Spectrum Computing

On the issue of search results, I strongly agree with Equinox. One of the most infuriating things in the world is when a search result doesn't even tell you it's deliberately withholding things from you. We can accept "known unknowns", but what can be more irritating than "unknown unknowns"!

I'm not saying that obscene titles should have everything "out there on display" but I do think most people would find it preferable for search results to, at the very least, indicate when results have been omitted rather than acting like the games never existed.

This site is such a tremendous resource for the historical documentation of what is quite an obscure medium, so it just seems a terrible shame for the information to be incomplete.

For porn games, you certainly don't have to distribute the actual games, but a listing would be welcomed. Many would even appreciate a category for games with porn or nudity.

Protecting children

Now I'm actually someone who truly cares about decency and protecting children. Guess I'm in a small minority now. I don't like public obscenity and in fact I'm a bit of a Mary Whitehouse, often writing letters of complaint. I don't want to see heavy kissing on TV, for example, it's creepy. (I'm not against porn, I just think it should be private.)

But sadly, we do live in a different world now - a world where children not only have unlimited access to the most appalling adult content and bad language, but are expected to look at it.

To most of us here (in our 40s or 50s), entertainers like Roy Chubby Brown have always been considered "adult", and we'd naturally want to keep this kind of material well away from children.

However, to my utter dismay, these kind of acts are now being prescribed to small children. You only need to take a look at the cover of magazines aimed at 7-year-old girls and you'll invariably find Chubby-Brown-style entertainers on the cover, people like Ariana Grande and Olivia Rodrigo whose songs use words like f----g, motherf-----, bitch, d--- and n---a. These are words which the BBC INSTRUCTS children to go on YouTube and sing along to.

And let's not even mention the seediness of Tik Tok culture, which every child is now a part of.

So, the world has indeed changed, with the youngest children now being prescribed, and desensitized to, grotesque obscenity and sexualisation. Therefore the vast majority of people aren't going to bat an eyelid to pixellated obscenity in a Spectrum game. The idea is quite laughable. Not that I think graphic sex or violence should be openly depicted in the database - I don't.

But I really don't see the harm in at least listing the titles (censored if necessary) with a disclaimer that the game may be considered adult/offensive.

Moral outrage

As for moral outrage, well, everyone's morals are different. Society changes, history changes, political views come and go. Right now half the world is "left" and half the world is "right". Some believe fictional violence incites or endorses violence, others of us believe that's been consistently disproven, and people can separate fiction from reality. I've never finished a game of Commando and wanted to buy a gun and kill people.

It would seem a shame for a historical database to have to go down the route of having to make personal moral judgements about a game's contents based upon the whims of current-year politics (or the authoritarian oppression of Wokeism).

I mean, our history books would be pretty thin if we started removing all the events we personally disagreed with. We might find the Crusades or the Holocaust abhorrent, but we don't erase them from history. In fact, we hold it as important to remember the horrors of the Holocaust so that it might never happen again.

IMHO, merely listing a "homophobic" title is certainly not an endorsement of it, any more than listing a Vegan game is promoting Veganism. What if a gay activist was trying to research and highlight homophobia in games?

So, if this site considers itself as any kind of historical resource, my vote would be to include all titles, warts and all, with appropriate censoring or limiting some entries to titles only, so there are no "unknown unknowns"!

With love and respect,
Have a good day Spec-chums!