Happy birthday Spectrum!

Thanks to this article on Slashdot, I have realised we celebrate the 25th anniversary of ZX Spectrum computer.

I remember finding first computer magazine in my life (it was called "Bajtek") when I was nine - I have read through the walkthrough for "Three weeks in Paradise" and thought I didn't understand the rules of the game (there was a map for the game, so I thought it was a sort of board game). I got some explanations and fell in love with the idea. I was then reading on about games in other computer magazines, watching the photos of Lords of Midnight and l'Aigle d'Or in French computer magazines that my parents got - and I kept asking my parents to buy me one of these wonderful machines. Occasionally, my Dad would take me to his work, where I could play some Amstrad games (hey, Ghosts'n'Goblins!).

Lords of Midnight

My dream took quite a long time to realize, since my parents didn't really have much money (plus take into account the fact the official exchange rates between Polish zloty and American dollars, as well as the availability of even 8bit computers, remember that it was still '89). On the funny note, I can vaguely remember that in the eighties the Polish radio would broadcast ZX Spectrum programs and games, so that anyone with tape recorder could record it on the tape and use. How about that, American imperialists? We shared everything in the communist period (tee hee), and come to think of it, one might consider it to be a rough equivalent of the government warez . Gives all new meaning to the term 'radio connection'.

ZX Spectrum+

I finally got my first computer in 1991 - it was ZX Spectrum+ with a tape recorder. Games took five minutes to load, and the loading would often crash, since it was a cheap, Polish tape recorder and read the data with a little bit of liberty. Sometimes if you touched the cable, the game would abort loading before the end. My younger brother even got beaten by me once, when he crashed loading of Draconus (I feel ashamed even today when I recall it). Of course in '92 most of my friends would already have Amigas. Words can't describe it how gorgous looking these games appeared to me back then (Wolfchild, Moonstone, Swiv, Agony). However, instead of just playing my ugly (by comparison) ZX games, I took to programming so there was something good in the situation.

Chase HQ

I can safely say that my parents buying me ZX Spectrum+ was one of the best things that happened in my life. It is all a history now, but these were great times and we had incredible sense of power, forcing this crude (but then they appeared almost almighty) devices to do what we wanted them to do. That's when I got infatuated with computers, programming and, above all, games. That's where my fascination with insides, outsides and the logical part of electronic devices stems. That was the beginning for me.

Imagine how many possibilities this gave, how many doors to visionary worlds opened, how programming was tickling my mind - and we're talking about eleven years old me in a gray reality of a freshly post-communist country.

ZX Spectrum+ and its insides

I now meet programmers who can't tell me what processor their machine has, who don't understand the way their expensive graphic cards work, I meet engineers that barely know what's in that black box. If I still happen to like to know what's 'under the hood' (so to speak), it is because back then my childish curiosity was driving me to understand ZX Spectrum from inside out... and after that, every next generation of computers was easier to understand.

PSPectrum

Right now, I have ZX Spectrum emulator on my PSP and I can revisit the dungeons of Knight Lore or caves of Heavy on the Magic on the bus - and it's like a trip back to childhood days, only without waiting for the game to load from the tape (my original ZX Spectrum+ is non-operational and lies in the depths of my basement, but I still have it). For those of you who are online, there is a whole archive of the games to be played through your browser available at World of Spectrum (this is better for veterans), as well as a selection available here and here. Tears are almost trickling down my cheeks when I revisit Chuckie Egg, Bomb Jack, Who Dares Wins II, 1942, Green Beret and Lords of Midnight...

Clive Sinclair

Clive Sinclair received his Baron title for the success of ZX Spectrum and in my opinion rightly so. Happy birthsday, Speccy, and all the best to you Sir Clive!