Jeez, another backwards-looking post. It's always jarring when someone else brings up something from the past, thanks to a post on REDDIT today, I was reminded of my first computer over 20 years ago, a gift via my aunt on Christmas. In this case, that would be the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, invented by a British gentlemen, dunno why she picked that one over the Commodore 64.
I don't have the layout for connecting the various pieces of equipment for consultation just now, about all I can remember about that aspect was that all of the programs were stored and played on regular tape cassettes, and from that, I still do possess one piece of software from that period: a UK cassette tape version of the Stranglers' 1984 album Aural Sculpture, which had a game on it, at the end of the album, entitled Aural Quest. There were some other programs that came with the computer, some of which were marginally useful, relatively speaking, but I have no idea where those tapes are these days.
At this point, once I had bought the Stranglers album, trying to play that game, where one is the bands road manager, became a goal I wished to master, but due to various factors (my total inexperience with computers then, faulty equipment...the tape player I was using was a cheap handheld portable type, etc.) that goal was never accomplished much past the beginning stages. It definitely could have been the hardware, on the inside of the j-card, the instructions read Wind the tape just before the computer programme starts. Set the Spectrum up for loading programs as shown in the manual. Type load "ENTER". Now play the tape. If the program fails to load, try a different volume setting.
Being that we had much more time to waste those days than we do now (HA!), all of the other volume settings would prove to just as useless when trying to get the damn program to start. That in itself was a rare occurrence, but the fact that this was a crappy game didn't help matters much either. The fact is also that the Stranglers were a crappy band to begin with and were to lose whatever credibility they had with me on this album, I rather liked the punch of the single No Mercy, but the rest of the album was just mediocre pop pap, not at all like the stuff from the first album such as Down In The Sewer or the tastelessly sexist chant Peaches.
That Reddit thread had a link to a site that had been running for just over a year, apparently (I don't go around searching for stuff like this), and the story on Kempa.com, which is HERE, which also has a link to play the game today, caught my eye because it told of of various 80's bands from the UK who used vinyl as a type of software for computer programs. For the record, I once might've bought the Pete Shelley XL-1 album, but seeing as I sold his debut album Homosapien soon after buying it ended that possible dilemma. The only question remains is why it took my so long to figure out that most of the Stranglers catalog was garbage.
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