Last week I discovered a message on FB Messenger that I had missed for a few months from 8BitAG on here asking if I was responsible for a game called Dragnet. I was surprised to find it had found its way onto a Spectrum archive. Back in the late 80s I lived half my life on Spectrums. My parents were deeply opposed to home computers, my mum thought they were a waste of time and my dad thought they were a waste of money. Neither thought there was any future in them (try getting them off their iPads today
)As a result, while all my friends got Spectrums I had to make do with a ZX81 which I bought secondhand for fourteen pounds at a car boot sale. Eventually, I saved enough paper round money to by a rubber key spectrum from a secondhand shop in Brighton. At some point I got my hands on a huge colour TV that was being thrown out from a Ladbrokes. When the keyboard membrane wore out on the 48K on that I moved on to a Spectrum 128 by the time that died I had finished school and everything ended up in the loft. By this time I had started work and soon was learning to drive the world of Spectrums got left behind.
At age 20 I moved to HongKong and shared a flat with a friend who was into PC's which began the next stage of my computer journey. During this time away from home most of my Spectrum components disappeared from my parent's loft. All that was left was a box of tapes and a joystick. Both computers, printers and other peripherals had gone along with all my Your Sinclair magazines. What was left moved into my loft.
Going back to the 80s I had a friend Robert who was quite into computers between us we decided to set up a software company Taskmaster software. The Dragnet Case (Robert's title) was to be our first game. By this time I had bought PAW and GAC. Robert provided an outline of the game idea and a hand-drawn picture of the office that appears in the game. After many months of labouring with PAW we had something close to finished and I asked for playtesters in Your Sinclair. A few people responded and I sent the game out including to someone in the next road to me. They came back with a heap of bugs and spelling errors. These were corrected but by this time Robert moved away from my area and school was making demands. Also the 128 died and that was the end of Taskmaster Software.
Somehow it seems some copies made their way into the archives. One version is a playtest version, the other I have no idea how it escaped, either from Robert's copies or maybe it was in with my missing Spectrums.
Since the versions of the game in the archive are unfinished and have bugs that prevent the game from being finished. I have uploaded the final version of the game which was still in my box of tapes. It only took 34 years to be released but it is finally out. I also have databases for part of the prequel so one day it might see the light of day. The GAC based tapes have all vanished
I doubt I am going to be buying a vintage Spectrum, but I'm currently enjoying using the ZEsarUX emulator. Maybe one day I'll look into a modern Spectrum clone. In the meantime, I have a vintage Joystick and a collection of games (all of which appear on here as TZX files) if anyone is interested in them.
