Virgin Media Community

[Oyster]

Does anyone remember marsport and Lunar Lander on the spectrum? There were many games produced for that machine I wish could remember all the titles I played, marsport, lunar lander, There was a helicopter and a plane simulator too. I think the plane simulator was by Microsoft and the helicopter simulator had a really weird security code device, Oh I just cant remember the exact details but it had some kind of optical aid you had to look through to get the security code

[Sololobo]

The helicopter simulation you are trying to remember is possibly Tomahawk, where the player pilots an AH-64 Apache gunship. The game used a protection system called Lenslok, a plastic lens in a folding frame which had to be placed on the screen to read a two letter code.

This system was also used on the early release of one of the best known Spectrum games, Elite, but was (thankfully) not used on later releases.

Lenslok: https://web.archive.org/web/20120313194410/http://wos.meulie.net/pub/sinclair/hardware-info/Lenslok_...

[DABhand]

The Helicopter Simulator sounds like Gunship. Where you could get promoted and get medals etc.

[DABhand]

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@Oyster wrote:

Does anyone remember marsport and Lunar Lander on the spectrum? There were many games produced for that machine I wish could remember all the titles I played, marsport, lunar lander, There was a helicopter and a plane simulator too. I think the plane simulator was by Microsoft and the helicopter simulator had a really weird security code device, Oh I just cant remember the exact details but it had some kind of optical aid you had to look through to get the security code

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Microprose was the name of the company 🙂 They were the software developers who brought us Civilisation along with Sid Meier.

[Zu]

OMG the security codes of those games.

But do you remember the security codes for Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy ?

It was a card with a grid of different colour patterns. 

So when the game finally (took ages didn't they ?) loaded, it asked you a code of say A3 for example and then you had to type in the right sequence of colours.

What was good with the long loading times, (especially the 128 K ones) was that while you were waiting for it to load you could read all the instructions.

Probably apart from Carrier Command,  OMG the instructions for that were huge. It was a book.  No wonder it came in a big box. Lol

[DABhand]

Carrier Command though was a bloody legend... Microprose published some quality sim games without being too simulatorish if you catch my drift.

Loved.... LOVED... Gunship, you could get promoted, get injured, get medals. On tape it was confusing as it looked like it wasn't loading at times - especially the speccy, and had people returning it as faulty by mistake. But the +3 disc version was awesome.

[Zu]

I really liked playing Carrier Command.  I've got the P.C version of it somewhere.  A little bug in that though with the virus Bomb.

I played Gunship, but I couldn't get into it,  Had something similar to it for the P.C.  LHX.  That was a good game too.

[SpacePhoenix]

We used to have a ZX Spectrum and we were always playing The Living Daylights. You had clay pigeon shooting using the light gun.

I remember it took ages for any games to load