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Full Disclosure: I’ve not watched Bandersnatch, the choose-your-own-adventure interactive video from Black Mirror, yet, so I write these spoilers at my own risk. If you’ve not watched it yet either, or haven’t found all the endings – look away now if don’t want anything spoiled.
[SPOILERS BELOW]
If you’ve watched Bandersnatch in its entirety, (yes, all the endings), you might have noticed the dial-up noise after the ending credits. That noise is a buried easter egg, which creates a QR code that then leads to the Tuckersoft website once you run it in a ZX Spectrum emulator.
Thanks to some eagle-eyed Redditors, that Tuckersoft website actually has multiple versions, with one having a page for Nohzdyve, complete with a ZX Spectrum .tap file for you to play.
Here’s how to play Nohzdyve
If you want to play the (supposedly) seminal work from the fictional game maker, Colin Ritman, here’s how to go about it:
- Assume that you’re in the timeline where Colin was able to finish Nohzdyve. You don’t need to go watch the Black Mirror episode beforehand, although you might want to for total immersion.
- Head over to the Nohzdyve sub-page on the Tuckersoft website.
- You’ll see a “Download” button, and some instructions to “Play Nohzdyve on your ZX Spectrum emulator.
- Download the nohzdyve.tap file from that link
- To play it, you’ll want to download and install a ZX Spectrum emulator program. We recommend Speccy.
We can’t find any mentions to Bandersnatch being playable unless, of course, the game in question is the Netflix episode and it’s all too meta4me.
Check it out in action
More about Bandersnatch and the easter-egg filled website
The normal Tuckersoft website is from the timeline where both Nohzdyve and Bandersnatch were released. You’ll have to view it in a browser other than Chrome, as Google’s browser doesn’t like the trick the site uses to serve two different versions. Tuckersoft gets elevated to even higher levels of popularity, with Stefan becoming more famous than his gaming idol Colin.
The site’s blurb explicitly mentions this:
It was Stefan Butler’s 1984 release, Bandersnatch, that catapulted the company to new heights. The innovative narrative and gameplay transformed interactive entertainment forever.
Screenshot: Joe Rice-Jones / KnowTechie
If you go to the other version of the site, you’ll notice that due to a tragic event, Colin’s game never got released. If you’ve watched the episode arc, you’ll know what this is so I won’t go into details to spoil things.
This version of the site has the following blurb:
A bleak turn of events would lead to the abrupt cancellation of Colin Ritman’s highly-anticipated game, Nohzdyve, and the end of Stefan Butler’s promising career.
Metl Hedd remains a classic, but the world will have to wonder what Nohzdyve was like. Rumour has it, an early version of the game is somewhere out there, waiting to be played for the first time.
I’ve also found a third site version, by clicking on the “History” link a few times. That version mentions Tuckersoft closing its doors before Bandersnatch released, due to “a morbid turn of events.”
A morbid turn of events would lead to the company shuttering its doors before the anticipated release of Bandersnatch, an ambitious title in development by the now infamous Stefan Butler.
Are there other versions of the site? Possibly, but I couldn’t find any through clicking on everything but perhaps there’s something buried in the HTML that makes up the pages. I’ll update this post if I find anything.
If you’re a fan of the Black Mirror series, you’ll have noticed that the BigDog-like robots that kept humans terrorized in season four’s “Metalhead” make an appearance in Colin’s other major title – Metl Hedd. That’s not the only Black Mirror reference amongst the fictional games of Tuckersoft, so I’ll leave you to go see how many you can spot.
Did you play Nohzdyve? What did you think of Bandersnatch? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.
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