ZX-2015

I recently read with some amusement the complaints regarding bugs and assorted glitches in one of the latest Assasins Creed games. Apparently players had to cope with distorted graphics, poor physics and other assorted inconveniences which obviously detracted from their total immersion in the world of murder and mayhem. The sense of disappointment and outrage from many teens and early twenties was tremendous even though as you can see above they were playing a product that took over thirty years to develop to this stage, when I was that age I didn't have the luxury of full 1080HD and 64bit, instead I swooned over this.

Boot Hill, a one or two player arcade game using state of the art graphics in 1977, did I complain about the poor animation, lack of colour and one channel sound? No, and you know the reason why? Because everything computer was crap.

Let me explain.

Growing up in the late seventies and early eighties exposed you to the first home computers and electronic games, as is the fashion for new trends the adverts and claims for the new technology was overstated to say the least. They tended to build up expectations to mammoth proportions only to leave you crying over wasted pocket money as the product failed to live up to the blurb.

I once saw this advert in a popular magazine and saved for weeks until I could afford to buy a copy. After all it promised a FULL COLOUR KONG jumping across the screen in this UNBELIEVABLE VIDEO GAME. This coupled with the advert almost promised an exact copy of the arcade game Donkey Kong, I couldn't believe it, only £5 for the home version of this!

I was so excited when it arrived that I rushed upstairs ripping off the packaging and loaded it into my trusty ZX-Spectrum.

Ah, so by full colour Kong you actually meant black with white nipples and Lego man grip hands. I particularly like the way no attempt has been made to impress, the barrels to jump are diamonds, the ladders to climb barely exist and the yellow background makes me want to throw up. The jumping was more shuffling and your 'man' looked like a figure denoting 'MENS' on a toilet door making the only thing UNBELIEVEABLE about it was how long they got away with selling it. The whole thing was totally unplayable and was classed as one of the worst ever computer games created by some websites, a sentiment I wholeheartedly agree with.

Things wasn't much better before this, Kong on the trusty ZX-81 (Black and white, no sound and no hires graphics) looked like this.

What is it with this game that all they concentrate on getting right is the nipples? Basically you are the 'A' and you had to climb the 'H's whilst avoiding the '*' to rescue 'J'. Yes, you had to have an awful lot of imagination to enjoy it.

Here's another, pilot a plane and bomb things in full colour!

Maybe not. For a start thats a biplane and not a B52 Bomber and secondly if I was running out of fuel I think I would have found somewhere flat to land rather than perform twenty bombing runs on a city to flatten all the skyscrapers so I could land.