Do you remember the first time?

Juan F. Ramirez · Post by **Juan F. Ramirez** » Mon Apr 26, 2021 6:26 pm

Not sure, but I think it was Match Day. Those first matches were obviously amazing (and very hard!).

XTM · Post by **XTM** » Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:25 pm

Vampyre wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:35 pmThen about 10am I loaded Jetpac - so that is my first ever game (that I count anyway).

High five, bro

nw24576 · Post by **nw24576** » Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:30 pm

Hungry Horace, around the very end of 1982. I remember being obsessed by a pub (well, probably more a public bar in a hotel than a traditional pub)'s Pacman arcade machine in the summer of 1982 and my parents must have figured that out and bought a Pacman-like game as my first game. When I unwrapped it we didin't even have a Spectrum... the Spectrum was a 'whole family' present we got later in the day. The other game I received was Ground Attack by Silversoft, does anyone remember that one?

The whole idea of the Spectrum for Christmas came when we visited our cousins at the start of December 1982, who had a Spectrum. I don't remember playing any commercial games on that, just the Spectrum manual's version of "Hangman" and that "Pangolins" game where you had to guess an animal. It was the first time I'd encountered a full computer though, and I remember being obsessed with it.

Like others I remember "Horizons"

Vampyre · Post by **Vampyre** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 7:01 am

XTM wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 7:25 pm
Vampyre wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 3:35 pmThen about 10am I loaded Jetpac - so that is my first ever game (that I count anyway).
High five, bro

I won't leave you hangin'

GreenCard · Post by **GreenCard** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:16 am

I'm fairly certain the first game we loaded (apart from the Horizons tape/Thru' The Wall) was Horace Goes Skiing. I'm pretty sure we had that, Horace and the Spiders and Chequered Flag as the games we got with our Speccy, possibly Scrabble and Survival too.

hitm4n · Post by **hitm4n** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:49 am

My uncle had a Speccy around 6 months to a year before me and i saw Manic Miner running on his but only briefly and i didn't get to play it. I never dreamed i could own one myself. That xmas, i think 1984, i was 13, i got a ZX Spectrum 48k rubber keyed jobby all of my own. What a xmas that was.

I was lead to another room where it was set up and the first game loaded on MY new speccy was "Skool Daze".
This was a leap from my previous (heavily updated) ZX81. I couldn't believe how REAL those kids looked

And i got to name them and the teachers and shoot them in the head !! haha.

I would have spent the entire rest of my day playing but i got dragged back to the living room to be with my stupid boring family and "take part" in xmas... I couldn't focus on anything other than "what shall i load next?" and "i can't wait to get home". It came with a bunch of tapes, many ripped off copied games too so my dad had done some work. I'm sure it was second hand but it couldn't have been very old, it was mint, all boxed etc. and must have cost my parents a pretty penny. I kept that same speccy for all my ZX life, replacing the membrane at one point, going through many joysticks, getting a mutiface one (yes i was a filthy pirate), swapping games in the playground. All until i upgraded to the Amiga500 then the Amiga took over. Once i upgraded the A500 to an Amiga1200 and found emulation, the Spectrum became redundant and was sold off for around £120. Must have been 15 or so years later, around 1998. It was still boxed with original manual and horizons tape and many many copied games.

Another present i got that same awesome xmas was 30 x C15 cassettes, coming without regular tape cases but were instead in these small plastic boxes with lids. There were 5 tapes per box and they stood up with tiny pins seperating them in the bottom of the tub. Each one came with 5 stick on labels too. They were very cool and i don't recall ever seeing them again or i would have bought more. I wonder if i can find a pic.

Other games i "think" i played that most excellent xmas day were Wheelie, Cookie and Luna Crabs.
Happy days.

//edit - The tapes were these - Computape... Awesome.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... putape.jpg
https://programbytes48k.files.wordpress ... putape.jpg

bluespikey · Post by **bluespikey** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:56 am

I spent my childhood playing in our street with the other boys. You could back then, just play football from dawn to dusk with no parked cars.

Anyway, one day in 1983 when I was about 11 I went out and my friends weren't there. There was just one of those other bunch know as girls who just existed at the edge of my awareness. They usually did their own thing and weren't important.

So I talked to her anyway to find some common ground. She said she enjoyed watching me play football. She then mentioned that her brother had a Spectrum, and would I like to see it. My family (And pretty much everyone on my street) were far to poor to afford a computer so I agreed.

We went into her house and she loaded up Maziacs (She also had a cassette player!). That was the moment my life changed. The vivid colour on screen, the grunts and sound effects of the man running, the emotion as you fought Maziacs with no sword and watched your energy dropping. Strangely she wasn't bothered. She just kept sitting right next to me, then moving my hands to use the right key, then sitting behind me an putting her head on my shoulders to watch while breathing in my ear. She was like an annoying cat. Why did she keep fidgeting like this when there was such wonder on the TV screen (And a whopping 32" colour one at that)?

1024MAK · Post by **1024MAK** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 12:02 pm

A 32” colour TV in 1983

Mark

DoDesKaDen · Post by **DoDesKaDen** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 1:08 pm

I dont remember exactly the order, but after Horizons (The Wall) our first games were Astro Blaster (Quicksilva), The Chess Player (Quicksilva), Alchemist (Imagine), ET (macronics) and Hard Cheese (DKTronics)... all very early games...

Sparky · Post by **Sparky** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:02 pm

So we all got games as the first program on a machine advertised as not a games machine

1024MAK · Post by **1024MAK** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:58 pm

Sparky wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:02 pm So we all got games as the first program on a machine advertised as not a games machine

What are you suggesting? Of course a teenager/young adult is going to have a go at playing a game

I did learn BASIC on mine. Well, along with using a Acorn BBC B Micro and a Research Machines 380Z at school in Computer Studies

And it helped me learn a lot about electronics and computer hardware

I think I only ever loaded any of the educational programs once

Mark

hitm4n · Post by **hitm4n** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:39 pm

Mine was only used to help me do my homework. Honest Guv'nor.

1024MAK · Post by **1024MAK** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:47 pm

hitm4n wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:39 pm Mine was only used to help me do my homework. Honest Guv'nor.

Mind helped me with my homework, it kept my hands warm...

Mark

TMD2003 · Post by **TMD2003** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:49 pm

1024MAK wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:47 pm
hitm4n wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 3:39 pm Mine was only used to help me do my homework. Honest Guv'nor.
Mind helped me with my homework, it kept my hands warm...
Mark

You both forgot the household accounts.

Lee P · Post by **Lee P** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:48 pm

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:18 pm What was the first game you loaded into your ZX Spectrum? (I guess there'll be a lot of "Thro' The Wall off the Horizons tape" answers to this from those who were there from the off, but not for everybody.

I got my Speccy + for Christmas 1985, and not including the two freebie games on the intro tape, it would have been one of the pack-in games, which were mostly ancient Sinclair titles like Scrabble, Chess, Planetoids, Reversi, Survival, VU-3D, Make-A-Chip, Starion, Chequered Flag and Horace Goes Skiing. Slim pickings, but they kept me busy for a couple of weeks. I have a feeling it was Planetoids I loaded up first for some reason.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:18 pmAnd if you answered the above with a 'pack-in' game, then what was the first game you loaded in, that you bought yourself?

As soon as I was able to get to the shops I bought Jet Set Willy, which I'd played round my cousin's house a few months earlier. As this was early 1986 it must've been a later release with the bugfix, as the If I Were A Rich Man in-game music had been replaced with Mountain King.

PeteProdge wrote: ↑Sun Apr 25, 2021 5:18 pmAlso, do you have any tales of your absolute naivety with this new-fangled computer at the time?

The Speccy +'s user guide companion cassette had a couple of games included on the B-side (which I spent more time on than some of the Sinclair games). After a few minutes of loading, I did the following...

Oops.

AndyC · Post by **AndyC** » Tue Apr 27, 2021 8:54 pm

Demolition (?) on the GoldStar cassette was great, an interesting take on the Arkanoid type of game (it didn't matter if you missed the ball, but it risked breaking the "windows" which were basically your lives).

Getting that with a 48K+, after upgrading from our old 16K (with a RAM pack expansion) which had sadly passed on, I was expecting much better things given how much more slick it seemed than Thro' The Wall, it was a little disappointing to see that everything else was basically the same but at least it meant I could keep playing all my beloved Speccy games.

Matt_B · Post by **Matt_B** » Wed Apr 28, 2021 4:18 am

Sparky wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:02 pm So we all got games as the first program on a machine advertised as not a games machine

Ah, come on. There were the programs on side one of the Horizons tape at the very least.

Morkin · Post by **Morkin** » Wed Apr 28, 2021 11:24 am

Like some others here I got a Speccy pretty early into its commercial life (and mine).

It was an upgrade after a ZX81, so just seeing the coloured loading screen rainbow in 'hi-res' was nice - in fact, just being able to do things like BORDER 5 and get a bit of screen colour was great..!

After having fun with Thro' the Wall, the rest of the Horizons tape was OK but a bit 'learn-y' for my liking

My first 4 games that I can remember were:

- 3D Tunnel (not too bad)
- Transylvanian Tower (urrgh)
- Escape (decent)
- 4D Terror Daktil (OK, but I found it quite difficult)

Nitrowing · Post by **Nitrowing** » Wed Apr 28, 2021 9:03 pm

Sparky wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 2:02 pm So we all got games as the first program on a machine advertised as not a games machine

Well, not quite.
My mum wouldn't buy a tape recorder because she said I would just play games. My 1st 2 weeks of ownership was type-ins that were lost when the Speccy got turned off for Coronation Street (so it wasn't wasting electricity).
She eventually caved in as I was virtually weeping after spending hours typing and losing all my work.

Then I spent all my time playing games

arjun · Post by **arjun** » Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:04 pm

Pretty sure it was the User Guide Companion Cassette that came with the Spectrum+

As for a commercial title, I'm not 100% sure but it was one of Psion Chess, Chequered Flag, Horace goes Skiing or Jet Pac. Memory isn't what it used to be I'm afraid!

arjun · Post by **arjun** » Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:10 pm

bluespikey wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:56 am She then mentioned that her brother had a Spectrum, and would I like to see it. My family (And pretty much everyone on my street) were far to poor to afford a computer so I agreed.

Haha. That's the nerd version of "do you want some coffee?"

Ast A. Moore · Post by **Ast A. Moore** » Thu Apr 29, 2021 2:32 pm

For the life of me I can’t remember what the first Spectrum game I played was. I distinctly remember a “compilation” tape made a friend that had Knight Lore among other things on it. Then, for some reason, Turbo Esprit springs to mind, but neither was the first game I played.

XTM · Post by **XTM** » Fri Apr 30, 2021 10:55 am

hitm4n wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 11:49 amI was lead to another room where it was set up and the first game loaded on MY new speccy was "Skool Daze".
This was a leap from my previous (heavily updated) ZX81. I couldn't believe how REAL those kids looked And i got to name them and the teachers and shoot them in the head !! haha.

Another present i got that same awesome xmas was 30 x C15 cassettes, coming without regular tape cases but were instead in these small plastic boxes with lids. There were 5 tapes per box and they stood up with tiny pins seperating them in the bottom of the tub. Each one came with 5 stick on labels too. They were very cool and i don't recall ever seeing them again or i would have bought more. I wonder if i can find a pic.

//edit - The tapes were these - Computape... Awesome.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... putape.jpg
https://programbytes48k.files.wordpress ... putape.jpg

Skool Daze as a first game, now that's hard to beat!

And what a great coincidence too ... in this very same post you mentioned the "Computapes" and when I saw the pictures, the memories came flooding back. I remembered having some of these tapes myself and after digging around for a bit, I found them. Guess which game was on side B of the very first of the five tapes:

hitm4n · Post by **hitm4n** » Fri Apr 30, 2021 11:47 am

Thats awesome, i loved those little tape boxes

This reminiscing made me fire up Skool Daze on the MiSTer, i almost got all the shields

firelord · Post by **firelord** » Thu Jan 20, 2022 9:50 pm

The first game I saw
One evening many-many years ago I saw my mother in the guest room watching TV while ironing the clothes. It was a still image with some colors arround it -nothing impressing. It seemed to me like a TV show.
After a while my mother told me that it was a computer and I was watching the loading screen of Jet Pac...

The first games that came with ZX spectrum + was a 60min tape with:
Jet Pac, PSSST, Cookie, Psion Flight Simulator ,Psion Backgammon , Chess , Chequered Flag and Reversi.
Also It has a photocopied manual.

These games were the equivalent of the Wii Sports for the Nintendo Wii. Simple but addictive games!
I don't think there could be a better introductory compilation of games for the Spectrum.

The second tape I got was Pac Man.

Spectrum Computing

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