- #How do you load a game on sinclair zx spectrum manual
- #How do you load a game on sinclair zx spectrum tv
I owned a Commodore 64 but my cooler friends had Spectrums. The Darling Brothers, the Oliver Twins, Matthew Smith … they were the technological equivalent of the bedroom indie pop stars of the era, and the Spectrum was their secondhand Telecaster, their Roland 808 drum machine. Games such as Jet Set Willy and Skool Daze were slightly anarchic, miniature alternative comedy sitcoms.They drew on what it meant to be an adolescent in the 80s, with its recession and unrest. This appealed to the kids making games at the time kids brought up on Monty Python and Pink Floyd, punk and The Young Ones.
They looked weird and offbeat and sketchy. But just like in other areas of culture, what looks like a technical failing actually became a signature aesthetic element of the games. It had a unique way of storing sprites (or moving characters) to be more memory efficient, but the process meant that colours would often leak between objects on screen – a phenomenon known as attribute clash.
There was something slightly strange about this computer. Again, it was more affordable than the competition – the BBC Micro, Commodore VIC-20 or Apple II – so teenagers could be given them for Christmas, and could begin making their own games on the rubbery keyboard. When the ZX Spectrum arrived a year later, with its colour visuals and tinny audio, it was truly the beginning of the British games industry. A lot of money for my family at the time, but not too much.Ī revelation … the Spectrum’s predecessor, the Sinclair ZX81. The ZX81, you could buy in Boots or WH Smiths or from the Argos catalogue, and it was all there for you. The hobbyist computer market, which introduced the likes of Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak to programming, was not as well-developed in this country and required some engineering expertise – you built computers such as the Altair 8800 yourself. It was a revelation.įor families all over Britain, Clive Sinclair – who has died aged 81 – brought computers home.
#How do you load a game on sinclair zx spectrum tv
There was something on the TV that we’d made, and that we could interact with. I can’t even begin to describe how exciting that was. The result was a game in which you had to input coordinates to throw a ball into a waste-paper basket. My whole family sat around the screen and took it in turns to type in one of the BASIC program listings from that weighty booklet.
#How do you load a game on sinclair zx spectrum manual
I remember seeing the instruction manual for the first time, with its beautiful illustration of a gigantic starship, and I understood straightaway that the thing my dad was at that moment plugging into the TV was the future. I’d seen them advertised on TV and in comics but I never imagined we’d own one we didn’t even have a video recorder. O ne day, in the bitterly cold autumn of 1981, my dad brought something home with him which he said was a sort of present for the whole family.
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