I want to start this blog by talking about the ZX Spectrum. This isn’t going to be a nostalgic article, where I praise its bleepy audio and teletext style graphics (if you don’t know what teletext was, it was like the internet but made from Lego) because I never actually got to play one. We did own one, though. We actually had two of them, but trying to get the things to work was the closest we got to playing a game.
The Spectrum was technically my first gaming machine. We had some weird Amstrad word processor with a green screened monitor, but we never had a single game for it. I’m not even sure games existed for it and, if they did, they’d probably be less fun than using it as a word processor. We bought both ZX Spectrums from car boot sales at fiver each. If a fiver sounds quite cheap then that’s because it was. The machine had had its day by this point and 16-Bit machines like the Amiga and Mega Drive were starting to appear, but if you’ve never played a video game before then what does it matter?
The first Spectrum didn’t work. Kids are supposed to be good with technology but when you’re under ten, your first computer uses a tape deck and there’s no YouTube then good luck. I’m aware that a bunch of seven year olds had set up successful software companies by then, but that wasn’t me. I came to the conclusion that it was broken and we had been swindled. The previous owner probably thought he could get a few pints out of it and that he’d be long by the time we realised.
When we found the second Spectrum some time later at another car boot sale, we asked if this one definitely works. We were assured it does, as do all the extra games that came with it. We handed over another fiver and took it home. It didn’t work.
What I remember most about the second Spectrum was looking at the artwork on the game cases. One was a beautifully drawn picture of a spaceship blasting an asteroid like it was the cover of a vintage science fiction novel. The game, if it ever loaded, probably would have just consisted of a few single coloured lines rather than the epic space opera I imagined. That’s how most games were back then, very simple with fantastic cover artwork that made you imagine something it’s not. At least these days it’s the game itself that impresses over the cover art, where they probably hired someone like me to quickly throw it together in Photoshop. Until today I always thought this game was Asteroids, but I can’t find any evidence that it was ever released on the Spectrum. The closest I’ve been able to find is ”Planetoids”. Imagining what these games were like was part of the fun of trying to get them to work. There’s no way they’d be able to live up to the expectation of someone who didn’t yet understand the limitations of early computers.
The coolest thing about owning a ZX Spectrum was the name. It sounds like an incredible piece of future technology. When asked what computer I owned, I proudly said the ZX Spectrum. It was old and it didn’t work, but it was a small first step into the interesting world of gaming.
Today playing Spectrum games is super easy and you don’t even need a cassette tape. No nostalgia is necessary and if you missed out on playing one, like I did, then find an emulator and give some games a try.