One Man and His Spectrum

Links

Published Games

Spectrum and cassette games

Sinclair ZX Spectrum Computer games designed and produced by Clive Brooker 1982-1991, published and unpublished.

Games

One Man and His Droid

Knight Driver Link Button

The Rmpire Fights Back Link Button

One Man And His Droid Link Button

Lap Of The Gods Link Button

War Cars Construction Set Link Button

Contact Us Link Button

One Man And His Droid ii Link Button

Links To Other Websites Link Button

Spectrum Games Home Link Button

Autolaunch Home Link Button

Next Game Link Button

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News 1 August 2022

This retro hobbyist website rarely has new news, so what will this item be? Well, I recently bought a video capture device that allows me to plug my old VHS Video into my computer. Long story short, I found a personal promotional video tape that I made way back in 1987 to market my new game to potential publishers. After a minor name change it was published by Firebird, a division of British Telecom, as War cars Construction Set. The link on the right is a short segment from my promotional video, it's quite grainy, but reflects the quality of the era and a time when I still had some hair.

 

 

Obituary 16 September 2021

Sir Clive Sinclair

Sinclair ZX Spectrum

1982 Sinclair ZX Spectrum home computer

Sir Clive Sinclair, “creator” of many inventions and notably, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer, sadly passed away on 16 September 2021 at the age of 81. It’s sad to say goodbye to one of the pioneering “greats” of the computer industry who helped create such a groundswell of “DIY“ computer programmers. The ZX Spectrum was such a well thought out machine, ideal for the beginner to actually learn to program a computer. Many self taught programmers went on to lead and inspire the British Video Games Industry. as well as significant roles in IT.

News 7 August 2020

Welcome to the newly reformed and refreshed website for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum games that I wrote back in the 80's. The original disappeared in 2016 after over a 15 year run. British Telecom inherited my Freeserve website from EE then deactivated all Freeserve websites in 2016.

I found a few unexpected technical challenges along the way to get this site and it's Autolaunch cousin, up and running again. The first problem was to track down both the original files for the site as well as the software I had used to create it 20 years ago! Quite a miracle in it's own right after laying dormant for 20 years. I certainly had a bemused look when I fired up MVD's Webbex for the first time. In the intervening years, small mobile devices have become quite prevalent and the site needed to be made "mobile" compliant.

I have enjoyed the mental stimulus to set this all up, with a few late nights along the way. I do hope that you find something of interest here on this Retro Games Site.

 Clive Brooker

 

The 1985 best selling game, One Man And His Droid

One Man and His Droid

 

One Man and His Droid, published by Mastertronic, sold over 250,000 copies in various formats. It has even been suggested that it was the inspiration for the game Lemmings.

 

The Droid from One Man And His Droid

The droid from One Man and His Droid

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War Cars Construction set starting screen

News 29 June 2020

I received an email from Gerard Sweeny (Hackers Anonymous), who was checking Spectrum authors websites no longer on-line. After a few emails back and forth, I started the operation of getting the files together for him to host the site on my behalf. At the end of that process, I decided that I would get the site back on the Internet myself. Without, that original request from Gerard, I suspect that I might never had thought to revisit this old historical website. Cheers Gerard!

Clive Brooker

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Original News 5 August 2001.................

One Man and His Droid II (1991) the unpublished sequel to the 1985 original hit, for the first time, is now available for free download

One Ramboid just sent home

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One Man and His Droid

Cassette Cover of One Man And His Droid

Scenes from the game

Screen grab from One Man And His Droid

 

Screen grab from One Man And His Droid

 

Masttertronic Games Launch on the River Thames

My story starts here

Following the success of Sinclair's ZX81 black and white computer, 1982 saw the launch of their colour computer, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, designed as a machine for people to learn the basics of computer programming. However, history shows, that instead, it became a highly successful games machine with over 11,000 titles produced worldwide. This single popular home computer (8 different models and sales of over 5,000,000 world wide) inspired a base of would be computer programmers, that helped, kickstart British computer skills.

These pages are my personal account, sort of a mini autobiographical, of the small contribution I made, together with free downloads of the games and interesting links.

Before starting at the beginning, so as to speak, lets briefly jump forward in time to 1985, to the release of my third commercially published game, One Man and His Droid. The publisher Mastertronic, had made its entry as a Software House, selling games at the knock down price of only £1.99, on mechandisers in garage forecourts, stationers, just about anywhere that would take them. It was said that their early releases were a little dire, but by 1985 the market was maturing and Mastertronic were ready to release a batch of new games that would achieve critical acclaim, even measured against the full price publishers.

Mastertronic's PR launch to the computer games press, was a pleasure cruiser on the River Thames, from Tower Pier. Downstairs after a superb buffet, the programmers demonstrated their new games to an expectant press and a Disco was laid on upstairs for their entertainment afterwards. Earlier in the day, we all mucked in carrying half dozen TV's and an array of computers into the boat and the whole experience was rather exciting, apart from the panic over not enough power sockets. The Games magazine Crash, later printed a photo from the bash and yes, I was in it. Pity I was looking the other way at the time! One Man and His Droid went on to become a best selling game achieving total sales in excess of 250,000.

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Year Date 1981

Sinclair ZX81 Computer

Sinclair ZX Spectrum Computer

It came with just 1KB of memory as standard

Pretty much everyone bought an extra 16KB memory expansion module

Before starting the games listing, my story begins back in 1981, when by chance, I saw an advertisement for what promised to be a fully functioning computer. Thinking back a further 10 years, to my time at Technical College, I recalled doing (and failing) an O level course in Computer Science. Learning computer Science in 1971, meant that you never actually got anywhere near a computer, except a single half day visit to the Computer Department of The University of Kent at Canterbury. Here we all sat in front of what appeared to be mechanical typewriter keyboards, with a printer. Anyway, here was this advert for a Sinclair ZX 81 computer, appearing to be significantly more sophisticated than UKC's computer department of 10 years previous. It was, believe it or not and I took to the hobby with relish. Limited as the computer was, (standard 1K of memory), it did work and was excellent for understanding the basics of computer programming using Sinclair Basic.

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Year date 1982

Simon Micro-Soft Collection One

Cassette sleeve cover for my first set of games that I self published

Screen from Collection One Tape.

Intelligent loading module allowing you to choose which of the two games to load

Fruit Machine winning combinations

Fruit Machine payout

Fruit Machine

The Fruit Machine

The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was vastly superior to its predecessor and boasted 16 colours with sound. It was great fun learning how to program all the additional features that the computer had. Unlike the ZX81 which had no ability to produce user defined graphics, the Spectrum made it easy for the Basic programmer to use up to 26 redefined graphical characters. Of course, designing them was another issue. The initial method was good old tried and tested graph paper using a grid of 8X8 cells (for one character) painting in the dots that were required for the shape. It was then necessary using binary mathematics notation to formulate the eight decimal numbers that would be stored in memory to produce the desired graphic. All rather primitive stuff, but in those days, you didn't think twice about it. One of the first complete programs that I ever wrote was UDG Aid which I actually sold as part of the Collection Two tape. Through 1982 and 1983, purely as a hobby, I developed three games and the UDG Aid, programmed in Spectrum Basic, to the point where I felt they could be marketable.

At the time, software sales were in their infancy and most companies advertising in the computer magazines were invariably producing the stuff in their bedrooms. Why should I be any different, so I needed to come up with a Trading name. Micro computers and software could be shortened to Microsoft and I used my Son's name Simon to finish the name off. That's how the name Simon Microsoft was born, but I had a nagging suspicion that I might have heard the Microsoft name somewhere, so I added an hyphen. Little did I know then. -- Sorry Bill.

Was my attempt at selling my own software successful? Alas not, with only 60 or so tapes sold, I just about covered the cost of the magazine advertisements and still had to cover the cost of the blank tapes, printing and tape duplication (two mono Boots tape recorders.). It would be some time before any more of my software would be sold again.

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WOS Emulator Downloads

 Sinclair Spectrum Emulators


To play any Spectrum game on a PC, tablet or phone, you will need a special piece of software that runs an emulation of the ZX Spectrum, downloaded to your device.

The World of Spectrum offers a huge selection of emulators, click here, for their download page.

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Fruit Machine

Fruit Machine

Fruit Machine (from Collection One)

Published By Simon Micro-Soft 1982


Written in Sinclair Basic, this program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

Fruit Machine features periodic random holds and occasional Super Nudges, where the reels can be held, nudged up or down. Wins and holds are purely random, so it is possible to win (as well as lose!)

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Car Chase

Car Chase

 

Oh dear, look at the exciting fire engine!

 

Car Chase Screen grab

Car Chase (from Collection One)

Published By Simon Micro-Soft 1982


Written in Sinclair Basic, this program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

Driving the black car, your objective is to collect all the + symbols without crashing into the blue car. The keys to control lane change are the cluster :-

W
A S
Z

with the directions being of course, UP (W) LEFT (A) RIGHT (S) DOWN (Z)

Make sure that you keep pressing a lane change direction key until the car has indeed changed lanes. The game is still a little bit of fun and not quite as easy as it looks and now almost 40 years old! Was it an original idea. No, I'm afraid not, I played a video machine version that ran significantly faster with bumper cars, but can't remember what it was called. I seem to recall that part of my advertising said the game was similar to Head On, with a unique and exciting difference. However, the fire engine has not born the test of time very well!

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Planet Defender

Planet Defender

Planet Defender screen grab

Planet Defender screen grab

Planet Defender (from Collection Two)

Published By Simon Micro-Soft 1982


Written in Sinclair Basic, this program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

Loosely based on the popular Defender game of it's era, I must confess that Planet Defender is a bit of a turkey! But then again, it was written back in 1982 and may not have been so bad at the time. Why not take a look?

The landscape slowly scrolls underneath the space ship and at this point you are totally safe. The object of the game is to land the craft on top of the periodic objects that sit on the surface then take off into the sky before the baddie wing fighters hit you. When you see (and hear) an object on the ground, press the letter O. Now use the WASZ movement cluster to pick up the object and zoom into the sky. Pick up all the objects to move on to the next phase of the game that I can't remember, whoops!

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Take 4

 

Take 4, Click to download

 

 

Take 4, Click to download

Take 4

Copyright Simon Micro-Soft 1982 (Unpublished)


Written in Sinclair Basic, this program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

This is a reworked version of the popular game Connect Four, where discs are dropped into a framework by two players. The objective of Connect Four is to be the first person to complete a line of four. These lines may be vertical, horizontal or diagonal.

This version (Take 4) is similar, but all the discs must be placed into the grid first, then the winner is the person with the greatest number of lines.

After entering the names of the two players, simply press the space bar when it is your go to drop a disc.

The second picture shows the lines that score at the end of the game. Once a line of four has been detected then a fifth disc in the same colour is ignored.

 

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Kiddie Cubes

Kiddie Cubes, Click to download

 

 

Kiddie Cubes, Click to download

Kiddie Cubes

Copyright Simon Micro-Soft 1982 (Unpublished)


Written in Sinclair Basic, this program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

My young daughter (at the time), felt a bit left out with what she regarded as the boys games I wrote. Claire always enjoyed playing the children's paper game dots. Draw a grid of dots then each player takes it turns to draw a line between them. The objective is to form a complete small square which you claim as yours, then get another go to finally own the greatest number of cubes.

The advantage of a computer version, was that her older brothers' couldn't cheat, as each player has their own set of controls and it always shows the current players name on the screen.

Player 1 uses the keyboard cluster W-A-S-Z with the key 1 to start the line.

Player 2 uses the keyboard cluster I-J-K-M with the key 0 to start the line

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See-Saw

See-Saw Click to download

 

 

See-Saw

Copyright Simon Micro-Soft 1982 (Unpublished)


Written in Sinclair Basic, this program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

This program wasn't a game, but a piece of educational software written for a local school. It was intended to be used in physics lessons, to test the understanding of what weights balance a system, when they are placed in a different positions either side of the fulcrum.

If the first answer is wrong, the program offers the route to the solution. After ten questions, the session is finished and the time and scores are shown. This program contained a small amount of machine code to prevent pupils cheating or altering the Basic program.

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Boat Run

 

Boat Run, Click to download

 

 

Boat Run, Click to download

Boat Run

Copyright Simon Micro-Soft 1983 (Unpublished)


This program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

From computer game magazines of the time, it became clear that it was no longer possible to sell software written in slow Sinclair Basic. It had become necessary to write code that directly drove the Z80 CPU, affectionately known as machine code! Pure machine code is simply a series of numbers (0-255) that manipulate the Central Processor Unit. As a novice, it is a difficult language to learn and Boat Run was to be my first attempt at moving a small portion of the screen as fast as I could.

The space key starts the scenery moving horizontally, with the W (up) and Z (down) keys used to navigate the boat. The objective of the game is to get to the end without crashing. Not a very good game, more an attempt to write Machine Code that worked.

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Buggy

Buggy, Click to downnload

Steer the arrow around the course

Buggy, Click to download

Buggy

Copyright Simon Micro-Soft 1983 (Unpublished)


This program must be run in an emulation of a 48K Spectrum.

Reworking some of the program code from Boat Run, Buggy was to be a little more ambitious, and provide 8 way scrolling. The program is a combination of machine code with Sinclair Basic for the non speed critical parts.

The game objective is to simply steer the "rocket" around the course without colliding with anything. However, driving through the black grids awards points.

Pressing any key starts the game and the two control keys are A - rotate Anticlockwise, and S - rotate the rocket Clockwise.

The game itself is a little frustrating until you master the responsiveness of the control keys. Certainly, not a commercial product, but I had learnt enough fundamental programming skills to entirely rework the concept for what would become my first commercially published game, Knight Driver.

And finally, by the way...

Back in late 2001, I did an online interview with Karl Andrew Dudley from Beta Games.

Button for 2001 Interview with Beta Games

My first published game in 1983 was Knight Driver

Knight Driver Link button

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© Clive Brooker 2001-2012, 2021

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