New Arrival

Just bagged myself a Spectrum Plus 3. Always wanted one of these, and after a few days play, I now realise I should have got one much sooner – it’s brilliant. There are a few scratches on the casing, but it works 100% and I am really pleased with it so far. Got a few blanks discs too, plus a few disk games, but I am spending a lot of time converting some of my own games across to disc. I ordered a scart lead which produces a really nice picture and the only bad thing I can say is that the sound is a bit poor. This is a known problem with these machines and there are fixes outlined on the internet, but as yet I am not confident about doing them! For me, the Spectrum +3 was the computer I always wanted but never had  for a number...

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The Spectrum Show #13

Finally, after having to re-capture all of the video again and then re-rendering it out (see previous post for details!) Episode 13 of The Spectrum Show is complete. In this episode we go back to March 1984 for the latest Sinclair news and top selling Spectrum games. We follow the adventurers and trace the Adventure game from humble beginnings to animated graphical challenges. We review some older games and take a look at a newer title. As always, best viewed direct in YouTube because we are in HD now… enjoy.  ...

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Adventure Gaming Roots

Adventure gaming began in 1976 when William Crowther created the very first text-based game,  written in a language called FORTRAN. The game was loosely based on a large cave that he had explored as a caver and was created on a PDP-10 mainframe. Shortly after, Don Woods found the game, and with Crowther's blessing, expanded it into what now is known as Colossal Cave, the grandfather of all adventure games. The game was purely text based and accepted 1 or 2 word commands to guide the player through various puzzles in a bid to collect all of the treasure within the cave and return it safely to the house. From this single game spawned every other adventure game and it was no surprise that when home microcomputers came along in the early...

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