About five weeks ago...
When I was 13 which is going back a very long time I was big into home computers. I owned a ZX Spectrum which was an awesome computer with 48k of throbbing power. Unfortunately as a 13 year old I was unable to afford any games for it.

Then I hit on a cunning plan. Most game companies still accepted mail order purchases and even had forms on their ads to buy games so I started writing letters to the addresses on the ads - "Dear Sir, About five weeks ago I sent a £5.50 postal order to purchase game X which I saw in Crash! magazine. I have not received my game, can you please send it immediately, Yours XXX".

About 50% of the time it worked and the game duly arrived. I must have gotten 10 games that way. I was so successful I blabbed of my scheme to friends and they all did it. Ocean software must have been hit 5 times with the same scam. I'm surprised the plod didn't pay a friendly visit.

With hindsight I'm horrified by what I did. Not so much by the scam but by being so transparently, thievingly greedy. Hitting the same company more than once is just stupid. The only company I feel sorry for was one which sent me a Zaxxon clone game that I saw in a small ad. Mere weeks after I got my game they went out of business. It wasn't even a good game, but I felt that I played my small part in their demise.
(MagicMoose, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 21:36, 10 replies)

ah, the speccy
spent many a happy hour playing disco dan, manic miner and punchy on ours
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 21:41, closed)

couldn't you copy the tapes off your friends?

( idonthaveafunnynickname Drink-Aware? Sure. I'm aware I want another drink., Wed 1 Sep 2010, 23:08, closed)

Some of them had c64s
Believe me we copied plenty of stuff with tape to tape decks but some people had c64s so it didn't always work. Besides, who wants a copy when you can have the original?
(MagicMoose, Wed 1 Sep 2010, 23:12, closed)

Five weeks ago when you were 13???
I'm lost! And you singlehandedly caused the collapse of a shitty videogame company, I'm so proud! Now attack EA! Tell them Tiger raped your mom and John Madden gave commentary.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 0:06, closed)

'About five weeks ago... When I was 13 which is going back a very long time' - He must be a mayfly, or some other similarly short-lived creature.
( SigmaX0 Dear Die Hard. You rock!, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 10:49, closed)

Please tell me you scammed Frak?

(nolongernuts, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 6:19, closed)

Flash bastard.
I had a zx80. That had all of 1k memory.

Couldn't count over 256 . . .

That thing was so primative, the only way to load a program was to actually type it in. line by line.
( Not Pineapple anymore, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 8:24, closed)

Woooorrrrrrr weeeeeeeee
ahhh, the sounds of a spectrum game loading with the red & blue stripey screen (blue & yellow for the higher pitched noises). The bugger would always get to right near the end and then stop loading. My friend was a lucky bugger as he had the Spectrum plus (I think) which had the tape player built into it and also had hard keys!
(Tom Jones's Mojo Hasn't had any since, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 9:47, closed)

Spectrum +2 had the tape deck built in. It wasn't all that.

( Michael Ellis contributes nothing, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 10:51, closed)

But then you had the +2A
which was essentially a +3 but with built-in tape deck instead of disk drive. So it looked like a black +2, i.e. fantastic.

I even had a mouse with mine. Man I was cool.
( Wet-chinned bag shanker Cannot parse Wogan, Thu 2 Sep 2010, 11:12, closed)