ZX Spectrum Games - You are a programming genious - ZX Spectrum

You are a programming genious
Yep - the famous 20 GOTO 10 loop that 99% of us typed into our ZX Spectrums. It was our 'hello world', our first foray into computer programming and we loved it.

Your name could scroll and scroll down the screen, as long as kept pressing 'y'.

Showing this technical feat to parents, friends, family members etc was probably the proudest moment of the week. Maybe even the month.

That was until you read an issue of input magazine or some programming section of a monthly Spectrum magazine. Now, with advanced techniques like variables and increments in loops, you were well on your way to writing your first game.

That was until you realised you needed to know about movement, collision detection, frames of animation....

Many of the 'bedroom programmer' brigade eventually made it commercially from roots like this - and that is what made the ZX Spectrum Games scene such a joy. On many (good) arcade games only one programmer did everything: graphics, logic code, sound effects, music, title screen...

The BASIC installed on the ZX Spectrum wasn't even the best around, but it was usable and relatively easy to learn, and it would sometimes even make you laugh.

"What do ya mean Nonscense in BASIC!" I was known to shout at my tv screen from time to time. Whoever programmed that little bit of the ROM sure had a good sense of humour.

Some of us (not me!) even made the leap to assembly language and developed smooth and fast moving classic games.

Anyway, simple little snippets of BASIC code like this could keep us amused for hours...