Welcome to Part 4 of the story of my introduction to computers (I know this page is a bit short of graphics, but I haven't found any suitable at this time). To read the previous parts click on the numbers : Part 1, 2 or 3.

It was the early to mid eighties. A lad (me) had bought a Dragon 32. While the games he played were good, he craved the games that the other home computer users were playing.

For what seemed like ages, Spectrum users had been taunting Dragon users because no generally popular games had been produced for the Dragon. However a savoir was about to come onto the scene. Who were they? Read on.

Software Projects. They produced some of the most popular games every written. They first one they  ported across to the Dragon was 'Manic Miner'. What a game!! Addictive or what. I must have spent hours, days, weeks playing this game.

Now one thing that did let the Dragon down was its graphics modes. You had two 4-colour modes (green/yellow/blue/red or buff/cyan/magenta/orange) at a resolution of 128x192, and 2 monochrome modes (black/buff or black/green) at 256x192. Other more unusual modes were possible (Blaby Computer Games did produce one game that made use of a graphics mode called something like mode 24 which had all of the above colours), but the main modes listed were used for most games. (Buff always looked white to me).

Anyway, this lack of good graphics modes did cause me one problem as I only had a black and white television at the time. Games that didn't make use of the monochrome modes or the first 4-colour mode just weren't playable.

Anyway, Spectrum owners were quick to spot the lack of any decent graphics is. Manic Miner was in colour on the Spectrum and Black & White on the Dragon. But who cares. It's Manic Miner. Yes Manic Miner.

Now I suppose I'd better take a moment to explain what Manic Miner was all about. The basic premise was you had to get Willy from one part of the screen to another, collecting objects along the way (you can play a Spectrum like version of it at http://www.spectrum.lovely.net/Manicminer.html). If you didn't collect all the objects, you couldn't move onto the next level. It was a sort of platform game. While it started off fairly easy, some of the levels really tested you. Timing was of the essence. Get it wrong, and you lost a life.

So Dragon Users were now happy bunnies. How could life get better?

Jet Set Willy. Need I say anymore?  This was the game that took numerous home computers by storm. Once again, the Dragon 32 version used Black and White graphics. But it did have extra rooms to explore that the Spectrum version didn't. Dragon users used to taunt Spectrum users about this. Software Projects had managed to use nearly every one of the bytes in the 32K available. No game would ever top this on a Dragon (debatable).

However playing games wasn't enough for me. I needed more.

In part 5, I go slightly off the story and reminis about the computer shows in the eighties.

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All the scans on this page are taken off the original game cassettes I own. A copyright for them may still exist (let me know if you own the copyright) and I will happily acknowledge this as required. None of the pictures have been taken from other websites. If you wish to use them for a project yourselves, please bear the above in mind and give this website a mention. Thanks for your cooperation.