Sinclair ZX Spectrum
The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was introduced in the early 80s. Apart
from its native UK, it was very popular in
Spain, eastern Europe, and to a
certain degree in Germany. It always remained a European platform,
having little impact in the US, where it was sold under the label
Timex, and I found no evidence yet that it was even sold in Japan.
The Spectrum's main strength was its low price. I have an old
Niedermeyer catalog from 1986 (Niedermeyer is an Austrian store chain
selling cameras, consumer electronics, and computers), at that time
it was half the price of a Commodore 64. MSX
computers were similarily expensive, and Amstrad CPCs still a league
higher. If you were on a tight budget, there was no way to go but the
Sinclair.
Graphics
The graphic capabilities you got for this price were really not
bad. The Spectrum had one of the highest resolutions at its time
(256×192, only expensive platforms like the Apple ][ or the BBC had more pixels),
and most of all, it had square pixels! The drawback was that you could
not assign colors to an individual pixel, only to an 8×8 group,
which could have only two colors, ink
and paper
.
Basically it was as if the Spectrum was running in character mode
all the time, but with freely drawable characters.
If you took the pains you could still create gorgeous graphics
on a Sinclair. Game designers rarely did. They went for monochrome
or a colored linedrawing
style, which has its own charm.
I have some Sinclair
ZX Spectrum screenshots up.
Besides, it was never the graphical capabilities that made a game
platform great, but exactly the lack thereof. The Spectrum is one
more good example for this.
The Games
Russia had her own clone machines, most notably the Pentagon and
Scorpion. Games written for these machines (usually distributed in
TRD format, for TR-DOS disks) will not run in the usual emulators.
Currently the only emulators that support this format come from
Russia. The best (at least for non-Russians) is probably ZX-Emul.
Unfortunately those disks do not autostart.
Remakes
| PC Remakes of Sinclair ZX Spectrum Games |
| Ant Attack |
Chuckie Egg |
 |
| Ant Attack PC |
|
 |
| WinAnt |
|
 |
| Chickie Egg |
|
 |
| Chuckie Egg |
|
| Jet Set Willy |
Deflektor |
 |
| Jet Set Willy PC |
|
 |
| Top Hat Willy |
|
 |
| Deflektor PC 1.6 |
|
|
Emulation
DOS
The ZX emulation scene started around 1993/94, and a good many
emulators run in DOS.
- Warajevo
is a Sinclair ZX Spectrum emulator for DOS, created in besieged
Sarajevo, hence the name. Read its history, it is very moving.
Supports TAP and Z80.
- Spec256 is an emulator that allows running Speccy games in
256 colors, provided, of course, someone took the pains to redraw
the graphics. Coded by Iñigo Ayo, the author of
Sextris. Like Warajewo, it's a DOS program.
- Bacteria
is the smallest Spectrum emulator ever, the executable has only 4K.
It runs under DOS and supports only TAP and SNA format.
Other Platforms
- ZX 32 is a decent Spectrum emulator for Windows. It's what I use.
Be sure to get the update, since the last release
will run only on a 256-color desktop.
It can emulate the Pentagon, but can't read TRD files.
- Mac Spectacle was originally developed 1994–96 and runs on
a 68020 with System 7.0 and color Quickdraw.
- Fuse stands for Free Unix Spectrum Emulator. It compiles on all
PC Unix flavors (BSD, Linux) and Mac OS X 10.3 or higher; a native
OS X port is available as well.
- Spectrum Emulators on World of Spectrum. This is an extensive,
regularily updated list that covers all operating systems and
platforms. Here you will also find Russian emulators that are the
only ones that can run Russian games (usually distributed in TRD
format). The emulators can be downloaded directly.
Links
Current Development
