Speccy in my son's school reading book

hldswrth

I was sitting with my six year old listening to him read "The Red Planet" which is an early reader in the "Magic Key" series.

I was very pleasantly surprised to find at one point in the story, one of the characters brings his computer round to play with, and pictured is a ZX Spectrum +. The book was first printed in 1987 so that just about fits.

My son was amazed when I showed him an actual Speccy and it matched the computer in the story. Of course now he wants to play the eponymous game; don't see a "Red Planet" on Infoseek... Does this mention merit a "never released" entry ;-)

Cheers, Simon

zxbruno

I found two 'Red Planet' games, both from Italy. They were released on game tapes #26 (game n.3) and #78 (game n.8 ) that are archived here:

http://zxspectrum.hal.varese.it/program.php

The 1st one is a little bit difficult to understand, but the second one is rather nice. If your son wants to play 'Red Planet', show him the second game. :)

Here's the .z80 snapshots of both games:

http://zxspectrum.zidev.com/zx/Red_Planet_1.z80
http://zxspectrum.zidev.com/zx/Red_Planet_2.z80

And to make it easier, here's a .z80 snapshot of the second one, but with keys redefined to QAOPSpace:

http://zxspectrum.zidev.com/zx/Red_Planet_2_QAOPSp.z80

You just have to press '0' to start playing. :)

edit:

Is it possible to have a pic of that book, or at least pics of the cover and the page where the Spectrum appears? Thanks.