If you only play modern video games, probably the biggest inconvenience you have to deal with is when the yellow Angry Bird won't play ball and assassinate that last pesky pig.

But back in the days of home gaming's birth, things were very different.

The venerable ZX Spectrum gaming system, which on Monday celebrated its 30th birthday, was a classic and persistent example. When you could get the tapes to load, that is.

Created by Sir Clive Sinclair, the Speccy was an impressive and beloved 8-bit console, at least for its time.

Not only did it display in colour (!) compared to its predecessor, the ZX81, but it boasted a 3.5Mhz processor and up to 128kb of memory.

Importantly, it was also cheap. The basic model cost around £125 at launch - less than half of competitors like the BBC Micro - and kids were also able to convince their parents it was useful for school, coming as it did with a full keyboard and ability to run word processing software.

While it never achieved the worldwide acclaim of its rival, the Commodore 64, it sold more than 5m units and ruled the UK with its large number of quality games.

The Spectrum was eventually discontinued in 1992, but while gaming has moved on exponentially there is still a vibrant community of fans and Sinclair Basic developers - many of whom still code and release games for the machine (or its emulators).

Take a look at a selection of the greatest games released for the ZX Spectrum.

Kids, behold the past in all its terrible glory.