The History of 8bit Gaming in the UK

Realistically the first home computer in the UK available to the ordinary man in the street (i.e not having a PhD in electronics, being a ninja with a soldering iron and willing to take out a second mortgage) was the ZX80 from Sinclair Research. However it was very limited in what you could actually do with it. Games, although they exist, are not exactly cutting edge.

Then came the ZX81, which with it’s 16k RAM pack added was becoming a viable games machine. However two important factors were still missing before the home computer was a realistic games machine. Colour and sound.

In the next few years dozens of home computers were released which had all the required elements to allow games to be written on them and lets be honest, no matter how many machines were bought for “schoolwork” and similar reasons most ended up being used for games.

Almost overnight a whole new industry exploded from nothing to being a serious part of the national economy.

In more recent times the raise of the mobile phone industry would be very similar. A few early adopters with “brick” phones to people looking at you very strangely if you say you don’t own a mobile in a very few years.

My aim here is to try and provide a review of these years as seen by the weekly computer magazines at the time and hopefully provide a research tool for other retro gaming fans.