I’m slightly behind the curve here, because Sir Clive’s masterpiece, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, turned 35 years old yesterday. This is, of course, an occasion worth marking, even a day late, so mark it I will do: with my Top Ten Spectrum memories. This won’t represent the best of what…
This week marks the 30th birthday of one of the icons of the 8-bit era: adventurer, boxing glove wearer and all-round good egg, Dizzy. So, to mark the occasion (and breathe life back into the retro-gaming blog here), here’s a quick rundown of Dizzy’s greatest adventures, ordered from least good…
Today’s challenge is to see how long I can actually keep writing about what is, in essence, a maze game; thankfully, I’ve chosen a maze game with a twist. The Facts. Released in 1983 by Incentive Software, ‘Splat!’ was ‘a totally original game’ in which the player must explore 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…
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…