laws of chuntey, and loaded up… There was no deep reason for Paperboy; it was never one of my…
I know I said it started on eBay, or on my 40th birthday, but of course it didn’t, not really. My current obsession with retro gaming is like episodes IV-VI, but with better prequels. My Phantom Menace, to stretch an already crap metaphor, occurred when these two 80s behemoths met…
At the end of last week’s post, I had acquired a handful of non-functioning Sinclair computers, and was about to embark on trying to revive them. And as you may have surmised by now, my attempts were somewhat successful. In fact, the ZX81s were surprisingly easy to deal with; maybe…
It’s one of those strange quirks of life that some of the most crucial elements of my childhood, some of my defining moments, are associated with things I never owned. For instance, I never owned a Raleigh Chopper, but Stuart Denny did, and for some reason I now have an…