Somehow I see a lot of those golden oldies arriving on the PocketPC. This made me just surf along some ZX Spectrum sites and get the good old nostalgic feeling.

icemark – an unbelievable interesting site dedicated to the Lords of Midnight and Doomdarks Revenge. I can remember the day that my Doomdarks Revenge arrived (on cassette). I listened to the audio story and then began playing, slowly drawing the map. In the downloads section of this site there is the map (!!) and the complete audio story. But also a pocketpc version. You can also find source codes for among others Sabre Wulf and Atic Atac… what an amazing cool site. I freaked when I saw the sabre wulf map

The Crash magazine archives are wonderful to read. Like the review of scuba dive from Durell, sigh, how many hours I have wasted on this game, or wheelie from Microsphere, this is was such an amazing different game back then, wow. Played it for ages. I also re-read about the games which are part of my neural network: jet set willy, sabre wulf from ultimate, from microgen and so on. I can remember that my granddad owned a ZX Spectrum and that he bought automania and I spent many days at my grandparents played the game. the matchpoint tennis game was amazingly playable with some good sprites as far as I can remember. And then there is pyjamarama, which is for me the grand icon my the zx spectrum age. Tir Na Nog was mystefying to me, I read long reviews about it in the Spectrum magazines and thought it was the greatest thing I would ever see on this planet, but never got hold of it until some years later. I didn’t understand it back then, but it made a big impression. starstrike was a game I played for a long, long time. To me it was addictive as anything. I got shadowfire as a pack of 2 games, (engima). I also played these two for ages. the fourth protocol I bought this and got the book alongside with it, but… I never understood the game so never got into playing it. Frankie goes to Hollywood was a game which I read about in the magz and which was hyped like whatever, it’s still imprinted in my brain. I played monty also at my grandfather’s, I remember he really wanted me to solve all levels. If you are my age then the way of the exploding fist is probably also in your brain. I can remember it was popular on the commie too. And then there is elite, I believe I have the poster from the ZX spectrum magazine still somewhere in the big box, alongside my countless drawn maps, etc… Is this the greatest spectrum game of all times? Not for me, for me that is Tau Ceti, this is the game that I played for the longest time and which moved me from planet earth into its realm forgetting about reality. Although Commando comes in close in terms of months playing time.

The world of spectrum of Martijn van der Heide offers, among others, a GIGANTIC list of emulators. There is so much to be found on this site that it dazzles me. I found in the best games 100 that Elite is choosen #1, and the great escape is #2, which is also a great game. Surprising that manic miner didn’t make it to #1, since this is also a/the icon of that spectrum Era. Browsing through the issues of these old spectrum magz is therapy! Every page makes me go “ah…yes”, many of these images and drawings are hardwired in my brain. I notice they still are looking for some scans of older magazines, so let’s see if I have some missing issues here in my bookshelves FULL of ye olde computer magz.

jasper is the online zx spectrum emulator, and could lead to some serious addictiveness!!! (Note that the ultimate games have been brought offline since rare requested it, check the rareware timeline for the ultimate link).