[Mad Martha / Spectrum]

21 minutes ago, dondplayer said:

From the ZX Spectrum Wiki page ...

From August 1982,^[125] the ZX Spectrum came bundled with a software starter pack in the form of a cassette tape entitled Horizons: Software Starter Pack,^[126] which included 8 programs: Thro' the Wall (a Breakout clone), Bubblesort, Evolution (an ecosystem of foxes and rabbits), Life (an implementation of Conway's Game of Life), Draw (a basic object-based drawing utility), Monte Carlo (a simulation of the rolling of two dice), Character Generator (for editing user defined graphics) and Beating of Waves (plots the sum of two sine waves)

As Reg says I'm sure there were promotional sales including one or more other games too.

Yes - the original Spectrum came with that Horizons tape, a couple of books, some leads (to connect to your TV and a tape deck) and a power supply.

A bit later on Sinclair bundled more software with it including Chequered flag (motor racing), Chess, Scrabble, Make-a-chip [design logic circuits], VU-3D [a rubbish 3D designer] and Tasword 2 [a word processor]. I think they were trying to make the spectrum look like a more rounded computer than just something for the kids to play games on.

 

Of course, lots of stores will have done there own deals to shift units. Particularly after the launch debacle which saw WHSmiths getting hundreds of machines returned to them because they didn't work properly and the Sinclair name was mud for a while.

Oh, there is still a thriving Speccy community out there.

S

Who remembers typing in Krazy Katapilla as one of his first experiences of Fruit Machine Simulation

[Do we have dxs of these machines]

I'm pretty sure there is a classic version of magic dragons put together by clo06 but I've not seen a DX version. Don't know about the others.

 

S

[pc spec]

Hi Loofy,

This probably doesn't help at all but it does seem to depend on the machine being emulated. I have a rather high end PC and it copes with 99% of fruit machines. There are, however, a couple of fruitees which don't cope well - it seems to be related to those with lots of visual effects using blended lamps but I haven't explored it properly to be certain of this.

Are you experiencing problems at the moment?

S

 

 

[Painfully Slow - Machines that are just Slow to Play]

1 hour ago, Reg said:

while at work I figured it could sit there on Autoplay.

This got me looking at some of the features of MFME and made me realize that I have no idea how to use things like the autoplay. Is there a manual or guide somewhere that I've spectacularly managed to miss?

 

S

[Development Updates]

Just saw this and thought wow! Nothing to add except it looks great and is really innovative

 

S

[Who was your favourite software studio?]

I don't normally like to necropost but I love the idea of this thread.

My favourite studio was definitely Ultimate.

However, the most important were probably J K Greye Software and CDS Micro Systems who were the good folks behind 3D Monster Maze and Castle Adventure respectively on the ZX81. Why, because they opened the eyes of a 10 year old Savage to how amazing computers are if you can program them. Needless to say this has served me well for nearly 40 years

 

S

[Advice]

Just a random thought but could you get some 3D printed?

 

S