The Speccy celebrating the Sinclair ZX Spectrum

← Back to all articles

It’s a fair swap, not!

19 August 2026

Memoir

In playgrounds all over the UK in the 1980s, children would be swapping game cassettes, loaning game cassettes, or selling game cassettes.

One day a friend in my class introduced me to his friend in the year below, as he had a ZX Spectrum. He offered to lend me Dynamite Dan, which I accepted. After taking it home and loading it for the first time, I really took to the game and really wanted to keep it.

Cover art for Dynamite Dan on the ZX Spectrum, 1985, showing the character Dan in a mine shaft dodging obstacles
The game itself — borrowed, loved, and never mine to keep.

We did not have one of those Amstrad twin-cassette stereo systems, and “The Key” failed to copy the game. I knew I had to return it, and had no real problems doing so. However, my brother had other ideas, and to this day I have absolutely no idea what was going on in his head. He took the game to another friend’s house and swapped it for Engineer Humpty, without even loading or playing it — it was swapped purely on the strength of the cover picture!!!

Cover art for Engineer Humpty on the ZX Spectrum, showing an egg-shaped character on a construction site
Engineer Humpty — acquired sight unseen, in exchange for a game that was never ours to trade.

My friend refused to undo the swap. In the end, I gave one of my own games to the original lender as compensation — Super Mutt, if memory serves me correctly.

Cover art for Super Mutt on the ZX Spectrum, published by Silversoft, showing a caped dog flying over a city skyline
Super Mutt — the game that finally settled the debt.

More like this

The Golf Course

A whole issue of INPUT magazine, typed in blind and left to render for the length of a coffee break — and a brother who wanted to know why none of it was a game.