@@maddlarkin Our computer was an Amstrad with a separate tape player wired in so we could play games. That being said, the oldest game I played was on a BBC computer (primary school got hold of some). The floppy disks were actually floppy and had to be manually locked into place.
This is the first time in human history that a middle aged man has asked two pretty girls to come and see his retro game collection and it's actually worked. Edit: They refused to touch his Boglin though, better luck next time Ian!
Dizzy must have been a bit of a trailblazer in the concept of ingame tutorials - locking you in a single room with 3 items to use (and a damage source that you can easily hit but just as easily avoid, so you don't suddenly find out they hurt at a more critical point) just sets the idea of the game so well without interrupting the player. I remember being very confused by a lot of early games or put off by difficulty, but Dizzy was one of the first I ever completed and it felt amazing, even if it already felt a bit clunky in the presence of Mario
“If the zx spectrum taught me anything, it’s patience” -Ian Higton Me thinking of Ian playing Pubg and other games “Patience, is that what they call it?”
I got so used to the sounds I was able to hear when the character set the game used loaded in--it made a very specific sound, oddly regardless of what the characters looked like!
I played this game! (Yes I'm old). Seem to think I finished it but I could be wrong. Was great to see Zoe and Aoife's reactions to the loading times and the graphics. Reminded me of the LTTP video where Ian introduced Chris to the spectrum.
I used to have commadore 64 with both cassette deck and floppy-disc drive. Disc drive was so fast compared to cassettes, and really fast with action replay module.
Fantastic job Ian! This era is almost entirely unfamiliar to me. I just about caught the NES, Sega and 1st PlayStation days, but it was an odd mix of all games and platforms. Even though this predates these, it definitely brought back some memories I didn’t realise I shared! Look forward to more!
Wow... talk about a blast from the past. Not only did I have that collection of Dizzy games but I also had a boglin! Thank you Ian for a wonderful trip down memory lane
Well done guys this brought back so many memories from the Spectrum days, the real crazy thing was this Dizzy game came out in 1991 and about six (ish) years later Final Fantasy 7 came out.
Zoe figuring out how to insert the cassette was too adorable and funny. It also made me feel old again even though I'm not that much older than her. Ian, 1991 was 29 years ago. I should know since I was born in 1990 and I'll be 29 until November.
This was brilliant Ian and loved seeing Zoe and Aoife discover how to play these old games. Your Spectrum brought back lots of memories of playing tape games on my Amstrad CPC and trying my hand at programming with BASIC. Loved the Boglin too. I had one that you control with your hand like yours and a baby one that goes on your finger.
Haha this was great! My Christmas 91 was almost the same, except I had the C64 version. When Resident Evil came out, I always claimed it was just Dizzy in a horror environment, People used to laugh at me, so I'm glad after all this time someone else agrees!
I still have my spectrum 128k +2 best game ever was chaos where u was a wizard casting spells to kill the other wizards u should so play this game against each other it was so good 👍
Oh my God, the noise! I missed it dearly. Also, we had a separate cassette player, with an audio input to a much smaller console and a standalone keyboard. What a time that was...
Lovely vid. And to be fair, when you think about how long it takes to download the latest Fortnite update, 5 minutes to wait for a game to load really isn't that bad - things haven't changed that much!
Dunno if you were around back then, but a lot of the games had multiple loading sections. Die in one of them and you start over from the very beginning and have to load again. I seem to remember Gauntlet was one of them, with loads between each level too.
Yep, I remember the Spectrum, 30 minutes in, still loading and your trying to work out by the noise if its screwed up 2 tapes in and you need to start over or if its the normal loading time and you need to get tape 3 ready.... Its really puts my Fallout 4 mod problems in context
The thing is, you knew with a Spectrum game that you were in for a few minutes wait, so you would go and get a drink, read the manual or pick up a magazine while it loaded... this would make the time go by... Nowadays, sitting for 30 secs while a game loads feels like so much longer, because you're sitting there watching it...
Hello! If you want to know the technical details behind the ZX Spectrum's loading, and why it makes that noise, read on: So Ian was right saying it's the sound of 1s and 0s. You're hearing the sound of a series of pulses at a frequency of 3.5Mhz. A ~244 microsecond pulse represents a 0, and a one is represented by a ~977 microsecond pulse. Each pulse has a gap of around ~244 between them. So this means to fill the full 128K of memory on the Spectrum (very few games did) it would take a maximum of 11 minutes and 23 seconds. So you'd play those tapes, the Spectrum would interperet the sounds depending on their length and you'd have to find something to do while you waited. The reason tapes were used were they were commonplace and therefore cheap and they were also reliable - relatively speaking for the time. However as a magnetic media, leaving them too close to a magnet (like the ones found in speakers!) was a bad idea. Also you'd have to mess around getting the tape heads lined up sometimes by sticking a screwdriver in a little hole just underneath the flap of the tape deck. It was whole thing... Pretty glad we've moved on :D
Zoe trying to put the tape was amaziiinnnnnng hahaha! When I was a kid, I had one of those, here in Argentina it was called CZ Spectrum, and the tape reproduce was separeted from the keyboard. Rubber keyboards where awsome.
I have been literally screaming at you guys...how could you not know how to get a Spectrum to load. I screamed to hide the fact that I now feel super old
Oh wow! I remember Your Sinclair - and they had a section to program your own games in ZX Spectrum BASIC. I did my very first text adventure games on this (and the school's BBC Micros as well). Oh, happy memories.
Thanks, I'd left school at this point in time! Yeah, Dizzy was an adventurous fellow, Lara Croft minus the violence. The industry during the eighties was definitely really cool. Not just for free (exclusive) games on magazines or from eating a dozen bags of crisps. I remember Pac Man having collectible bubble gum cards and miniature home versions of arcade classics. The coding was really hard work but yeah it was another normal feature. I think about a decade ago we achieved halcyon but the eighties were a really pure, almosy innocent era for gaming. Late to the party Treasure Island Dizzy would showcase a historical title. There are countless classic games that don't get a mention, even the nineties catalogue is becomes obscure.
At least with a Speccy game you didn't find a 5 gig update was needed before you started playing. Mind you, you might have to load four or five times to not have it crash right at the end.
I had the Spectrum plus 3, which was the floppy disk drive version, but as my parents wouldn't shell out the money for the floppy disk versions, we had to hook up a tape player to it and play it in the same fashion, while playing with my transformers. Ahhhh, memories. :)
Not that much difference between waiting for a game to load from a cassette, and waiting for your game to update when you try to play it. At least that didn't depend on your internet speed.
Ace we had a spectrum in our house hold it was the one with the separate tape deck brought back some good mems great vid this should do more going through the ages super late to the party you could call it lol
HOLY....! Boglins were a thing when I was 9ish and I am definitely not as 21 as Ian! by about 10 I think,.... was there a resurgence? or am I less 21 than I thought ... Whatever this video brought a tear to my eye and joy to my heart... who else can say the same !!
I never had a Spectrum, but we did have several different Atari machines, including one that had an external cassette deck connected with a relatively thick cable to the "computer" portion of the machine (which normally accepted heavy cartridges). Star Raiders was the game my dad preferred, though I was pretty bad at it. Ah yes, video games of Christmas past.
Just dug out my Amstrad CPC464 from the loft. Like Zoe & Aoife, the kids had no idea how to load a cassette into a cassette player. ha ha Sadly I couldn't get it to work on my now, not so smart, Smart TV.. :(
I'm 36 and had a couple boglins growing up but I don't remember the Spectrum, I grew up and am from Canada though so maybe it was a Europe only thing. And how old/young are the girls to not know how to put a cassette in, lol.
I don't remember what year but we got an Atari 800 one Christmas that had Dos on a cartrige and some games on tape like that. Was a monkey math game i remember, got the math problem right he went up the tree to get the Banana. My Dad programed a madlib in Dos.
Exact model of the Spectrum I had as a wee lil whipper. Taught myself to program on that at 7 years old. Ahhh memories. EDIT: Also, Dizzy was a cool little game, but you should have got them to play Skool Daze ;)
Zoe doesn't know how to load cassettes?! i really feel ancient now! My cassette player was my prize possession, that and my small personal cassette player. Not sure if it's just me or an asd/sensory issue but the flashing stripes on the screen when the game is loading make me feel really unwell. i've seen it before when Ian has streamed retro stuff - is it necessary for the game to load, or were devs just obssessed with colour and effects back then? Kinda want a transformer now..... Thank you Aoife, Ian and Zoe! X X X
I think the colours on the screen, as well as the noise was just a result of the computer playing the tape and having to do some sort of translation as it transferred. That's going off memory of course, and mines ropy at the best of times :)
@@NoFormalTraining The noise certainly was, but the lines could let you know whether or not the thing was corrupting. If they were clean then all was well, but if they looked glitchy it meant there was noise in the signal & you'd likely have a crash at some point.
Unfortunately Codemasters have denied distribution of all their back catalogue, otherwise you'd be able to download the game and a Spectrum emulator from worldofspectrum.org and play it!
Yea, the +2 was Amstrad but it was really just a 128 with some branding & a tape deck on it. The guts of the system were exactly the same, as far as I know.
So lovely to see one of these framed as sharing the joy of a childhood memory and not making fun of the people who haven't seen them before!
Mural yeah, it’s kinda depressing that this is refreshing.
Loving the sight of Aoife and Zoe trying to work out the Transformers while nightmare transmission noises are going on in the background
Zoe trying to put the tape in made me feel so old...
Me too! Carousel carousel!
I got the feeling she'd never used a magnetic tape in her life. :/
@@marhawkman303 I wish I was still that young.
Me too dude, me too... Think the first game I ever played was on a mates Spectrum! (Space Crusade)
@@maddlarkin Our computer was an Amstrad with a separate tape player wired in so we could play games.
That being said, the oldest game I played was on a BBC computer (primary school got hold of some). The floppy disks were actually floppy and had to be manually locked into place.
I love how the challenge is simply how to load the game! And Aofie's confusion that yes games used to come on casette tapes made me smile!
Somewhere there's an archive of public records stored on magnetic tape :p
Back in MY country, year 1991 was dedicated to AK wielding resistance to Yugoslavia. Cheers from CROATIA LOL
I had one of these until I spilt lemonade into the tape deck. The nostalgia is strong! Thank you for this.
This is the first time in human history that a middle aged man has asked two pretty girls to come and see his retro game collection and it's actually worked.
Edit: They refused to touch his Boglin though, better luck next time Ian!
This was super wholesome
Dizzy must have been a bit of a trailblazer in the concept of ingame tutorials - locking you in a single room with 3 items to use (and a damage source that you can easily hit but just as easily avoid, so you don't suddenly find out they hurt at a more critical point) just sets the idea of the game so well without interrupting the player. I remember being very confused by a lot of early games or put off by difficulty, but Dizzy was one of the first I ever completed and it felt amazing, even if it already felt a bit clunky in the presence of Mario
“If the zx spectrum taught me anything, it’s patience”
-Ian Higton
Me thinking of Ian playing Pubg and other games
“Patience, is that what they call it?”
I had this exact same thought!! xD
Indeed, there is little patience there. More 'Loot! LOOT! More loot! Ahhh! I'm being shot at, save me!'
By Eurogamer standard it is
The loading noise hit me right in the nostalgicles, my first ever gaming experience was River Raid on the Spectrum 128k.
I got so used to the sounds I was able to hear when the character set the game used loaded in--it made a very specific sound, oddly regardless of what the characters looked like!
Dizzy! Transformers! Boglins! Hero Quest!
This made an old man smile.
(Me, not Ian. As I know he's only '21'...)
Oh Ian, may you live forever, I'm gonna be devastated when Ian retires from eurogamer
I love the confused/intrigued looks Zoe and Aoife are giving the tapes.
that toy was actually Motormaster and Menasor is who he'll turn into when he combines with the other stunticons.
One of my absolute favourite episodes of Late to the Party is when Ian showed Chris the Spectrum so this is a treat! :D
I played this game! (Yes I'm old). Seem to think I finished it but I could be wrong. Was great to see Zoe and Aoife's reactions to the loading times and the graphics. Reminded me of the LTTP video where Ian introduced Chris to the spectrum.
I used to have commadore 64 with both cassette deck and floppy-disc drive. Disc drive was so fast compared to cassettes, and really fast with action replay module.
I turn 37 tomorrow. You have no idea how old this has made me feel...
Happy birthday!
39, I really do... And happy Birthday fellow Boomer ;-)
Fantastic job Ian! This era is almost entirely unfamiliar to me. I just about caught the NES, Sega and 1st PlayStation days, but it was an odd mix of all games and platforms. Even though this predates these, it definitely brought back some memories I didn’t realise I shared! Look forward to more!
born 81 so this really takes me back to my 48k speccy days, thank you for this.... love Dizzy
Wow... talk about a blast from the past. Not only did I have that collection of Dizzy games but I also had a boglin! Thank you Ian for a wonderful trip down memory lane
Boglins! Wow, I’d totally forgotten about those. Definitely remember having one of those and turning the thing inside out
Well done guys this brought back so many memories from the Spectrum days, the real crazy thing was this Dizzy game came out in 1991 and about six (ish) years later Final Fantasy 7 came out.
Zoe figuring out how to insert the cassette was too adorable and funny. It also made me feel old again even though I'm not that much older than her.
Ian, 1991 was 29 years ago. I should know since I was born in 1990 and I'll be 29 until November.
Well watching them trying to transform Motormaster and Astrotrain as well as trying to figure out a tape loader has left me feeling very old
This was brilliant Ian and loved seeing Zoe and Aoife discover how to play these old games. Your Spectrum brought back lots of memories of playing tape games on my Amstrad CPC and trying my hand at programming with BASIC. Loved the Boglin too. I had one that you control with your hand like yours and a baby one that goes on your finger.
Aoife and Zoe reaction to Boglin = day made :D
This was very sweet. If you get the chance Ian, you should show Zoe and Aoife the game that Mr. Tom (I believe) made for you. It was really neat.
Haha this was great! My Christmas 91 was almost the same, except I had the C64 version. When Resident Evil came out, I always claimed it was just Dizzy in a horror environment, People used to laugh at me, so I'm glad after all this time someone else agrees!
Ian is truly my brother from another mother/spirit animal.
Straight to my childhoods Spectrum 48k nostalgia.
I still have my spectrum 128k +2 best game ever was chaos where u was a wizard casting spells to kill the other wizards u should so play this game against each other it was so good 👍
I use to go get my tea, or do my home work while it loaded. Ha.
Oh my God, the noise! I missed it dearly.
Also, we had a separate cassette player, with an audio input to a much smaller console and a standalone keyboard. What a time that was...
Ugh, that lovely loading noise. Thanks Ian
Lovely vid. And to be fair, when you think about how long it takes to download the latest Fortnite update, 5 minutes to wait for a game to load really isn't that bad - things haven't changed that much!
Dunno if you were around back then, but a lot of the games had multiple loading sections. Die in one of them and you start over from the very beginning and have to load again. I seem to remember Gauntlet was one of them, with loads between each level too.
Yep, I remember the Spectrum, 30 minutes in, still loading and your trying to work out by the noise if its screwed up 2 tapes in and you need to start over or if its the normal loading time and you need to get tape 3 ready.... Its really puts my Fallout 4 mod problems in context
quite surprised it loaded that fast, only tape streamer i used was the one for the commodore 64 and it would take around 20 minutes to load a game.
Thank you Euruh gamah. This was fun. Was never born this year, and here this year means really really BAD THINGS LOL thanks!
The thing is, you knew with a Spectrum game that you were in for a few minutes wait, so you would go and get a drink, read the manual or pick up a magazine while it loaded... this would make the time go by...
Nowadays, sitting for 30 secs while a game loads feels like so much longer, because you're sitting there watching it...
I had the two Dizzy compilations to play on my Dad's Spectrum 48k. I never noticed the similarity to Resident Evil before.
Hello! If you want to know the technical details behind the ZX Spectrum's loading, and why it makes that noise, read on:
So Ian was right saying it's the sound of 1s and 0s. You're hearing the sound of a series of pulses at a frequency of 3.5Mhz. A ~244 microsecond pulse represents a 0, and a one is represented by a ~977 microsecond pulse. Each pulse has a gap of around ~244 between them. So this means to fill the full 128K of memory on the Spectrum (very few games did) it would take a maximum of 11 minutes and 23 seconds. So you'd play those tapes, the Spectrum would interperet the sounds depending on their length and you'd have to find something to do while you waited.
The reason tapes were used were they were commonplace and therefore cheap and they were also reliable - relatively speaking for the time. However as a magnetic media, leaving them too close to a magnet (like the ones found in speakers!) was a bad idea. Also you'd have to mess around getting the tape heads lined up sometimes by sticking a screwdriver in a little hole just underneath the flap of the tape deck.
It was whole thing... Pretty glad we've moved on :D
'Dizzy is the mascot of the Spectrum'..... Horace would like to have a word....
More of this, please. Bonus points if the next Spectrum game is Nightmare on Ramsey Street, the Neighbours Australian soap shoot-em-up.
Brilliant video! 😂
Zoe trying to put the tape was amaziiinnnnnng hahaha!
When I was a kid, I had one of those, here in Argentina it was called CZ Spectrum, and the tape reproduce was separeted from the keyboard. Rubber keyboards where awsome.
Love this had them all was about 5yrs old.
I have been literally screaming at you guys...how could you not know how to get a Spectrum to load. I screamed to hide the fact that I now feel super old
Oh wow! I remember Your Sinclair - and they had a section to program your own games in ZX Spectrum BASIC. I did my very first text adventure games on this (and the school's BBC Micros as well). Oh, happy memories.
Retrotastic! I'm sad that I never got to play on the Spectrum; I was only 3 at the time
Thanks, I'd left school at this point in time!
Yeah, Dizzy was an adventurous fellow, Lara Croft minus the violence. The industry during the eighties was definitely really cool. Not just for free (exclusive) games on magazines or from eating a dozen bags of crisps. I remember Pac Man having collectible bubble gum cards and miniature home versions of arcade classics. The coding was really hard work but yeah it was another normal feature. I think about a decade ago we achieved halcyon but the eighties were a really pure, almosy innocent era for gaming.
Late to the party Treasure Island Dizzy would showcase a historical title. There are countless classic games that don't get a mention, even the nineties catalogue is becomes obscure.
OMG I'm so old. Love the music too. 2001 FTW
Fucking brilliant. Dizzy games were great. The two young whippersnappers on the Eurogamer team don't know what they missed out on.
this one brought me back to 1991 and my C64. The loading sounds from the tape and very pixely graphics.
At least with a Speccy game you didn't find a 5 gig update was needed before you started playing. Mind you, you might have to load four or five times to not have it crash right at the end.
I had the Spectrum plus 3, which was the floppy disk drive version, but as my parents wouldn't shell out the money for the floppy disk versions, we had to hook up a tape player to it and play it in the same fashion, while playing with my transformers. Ahhhh, memories. :)
It's Motormaster!
OMG i had that box set on ZX Spectrum!
Your Sinclair.... What a magazine 👍👍
Makes me miss my Nintendo. Oh how far gaming has come.
Not that much difference between waiting for a game to load from a cassette, and waiting for your game to update when you try to play it. At least that didn't depend on your internet speed.
Ace we had a spectrum in our house hold it was the one with the separate tape deck brought back some good mems great vid this should do more going through the ages super late to the party you could call it lol
Oh my god I'd forgotten all about boglins!
HOLY....! Boglins were a thing when I was 9ish and I am definitely not as 21 as Ian! by about 10 I think,.... was there a resurgence? or am I less 21 than I thought ... Whatever this video brought a tear to my eye and joy to my heart... who else can say the same !!
Zoe took to Dizzy much better than Bratterz
I feel Ian and I shared a very similar childhood! Still have my 128k +2
I never had a Spectrum, but we did have several different Atari machines, including one that had an external cassette deck connected with a relatively thick cable to the "computer" portion of the machine (which normally accepted heavy cartridges). Star Raiders was the game my dad preferred, though I was pretty bad at it. Ah yes, video games of Christmas past.
Loved my Speccy.... Good times!
Loading games from tape in 1991? Yikes! The Commodore 64 and the Amiga had both passed that stage in the Eighties. Very instructive.
Look at Ian, all flash with his +2. 48k 4 lyfe…
doyle8711 Loading menu? We don’t need no stinking loading menu.
Speccy! Dizzy! Boglin! Astrotrain! ❤️
I love how Aoifa shows us her mangled transformer like it was a success. 😂
Perfectly understandable from Astrotrain.
0:19 Eagerly awaiting _Eurogamer v Fine Bros._
Cool stuff you guys!
Ian was apparently me as a child.
Also, Motormaster, not Menasor. Menasor was his combined form with the other Stunticons.
Watching these two girls know absolutely nothing about toys from my childhood, ohhh I'm ancient.
My first computer when I was 8 years old, My first Dizzy game cost £1.99 from my local newsagent
horace woud have something to say about dizzy being sinclairs mascot
Just dug out my Amstrad CPC464 from the loft.
Like Zoe & Aoife, the kids had no idea how to load a cassette into a cassette player. ha ha
Sadly I couldn't get it to work on my now, not so smart, Smart TV.. :(
So GTA Online loads like a game from 1991. Nice progress!
I'm 36 and had a couple boglins growing up but I don't remember the Spectrum, I grew up and am from Canada though so maybe it was a Europe only thing. And how old/young are the girls to not know how to put a cassette in, lol.
I was 2 during Christmas '91. I am feeling young for once!
My first comp was a Spectrum 48k with rubber keys 😂. Also first console was an Atari Grandstand. Dam their worth alot now 😭
Jesus CHRIST BOGLINS!!!!!
Aoife and Zoe certainly got on with the ZX Spectrum much better than Chris did.
My first computer. Omg
This would have been so good with Chris and Johnny
I don't remember what year but we got an Atari 800 one Christmas that had Dos on a cartrige and some games on tape like that. Was a monkey math game i remember, got the math problem right he went up the tree to get the Banana. My Dad programed a madlib in Dos.
i know the game i use to have it as a kid i didnt know what to do in the game lol
The Speccy was a bit out of date by 91 lol. We’d already moved to Floppy’s, Cartridges and CDs by then.
Ian, you should have made them play Valhalla. Or least least sit through the 20 minute loading screen :P
Exact model of the Spectrum I had as a wee lil whipper. Taught myself to program on that at 7 years old. Ahhh memories.
EDIT: Also, Dizzy was a cool little game, but you should have got them to play Skool Daze ;)
Lol! That load time is ridiculous, now let me find something to do for the next 2 hours whilst I wait for my game of update otherwise I cant play it.
Fuck, I feel so old now
BOGLINS!!!!!
i think i had it for the nes the old one
Ian Higton and Jim Sterling team up, to bring back Boglins?
Zoe doesn't know how to load cassettes?! i really feel ancient now! My cassette player was my prize possession, that and my small personal cassette player.
Not sure if it's just me or an asd/sensory issue but the flashing stripes on the screen when the game is loading make me feel really unwell. i've seen it before when Ian has streamed retro stuff - is it necessary for the game to load, or were devs just obssessed with colour and effects back then?
Kinda want a transformer now.....
Thank you Aoife, Ian and Zoe! X X X
I think the colours on the screen, as well as the noise was just a result of the computer playing the tape and having to do some sort of translation as it transferred. That's going off memory of course, and mines ropy at the best of times :)
@@NoFormalTraining The noise certainly was, but the lines could let you know whether or not the thing was corrupting. If they were clean then all was well, but if they looked glitchy it meant there was noise in the signal & you'd likely have a crash at some point.
@@NoFormalTraining thanks! Also, don't worry - since i remember cassettes so well, i too have a ropey memory! ;)
Ah, so they are necessary. Did think they were odd as an aesthetic choice. Will continue to avert my wimpy eyes in future.
@@DragonBotherer Well not necessary really, since it'd crash at some point anyway, but in some sense useful, occasionally.
I want to play this game, my super computer is obviously meant for games from '91
Unfortunately Codemasters have denied distribution of all their back catalogue, otherwise you'd be able to download the game and a Spectrum emulator from worldofspectrum.org and play it!
Isn’t that an amstrad spectrum when the company bought sinclair?
Yea, the +2 was Amstrad but it was really just a 128 with some branding & a tape deck on it. The guts of the system were exactly the same, as far as I know.