Sinclair Spectrum 30 years old today

The Last Bandit

Nice piece on the Spectrum in today's Register

http://www.reghardware.com/2012/04/23/retro_week_sinclair_zx_spectrum_at_30/

Dr Bob

ah ..30 years of being almost as good a home computer as the c64
(only messing , please dont kill me!!)
Happy Birthday

justsomebloke

well that's made me feel old

Spacedog

Happy Birthday Speccy! I'll always be a Commodore fanboi, but the ZX was a ground breaking machine for affordable home computing, and mainstream indy game development so maximum respect.

Interesting article also - I never knew that the Sinclair computer business got bought out by Amstrad and that the Speccy line became the CPC. makes sense looking back at the similarities and evolution of the machines. gotta love that pencil design drawing too

LoGiE

Horace and the spiders and Project future flashbacks ahoy hoy!

30 years... :eek:

KeRbDoG

Even got a Google Doodle on Google.co.uk today

CiDeRmAn

Spacedog wrote: »

Happy Birthday Speccy! I'll always be a Commodore fanboi, but the ZX was a ground breaking machine for affordable home computing, and mainstream indy game development so maximum respect.

Interesting article also - I never knew that the Sinclair computer business got bought out by Amstrad and that the Speccy line became the CPC. makes sense looking back at the similarities and evolution of the machines. gotta love that pencil design drawing too

Nope, the CPC coexisted with the Spectrum for a time, they also shared Z80 chips, afaik, and converting games from one to the other was relatively simple for a developer but they were first machines. Amstrad bought the Spectrum and made the +2 and +3, but never really added anything constructive to the Sinclair device that had already had its major evolution with the 128k version.

Loved that machine, great version of Chase hq and Elite.

safetyboy

http://www.retronaut.co/2012/04/me-and-my-spectrum-1980s/

Kaner2004

I still have mine. Dont know if it works anymore though.
I must root it out and sell it

messinkiapina

So much nostalgia everytime I think of my old speccy 48k. Crappy monochrome graphics. Waiting for an eternity for a game to load, and then it throws up an 'r type loading error' at the last minute. I loved the thing all the same though!

CiDeRmAn

The Spectrum did not have only monochrome graphics!
It just was quite limited in how it could use it's palette...
2 colours per character space, out of a possible 16, that's the 8 regular colours plus 2 brightness levels.
Some games still played a blinder though, Lightforce was one of them, a nice vertically scrolling shooter with clever use of palette.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2HQY0t0cI

messinkiapina

CiDeRmAn wrote: »

The Spectrum did not have only monochrome graphics!
It just was quite limited in how it could use it's palette...
2 colours per character space, out of a possible 16, that's the 8 regular colours plus 2 brightness levels.
Some games still played a blinder though, Lightforce was one of them, a nice vertically scrolling shooter with clever use of palette.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MU2HQY0t0cI

True. I remember rainbow islands and teenage mutant ninja turtles looked amazing at the time!

CiDeRmAn

System limitations always have the power to, well, empower a developer, to encourage them to overcome the short-comings of a console or computer and reward creativity and highlight genius.
This is why Jeff Minter is so heralded, he performed miracles on the Vic-20 and Jaguar, devices that were defined by limits, relative to their peers.
The NES had Kirbys Dreamland, SMB3 and Batman Vs Joker.
The Spectrum had the above, not to mention the music in the likes of I-Ball, getting multichannel sound out of a machine with only one channel is a neat trick.

And so on, every device, if it's loved, will have someone who gets to know the metal, develops for it and makes magic with it.