Scuba Dive - a little fish in a big bowl
I grew up surrounded by tropical fish ( in fact at the moment for the first time in 47 years I don't have fish.) When I was growing up in the 70's/80's my father kept tropical fish and some of my first memories are of sitting in front of his fish tank and watching them swim around, cherry barbs, guppies, tetras, catfish, sucking loaches , platys, red finned shark, they all fascinated me. I would lie in front of the tank for hours looking up at them. Needless to say upon leaving home I also began to keep tropical fish. So when we found the Scuba Dive game in 1983, it was love at first sight.
The aim of the game is to dive to find pearls and treasure to bring back to the ship. It's fair to say I was pretty awful at playing this game (and I'm still not much better today either!) But, in all honesty that didn't matter , I was quite happy ignoring the pearls and treasure just for the chance to swim amongst the animated fish. I have to acknowledge that the marine life in this game is limited, it's certainly no David Attenborough series ,please don't expect biologically correct illustrations of Groupers or Tubeworms. But this was 1983 and the 48K Spectrum and for the time and the computing power this game was amazing (no, really it was.)
As 1983 rolled into the rest of the 80's this game gradually became replaced with other more complicated things, things with more sounds, more music, more pizzazz. Until I began studying for A Levels (including one in biology - the love of fish had steered me there) , I needed something that I could switch on to unwind, to stop myself drowning in chemical equations, sociological theories and the enzymes of the digestive system . Where did I turn ? Well, I could have gone to Jetpac - that was a happy game. Or AticAtac - that was an engrossing game.
I went back to Scuba Dive , not necessarily to play it , but to let it load up and just to potter around just slightly away from the boat. In fact it almost became a screen saver, I never got past the big old octopus ( see Nick's review below) and the truth is I never tried to. I don't think I ever even collected a single pearl, it was just escapism and exploration. A chance to give my hectic little brain the ability to once again be that little girl, lying in front of that big fish-tank . Of all the Spectrum games I had, this one is probably the one I played the least but loaded up the most. The little friendly black box had taught me another lesson and possibly one of the most important.
Sometimes you need to escape and relax and just do nothing.
Long before the meditation , neurobeats, brain training, relaxing screen savers software we have access to now, Durell Software had produced something that was ahead of it's time on the ZX Spectrum (although I doubt they had intended to have it used in this manner.) For me, this piece of software will always have a place in my heart, not for the game play, not for the plot line, not for the control mechanism.
But for the exact opposite.
Sometimes you just need the peace and quiet of under the sea.
I went back to Scuba Dive , not necessarily to play it , but to let it load up and just to potter around just slightly away from the boat. In fact it almost became a screen saver, I never got past the big old octopus ( see Nick's review below) and the truth is I never tried to. I don't think I ever even collected a single pearl, it was just escapism and exploration. A chance to give my hectic little brain the ability to once again be that little girl, lying in front of that big fish-tank . Of all the Spectrum games I had, this one is probably the one I played the least but loaded up the most. The little friendly black box had taught me another lesson and possibly one of the most important.
Sometimes you need to escape and relax and just do nothing.
Long before the meditation , neurobeats, brain training, relaxing screen savers software we have access to now, Durell Software had produced something that was ahead of it's time on the ZX Spectrum (although I doubt they had intended to have it used in this manner.) For me, this piece of software will always have a place in my heart, not for the game play, not for the plot line, not for the control mechanism.
But for the exact opposite.
Sometimes you just need the peace and quiet of under the sea.