(Press more to read the story that has really made my week possibly even made my month!)

This whole story starts when I was about 5 years old, and I started playing on my dads spectrum 48k computer, waiting patiently for games to load as the tape player that loads them spits out computer noise, I waited patiently and the noise sank in without a thought. When the game starts my little child mind lit up with beautiful fantasy worlds, built up from simple 8 colour graphics and odd bleepy sounds. It was the start of a beautiful relationship.

More games came along, in fact so many games came along, there seemed to be an unending supply of games, I was never waiting for a new game to come out there just seemed to be so many of them. And to this day I can remember, im pretty sure, almost all of the games I played on this beautiful little computer. You can even get an emulator and download the games for free now, which I have done many times over the years, whenever i fancy a blast of nostalgia.

So what im getting at with this recollection of the past is that I was a massive fan of the spectrum and many of its games, totally loved loads of them. So lets skip forward to….

1998! By this time my old Spectrum was pretty much obsolete, id been through the Amiga years as well (which despite feeding my gaming addiction massively don’t take part in this story, well other than feeding my gaming addiction), through the Super Nintendo years (no relevance again), and onto my N64 years, and to a game called Wetrix, which was made by a company called…….ZED TWO! (the story unfolds). This game totally blew my mind, it was kind of a Tetris clone, but involving water and fireballs, the idea is build walls on a 3d landscape with random falling tetris blocks, then water starts coming down, fill up the landscape and use extra blocks to stop the water leaking off (which is how your game ends) then fireballs come along and you evaporate the water for points. It was such an amazing concept, beautiful graphics, beautiful music and perfect sounds. I got totally hooked, one game for me would last easily over an hour and sometimes 2 or more hours, it got to the point where I would have to put some serious time aside to play it, that and get myself into a serious state of mind. Very quick thinking was needed and tactics were constantly changing and new ones evolving. It was such an amazing game, such depth, beautiful really.

And then, zoom forward tooo…

2001 (dum dum duuum!) The Fab Cafe in Manchester, Me and my mate Jay were supping beers there like we were doing a lot them days, and a bunch of guys sat near us were also supping beers, we all were having a nice time. The group of guys sat near us said hello, asked us how we are. We got chatting and they explained that they had all just finished work and were enjoying the friday night drinking beers. I asked them their job and they told me they made computer games!! I asked them what games and they said that I wouldn’t have heard of them, so I asked them the name of some of their games. They told me they were called Zed Two! And they made a game called Wetrix! They were blew away that I was a massive fan of this game, having spent many hours perfecting evaporating them little lakes, cultivating duck ponds for multipliers. We talked more and more and got on to their first games, again they said I wouldn’t have heard of these games for sure, the first game they mentioned…..Zub! (picture of it up there), i described in detail the game to them, they were amazed! It was a joyous occasion for all of us. They reeled off a list of loads of Spectrum games, pretty much all of them id played and loved, (glider rider was a massive favorite of me and my friends, so was Feud, Matt! these guys totally made Feud!). They then showed me a Gameboy Advance that they had just received from Nintendo, it had just come out in Japan so it was amazing it see it so early. It was a great night for all of us. All the spectrum games i put pictures of further up this post, these guys made them games!

I met a couple of these guys a few years later in a computer game writers meeting in a pub in manchester, i know i don’t write computer games, but i went along anyway and met some of them guys there.

Skip forward to 3 days ago, when i saw the name Zed Two again, i searched for their website but it had gone. But after a little searching I found their new website. They are still making games under the name Zee 3 check out their site (the Zee 3 is a clickable link for loads of stories and artwork from their back catalog of games, really interesting if like me, you played their games (I love the little story about the Zub character animation, how he drew in an animation that showed him flipping gun hand when he turned around, otherwise people would see that the character facing left and right was just a mirror image). Their names are Ste and John Pickford, they are brothers from Stockport! I emailed them and asked them if they remembered me from the fab cafe, Ste got back in touch and he totally remembered me! Said he remembered me well! And that has totally made my month for sure! Ste also has a flickr account with loads of beautiful doodles and comics, check these out for sure here

They are still making games, their most popular game to date is called Naked War, I downloaded it and I fancy playing it, I think all of you out there who know me and played games with me when we were young, we should get this Naked War game going on, as its a turn based 2 player war game that we email turns too, the graphics look very bold and beautiful. Keep an eye on the guys website as well, more games coming out and since I have loved quite a few of their games in the past im sure they are capable of greatness again. If Ste or John are reading this! Hello! Leave a comment why don’t you!

Here’s some stuff from their site

————->CLICK HERE TO GO THERE<--------------

You might have trouble getting this to work in firefox, so switch to IE if you do have problems (thats if your not
already in it)

Controls, left mouse button is draw, and hold the right mouse button to move the object around
see the manual for lots of different things you can do, if you type
in one of these in the box with test in and press load, and be patient it will load a new object for you:-
bird, bunny, default, dragon, fish, plute, squirrel, teddy and test
pressing undo can unpause it if it becomes stuck