I figure people may have trouble setting up a ZX Spectrum emulator and/or loading this game (Not So Happy Easter 2025). I made a video showing you how to do it in Retro Virtual Machine. This emulator’s free, easy to use and runs on all major platforms, so I hope the video will do for the majority of people.
-Wade
Thanks for posting this. I just wanted to add that in terms of “loading” the “tape”, drag and drop worked for under Windows 11.
Good, thanks for the feedback.
-Wade
From your review, @severedhand, I got the impression that Retro Virtual Machine does not have a lot of options for changing the game speed. This might be a reason for using Fuse instead; both @vivdunstan and I ran it at 400% game speed and quite enjoyed the resulting experience. (But I had to download some possibly illegal system files to get to the point were the game was running, so that might be the downside? I’m not very clear about this situation.)
I second Victor’s recommendation & also find it amusing he, Viv and I all chose 400% speed! Perhaps it’s because emulator speed is generally 50/100/200/400/800. Or in my case I was using MSPaint with its zooms by a factor of two.
Whichever, I thought I’d attach Windows screenshots for anyone interested. It actually took me a while to figure out Fuse. For me it wasn’t a need to speed the game itself up so much as it forced me to slow down typing a lot or a key wouldn’t register. Of course going too fast would result in me typing stuff like TTAAKKEE.
Strictly speaking I didn’t choose it. Or don’t think I did 
It was the emulator speed when I opened Fuse. I had installed Fuse quite some time ago, to try a couple more old Speccy adventure games. So it is possible that I set the speed then. But doubtful!
Yes, from your review and others, Fuse sounds like it might be more convenient overall. Though you all had FUSE already and knew it, and therefore you knew the ZX Spectrum to some extent, and are on Windows.
I made a video catering for the “possibly never heard of a ZX Spectrum, possibly never used or want to download an emulator” (you know, the @AmandaB set) using Retro Virtual Machine because I had it, knew it worked on all platforms, that the download and installation were easy, and that all downloads for all platforms are on one page.
RVM’s warp mode was too fast for this game. You would press a key and fifteen of it would appear. However, I would only have liked to warp through the load, and you only have to do the load once. I was happy playing the game at real speed.
-Wade
Oh, just to be clear, I’m on Ubuntu Linux!
On Mac, a nice recent build of Fuse can be downloaded here:
https://github.com/speccytools/fuse-for-macosx/releases
It can also be installed via Homebrew.
I have a question about this game. I was playing it online on https://jsspeccy.zxdemo.org/
However, whenever I type L for LOOK, it says ‘LOADING FROM TAPE RECORDER’ and I get sent to a random room with weird objects. Is that a bug in that specific interpreter, or is that an intended part of play?
I haven’t played it myself, but have seen others emphasise that “L” in this game is short for “LOAD” rather than “LOOK.” I don’t know if the exact result you’re getting is typical, but my understanding is that you should avoid using just “L” in general.
Thanks! I think I’ll stick with that interpreter, then, and just follow the walkthrough so my muscle memory doesn’t brick my run
Appreciate the tip!
It took me a few times to avoid L, but I found having a map helped me avoid it. It’s weird, the conveniences we get used to. I’m not sure if Patrick Mooney made a map, but NSHE doesn’t have too many rooms in any case.
I can also recommend typing RS for Ram Save once in a while. If you by mistake type L, you can then ramload again by typing RL. And to “look around” you should type R for Redescribe - old european “standard”. 
