Tickled_Pink

high voltage, on Mon May 21, 2012 2:50 PM, said:

Pardon? You sure you're not confusing it with the ZX81?

The original Speccy had sound, albeit through a built-in speaker. Later revisions added a Yamaha sound chip.

Um ... it was called SPECTRUM for a reason ... it was Sinclair's first colour computer.

The lack of a joystick port was a problem for me but it was easily rectified since there were several add-on interfaces available. They were added as standard in later editions.

You're also missing the point of the Spectrum. Sinclair were aiming for a sub £100 price point for a colour computer - something that was unheard of in the day. They didn't manage it at launch but did it a few months later when they dropped the price of the 16K model (it was £125 at launch, which in itself was incredible at the time). It was the Raspberry-Pi of its age ... a computer with most of the bells and whistles taken out to reduce cost. If you wanted more functionality then you had to pay for it. And when you think about it, that's what you did when you bought a C64 or A8 ... you paid for the extra functionality.

I never really gave the C64 a second glance. The article hit the nail on the head for me ... what's the point of having a system that looks so goddamn ugly and feels cheaper than a machine half its price? If you spend more on something, you don't expect it to feel like it's made from paper mache and sticky tape. It's why I never bothered with the machine back in the day and don't really have a need to get one to add to my collection.

In fact, when I did get one about 4 years ago as part of a bundle I picked up, I just took it apart and sold the parts on eBay rather than try to fix its faulty keyboard. The Spectrum, on the other hand, is for me much more of an engineering marvel. It was designed by a very small team of engineers and it looks amazing to me. How many did Commodore have at their disposal when designing the system and its custom chips ... and how much did each company spend developing these two machines? On that basis alone, the Spectrum wins hands down for me.

I'm just wondering where and when you got it. I sold a defective one on eBay a few years ago to someone in Germany ... And yes, I did list it as such.

Although I've never bought or played any new games on the platform, I am intrigued by what people can come up with.

If you look at Xbox Live Arcade and the Xbox Indie Games, retro is very much in vogue. But try comparing something like Orbitron Revolution to Dropzone and I know which one I'd rather play and on which system. I like Orbitron and am pleased with my purchase but I'm dying to find the time to play Dropzone again.

I think that's a pretty good reason for it. People like retro games and retro games are best played on retro machines.

Lynxpro, on Wed May 2, 2012 2:51 PM, said:

I would direct you to past threads on AA where I've voiced the exact same sentiments and arguments ... but I can't be arsed.

I've also been pondering the use of Raspberry Pi as the basis for an emulated system. It's intended as an educational tool to get kids programming, but there was no better programming tool than those that existed in the 8-bit era. I'm sure a R-Pi would fit in an original Sinclair Spectrum case. How expensive would it be to remake that?