The Long Game

Started on the Arcade machine this week... The ZX Spectrum Arcade Cocktail Cabinet.

What I’m doing is refurbishing an old ‘Moon Base’ cab, putting in a PC, slapping on a mame frontend and have it solely for ZX Spectrum games. Okay, so there are a lot of arcade restoration enthusiasts out there that will now be burning effigies of me for doing this… well, I make no apologies. I’ve spent two years trying to get a working Moon Base gameboard and failed. I’ve gone as far as I can with trying to restore it, so now I’m going to rebuilt it… so that’s that. I’m going to do something with it that will make me happy.

This is going to be a very, very long project, but it will be fun. Now I’ve got the mame frontend working nicely with ZX Spin ( THANX DUNNY! ) I’ve started work on the ZX Spectrum Frontend. This will be a photo of a speccy wired into a 1983 14” tv ( That I’m picking up this weekend )

It will display screenshots of the games in the list as you scroll down, plus a 3D covershot ( that’s the test shot above ) along with other basic info like the ‘Crash Smash’ logo ect. on relevant games.

My goal is to have it finished for the 30th anniversary of the Speccy. So I have a few years.

More info to follow.

Whirled Announced

Well, the clock is now well and truly ticking. I’ve gone and mentioned on the World of Spectrum forums that the ‘Whirled of Spectrum’ novel is now complete… and that I may put a sample chapter up online for the big ZXMass that NickH is organizing.

Bit upset about it, only got myself to blame but though… I really wanted it to be finished finished before mentioning it… at the mo it is being very slowly proof read by Mr Christopher… There is a lot of laughing coming from these sessions… hope that’s a good sign and he’s not just laughing at my atrocious grammar.

Hope it doesn’t need too much work done on it, I so want to get it available on Lulu before Christmas.

Missing Retro Reunited and Staying Home

Well. It’s been a total washout of a weekend. Been looking forward to it for AGES! The big Retro Reunited weekend in Huddersfield and I didn’t get to go.

Did a serious amount of sulking yesterday, that’s for sure. Hope everyone had a good time thought.



This weekend after sorting out some shed stuff I wasted the rest of my time on playstation Home. If you’ve not heard of playstation home yet it’s like a social networking thing on the PS3 that lets you talk to people from all over Europe in different 3D environments.

This weekend though I thought I’d do something a tad different and opened up an American account on my PS3, just to see what would happen. Nice surprise, I got into the American Home.

It’s got a lot more area’s than our one... and most upsetting is they have a Namco museum, full of arcade games and cocktail cabinets...

Anyhoo, that was my weekend, wondering around the American home, then telling everyone about it on the Europe one... and sulking over the fact I missed Retro Reunited as Chris had to work.

Witchfest next, he better not say he’ll work that one as well otherwise there will be trouble!!

ZXBeccy’s Avatar.

If you fancy having a chat on Home, come and find me, my User ID is ‘ZX Beccy and I usually look like this.