Gamers of a Certain Age, unite.
Twenty five years ago this month Clive Sinclair’s Sinclair Research launched the ZX Spectrum; the rubber-keyed home computer that helped kick-off the personal computing revolution in the UK. This was a computer of limited means, hilariously so by today’s standards; it initially sported only 16k of memory, later a mighty 48k (the one I had) and even 128k in final iterations.
Despite the limitations, the Speccy sported a cracking array of games, mostly loaded via cassette tape:
Watch one classic game – Manic Miner – load 
My favourite game was Elite, which had its debut on another breakthrough PC – the BBC Micro – but which has since, bafflingly and frustratingly, never been redone for modern PCs. Game designers today point to the machine’s limitations as being a huge creative spur; the emphasis had to be on gameplay, because there simply wasn’t the space or power for the kind of eye candy that decorates modern games.
Looking back, the Spectrum was probably the most formative gadget I’ve ever owned… as well as cultivating my continuing addiction to football management games, I learnt to program stuff in its very basic Basic, and managed to take the thing online with a VTX5000 modem, joining Prestel and Micronet in 1986 (I think) and building a little homepage. I seem to remember the Observer being the only British newspaper online at that point, long ahead of the web revolution. Prestel also had an email-to-telex service which always seemed very alluring – send a message, anywhere! – but which I (a 12 year-old) had little use for.
Guardian Gamesblog has an entertaining thread with people chipping in their memories.
I think you must have had very forward-looking parents.
I remember another small boy who was a whizz at “Elite”…..he also had forward-looking parents!
Ah, the 80s were golden times. And did you know you can play Manic Miner online at:
http://www.darnkitty.com/manic/
Though Onslaught is taking up more of my time just now:
http://ec2-1.playr.co.uk/onslaught/
And glad to see your site is Wii Friendly mate!!