What was it that attracted you to your early to mid '80s computer of choice? Graphics better than the ZX81 and top quality games were the key things that drew us to the Spectrum. This in turn resulted in our lives being dominated by the Big Green Book and the Little Black Book.

The Big Green Book (also known as The Proxima Graphics Planner, fact fans) came along a year or so after we had first delved into the rubber-keyed world. We had been hooked on defining our own sprites almost from day one. Not sure what we ever intended to use them for initially but the day soon came when we could put them into action.

Along with the improved keyboard, the Spectrum Plus conversion kit also included the new manual Uncle Clive had allowed to be written (which was about a third the size of the spiral bound original) and a new introductory tape. Much better than Through The Wall on the Horizons original, this version had a maze painting game. We weren't all that impressed with the sprites supplied with it, but that was probably the idea as it also had a built in editing facility. Within days we had plundered the pre-designed images within those green covers, tired of those too and invented our own. Well, I say invented, more adapted and ripped off some we had seen on an arcade machine. In a cafe in Holland. Eindhoven to be precise. Under the shadow of the great concrete flying saucer that was the Phillips Evoluon. Where we had seen such wonders as compact discs for the first time, pedalled a stationary bike hard enough to light up a tv screen and (most importantly) eaten wonderful pancakes. With syrup.

But outright theft soon turned to creativity. People, cars, planes, spacecraft and what can only be described as "other things" soon appeared. Carefully pencilled into the little blue 8x8 grids the planner was stacked with. And then the maths was done to turn those blocky scribbles into pure numbers that the spectrum could understand. First in strings of 1s and 0s but soon in more sensible numbers, never going higher than 255 for a solid line of ink. And from there we got more adventurous still. Graph paper was "obtained" from the maths department and bigger pixel masterpieces created for later transfer on to the screen. No image was safe from our wandering pencils. Heroes of the day such as Garfield were soon rearing their monochrome heads in our feeble attempts at moving sprites on screen. No magazine listing was safe either - we knew what the graphic commands looked like even if we lacked the talent to replicate other routines. Want to play the Sinclair User version of Donkey Kong Junior with tarzan instead? Or pacman in a jeep? No worries, just load the alternative version from the other side of the tape.

A year or so down the line it was clear that the green book was passed its prime. Pages were begining to fall out from constant use, and the inserted sheets of purloined paper were forever dropping to the floor. So the blue folder came into being, with all the above punched with holes and carefully threaded on to the rings. And being so useful it soon became the repository for other useful information.

Recent archaeological research in the lesser charted reaches of the loft brought the blue folder back into the light (many apologies if this counts as research and thus violates rule one). Nestled within the covers I found not only graphics that touched the nostalgia nerves but also cheat codes for Manic Miner, maps of Finders Keepers and Project Future and something else I had forgotten. More sprites, yes, but not ones we had dreamed up. These were painstakingly copied pixel by pixel from screenshots in magazines. Did they ever end up back on screen in something we did? The mind can no longer recall. Certainly some of the things we drew made their way into early cassette inlays produced with the Art Studio. And of course now they have been rediscovered they will no doubt get the Corel treatment when time permits to lovingly wrap around more modern mini-discs.

Oh, and the little black book? That was where, in the days before hard drives (or even floppies) or battery back ups, we kept a record of our high scores. Now that I really would like to find again...

Simon

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