Posts Tagged ‘Wonderboy’
A link to these chaps, the ZX Orchestra got me pondering about my times with Sinclair Computers at home.
In my lifetime we had a 48k, then a 2+ 128K, then an absolutely astonishing piece of home-made wizadry which was i think a 128K with an Opus floppy disc drive attached, which meant games were loaded in seconds rather than minutes. And it had a save option too, so instead of having to complete Chuckie Egg 2 in one 20 hour sitting, you could save and go back to it.
Apart from the top two blocks of pixels across the top went funny, so descending a tube became more of a 16 colour lottery.
I would have traded in our Spectrum for a Commodore 64 or Please Father Christmas an Amstrad or Amiga at the drop of a hat. Now i am willing to wear my 128K badge with pride, it becomes a bit like the Yorkshiremen sketch:
-You had an in-built cassette player? Ooh we could only dream about In-Built cassette player.
We had to get out of bed at 4am-half an hour before we’d been to bed-to turn the TV on so it could warm up.
Once the telly had warmed up we had to find the two copies of Gauntlet part 1 and 2, that me brother had copied off a friend at school.
The first tape would take 10 minutes to load, and then we’d put in the other one. This would normally break after 10 minutes, so we’d have to start the whole process again.
Meanwhile me younger brother would be moaning saying why aren’t we playing Metal Army? And me older brother would be trying to play Lords Of Midnight.
We’d start again, and this time pray really hard that both tapes would work.
By now my sister is trying to watch television on the only telly in the house and wants us off.
So i’ve now got one wanting Metal Army, one Lords of Midnight and one Neighbours, and no one’s happy. But we put the copied tapes back in.
Whilst Gauntlet copy one Load “”s i’m amusing myself with the pictures of the Amstrad version of Magicland Dizzy on the back of a Dizzy box set my brother got for Christmas, dreaming of what it would be like to play that game with the colours filled in.
The second tape goes in at what i think is the right point.
Another ten minutes go by and it’s loaded; three of us are encamped on the keyboard: one using 1,Q,CAPSLOCK,A; another TGHJ; the other ‘/,. for UP DOWN LEFT RIGHT respectively.
As the wizard i am weak but i’ve got magic. My little brother is the nimble archer; my older brother the tough Barbarian. The game lasts for 2 1/2 hours, then we want to play something else so we turn it off and start the whole process again.
–
I am sure that many Spectrum users will recognise parts of this. The feeling of completeness that came with getting an Atari ST for the house can not be surpassed: Wonderboy was the greatest thing.
Nostalgia about Spectrum is not misplaced, nostalgia is nostalgia because you remember the emotional bits: the part where the baddies became blue outlines on Hong-Kong Phooey; when i got the game for my birthday that no one could work out how to play at all ever etc. etc. Not the bad bits such as the lame graphics and the loading time.
Spectrum was brilliant, but Dragons Breath and Wonderboy must not be overlooked in a whistful moment.
Flickr Photos
web3point11 
