[pjmlp]

Indeed, I was part of this generation, the first real computer I got, by opposition to build your own kits from electronic stores, was the Timex 2068 from that same factory.

Only recently I got to understand Timex spotlight in USA was long gone, while in the Iberian Penisula it was still all over the place, alongside ZX Spectrums and some MSX models.

I never knew anyone with a C64 back then.

Then the next computing wave was mostly Amiga, there were some people with Sam Coupe, until Windows 3.1 came to be, which is when I left my dear Timex 2068 into PC land, buying on credit, hardly anyone could afford paying on the spot.

[anthk]

The iberian peninsula was all about the ZX because pirating tapes was the norm. Also, saving custom software in tapes was cheap and producing the games in tapes, the same; they could even fight piracy by selling the games in newspaper kiosks at a very cheap price.

Similar on how the Play Station spread about the country: burning CD's and modding the PSX was trivial.

[pjmlp]

Yeah, one reason why I grew up bilingual, besides having grandparents close to Badajoz, was the amount of Speccy stuff in games and magazines that we got from the other side of the border, because why bother with translations. :)

Microhobby, Micromania, Solo Programadores (this one came later in 32 bits days), are some I still remember the names.

La Abadía del Crimen, Sir Fred, Livingstone Supongo, Game Over, and such.

[anthk]

And Aventuras AD; but TBH most modern games written for the ZX in Spanish (especially text adventures) are many times better than "La edad de oro del software español" (The golden age of the Spanish software).

[pjmlp]

Have to check those, I don't play modern games measured in hundreds of GB and hours, thanks for the hint.

[anthk]

I have some text adventure saga (Los extraordinarios casos del Dr. Van Halen) which is about Lovecraftian/Poe themes and such; it's composed of nine tapes.

If you are interested, I can send a zip to you with a PDF and the TAP files.

Also, on modernish platforms, there's "El archipiélago", probably the best Spanish Z Machine game ever. You can get the last one at IFDB. Getting the first saga it's a bit cumbersome because you need to get nine downloads and sort the 'volumes' after that.

Back to "Van Halen", as the games are designed with PAWS/GACG or whatever was called that universal format from the 80's, the Zesarux emulator can trap all the interpretatation (as if it were a ZMachine-like interpreter itself) and giving you options to both debug the adventures and translate them to Portuguese (from any to any language) on the spot with online services (and maybe local, IDK; it shoudn't be difficult to add support to Argos Translate, Apertium and the like). Input is not translated but, well, these games have a really common verb set.

[aa-jv]

Spain is still pushing out great titles for these machines- the scene around the Oric-1/Atmos computers (competitors to the ZX Spectrum) is particularly virulent, among the Spanish retro hacking community. Some truly astonishing things coming from those folks, for these 40+ year old machines ..

[xcf_seetan]

Hi I also was part of this generation. My first was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1 kb ram :)

[pjmlp]

And a double deck tape player, also made into your collection?

That was eventually the next step, for the school trading ground activities.

Not that the Portuguese shops had any original stuff anyway, I bought several games with clear copied covers in black and white, without manuals.

[xcf_seetan]

For the ZX81 there was almost none programs! I could get a chess and a flight simulator (1kb Ram), the rest i used to get from printed magazines. But for later with the Spectrum the double deck tape player was a must! We would go to the local shop and buy one game, when home, duplicate it then return it saying that it didn't load well. want another and pick a different one and so on...

[pjmlp]

Ah yes, my circle also did that approach with local shops.