Firetop

Continuing with my theme of ‘nostalgia’ I revisited the days of the ZX Spectrum this week to try and recapture some of that early gaming fun to which I was so addicted as a small boy. ‘Spectaculator‘ is a ZX spectrum emulator that you can download and install on your PC to recreate the early 80’s computer game sensation. They don’t supply a rubber keypad I’m afraid… and you won’t be able to reproduce that ’scratching paint from metal’ feeling unless you take a can of gloss to your PC’s keyboard first. However, you do get a 30-day free trial with Spectaculator and pretty much all of the classic games can be found at World of Spectrum.

I have a lot to thank the ZX Spectrum for; it was my first exposure to the world of computing (I don’t include the ZX81 because that blew up the second day we had it). For the most part I just loaded the games on the cassette recorder and spent days in my bedroom hooked on those, breaking Kempston joysticks, which really weren’t designed for the vigorous ‘left/right wiggling’ needs of Daley Thompson’s Decathlon. Upon playing the games again now, I found it strange how my memory of the graphic range was so over inflated, as if my mind had compensated for the poor 8×8 bit character quality back then with human imagination - just as it does with the words from a book.

My other favourite game, which I spent hours on with my friend Benedict (no he wasn’t a Pope), was Guadalcanal. I still love this game on the Spectrum emulator and found myself quite addicted for hours this week. Playing as either the Japanese or US fleet you have to destroy the enemy by manoeuvring ships, launching bombers from carriers and directing a seaplane to find the enemy ships on the map. For a young child it’s a very early initiation into the world of multi-tasking and project management (the graphics themselves ar ehardly anything more than 8 bit squares moving on a sea of blue).

Of course I did also learn BASIC programming thanks to Steven Vickers’ ‘BASIC Programming’ book which featured among other things, how to make a Union Jack flag appear full size on your screen, Go SUB routines and my proudest moment - making a game start without having to type ‘RUN’ after the cassette had finished playing (well I was only eight years old). There’s no doubt that without the ZX Spectrum I would never have started on the root that lead me to working in Online; HTML, PHP and JavaScript aren’t really all that different to get your head around.

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