What got me started gaming

My very first experience with video games. Was it the SNES? No, was it the NES? No. It was in fact the 'Sinclair ZX Spectrum128k+2'

Aside from having a name that rolls off the tongue the Sinclair was the daddy of home computing and video games.

The Sinclair Spectrum +2 was the first Sinclair computer made by Amstrad after they bought the rights of the Sinclair computers products. Now I'm aware that there were other versions of Spectrum's available before the +2 release in 1987 yet as this is my article I'm talking about the Spectrum +2 (I'll touch on the others at another time)

I don't really know much about what the machine cost back then as it was my Dad who got the machine and brought it home, but from what I can gather courtesy of the Internet I believe it to be somewhere between £139-£149 crazily enough the same prize as a Nintendo Wii!

The redesign of the Spectrum +2 welcomed a proper typewriter keyboard and a built-in tape recorder and twin joystick ports.

Anyway that's enough about the technical side of things regarding the computer, lets move onto the Games.

There were tons of them, Popular game developers were Psion, U.S. Gold, Ocean and of course Codemasters.

The first game I ever played was an adaptation of the TV series 'Street Hawk' for those to young it was basically Knightrider but on a super bike. It was a simple top down view, riding a bike chasing bad guys cursor keys for control and space bar to jump.

Now as you can see from these graphics we're talking simple colours and actions on-screen. Sound effects were a minimum with the odd noise coming from gunfire from the vehicles you were overtaking, quite why every car was firing at you I never understood!

The next major game for me was 'Daley Thompsons - Decathlon' released by Ocean.
Now as the game savvy of you may be aware this game was one of several attempts to bring the arcade game 'Track and Field' to the Spectrum

The game consisted of the 10 events which make up the Decathlon (100 metre sprint, long jump, high jump etc) movement was controlled by either wiggling the joystick back and forth or pressing to alternate keys on the keyboard. Graphics were slightly better than Streethawk, with crowd cheers and scrolling 'Ocean' advertising boards in the back ground.

Now I'm not going to sit here and list every game I played on the computer as that would be endless given how easy it was to distribute copy games (as simple as using a two deck tape recorder and copying tape to tape) How simple is that, no need for cracks, or disc key's etc.

It wouldn't be right of me to talk about the Spectrum without mentioning the loading procedure. It really did feel like an age for a game to load, when in all seriousness it was about 5 minutes, during which we were treated to god awful squealing and scratching (what can only be compared to a similar sound modems used to make when they connected to the Internet) moving bars at the side of the screen as well as a cool attempt at a picture of the game.

Well I hope you've enjoyed this little trip down memory lane there will be more to come in the future, please feel free to comment about your favourite or memorable Spectrum games. If you would like to reminisce some more about the Spectrum then pay a visit to the guys over at the gamerdads forums