Filling in the gaps: creative imagination and nostalgia in ZX Spectrum gaming

The ZX Spectrum home computer and its fans have largely been neglected in both popular and academic histories of videogames. This article helps to address that omission through extensive audience research with players who fondly remember their experiences of playing ZX Spectrum games in the 1980s. Drawing on approaches from literary theory and visual art, as well as audience studies and games scholarship, it explores the ways in which these players 'filled in the gaps' of the computer's simple, often abstract graphics, and effectively co-created fictional worlds in which they became vividly immersed. It argues that the intensity of their nostalgic memories is precisely due to this imaginative, creative investment, and the fact that the experience cannot be recovered. Finally, it proposes ways in which this approach to ZX Spectrum players could be extended to other gaming systems, in other cultural and historical contexts.