It's 42 years since the Sinclair #ZXSpectrum was released. My second computer - after the #ZX81 . Here's a blog post from a few years back, where I pointed out the absolute best portable #Speccy in the modern age is... The #Nintendo DS!
I am part of tech industry because of the #Sinclair#ZX81, released on this day in 1981. (It is also possibly the only computer that uses the current year in its name!)
During my time I've met Sir Clive, Rick Dickinson, and John Grant amongst many other luminaries of the time. Things came full-circle when, on the 40th anniversary, Cronosoft released a game I'd written for it! (Going back to Z80 assembler was actually more fun second time around, because we have such good tools now.)
I check that link once or twice a month and occasionally you find something interesting and often cheaper than eBay, but you do have to go though the list to find them.
Don Priestly is best known for The Trap Door on the #ZXSpectrum, but his trademark huge characters made an appearance in this maze game, running on much more limited hardware. The game had depth, though, with randomly generated mazes and a risk vs reward system where you could carry treasure (needed to win) or a sword (to defend yourself from the titular foes, miffed you’d stolen their bling).
Nel attesa di provare la mia tastiera nuova per #zx81 stavo provando l'emulatore per capire come gira questo 3d Monster Maze che sul mio non può girare causa assenza dei 16k.
Ammetto che è la cosa più bizzarra e retro che abbia mai provato escluso il Pong della Re.El. casalingo.
Gioco tutto in basic, tutto caratteri, niente modalità grafica, niente suono.
Ora sono ancora più curioso di riuscire a caricare qualche cosa sul mio che ha solo 1K di memoria.
So uh, I may have just written a hexdump tool in the style of xxd(1) that transliterates the ZX81 character set to their Unicode counterparts and I'm feeling pretty happy about that right now #zx81#retrocomputing