David Hayward goes North, West, Down, Get Sword… Although the latest graphical masterpieces are a wonder to behold, there’s a lot to be said for simply using your own imagination and playing a clever, well written text adventure game. Text adventures were once as popular as any platformer, 3D space game or arcade conversion. There … Read more
Turn to page 25 to fight David Hayward, or continue reading for great treasure At the same time that gaming on a computer was beginning to form, at least in the shape or the ZX81 and Atari console, another genre of gaming was experiencing something of a renaissance: roleplay gamebooks. It’s a form of entertainment … Read more
This week, we get a little help from a mathematician Back in the early 80s the PC was essentially a business only machine. Gaming hadn’t really taken off, and there would still be a few more years until the PC would become a recognized gaming platform, so the vast majority of PC-based computing was word … Read more
This week, David Hayward looks at a classic 80s games company I was recently on a Facebook page for fans of the ZX Spectrum, and I got into a conversation regarding the many wonderful games that came from the Durell Software Ltd stable. Games such as Galaxy 5, Starfighter, Scuba Dive, Harrier Attack, Saboteur and … Read more
David Hayward recalls writing programs that insulted classmatesThere’s a popular educational movement at the moment to get the current generation of students back behind keyboards and programming. The likes of the Raspberry Pi and the attention attracted by the BAFTA Young Games Designer and Concept awards has somewhat helped to force a change in the … Read more
This week, we celebrate the birthday of a 16-bit favouriteThe arguments in the school yard between the Spectrum owners and the C64 owners didn’t stop at the end of the 8-bit era. By the time everyone had ditched their childhood 8-bit computer, the talk of the school was which 16-bit home computer you had: Atari … Read more