ZX Spectrum - Your memories

[Betty_Swallocks]

How annoying was it when loading a game from cassette only to find you needed to adjust the volume on the tape deck to get it to load properly.

You could get a good reliable load if you adjusted the cassette recorders head so that it gave a harsher sound. I drilled a hole in the casing so that I could adjust it easily

[psj3809]

Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wulf, Attic Attac and Hyper Sports. I managed to destroy a Kempston joystick doing the weightlifting event in Hyper Sports, those were the days

Daley Thompsons was the joystick killer for me, went on to keys after that. Hyper Sports was a great game though, always liked the skeet shooting

[monkeychops28]

Memories of playing Football Manager all day with a friend and getting promoted from Div 4 to Div 1 (as it was). Amazing that such a simple, basic game could keep your interest like that.

[Barrichello]

I love playing the old speccy games in their original format, but the missus (who was to young to remember the speecy days) has been playing some of the classics games jazzed up at http://retrospec.sgn.net/

Brings back memories. Loving the revamp of atic atac

[MMVIII]

So many great games, that previous people have posted.

Gameplay was definitely what many of the Spectrum games had and which is sorely lacking in many of today's PC and console games.
Lots of happy memories...

Some (but not all!) of my favourites were:
Chuckie Egg, Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Jet Pac, Atic Atac, Green Beret, Saboteur, Monty on the Run, Skool Daze, Bak to Skool, Knight Tyme, Spellbound (predecessor to Knight Tyme), Firelord, Dan Dare, Ghost Buster, Bombjack and Daley Thomson's Decathlon.

Other memories include the old Speccy magazines (auch as Crash!) and trying to type in those programs listed in them!!!

[psj3809]

Remember to try out www.myspeccy.com

Getting quite addicted to that ! Online emulator with a leaderboard.

You can also get Crash/Sinclair User etc , all the issues scanned and on a dvd....

http://www.zzap64.co.uk/zzuperstore.html

The sites nothing to do with me but just wanted peopleto know about it. I have the Crash one, theyre superb to take a trip down memory lane, you use a simple JPEG viewer to view the pages full screen and page up/down through them all.

Really takes you back, the Xmas specials of Crash were very special back then

[MMVIII]

Cool online emulator! I can see myself wasting too much time on this...

[Freedom Cry]

Spent ages designing my own courses on Kikstart.
Fave game though was Turbo Esprit by Durell. Spent hours driving round those streets which all looked the same. Also loved the Technician Ted games by Hewson.

[psj3809]

Turbo Esprit was a great game considering it was written in 48k. The missions were quite tough, often i would just drive about in the practice mode and see how long i could go on for without getting any points for damaging cars/hitting pedestrians etc !

Very original game back then, like a very basic GTA !

I spent lots of time with Championship Sprint (Sequel to Super Sprint) creating my own courses !

[FLUFFYTOY]

I love playing the old speccy games in their original format, but the missus (who was to young to remember the speecy days) has been playing some of the classics games jazzed up at http://retrospec.sgn.net/

Brings back memories. Loving the revamp of atic atac

cheers for this. going to have a dabble later. i loved chuckie egg.

another great game we used to play as kids on the speccie was formula one. the graphics werent good even in the day to be honest but the gameplay was fantastic.

Edit - found this on youtube showing formula one - brings back a lot of happy memories http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAWhv...eature=related

[psj3809]

Yep Formula one was a great game ! Remember the pit stops ? So annoying if your mechanics had no speed !

I never realised for years that if you pressed G you could gamble and put bets on the various drivers etc, quick way to earn money in that game.

Never was keen on the sequel (motorbike version of Formula One) but the original was superb.

[patdee]

Chaos and Lords of Chaos were the best games!
Did anyone ever have an interface with a slot in the top for games that came on a cartridge? They had a orange rubber skirt around the bottom?

[psj3809]

Yeah the interface II and the rom cartridges. They go for a fair bit on ebay now (as long as that rubber band is round them !)

Back then it was superb as you didnt have to wait 5 minutes and hear screechy noises for a game to load. The games on those cartridges were pretty old but were some classics (Eg Tranz Am, Jet Pac etc)

[discofonzy]

The most enduring memory for me was "Mapping" games. The hours we used to spend attempting to map the various arcade adventures.

I remember the day I bought Sabre Wulf, thinking to myself "This will be a great game to map". On the way home, I picked up a copy of "Crash" or "Your Sinclair" and inside they had a removable centrefold with the whole game already mapped!!! What a bummer, was still a half decent game though.

FonZy = Knight Lore was next

[Deadlight]

Now let me guess- Underwulde after that?

[roorooroo]

Millions of Speccy memories here..too many to list but a few of the hardware related ones below:

The buzz when you turned it on (literally a lovely buzzing sound)
Fuller sound box (amplifier)
Currah Speech interface
Manually adjusting cassette recorder heads for optimal loading (i can still hear the tones now!)

Having more games in my collection than all the shops i visited..lol..

Then there's the games..will get back to you on that one..