Did your parents ever play on your Speccy?

[worcestersource]

The post about having the best of both worlds reminded me how, in the early days of Speccy ownership, I came home from primary school one day to find my dad playing Tribble Trubble.

Although he never got into gaming, it makes me smile to think he once flirted with it. I suspect he used to play on it, on occasion, whilst we were at school and he was on annual leave. Mum used to like sitting and watching us enjoy playing on it.

[SpeccyKev]

lol never! I remember trying to get my mum to have a go but she couldn’t understand the connection between the joystick and the things going on on screen..

[Wall_Axe]

Mine were interested in it for about a week.
It was everyone's first gaming experience after the arcade and crappy home pong systems.

They saw horizons and the grand prix game chequered flag and seemed impressed.

I think they tried magic carpet and glug glug, but soon after that couldn't be bothered with anything, even the sixteen bit systems.

Part of the reason could be that I ended up playing that game that consists of 'b' to bomb the buildings so you can land. They might've thought that's what the spectrum was about.

I'm really glad that they didn't buy a zx81 or zx80 cos I'd be drawn in by it... but they'd be disgusted at the games,bugginess, flickering graphics. They'd probably have returned them to the shops

[MarkRJones1970]

Mine showed no interest whatsoever in even having a try of a Spectrum game.

My mum did get addicted to 'Tetris' on the Gameboy though around 1990. She said that some nights, when she went to bed, all she saw when she closed her eyes were falling blocks!

[spider]

Grandfather would occasionally type in some listings for me, I recall half of one of the "Rabbit" ones, possible Haunted Belltower. I had to finish it off.

He also I can recall had played JSW (when I was out) as he'd kindly left me at Swimming Pool and Battlements to 'explore' further.



Otherwise no, not that I can recall.

[AndyC]

My Dad did when we first got one, he'd show us how to get past levels in Manic Miner. I think he made it about as far as Processing Plant before I started to get better at it than him. Then he stopped playing.

[Jbizzel]

On Christmas day, yes. My dad insisted on figuring out how to use it.

Then range quit trying to load a game.

Then we played a few ligh gun games.

Bullseye was ridiculous.

Then some text adventure where he typed 'balls' in frustration.

That was it.

[1024MAK]

No, neither my dad or my mum used our Speccy. Dad was into watching sports on TV, or playing in real life. My mum preferred watching TV quiz shows, game shows, soap operas etc. Also certain sports (but not football or cricket like dad).

My sister and some or our friends did however play games on it. Although I always loaded the games…

Once my sister had lost interest, our Speccy moved to my bedroom, and I became the only user.

Mark

[Tan Coul]

Dad used to play Spectres (or as he called it, Ernie the Electrician). Nothing else, just that one game. He did do a type-in once, but didn't realise he could save it, so just switched it off after playing for 5 minutes...

[TMD2003]

The answer to this question is a resounding "no". However...

...my dad wrote a few elementary programs on my ZX81 (°C/°F conversion was one), and I remember my mum once asking if she could have a go on Super Mario Bros on my brother's NES, and I have never seen quite such a hilariously inept attempt to clear the first half of the first level.

It's not entirely surprising, though, is it? My dad was 30 when Pong was first released, and I suspect it's a similar story for just about everyone else even though the majority of users here were born circa 1973-75 and not quite as late in the decade as I was.

[g0blinish]

It was a long time ago, but my dad played crazy cars

[flatduckrecords]

No, not really.

According to my mum, when she bought the Spectrum, my dad though he’d (with the help of his pal Graham) set it up and “see how it works” before wrapping it up as a Christmas gift for me.

Well, that didn’t go very well—and ended up with a lot of swearing when they couldn’t get anything to load. They were experienced electricians with some electronics knowledge (so I think they thought it would be easy, but of course they underestimated the vagaries of the Chunty Field) [and yeah pretty much “rage quit” @Jbizzel and never touched it again!]

And like @SpeccyKev was saying, Mum tried to humour me but she couldn’t get the association of joystick movements with what was happening on-screen.

Fast forward to 2023 though and Mum and I had a nice evening playing Zork and solving some of it together on Spectrum +3. That was nice!

[Jbizzel]

Excellent!

My mum always hated the noise too. I mean the music. The music!!

[1024MAK]

It's not entirely surprising, though, is it? My dad was 30 when Pong was first released, and I suspect it's a similar story for just about everyone else even though the majority of users here were born circa 1973-75 and not quite as late in the decade as I was.

Youngster!
My dad was nearly fifty when he bought our Speccy. I’m now in my mid fifties. Where did all the time go

Mark

[arjun]

For a brief period when the speccy was new in the family, my dad typed in some programs from the manual, and played a few games of Demolition, Horace goes Skiing (which my mum remembers to this day), Jet Pac and Psion Chess. But I think he didn't have the patience for the bloody tape to load in, so the speccy was all mine in about a month of having it. He loves playing Windows Solitaire on the laptop nowadays but that's about it.

[Oloturia]

My dad played Highway Encounter a lot. He almost completed it, but time limit expired just a few moments before the end. He didn't rage quit, but he never tried again. I remember also playing some text adventures with his friends. He and his friends used to meet at a model shop (RC cars and aircrafts, wooden ships, trains, etc.) named Model Hobby where in the back room there were some computers. There was a free to play ZX Spectrum with microdrive and a joystick.

My mum played a lot with Pacman on a handheld device, later she became keen of Windows 3.1 solitaire, then moved to Tetris, Columns and word games. She still plays them.

[Wall_Axe]

Excellent!

My mum always hated the noise too. I mean the music. The music!!

My God, I can imagine that putting off many people.

Also badly made soundfx that are grating/too loud

[uglifruit]

Rifle Range, by mastertronic was one they played a bit. And definitely had a go on Manic Miner and Bear Bovver (just to show willing). We, as a family, played Scrabble on the Speccy (using it in lieu of having the board).

Later on I have a lovely memory of showing them how to play worms on the PC, going out - playing a gig - and coming back to find them *still* playing Worms together.

After mum died, dad had a period of playing *lots* of Tetris on a cheap knock off game. I'm sure it was a distraction and was a facet of depression, rather than a new found love of gaming. I have less find memories of that period. Strange that.

[HEXdidnt]

Although it was technically their Spectrums rather than mine, I don't recall my parents playing games on them... It's possibly my mother played some of the puzzle or quiz games that required two players, but my father was more interested in utilities than games, despite being a member of a mostly-games Spectrum software 'library' at his workplace. I did once find that he'd written notes in the back of the manual for my copy of The Artist II, despite having the +3 version himself.

Other than that, if I had ideas for adapting type-in listings from books and magazines into custom BASIC games, my father would end up doing most of the programming, and I just provided the UDGs. Somewhere, one one of my many tapes, I have a crappy Knight Rider game that starts with one of those scrolling dodge-'em-ups and ends with a very simplistic face-off between KITT and Goliath... Might try to dig it out when I visit over Christmas.

[8BitAG]

Our computers were family ones so everyone played on them. Horace Goes Skiing was an early family favourite on the Spectrum. My dad played just as much of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and Valhalla as I ever did. He probably dad more patience than I did for typing in various programs; including most of the Input magazine ones.

Later on with the +3, both my dad, mum, sister and I used to take it in turns playing Arkanoid set up on the dining room table on a Saturday. We all got through to the final boss eventually. I seem to remember Split Personalities being a popular family game too.

[PeteProdge]

Apart from fitting on the plug, my dad had absolutely NOTHING to do with the Spectrum or indeed any technology more advanced than a television set. On the day I first switched it on, he stared at the screen for a minute as I was playing Colin The Cleaner, but other than that, nope. It'd be like trying to impress a cat with a vegetarian menu.

As I was regarded as 'the computer whizz' (I hate that term), I'd be called in to help with any modern-day technology. When the local telephone boxes switched over from coins to the BT PhoneCard, I was dragged along to help my father use it on his first try.

One day my brother and I got our mum (who had a similar disdain for computers) to play Bubble Bobble with us and like some of you have described, there's just not the recognition that the joystick was making the character do things. I think she lasted about two minutes on it. Still, a lot more than my dad and she did make some hefty savings for me to get a Spectrum on my birthday, so I'm very grateful for that.

Years later, she was heavily into the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire quiz show. When I had a version of it on my PlayStation 2, I made her have a play at it, but again, she was flummoxed by how to highlight the right answer and was just pressing buttons randomly. I took over and let her play verbally. But really, not that interested in gaming and she was fed up with "computers taking over everything".

[Lee Bee]

Great thread question!

My parents had absolutely zero interest in any kind of videogames. It seemed quite clear at the time that this was only for kids. (More specifically, only for boys, as there were very few girls interested in games at the time.)

The most interest my parents could ever muster would be to stand behind me for a few seconds in the arcade as I played a game with full-colour graphics which looked something vaguely resembling real life, which they could relate to. But as for the weird pixelly monotone graphics and strange sounds of the Spectrum… nope! I think the loading noise alone was enough to drive parents out of the room.

At the time it seemed completely natural, but thinking back, it's really quite odd that there was such a huge, sudden generational gap when it came to having an interest in videogames. The level of interest between children and parents really was like night and day.

As a teenager I sometimes wondered if it was a generational thing, or an age thing. Would I naturally lose interest as I entered adulthood? Well, that didn't happen to most of us.

At the end of the 90s, I did my university dissertation on the future of videogames. In it, I speculated that one day videogames would be extremely popular with elderly people. That was quite an absurd thing to say back in the 90s; but 25 years later, as I approach old age myself, it's becoming more of a reality.

[worcestersource]

It’s an interesting point you make about games and our respective ages. We all play games in my house, although I may only be able to grab an hour a two a week these days (I’m using what time I’ve got left being surprisingly mobile for my age playing as much football as I possibly can before it’s too late!). My son’s surprised when we’re better at games than him. Enter the Gungeon is a prime example.

It reminded me that whilst my dad may have only flirted with the Speccy and mum having no interest, when they were ten years younger and in their early 20s, table football and pinball were all the rage.

These skills proved surprising and, to me at least, very cool. On holiday in Germany once, my dad beat everybody in my uncle’s local bar - even two or three on one. Quite awesome to watch.

Even more awesome was being in arcades in the 80s and 90s. If we could get mum on a pinball, we knew we’d be there for a while. She was amazing and totally unsuspecting. She had to walk away from a Simpsons pinball once because it was time to go but she’d smashed the high score and racked up a bunch of extra balls. Just bewildering that she had that skill.

I think there’s a time when we realise that our folks were young once and had interests of their own.

[TMD2003]

I think there’s a time when we realise that our folks were young once and had interests of their own.

"When I was young, my parents gave me a... stick. I called it Lucy..."
- Jack Dee, apparently doing an impression of his grandad