Speccy Nation

Fun writing but does end up being a game by game review.

I've been taking long walks through nostalgia and revisiting my childhood days with the Spectrum, so this book looked fun.

It's well written and Dan Whitehead has a fun way of writing - very much in the ilk of the spectrum games of the day. There's a briefish introduction to the history of the spectrum that I had wished there was more and then the book goes through some of the poignant games from the 80s that ran on the speccy.

The game chapters weren't so much as reviews but a dig into what made the games interesting either from the player's perspective or a technical achievement for the day.

I would have preferred more stories from the history of the speccy, but that I guess is an entirely different book.

Still, a fun read, some bookmark worthy game titles with some useful web resources at the end.

It's over 30 years since I got a little black box with silly rubber keys for Christmas. And I've never forgot it.

Speccy Nation is a 120 page love letter to the greatest computer of all time. While the ZX Spectrum never had the best technical specification or hardware, it did cause people to write uniquely British games. Free from the pressure of today's blockbuster budgets, eager young coders gathered in bedrooms to see what these new-fangled “computer games” could do. Some may question the need to publish a book of reviews for games no longer available. After all, they're not going to aid consumer decisions. But that's missing the real strength of the Speccy Nation. This is Whitehead's interpretation of Speccy games and how they entwined with British culture of the time.

The games in this book are:

- The Classics (Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Jetpac, Atic Atac, Ant Attack, Horace Goes Skiing, Wheelie, Alchemist, Chaos, Everyone's a Wally, Deathchase, Head Over Heels)

- The Pioneers (Games that were groundbreaking at the time: Skool Daze, Feud, The Hobbit, All or Nothing, Dark Sceptre, Redhawks, The Wild Bunch, Deus Ex Machina, iD, Slaine, Driller)

- The Greats (Games that are still worth playing, even now: Where Time Stood Still, Cybernoid, Nodes of Yesod, Knight Tyme, Jack the Nipper, Zoids, Firefly, Thanatos, Turbo Esprit, Daley Thompson's Decathalon, They Stole A Million)

- The Dark Horses (Games I'd never heard of: Flunky, Survival, Agent X, Friday the 13th, Alien, Death Wish 3, How to be a complete B*stard)

- Never Again (Games that would never be made today: Trashman, Mrs Mopp, Mad Nurse, Death Star Interceptor, Starring Charlie Chaplin, Cannibal Island, The Rocky Horror Show, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Give my regards to Broad Street)

The British games industry would go on to create such massive hits. Take Tomb Raider and Grand Theft Auto as examples, which made our programmers some of the most sought after talent. And it all started here. Welcome to the Speccy Nation.

Check out my YouTube playlist of the games featured.