SINCLAIR SPECTRUM ZX

The first computer I ever saw, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum was about the size of a large paperback book, jet black (save the rainbow flash of colours zipping across the bottom corner) with tiny grey rubber keys.

Invented by balding scientist Sir Clive Sinclair in 1984, the Spectrum was one of the first home computers. Plugged into the telly, you could play games in your own front room! Granted, they were all rubbish, but I wasn’t allowed in arcades, so to me, they were like stepping into TRON.

If you could go back in time to visit the eight-year-old me, and swap my Spectrum for an XBOX, it would be like giving a caveman a Cornetto. I’d love it for five minutes and then throw up, my body unable to comprehend the assault of colours, music and hard-core violence. (That is exactly what would happen if you gave a caveman a Cornetto)

For one, all the games for the Spectrum were on cassette tapes.

While this made copying your mate’s games pretty easy (all you needed was a tape-to-tape HiFi) it did mean that most Spectrum games took at least eight minutes to load. EIGHT MINUTES. Can you imagine any child today waiting eight minutes for Call of Duty to load? No, they’d be off spray-painting the library.

I found those eight minutes quite handy – you could pop downstairs for some toast and cup of tea and be back before the game had loaded. That way, you also avoided the EXCRUCIATING loading noises. Like scraping a cat’s claws down a blackboard while simultaneously putting its tail in a George Foreman grill. No one who owned a Spectrum will ever forget that noise – and it lasted EIGHT MINUTES.

(Later, when the games became more complicated, you often had to inset ANOTHER cassette tape and wait AGAIN. Even then around 75 per cent of the time, you’d just get an ERROR message and have to start over.)

However, if you were patient, you were rewarded with an embarrassment of riches.

Take the game Horace Goes Skiing for example. Check out these state of the art graphics. And the gameplay! You could move Horace left AND right!

Another staple of the Spectrum was the text based adventure game. These dispensed with graphics and moving characters completely, opting instead for descriptions of what was happening. The player would simply type instructions such as ‘go north’ to move to the next location.

But the rubbish nature of the graphics eventually forced programmers to be wildly creative with gameplay resulting in some of the cleverest, most inventive games ever made.

Sinclair brought out a 128k memory version, allowing software companies to make games like Chaos (chess with wizards), Laser Squad, (vast tactical warfare) and Elite (a never-ending space trading game). Soon, the Spectrum had become the most popular home computer in Europe. Kids at school that had the rival Commodore 64 were losers – the ‘Speccy’ was king.

Back then, you didn’t need 72 programmers, voice-artists, musicians and script-writers to make a game. Anyone could learn to code games on their own machine, meaning there was no end to the bizarre titles that came out. If a programmer had an idea, they could make a game out of it.

Want a somersaulting egg that solves puzzles? No problem, you had Dizzy – a sort of Indiana Jones.

Then there was Paperboy (you just had to deliver papers), Marble Madness (you were a marble), School Daze (you were a naughty schoolboy who had to terrorise fellow pupils without getting detention) and Jet Set Willy (not too sure what happened in that one…)

I loved my Spectrum more than it was normal to love a stupid noisy box of wires. It became more than a hobby – hunting down second hand games at car boot sales and devouring both monthly fan magazines, Sinclair User and Your Sinclair.

Even when Amiga’s, Mega Drive and Nintendo arrived, I stuck with my old Speccy. The new games dried up, but there was still a hardcore fan base still programming their own. I still remember the last ever issue of Your Sinclair – a massive double edition that paid tribute over a decade of Sir Clive’s revolutionary home computer. It was like Michael Jackson had died.

Now, the entire concept of the Spectrum is so alien to today’s youth, it’s hard to believe they even existed. But they did, and I’ve still got mine in the loft somewhere to prove it. I’ve got an XBOX now, and while the games look like Hollywood movies and you can spend hours recreating World Cup finals against 12 year-olds on the other side of the world, I’d still rather sit through eight minutes of screeching and play a two-dimensional black and white game featuring a somersaulting egg every time.

By Luke Chilton

TAMAGOTCHI

For kids growing up in the 90s, it was the one toy you and all your friends had to have. The idea of having a virtual playmate to feed and play with was just so much fun! The obsession with the Tamagotchi as it was known was definitely a phase I went through! I had a white and pink one, and it could be attached as a key ring with a little chain. The idea of mothering this ‘child’ from birth, and essentially seeing it grow made me feel responsible and important. I think this was its fascination for many kids out there. Continue reading “TAMAGOTCHI” »

PACIFIER/DUMMY NECKLACES

Convincing our parents to let us wear heels, practising our signature, daydreaming of marriage, lining our eyes with kohl pencil and daily checking blossoming boobs and pubes: at primary school we were absolutely obsessed with growing up. Therefore, one of the trends that hit us in the early nineties was paradoxically surprising: pacifiers.

Continue reading “PACIFIER/DUMMY NECKLACES” »

POINT HORROR BOOKS

Long before R-Patz had us coming down with a serious case of Twilight Fever, and kids actually read with their eyes and everything, a craze hit the 90’s faster than Kevin Bacon’s feet in Footloose- that phenomenon was the teenage fright fest novel series Point Horror. Continue reading “POINT HORROR BOOKS” »

GAME BOY

Bulky, grey, chunky and with buttons which could be seen from outer space; no I’m not talking about Saved By The Bell’s Zach Morris’ cell phone, but the best thing to come from the 80’s (apart from George Michael’s Club Tropicana speedos…) it is of course the Nintendo Game Boy. Continue reading “GAME BOY” »

LEGO

It’s said that DNA is the building block of life but I would beg to differ. When having a building block contest there really is one that trumps them all…Lego of course! Its tiny form belies its mighty power but any child (particularly one who grew up in the 80s – before advanced computer games really took over every young boy (and girls) playtime) will tell of the magical properties held in the little bricks. And plus, what other toy has a whole theme park dedicated to its cause!?!

Continue reading “LEGO” »

CABBAGE PATCH KIDS

When you look at some kid’s TV characters/toys today, it’s astounding that children don’t run away from them screaming in fright. Take for example the terrifying cast of In The Night Garden, who look like they should be locked away in a secure unit, I wonder how many parents have to soothe their distressed offspring from nightmares about Igglepiggle, Makka Pakka and the rest.

But this love for frightening visages is not restricted to today’s tots! When I cast my mind back to my own childhood, a familiar face looms into my memory – that of the Cabbage Patch Kid. Although undoubtedly one of the most popular dolls of the 80s, there’s no denying the fact that they had faces only a mother could love. With giant puffy cheeks, woolen hair, stumpy limbs and staring eyes they didn’t look like any baby I’d ever seen! But their distinctiveness certainly didn’t stop them from doing well. Continue reading “CABBAGE PATCH KIDS” »

MR MEN AND LITTLE MISS

With today being the 76th birthday of the late children’s author Roger Hargreaves, what better way to celebrate than with an ode to the original Mr Men and Little Miss books, of which he was the creator and writer.

Continue reading “MR MEN AND LITTLE MISS” »

LOVE CALCULATIONS AND PAPER FORTUNE-TELLERS

When we were young and the future was still wide open, our favourite past-time was to colour it in with fantasies. Scientifically supported fantasies, mind you. The one that drew most on an ability I could actually use later in life, was calculating the percentage of love or the mathematical compatibility between you and another person, preferably your love interest of that particular week. With a bit of plain old math you’d know within minutes whether it was worth chasing the boy or girl of your dreams.

For those of you who’ve never indulged in this widely respected practice, here’s how it works. Write down your name and the name of the person you fancy, then count how many times you see the letters L O V E S. You will end up with a five-digit number – one digit for each letter. Then simply add up the first and second, the second and third, the third and fourth, and the fourth and fifth. Rinse and repeat until you end up with a two-digit percentage representing the chance of romantic success.

Now, these were binding percentages: if the result was anywhere below 50 percent, you might as well break up immediately as you’d be doomed to fail anyway. Fortunately, pre-teen girls are both helpless romantics and conniving little monsters. We were not going to let cold, hard science steal our dreams and soon found ways to manipulate the results. You could either add last names or leave them out, or include or exclude the letters L O V E S when it came to counting, and simply pick your favourite result. For example, I’ve just calculated the compatibility percentage for the man who recently asked me to marry him (unfortunately, I said yes before even thinking of checking whether science agreed) and the four trustworthy percentages my little research resulted in were 26, 42, 68 and 94 – you can guess which one I’m sticking with for now.
However much fun math is, the absolute favourite fortune-telling technique was the chatterbox, or cootie-catcher. In these days of Xboxes, iPads, the Internet and trashy-but-addictive reality TV shows, it’s almost unimaginable that once-upon-a-time young girls could actually enjoy themselves for hours with just one silly sheet of paper. Even though we probably should have cared more about our professional futures, recycling and the ozone layer, all our hormone-ridden brains wanted to know was when and whom we would marry, how many kids we’d have and what their names would be.

Moreover, it seemed of vital importance to avoid getting imaginarily hitched to the class nerd or have children named Silly ans Billy. After all, one’s ‘destiny’ was dependent upon the number of switches and the choice of arbitrary colours. We would spend hours giggling producing them, and all breaks were filled with hysterical pre-teen laughter. It didn’t really matter what the results were, any outcome was hilarious. Perhaps we were simply craving the nosy, slightly worried looks the boys threw us while we let faith decide on their destiny. How about that for feminism?

By the time we expanded our spouse search beyond the playground and decorated our bedroom walls with posters of the heartthrobs-du-moment, they too were included in the chatterbox. One lucky morning, destiny told me I would marry Leonardo DiCaprio after he’d asked me at to the local supermarket and I would give birth to twins named Ann and Rose. I decided then and there that I would just omit the supermarket bit when I would retell the story to the 27 grandchildren me and Leo would have, according to the chatterbox.

If only we could trust a simple piece of origami or adding up some numbers when it comes to today’s bigger life questions. What job shall I look for? Where should I live? Should I buy these shoes and eat noodles all month? I’ve already nicked a sheet of paper from the office printer, and am folding my future as we speak. Anyone want to marry both Ant and Dec?

By Janneke de Jong

‘GOOD LUCK’ TROLLS

Bright hair, fancy dress and a happy go lucky attitude; no we’re not talking about Katy Perry’s latest video, but the wild and wonderful world of ‘Good luck’ Trolls.

With their constant smiling faces and bright eyes filled with wisdom, they pretty much dragged Barbie down in the dirt and kicked Ken’s ass in terms of coolness; or perhaps that was just in my eyes.

Even though these adorable dolls originate back in 1959 (the handiwork of a Danish fisherman, too poor to buy his daughter a gift, instead carving for her a little troll from wood), and became a phenomenon in the 60s, they enjoyed a huge resurgence in popularity in the 90s, and most of today’s fans first discovered them in this era. Continue reading “‘GOOD LUCK’ TROLLS” »

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