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[jester1470]

There were a few legends made around that time:

Clive Sinclair obviously (my brother owns and occasionally drives a C5 and reckons it was incredibly far ahead of tis time)

Matthew Smith: game designer and programmer of Manic Miner/jetset Willy

Jeff Minter - Founder of LLamasoft and creator of many early classics such as Attack of the mutant camels, still game designing today and has done at least one for the xbox360.

The Oliver Twins - Super Robin Hood was their first, then went on to create Dizzy and for that alone they are legends.

David Jones, famous for creating th Magic Knight series of Games, often forgotten now, but true classics.

[Original Spies]

I love old football games. Tycoon Soccer used to have this awesome penalty shoot out mode, where you could go through the rounds of the World Cup, but just playing shootouts, and not an actual match, and the view was from behind the goal. The last penalty kick used to go in slow motion, and all the sound effects were muted except for the kick and the whoosh of the ball, and then either the slap of the keepers glove or the ripple of the net. God, it was fucking ace.

The actual match mode was balls, and looked like a very poor Kick Off 3. You couldn't even run diagnal. It was evident all the focus was on the penalty shoot out mode.


Speaking of which. Remember Kick Off 3, and the random passback decisions? I think it's the only football game ever to incorporate the passback rule. Freekicks from 4 yards out were great.


On a relatively similar note, I played Pro Ever 2010 today in HMV. Heap of shite. The players look like they are running like Mr Burns, and the ball shows no relation to being on grass as its like it's rolling about on the surface of a Supermarket floor. Terrible game. I played as Man Blue, versus North London White, I think. Scored a screamer with Adebayor, who shared the same skin tone as team mate Carlos Tevez, who was looking unusually sun tanned.

[Woodsinho]

I had a spectrum and nothing better for a lot longer than most people, the whole atari/amiga thing passed me by completely. I was ok with that though thanks to such fantastic games as Football Manager 2, World Soccer Manager, Euroboss. I liked football manager games when I was 10, that part of me will never die.

I played Chequered Flag for many, many years too. Back in those days there were no saved games or high scores so I kept a log book of my best times for each track. I WAS THAT COOL.

Moving onto the PC I will always love Settlers 2, probably my favourite game of all time. There was a version made for the DS not long ago but it's so riddled with bugs that it's completely unplayable. It is still a great game though, it had quite a simplistic model for your settlement's economy and all that but the execution of it kept me coming back time and time again. I wish I was playing it now. Right now.

[Le Stu]

The Def Guide to Zzap!64

Zzap was ace. Crash was boring though which is weird 'cos they came out of the same office.

The Your Sinclair Rock'n'Roll Years

On the other hand YS was AMAZING.

[Bigsby]

I used to have a Spectrum fanzine at primary school called "Speccy User". Ironically we used an Atari ST for desktop publishing purposes.

It got banned and our parents got called into school one afternoon after my fellow editor and I moved into "public interest" stories involving one of our fellow pupils.

Some of the software companies kept sending us free games for a while after though.

[Le Stu]

Originally Posted by Bigsby

Some of the software companies kept sending us free games for a while after though.

Oh, you were an enterprising one!