25 Years On

This month is the 25th Anniversary of the launch of the ZX Spectrum. Although this probably won’t mean much to American readers of this blog, I’m sure all my male Brit friends are now looking up in fond rememberance of their first ‘real’ computer. The computer that set many of us on the path of increasing geekdom.

On reflection it’s interesting how social activities flourished around our computers when we were younger, in the absence of an ‘internet’. When I first got my Spectrum I created a ‘limited run’ fanzine (trans. about 20 photocopies) that used to take me every spare minute to write, draw the illustrations for and send off for free games to play. I mean review. I also used to try and create the next greatest spoof adventure game with other friends under the company name ‘MattSoft’. Then later myself and a few other guys from school created an Atari ST fanzine together that again, had limited exposure. Now all that work would probably get noticed with minimal effort it can take to put up certain sites and then run if you know what you’re doing. One of these days I hope to come across one of my old fanzines – I’m sure that will be ‘interesting’.