That 80s style is so evocative. Britain looked permanently overcast and slightly damp.

Bear Bovver was way ahead of its time. Its a portrayal of the struggles of modern EV owners trying to access recharge points.

For some reason I imagined myself popping into existence next to Sarah as a fourth guest, 54 years old, still playing games

Blooming awesome to see footage like this from the real `Spectrum Days`, ah the memories, going into a shop and being able to try out the games...take me back!!!

Someone give these poor kids a Kempston joystick 🕹️

Sarah Green was a true gem back then.

Sarah Greene and Atic Atac in the same video, sometimes life can be so good...

Sarah Greene is gorgeous. I think I was in love with her all my teenage years!

I wish I could go back to that time again.

I started gaming on the Atari 2600 in the late 1970's.. By 1984 i was12 years old and loved the ZX Spectrum back then, the games look laughable now, but it was nearly 40 years ago, and the memories of loading up those games still bring a smile to my face to this day..

Cool to think how games have improved over the decades. And this was the start of the gaming revolution, long live Speccy and C64! 👍👍.

the era in which one person in their bedroom or basement could learn to program, make a game and if they were talented enough get it published and sold in retail stores! the true first indie game makers, im more familiar with the 16 bit machines such as the Amiga and ST but even with them people who were in the demoscene such as the guys from travellers tales and DMA design went on to great things.

Shame they didn't realize you could turn the music off on Manic Miner....this also made the game run faster as there wasn't as much load on that massive cpu😂..My fav ZX game ever.

Ah, Sarah Greene. I had a major crush on her through the 80's (let's face it, who didn't?).

3 great games and Bear Bovver. Atic Atac was very advanced for such an early Spectrum game with multiple playable characters thateach had their own strengths and shortcuts. Apparently, you can complete it in less than 5 minutes if you know the game which is something I could never do as back in the day.

Dominic must be in his late forties by now and Duncan and Cassie will be in their 50s. I wonder how they feel looking back on themselves 39 years ago with the gorgeous Sarah Greene! I had a Vic 20 back in 84. It was old hat by then and the majority of the kids I was at school with had Spectrums or C64s. So we had a little clique of us who used to lend each other games as we were in the minority (same went for those kids who owned a BBC or an Atari). Some games forNonetheless this brings back memories of some great games like Gridrunner, Choplifter, Ganymede and of course the classic Elite. And some of the companies that made games like Bug Byte, Llamasoft (Jeff Winter was a programming genius), Ocean, Imagine and even Thorn EMI and Virgin had a go at knocking out games for the markets. I remember one of the computer magazines (might have been Popular Computing Weekly) ran a top ten selling games of about six different computers. There were some really interesting machines back in those days (who remembers the Oric-1, The Dragon 32, Jupiter Ace, Tandy , Sord M5, named after a computer in an episode of Star Trek apparently, and the TI44/A?).

Just brilliant, I remember going skiing and fighting spiders with Horace as a 12 year old on Xmas day 1983. Also.....Sarah Greene was never far from my adolescent "thoughts" 😁

The good old 48k Spectrum in all it's rubber keyed glory. Every kid who had one and used the keyboard control for games probably has carpal tunnel syndrome now.

Saddest thing about the BBC is that they've NEVER had a dedicated video game show. Sure, they've had shows with gaming elements in it like First Class, Total Reality, Fight Box, and that VR thing Craig Charles presented, but they've all been aimed at kids. And for an industry bigger than the movie and music's combined, it's a huge shame that the Beeb has never had a proper mature series. More so when the TV license is required to show all interests. yet one of the most popular hobbies in the UK for four decades has nothing.

Still in love with Sarah Green...and computer games

Who remembers the collection of games that came with the ZX Spectrum. There was various Horace goes type games, but there was Grand Prix I think it was called. It was the first game to try and emulate a steering wheel. You had the option of taking a biscuit tin lid and placing it in the middle of the number keys. Then moving it left and right, pressed on the lower and higher number keys, turning the car. I remember thinking that one day, we would have much better graphics and real steering wheels. Now I play GT on my PSVR2 using a Fanatec wheel. I still think back to my playstation days back then.

Christ, love this blast from the past, and the bonus of seeing the lovely Sarah to .

Those were the days!!

Such nostalgia. Feels a lifetime ago.

I live in Australia, I got an Amstrad CPC 464, my first computer at 17. I spent more time cracking game protection systems than playing games (inspired by War Games till I realised it wasn't realistic 😂) .. 80's games were just too hard for me. After I'd crack the game I'd donate the games to my Amstrad User group I belonged to, we had a library where you could pay to borrow the game for a month... It helped pay the rent on the hall, pay for biscuits and coffee. I probably bought 500 games and donated them all.. The library was pretty much my contributions. Of those 500 or so games (not including adventure games), I finished 2 games without cheating.. N. O. M. A. D & Fireant. A gaming prodigy I was not 😂 I don't think I ever got past the second screen of Manic Miner. 55 and still playing games, but actually able to finish them since they're so much easier nowadays.

‘The colours are too bright’. Sounds like the C64 would be more your speed… earthtones.

1st game i played on my ZX Spectrum was Beach Head by US Gold. Happy days, and Sarah Greene was and still is bloody gorgeous...

Bear Bovver is the only one I’ve never heard of, lost hours of my early teens to the other three. Think I bought Manic Miner but used my tape-to-tape recorder to make copies of the other two off boys from school. As long as you had, or knew someone with, a tape-to-tape recorder only one person in class actually bought the game. £5.99 was a massive amount of money in those days and you could get loads of games on a blank C90 tape (make sure you note down the tape counter number for where the games start and end!)

Reminds me of the old Griffithiffs Games Megamart in my town. Have some fun memories of working up some suds playing the original version of Window Cleaner.

I had a Vic 20 and still vividly remember unboxing it and loading up Blitz 😀

"Makes too much noise and the colours are too bright". Boy, are you in for a shock! 😂

How I miss recording games and swapping them at school.

She gave me special feelings as a teenage boy

That host was 80s hot 🔥

Sarah Green gets 10 out of 10

I love these old computer videos. Keep'em coming Aunty Beeb!

The fabulously lovely Sarah Greene. So 80s.

If you asked my mother at the time (she kind of appropriated the ZX Spectrum for a couple of years in the mid 1980s!) her top three were: 3. Attic Atac 2. Jet Pak 1. Transylvanian Tower (she spent hours on that one!)

I had such a crush on Sarah Green at this time

I still know Sarah Greene now and she's just as lovely as you'd imagine. A real gem of a person.

The Ultimate Play the Game titles were my favourites too. Sabre Wulf, Jet Pac and Knight Lore kept me entertained for days on my BBC Model B.

My childhood right there, those many, many minutes spent waiting to see if it would load, only to get to where the music and menu should pop up and it would crash! Those rubber keys! Awesome!

Those were the days!! When game reviews had no Nord-VPN and War Thunder sponsoring!!

The amount of hours spent on Saturdays in the 80s playing manic miner and jet set Willy with friends was worth it !

Looking at these charts, this was the best week of my life so far.

Still lots of love for the Spectrum. Dozens of new games are released for the machine every year.

I was working at a local bargain brand battery plant, and some of my coworkers were talking about playing "Oregon Trail". I lived in the town of Oregon and thought they were talking about a local school. I thought their comments about running out of food or drinking contaminated water were taken from the numerous plaques that would adorn such a school. (We love our plaques around here) Little did I know they were talking about a computer game of some popularity.

I loved Manic Miner. It was one of the only mainstream games I could get for the Toshiba MSX. My dad was told it was going to be the next big thing, but unfortunately never took off. However I loved it. You got a monthly magazine where you could program your own simple games and a cartridge slot. You could get really good cartridge games for the time from Konamai.

Just a couple of years away from Zelda being released. Must have blown their minds. I was born in 85 so I was more a mega drive / snes generation kid, but seeing the progression from manic miner onwards must have been an incredible experience for these kids.

I was deeply into computer gaming around the same time as this. Had a huge game collection on my C64 but Manic Miner is the only title of these that I have heard of. The Bear one looks like a ripoff of Burger Time, which I have played a lot. Still do from time to time on emulators. Like these kids, I still think of some of these games as having great graphics.

Ghetto blaster. Check. Connect ear socket cable on 48k Speccy to mic socket on ghetto blaster. Check. Play Winter Games by Epyx. Groove out at the apparent 3 channel sound! Check!!!

£6 from 1984, equates to about £25 today, I know this is a boring comment but I thought it may be useful to some...or maybe not?

I had a crush on this posh totty as a kid!

Back in my day we teleported everywhere 😅

Matthew Smith sweats blood to get actual music out of the Spectrum beeper. Some kid: "It makes too much noise"

Manic Miner and Atic atac are both in my top 3 speccy games, along with Chuckie egg. Ant attack would be in my top 10

5:23 I'm feeling their neck strain looking up at those monitors

"It makes too much noise" - if only he heard the Spectrum starting up 😅

Jet Set Willy is still amazing to this day. Matthew Smith is an absolute Genius, as were the Oliver Twins.

Somebody give those poor souls a Commodore 64 and a Joystick!

@3:05 "If you found new rooms all the time, it could last forever" And that kid went on to make The Binding of Isaac. 😉

And then Alan Sugar came along and ruined everything.

Imagine 40 years from now, we're all gonna see a same video talking about Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War and Elden Ring. :)

Loved Tottenham Court Road back then for tech,it’s crap now they have all gone apart from Cex near the top end,that was the first Cex I’ve still got my original membership card 😊

Atic Atac was great but I could finish it too quickly eventually. The one I really liked was the Defender clone - Invasion of the Bodysnatchas (I think) with back door loading hacks and weird Ulysses references.

Ah before the days of 'Not actual game play' where you got what you see. Fantastic games and fantastic days of wonderment and excitement... LOL the kids face at 4:05 🤣🤣🤣

As a child of the 80s and having to deal with the games back then was really frustrating, each game would promise a lot more than it would deliver, the images on the front and back of the tape boxes plus the text made the game seem amazing, but once you started to play, most of the games not only looked bad also were hard to control and would get very repetitive, although some would actually be really good some effort was actually put into them.

Sarah Green was very fit in her day❤

4:07 Wee guy looks like he's having a fit 😂

The joy of modifying that DEC B to NOP in Manic Miner, so you wouldn't lose any lives.. Changing it to INC B was rather interesting...

They were saying most of the games are too large, I wonder what they think of games like red dead redemption as adult players

The posh kids had either a spectrum plus 2 or Commodore 64 or really posh ones a BBC micro with the game elite

Sarah Greene flexing those pre-Ghostwatch acting chops 😄

What's also amazing is the staff you can see here, young men with neat hair, in jacket and tie with name badge. The polo shirt wearer would be the person loading things round the back. Now it's polo shirts up front and often no badge. And all the goods people wear dinner suits 😉

I love how a lot of the early games were a character in some semblance of a room having to avoid whacky objects and collect stuff.

Atic Atac was my favourite. I played it for hours, and programmed my own version.

This type of nostalgic technology is coming back.

I Remember playing “knobber” on an Apple IIe green screen only back in 1983/84.

Good to hear the word 'sheets' being used,instead of 'levels' or 'screens' and the like.

That 3-D! 🤣

I remember Ant Attack , I was amazed by the 3D graphics on my Spectrum LOL Very difficult to complete, I don't think I did.

A tic attack was the first toreuettes themed video game

The golden age of video games

Brilliant

Later in the year 1984 there was Jet Set Willy, Sabre Wulf, Star Quake, Knight Lore and many, many other games.

Use a Joystick 🕹 Ant Attack was a great game.😅

Elite, Castle Quest, Sabre Wulf, Yie Ar Kung-Fu and Knight Lore on the BBC, *Chef kiss*.

Oustanding review. Today's gamers have a lot to learn from these chaps.

The 80's were crazy this interview is great

Great video from the vaults. I'd happily show Sarah how to play each of these games, except for Bear Bovver.

They should have used the C64 instead of the rubbish speccy lol Great times though, I'm not bothered being nearly 51 as it means I was old enough to grow up through the 80s & 90s & seeing how much home computers & gaming evolved. Still got all my commodore gear, couple of C64s with 1541 drives, action replay cartridges & loads of amiga stuff, A600, few A1200s & associated hardware.

I had a zx spectrum 128k though sold it a few years later for £140. Now you can barely tell computer game graphics from reality. So much wrong with the world now but the technology is quite mind blowing

That kid saying Manic Miner had 20 sheets. Proper retro gaming language there. Clearing screens in arcades was always termed as "sheets". Don't hear it any more. I mastered Manic Miner back in the day to the point I could go round the 20 sheets over and over collecting extra life every 10K points. Just couldn't die off then. Had to eventually switch the computer off.

Manic Miner. Great game for its time. Spent many an hour playing that.

I still love my Spectrum.

My fave speccy game was Jet Pack.

She is so full of enthusiasm❤️

Manic Miner - press keys H, J, K, L to toggle sound on/off

Her 80s hair is on _point!_

CHAOS... the board game for up to 8 players by the amazing Julien Gollop... still played after 40 yrs 👍 especially the upgraded Chaos groove version with monty python samples.