ZX Spectrum vs BBC Micro: the TV drama Comments by Oli Welsh

@Yaz

Agree totally. Its so easy to be lazy these days. (including myself here)

I felt we were being pushed harder in those days. The hardware limitations forced you to think outside the box more.

@kangarootoo
Edit: now I think on it, what about the ZX81. My first experience of home computing. 3D Monster Maze was the scariest shit I had ever seen in my life.

Ah... also my first experience of home computing and the wonderful world of 3D gaming. I was nine at the time and within minutes of opening the ZX81 manual, I knew I'd be spending the rest of my life coding.

Really looking forward to this; the 8-bit era really was an amazing time, where people like Uncle Clive, Chris Curry, Al Charpentier, Jay Miner and many others brought home computing to the masses, and freewheeling bedroom coders created all sorts of mentalism that wouldn't even be sniffed at by today's publishers.

And yes, said publishers could do a damn sight worse than having a trawl down Emulator Lane and snapping up some golden-age brilliance for release on today's systems.

@Couthulu

Oh shit, yeah! :-)

My bad, my rose tinted glasses are a bit scratched. Too much fun in the nineties (Curse you, recreational drugs)
On a side note: Thrust! What a fucking immense game that was!!

Oh, they both sucked.

I had Sinclair ZX81 but moved onto an Atari 800XL. I always felt sorry for anyone with a Spectrum (hope you don't like too many colours!) or a BBC Micro (*that's* what you call a joystick?!).

"I always felt sorry for anyone with a Spectrum..."

Snob!

;-)

"hooked a generation of British boys on computing"

Hey! Girls played on BBCs and Speccys too! Please amend!

Will they have Timothy Dalton as Alan Sugar in the last episode, grinning evilly as he buys the last remnants of the once-powerful Sinclair empire? "I'll have all your computers, and your little C5 too!"

Edit: I was one of the outsiders as an Oric-1 owner, but had friends who owned C64s and Amstrads.

Awww, this sounds (like it could be, unless they bugger it up) great! :D

Seeing as it's on BBC4 I'll give it the benefit of the doubt, interesting angle too.

I look forward to some vintage beards and 'taches.

There wasn't a battle between Spectrum and BBC Micro in the home at all, the only kids I knew at the time with BBCs had teachers / wannabes as parents, the rest of us had C64s, Spectrums and a few with CPCs.

Oh, and good god.... the CPC had the best of both worlds?! O_o It was superb for isometric games like Head over Heels and such, but stunk at scrolling and trying to fly sprites around the screen for the most part. I was always jealous of the CPC versions of Renegade and the like, though :)

@ CHAZBIGPOTATO

Thrust was the game that taught me that some CRT monitors really don`t like being turned upside down, discovered by my ultimately less than cunning plan to complete the inverse gravity levels by flipping the monitor over.

@StooMonster
I too first went online with a C64. In australia it had a black box modem thing that auto connected to a Bulletin Board setup and I purchased Bards Tale III online. Got it weeks before the shops. Should have called the "The Thief of Time" not fate. :)

All sorts of brilliant.
I want the end with Clive going over a cliff in a C5, thelma and louise style.

Beeb FTW! I think Starship Command was the first moddable game - could change out the ship sprites for anything. I had a full suite of classics - Galactica, flash gordon's rocket, and a Barbarella Kn*b ship.

I had an Acorn Electron. Waiting 30 minutes for a game to load somehow made you more appreciative of the games. I remember with fondness Starship Command, Thrust, Frogger, Killer Gorilla (rip off!), Superior Soccer, Graham Gooch's test cricket, Footballer of the Year, Steve Davis Snooker, Stryker's Run, Howzat, to name but a few.

Anyone remember the wild bunch? I loved that game so much.

>"I always felt sorry for anyone with a Spectrum..."

Why? it easily had the better games!

Graphics dont make a game.. gameplay makes a game.. graphics are just "fluff". Kinda like how a hollywood movie isnt made "better" by special fx (well unless you're a sad dweeb)

Lost my gaming cherry to a Spectrum 48k - wonderful machine (and tender and gentle with me). The good old days of thumbing through revolving stands full of £1.99 games at the local paper shop reading the tatty cassette sleeves in awe at the unlimited possibilities they seemed to offer :) Happy days! Or they were until mine spontaneously combusted, shooting flame out the expansion slot and permanently singing the carpet in front of the telly. Mum took a lot of convincing (and slavish completion of chores) to buy a C64 a few months after.

Just gotta remember to tip-ex the cassette players volume wheel!

Oh yes, I had tip-ex on the volume wheel :) It was a tricky bugger to get just right.

I had an Acorn Electron but we got one when they were practically giving them away. At that stage the Speccy was already a more successful machine (but more expensive). My dad went to town for a new portable telly from Currys or Dixons (whichever did Saisho tape players) and they bundle one in with some Acornsoft games and a cassette player for an extra £50 if I recall correctly. The games came in a plain cassette box which sat inside a hole in a cardboard book-sized box. Seemed quite special at the time :)

I remember excitedly playing Hopper and Boxer that night. We had Arcadians too but it took ages to load and tended to cock up right near the end. Lots of "Data. Rewind tape" messages :)

It's pretty amazing to me what the programmers got out of 32k or whatever was left after the basic OS. When Crazee Rider came out and the track had corners (as opposed to Overdrive's straight road) I was in awe. I had this Summer games collection by Tynesoft and rather cleverly they used a command to click the cassette player's motor lock to create the clicking reloading sound of the gun during the skeet shooting.

I don't suppose many of the games would hold up that well today but I was very fond of Chuckie Egg, Frak!, Codename Droid, Deathstar and Mousetrap. Later on I really liked a Ghost and Goblins type games called Hobgoblin and it's sequel. I managed to pick up a cheap Plus 1 interface later on and played Hopper a lot on cartridge because i didn't have to wait for loading :)

Oh, and Zany Kong Junior which was a rather excellent copy of Donkey Kong Jnr.

I could read these comments all day , and to think I thought I was the only old git who still loves gaming . I was a Spectrum 48k dude as well but I remember in our Lunch times we used to play a great platform game on the BBC Micro called Magic Mushrooms ! it even had its own level editor . Makes me laugh when they call LBP innovative !
Someone mentioned Fairlight , what about 3D Ant Attack by Sandy White . Now that game really will be looked upon as something very very special in years to come .

I had one of the first spectrums (16K) and from what I recall when I later upgraded to a BBC B it was that which were pitching against the C64 at computer club :)