What do you now know many years later

[Sokurah]

I bet he doesn't even know how to ride a horse.

Clive sinclair never rode mere horses. Fnar fnar fnar fnar.

I think you'll learn that in the shown cases it's the horses that are riding him

[Juan F. Ramirez]

The brand of the petrol station in Everyone's a Wally, 'Bee Pee'. It got it after almost 30 years...

[bluespikey]

Theres this one screen in Starquake very near to where you begin (Just keep running left).



There is always something useful on the screen. In this case theres a core segment.

However to get back to a hoverpad you either have to expand all your bridges to get up to the screen above, or run a long way to the right and down.

I used to play Starquake a lot and could complete the game most goes without needing to refer to a map. BUT I had no idea there were secret passages. On this screen, you just simply run into the wall on the left, and on the next screen you are immediately given a hoverpad.

[Juan F. Ramirez]

In Robin of the Wood, a game in which that I've never progressed much, I thought the archery contest was the last level/stage.

But the aim of the game is only getting the three magic arrows that enables you to enter the contest.

[Ste Woz Ere]

That Chaos has combat tables for every creature. (found on the Tipshop entry)
Still doesn't help me figure out how the combat actually works, or why 80%-chance spells fail a lot more than that.

[clebin]

I just discovered Anfractuous is a real word.

anfractuous [ an-frak-choo-uhs ] adjective
1. characterized by windings and turnings; sinuous; circuitous:
an anfractuous path.

Definitely an exception to the rule - don't bother looking up Nonterraqueous in the dictionary!

[+3code]

Definitely an exception to the rule - don't bother looking up Nonterraqueous in the dictionary!

Well, "Non terraqueous" sounds as "not from Earth" in Latin or so.

[clebin]

Well, "Non terraqueous" sounds as "not from Earth" in Latin or so.

Good point!

[Spud]

I never knew that turbo mode in Bomb Jack made you jump higher. I never even bothered to try it because I assumed it made the game run faster.
Therefore I could never pass the 5th level and figured there's some trick to passing the level. Thanks to the HSC contest I found this out.

I'm pretty sure the max height of the jumps in turbo mode is the same as normal mode, you just don't need to press up and jump to go higher in turbo mode like you would in normal.

[R-Tape]

I just discovered Anfractuous is a real word.

anfractuous [ an-frak-choo-uhs ] adjective
1. characterized by windings and turnings; sinuous; circuitous:
an anfractuous path.

Your challenge for the week is to use it in regular conversation!

[clebin]

Your challenge for the week is to use it in regular conversation!

"Shall we walk the quick way home?"
"No Darling, let's go the anfractuous way today."

[MarkRJones1970]

I only realised a few years ago that 'Alien 8' is a play on the word 'Alienate'!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I only realised a few years ago that 'Alien 8' is a play on the word 'Alienate'!

Same here!

[blucey]

That a 'purdy' is a shotgun.

Terrible text adventure and scientifically the hardest ever game ever made, Denis Thru The Drinking Glass, has it as an item. I remember playing the game as a kid and asking my brother (at the time in his 20s) and mum (50 something) what a 'purdy' was. They didn't know. Neither did the OXFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY.

I mentioned it on the other Speccy forum and it turns out it's a 'Purdey' which is a brand of shotgun.

Worst game.

[cmal]

Harrier Attack was one of the first games I got for the Speccy. But I never could complete it. I kept on dying for no reason at a random place somewhere in the game so I assumed it was a bug. I only found out this week that you are supposed to dodge those dots in the sky.
So now I just completed it. Yay!

[bluespikey]

Took me a good few years to realise this, but....

In the first level of Lasersquad you open doors by pointing at them and using an open action, or close to close them. It costs some action points but all makes sense.

From the second level onwards, you no longer get actions but instead have to walk into them to automatically open. But without the action I just assumed they were locked and had to be shot open. So I spent years tediously wasting ammo to remove doors.

[akeley]

I only realised a few years ago that 'Alien 8' is a play on the word 'Alienate'!

In my country, one of the original Alien film taglines -"It's Alien, the 8th passenger." - was translated as the actual film's title. For years I was convinced that the game and film must be related (I never got to play it back then somehow).

[Sol_HSA]

I just discovered Anfractuous is a real word.

anfractuous [ an-frak-choo-uhs ] adjective
1. characterized by windings and turnings; sinuous; circuitous:
an anfractuous path.

Your challenge for the week is to use it in regular conversation!

Saw Pete today.

Oh?

In the pub, he was with an anfractuous lady.

What?

[spider]

It did take me quite a while to realise (this was still pre internet days) that Lloyd Mangram did not exist, even though the surname is a pun on "anagram"

I seem to recall one issue of Crash there was a pic of said 'person' too, a make-up face*** as in lots of warts or something like that, I can't recall now.

*** I hope it was a make-up face and not a real person afflicted with so many!


It did take me a bit of time too to realise that in JSW2 "Alienate" was probably a ''friendly wave' at A.G.C/Ultimate for Alien 8, same way they have Macaroni Ted as a 'wave at' S.Marsden and D.Cooke for TechTed.

Not ZX related but "back then" I noted in the 'full' version of JSW2 for the BBC Micro "Nomen Luni" had been renamed "Nomem Luni" , likely a pun on the difficulty in cramming it into less ram perhaps.


Some interesting things in this topic though.

[FFoulkes]

Although I spent many hours in the Atic Atac mansion back then, I only realized the map with the different floors now.
(I know, there are stairs, wells and such, but maybe it would have been a good idea, just to show the number of the floor you're on on the screen somewhere.)

[FFoulkes]

I only realized now, that in "The Hobbit" you can kill Gollum, pick his dead body up, go back to your place, open your chest, put Gollum's body in, and close the chest again.

Would have been nice, if that had been a way to finish the game.

[FFoulkes]

It was interesting to discover Manic Miner was programmed that way, using a TR-80 if I'm not mistaken

Yeah, Wikipedia says it, linking to this article. It says, it was a Tandy "TRS-80, Model III".
But these machines were not so great either, people in the US often called them "Trash 80".
So this still wasn't a "workstation" computer above the home computer range (like the "Vax" or "VaxStation", I heard, some other developers may haved used back then.)
The "TRS-80 Model III" (Z80A at 2 Mhz, 4-48K RAM, just black & white) had a proper typewriter keyboard though.

[druellan]

So this still wasn't a "workstation" computer above the home computer range (like the "Vax" or "VaxStation", I heard, some other developers may haved used back then.)

I bet it was not that expensive for something with a proper keyboard, monitor and a hardware on were you can put 42k free ram plus an assembler. I saw several developers mentioning it as their workstation.
And as mentioned, another piece of hardware I was not aware at all about its widespread usage among developers was the microdrive. Even professional software like the Alcatraz loading scheme was provided in Microdrive format, for example, and companies like Odin used it to store masters.

[FFoulkes]

Clive sinclair never rode mere horses. Fnar fnar fnar fnar.

He likes his electronics small, inexpensive and stylish, his vehicles electric and his women young and beautiful.

[manicminerfan001]

It was interesting to discover Manic Miner was programmed that way, using a TR-80 if I'm not mistaken

Yeah, Wikipedia says it, linking to this article. It says, it was a Tandy "TRS-80, Model III".
But these machines were not so great either, people in the US often called them "Trash 80".
So this still wasn't a "workstation" computer above the home computer range (like the "Vax" or "VaxStation", I heard, some other developers may haved used back then.)
The "TRS-80 Model III" (Z80A at 2 Mhz, 4-48K RAM, just black & white) had a proper typewriter keyboard though.

My cousin, David Jones (Spellbound, Finders Keepers, etc) did all of his development on a TRS-80, model 3. Posh git also had a 20mb hard drive and had a custom board to fire it into the speccy!