ZX81 Flight Sims

My first sim experience was on the ZX81, but not the 16k version, the 1k version. A single line of text across the top of my black and white telly

gave me various flight parameters of a hot air balloon, about five I think. The only control was of the gas burner. You went up, along and down. There

were NO graphics whatsoever. I've been hooked ever since!

It cameout of a very cheaply made book called something like 'Thirty games for the 1k ZX-81'. I'd love to see it again.

There are so many titles I have had and forgotten, or thought I'd dreamt about that the museum is browsed through almost weekly. I wish I could give you some more details of the 'game' but it was so long ago. It definitely ran on the 1k machine. Something I painfully remember as being a child at the time I could not work out how to save listings to the tape, and would type in the code everytime I wanted to play!

It's a constant source of amazement that my video card alone has 16,000 times more memory than the machine I started on.

Gareth 'Goon' Evans

Gareth currently works at Staffordshire University Beaconside Campus and usescomputers with even more than 16K of memory... and still plays flight sims!

"Flight Simulator" (actual name) for the Sinclair ZX-81, actually required you to have the 16kB expansion pack to load - in my opinion it was the best flight simulator ever when you look at full system utilization and optimization. I still have it in a box somewhere : - )

I would not load on the stock 1kB.

Cian de Buitleir (2006)

The awfully badly designed Sinclair Ram-Packs

You slotted them onto a bare piece of circuitboard at the back of the ZX-81 and then you prayed that it didn't wobble too much, because if it did it usually shorted out (I managed to that 3 times ). This lead to the local store getting fed-up with replacing Ram-packs on guarantee and eventually asking me I would like to upgrade to a Spectrum ( a very real and heavy 'Puter at that time)

Thanks to GREMLIN

Hi,

I played the zx81 flight sim a lot - it was a commercial release on cassette and one of the first I bought.

It did have basic graphical representation of a cockpit, with enough instruments to get by. Pressing the arrow keys, the horizon would move instantly to a preset bank or dive angle or a mix of both. There were two runways with beacons and navigation had to be done with these.

Getting close to the runway you switched to a full-screen 3d view which showed the runway lights using single white pixels on an all-black background, no horizon. There were no takeoffs. The map screen showed your position in real time.

The sim was open ended with no missions or any goals! The skill came in using the beacons to line up on runway headings.

I don't know the Balloon program - there were many games published in magazines back then, most in BASIC and some in hex code. These were awful to debug.

Cheers!

Steve