Speccy
This page is purely about my history with the ZX Spectrum & other 80's home computers, and not a page about people who wear spectacles. Click on one of the options above to move to another part of the Speccies section. There is a PC page and a Sony Playstation Page on the menu bar.
48K: My first computer was a jointly owned one. Dave, Mike and myself used to have a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K Squidgeboard.
The next one was a ZX Spectrum + which was basically the same computer but with a better (yeah right) keyboard. Yes, as I remember it, if you turned it upside down all the keys fell off. Try finding Symbol Shift then!
I think that after the + we went on to a +2 briefly. I say briefly because the tape players were rubbish on them and wouldn't load any of the games up.
AMSTRAD: Then came the Amstrad CPC 6128 with the built in 3" floppy disk drive. As I remember it we only had a green screen monitor with it at the time, and it took ages to get a colour monitor. Try playing Steve Davies' Snooker when all the balls are the same colour as the table.
AMIGA: Commodore Amiga A500+ was my next step into 16 bit computers, and I used to love playing Skidmarks on it! Especially getting the Cows on wheels towing Caravans over the jumps. This is where I started faffing around with drawing and I was also using Mini Office to do my tech homework. It couldn't cope with the stuff I wanted to do so I went out and bought a PC. (See PC's on option buttons)
Spectrums still haven't gone from my life, I am still running a Speccy Emulator called ZX32. It appears to be very good and there are loads of places you can download the games from. The games are only 40K odd so they don't take long to download either. The games I am enjoying at the moment are Way of The Exploding Fist and Commando. Do you remember these?
Another reason Speccies are still part of my life is that I own three of the buggers. Two 48K squidgeboards and a ZX Spectrum+ (48K). I paid about a fiver for the last squidgeboard I got. It had the tape player, leads, carry case and a few games with it. Unfortunately it doesn't work on my normal telly so I have to use it on the portable TV. These are going for around £30 on e-bay at the moment.
My Spectrum Squidgeboard.

EMULATOR: If you click here you will able to download the ZX32 Spectrum Emulator that I am currently using. It is 1.37MB in size and is version 1.03. There are also a couple of classic games on here too! The emulator here may not be up to date but if you visit World Of Spectrum, (see Escape), you should be able to get the latest version.

ZX32 Emulator for download. Version 1.03

Among the many games I am playing here are but a few.

Each of these above links will let you download the files onto your computer.The files from here are self extracting zip files which can be opened on any PC, even those without Winzip or PKUNZIP. I have these games on a disc which I bought on-line and there are many places to buy them from, however if you want one off my disk, E-mail me and I'll send it if, it is on there.

Airwolf (Not as good as C64 Airwolf)

This is Airwolf from Elite and while it was a very good game in it's day, it could not quite match the Commodore 64's Version which was excellent.

Stupid Faces... Why????

Click picture to enlarge

PCW Show 1986: One thing I'll always remember about Speccies is the PCW Show, the Personal Computer World Show in London Olympia. A few of us went down on the train and strolled around picking everything up that was free and I think I got away without paying for something. It wasn't on purpose, it was just confusion. On the left here is a picture of the group who went. I think at this time only one person in this picture was a C64 owner, and the rest of us were ZX boys.

This picture was taken on the train, returning from the show and you can see Killers loaded up with booty. (He's the one with the really strange face). A few things I can remember from this trip were:

My yellow jumper...(Nice) , Dave's King Grub T-Shirt , Oli Frey (Crash Mag Artist) , Baseball Caps. My Crash baseball cap later got me into trouble at a funfair in town when a BIG bloke start spitting on it and I spat on him and his friends. Not a good move.... Still, at least my friends (in the photos) stood by me...???? and hid behind arcade machines so that I couldn't find them and get them beaten up too.

 

Twisted Again Killers.

Click picture to enlarge

Click picture to enlarge

 Yellow Jumper!!!! I had this jumper for christmas off my mum and I wore it whenever I could because it was so cool. All my mates used to rip into me about it but it was just a little bit warmer than my blue PUMA muscle shirt! (What was I on?).

Fancy a font for your PC? Like the one at the top of this page? Try this self extracting zip file. Just extract them into a temp directory and then install a new font in the Windows Fonts Directory. All of the documents relating to the author are still with it, give em a whizz and indulge in some nostalgia.....

I've just bought 2 ZX81's from a car boot sale although they haven't got the power supply with them they're in top nick. I'll get a couple of piccies up here when I get the chance.
More Spectrum nonsense to follow.
If anybody who owns the copyright of the games that are available here, objects to me storing them here and allowing people to return to their childhoods then I will be happy to remove them from this site.

 

Last Updated May 21, 2004