Favourite Three Sinclair Related Retro Books

[PeterJ]

We all know that some of the titles which came out for the Spectrum (along with other machines) were rubbish, but what are your favourite three?

My choice would be:

Cracking The Code (John Wilson)
Spectrum Machine Code for the Absolute Beginner (William Tang)
Advanced Spectrum Machine Language (David Webb)

Retro and Sinclair Related only please!

PS: Whilst I'm here, does anybody fancy writing some book reviews?

PPS: There are still quite a few scans of books missing from the archive. Sometimes we have the Spanish or Italian versions, but not the English version. If you own any and fancy scanning that would be great. I could collate a list of what is missing if that would help.

[TMD2003]

PPS: There are still quite a few scans of books missing from the archive. Sometimes we have the Spanish or Italian versions, but not the English version.

Or, in the case of "A Child's Guide To The ZX Spectrum", the German version. It's unlikely that the library at Great Dunmow still has the copy I remember borrowing in the days before I owned a Spectrum (circa 1985-86), and tried running some of the simpler programs on a 1K ZX81...

I'd be interested to see it again, if only to remind myself of the five characters in it, who were renamed in the German version. The artist was Mortimer Puce, I remember that, just not the others...

[PeterJ]

There is a copy here for £7.99 [mention]TMD2003[/mention]

https://www.mutant-caterpillar.co.uk/sh ... ts_id=4521

[TMD2003]

Marvellous.

I wonder if my nephew will take to Spectrum programming in a few years' time? He needs to learn how to talk and write at this stage, mind, but I'll be waiting...

[druellan]

My all time favorite is probably ZX Spectrum Astronomy: Discover the Heavens on Your Computer. I was really into astronomy and anything space-related. To learn new things while coding on my Spectrum was a memorable experience. - https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/2 ... r_Computer

[PeterJ]

Interesting [mention]druellan[/mention]. I had not spotted that one before. Thank you!

[Morkin]

My choices:

1. Advanced Spectrum Machine Language
(David Webb)

2. Understanding your Spectrum (Ian Logan)

3. Spectrum Adventures (Tony Bridge & Roy Carnell)

So after 25+ years since giving up on BASIC, I decided to make a concerted effort to finally learn assembly. Figuring any help was good, I thought I'd try paper as well as electronic literature. The first two books above were responsible for me finally learning enough to write a game.

I'd stumbled upon a job lot of Speccy books on eBay and was the only bidder so got them all for £1. I even drove round to the sender's house to pick them up as they lived nearby. They were pretty friendly and even offered to waive the £1 (I insisted on paying of course ).

I initially thought Advanced Spectrum Machine Language might be... well, too advanced. For a beginner anyway. It contains a lot of things that I didn't need (e.g. border effect timings and flashing Manic Miner-style loading screens) but I liked that the book author knew something about writing games. It contains two vital routines which I used to finally learn how to (a) draw graphics on the screen (having read the first 5 pages about 10 times to vaguely understand it), and (b) read the keyboard and Kempston joystick ports.

Understanding your Spectrum was also good, though mainly as a reference, particularly the page on bit shifting commands (I think my book falls open naturally on that page now!). I know you can get this info online, but it's so clear, I'm still surprised so many people still document RRA, SLA etc. on the web using text only, without a single simple illustration.

On the whole, the book is written in that '80s technical documentation style' and includes how to assemble everything just using BASIC, which would've been great nice for me 35 years ago but perhaps not as much now. But just for the few important reference snippets and the end result of me having it (i.e. finished games), I'm including it in my 3.

Spectrum Adventures was a book I had in the 80s, at a time when I was quite enjoyed the odd text adventure, and I've included it mainly for nostalgia purposes. I remember reading it multiple times. It's easy reading, and discusses the history of adventure games and how they'd developed over the years. It includes a BASIC listing for The Eye of the Star Warrior, which is a bit slow and rubbish but just reading how the program and graphics were constructed gave me a bit of BASIC inspiration at the time.

[PeterJ]

Thank you [mention]Morkin[/mention],

Its not in the archive yet (perhaps we can add it [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention]), but there is a PDF of Understanding Your Spectrum here:

https://archive.org/details/understandi ... 5/mode/2up

What was your first game?

[Morkin]

...Something else that made me chortle when I looked at the magazine scan of "Advanced Spectrum Machine Language" is that there are lots of pencil scribblings over those first few pages - clearly the owner of the scanned book was scratching their head as much as me over those pesky graphics screen address drawing routines..

What was your first game?

Have only done two, Catacombs was the first. With Rorthron contributing with grafix (well, the vast majority of them at least).

[NotTheActualTrashman]

We all know that some of the titles which came out for the Spectrum (along with other machines) were rubbish, but what are your favourite three?

The main one for me was Toni Baker's wonderful "Mastering Machine Code on Your ZX Spectrum". I bought it instead of Jet Set Willy and that's what got me into proper programming. I still have a real soft spot for that book.