The Feature In their infinite wisdom, Sinclair commissioned several titles to support the release of the Spectrum. Funnily enough, most of these titles (and subsequent releases) were pretty good, unlike the pointless shoot-em-up bollocks you get with the 3D-O. Some titles are also rather pleasing to collect, coming as they did in well designed cardboard cases. The one we all have is the HORIZONS cassette, the first of a long association with PSION. I was certainly engrossed in the various lessons and tests put before me by this new wonder machine. Sorry, got a bit Spectrum UK-ish there... I mean, fucking amazed. The VU- series of titles are all well worth having. 3D is an interesting voyage into hi-res design and manipulation. Maybe some bod managed to get the resulting images flying about in his own demos? CALC was a complicated spread-sheet that I havn't sussed to this day, and FILE is quite simply one of the best database systems you could hope for (even at a 12 year vintage).
COLLECTORS PACK from ISL was a more restricted format database but still very comphrehensive. As I mentioned in SC#7, my Mum was dead impressed with CHESS, but not so much with PLANETOIDS and SPACE RAIDERS, sturdy versions of the arcade money grabbers. BIORHYTHMS was an interesting self analysis system based on your birthdate. Only the seriously mugged believed it though but it does make you feel incredibly old as it tells you how many days you've lived!! Scary stuff. FLIGHT SIMULATOR was a basic namesake which did nothing for the Speccy at all (hail the F16 Combat Pilot.) I would much rather forget the three HORACE games, they really were dire (but not badly programmed for the age).
It wasn't until 1983 that better arcade titles came up, like ERIC AND THE FLOATERS, STOP THE EXPRESS (both from Hudson Soft) and CHEQUERED FLAG, all considered classics. SCRABBLE became an instant best seller and rightly so. No other traditional board game has converted to computer so well. MATCH POINT arrived in 1984 and still remains one of the better tennis sims. The 'Sinclair' titles however, excelled in utility software. FORTH from Artic and MICRO-PROLOG by LPA were two new languages for your Speccy, `25 for the latter! The ZEUS ASSEMBLER from Crystal is still used to this day by one very impressive UK demo crew (no, not the Knuckle Girls), and the MONITOR/DISASSEMBLER probably came up to the same standards (havn't got it see!)
Andrew Pennells PRINT UTLITITES, the display of different sized characters, have been over-shadowed by many PD routines since but in 1983, this was a nice program to own. CHESS TUTOR 1, MUSICMASTER, MAKE-A-CHIP and BEYOND BASIC were all excellent aids to learning new skills. In fact the education titles are amoungst the rarest to now obtain. I can only assume those titles aimed at primary school kids ended up as cassettes full of Heinz Carrot desert. The boxes are probably covered in scribble even if the tapes still load. I speak of the elusive LEARN TO READ series and the titles from Blackboard Software. If anyone has these programs then sell them to me! The Science Horizons series was aimed at the older child, CARGO, GLIDER, SURVIVAL and MAGNETS. I still enjoy these half education/half game programs today (but only when I'm pissed up). When I'm feeling really brainy I load up the CATTELL IQ TEST and CYRUS IS CHESS although I always regret it - the brain of an ant...
Not forgetting the mighty TASWORD 2 of course coming as it did in the lovely silver and black boxes. TINY TOUCH N GO was a typing tutor that came in the same format. On reflection, every single program that Sinclair packaged is very worthwhile having; as well as looking nice on your shelf you'll end up using them quite alot too (and how many programs in your collection do you actually ever load?)
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