Technical deep dives, programming tricks, ROM lore and other long-form pieces about the ZX Spectrum and how it really works.
I set Claude Code loose on a ZX Spectrum game with $100 of credits and the new Fable model, expecting a doddle. Here's why 48K of 1982 hardware humbled it in ways a modern REST API never could.
A borrowed copy of Dynamite Dan, a copy-protection scheme that beat "The Key", and a brother who traded it away for Engineer Humpty on the strength of the cover alone.
A second, independently-built take on the same premise: a bargain hunter, a security guard called Big Dave, and a legendary discount tin sealed away in Aisle 13. Same isometric-engine idea as the original, a different story, and its own fresh set of bugs a screenshot caught that the test suite alone never would have.
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.
My brother typed in a Hello World loop from the orange Sinclair manual. I changed one line, hit RUN, and turned around for an audience that wasn't there.
In 1984 a journalist dialled a ZX Spectrum into Prince Philip's private mailbox, read his mail, deleted it to cover his tracks — and told Prestel exactly what he'd done. The court case that followed is the reason Britain has a computer hacking law at all.
Why a Z80, why a rubber keyboard, why your telly instead of a monitor — the ZX Spectrum wasn't designed around what would be best. It was designed around what Sinclair could get away with cutting, and one single custom chip that did the cutting for them.
Is it possible to build an isometric engine of the same real technique as Knight Lore and Head Over Heels on a 48K Spectrum, not a simplified imitation? Yes. Height-aware projection, painter's-algorithm depth sorting, and genuine masked sprite compositing, proven with a before/after screenshot of exactly the bug masking exists to fix.
A genuine isometric engine for the 48K Spectrum: three connected rooms, a patrolling security guard, a countdown clock, and one very important Christmas Eve toy. In the spirit of Knight Lore and The Great Escape, built and tested from scratch — including four real bugs a screenshot caught and a logic test never could.
A six-scene, non-interactive title-sequence demo — tunnel, skyline, overpass, smokestacks, suburb, home — with an original chiptune, done as an affectionate homage to a certain HBO drama's opening titles. No scrolling, no likenesses, no real theme song: just mood, silhouettes, and hard cuts.