Spectrum Review – Reliving the 1980s with Tactile Gaming Experiences

TThe first time I played with a ZX Spectrum was at the Stockport branch of Debenhams. Back in 1983, it had a great home computer section, which quickly turned into a kind of free daycare center for bored 13-year-old boys. You can be there for hours typing rude Basic programs into the machine’s array while hasty staff members scramble around trying to stop it from running. However, some computers were running games for customers to try. There I encountered Manic Miner, a legendary platformer with bizarre flashing visuals and surreal enemies. The Speccy game looked completely unique thanks to the machine’s unusual way of limiting its 8×8 sprite map to two colors. This meant that objects moving on the screen were typically patchwork collections of colored pixels, creating an effect called attribute collision. Somehow it was ugly and beautiful – and it still is.

Unboxing Spectrum, Retro Games Ltd’s latest offering of modern vintage hardware, is a surprisingly nostalgic experience. It looks exactly like the original machine I remember. It’s a black board with rubber keys, each of which displays basic programming commands as well as numbers and letters. “Rem,” “Rand,” and “Gosub” are mystical words from the era of home programming. There’s a USB cable to connect (but you’ll need your own USB plug) and an HDMI lead, but no joystick. This machine is compatible with most USB gamepads. You just need to configure the button yourself. It’s a little time consuming, but worth it if you can’t stand using rubber buttons to control games.

Once you load it, you’ll be presented with a modern home screen displaying a carousel of built-in games. There are 48 to choose from, from classic titles like The Lords of Midnight, Head Over Heels, Manic Miner, and The Hobbit to the latest titles created by modern programmers in the Speccy fan scene. These are fascinating projects, including the top-down sci-fi blaster Alien Girl: Skirmish Edition and the tomb raiding romp Shovel Adventure. If you run out of internal power, you can also download Spectrum Game Roms from your PC to a USB stick, plug it in, and run it here. However, if you’re not a modern open source fan and are looking for a classic Speccy title – a game made with – then you’re in questionable legal territory.

As before, there are a number of screen settings so you can add CRT effects to give you a more authentic 1980s TV experience, but honestly, you can’t watch “Horace Goes Skiing” on a 55-inch LED display. There’s nothing to reduce the intense confusion when playing. What surprised me is that these games still have a lot of visual appeal. The students and teachers wandering the halls of School Days are full of personality, from a hulking bully to an aging history teacher. Sandy White’s Ant Attack maintains its rugged beauty, with geometric walls and giant, scurrying ants giving it an old-fashioned sense of alienation and fear. Ocean’s relatively sophisticated isometric adventures The Great Escape and Where Time Stood Still pack an incredible amount of detail into their largely black-and-white worlds. It’s nice to see them again.

As with most other retro game consoles, modern game features like save points (which are a bit difficult to navigate but work) and the ability to rewind to the seconds before you got hit by a car in Trashman has been added. . But I also like the fact that every time I select a game, the original illustrated loading screen appears for a few seconds. These pictorial delights were an important part of the initial experience, as the tape would be watched for up to five minutes before it was finally loaded. What matters is whether they are preserved or not.

The original computing power of the ZX Spectrum is also retained. Selecting classic mode switches the console to the old boot screen and allows you to actually program. This is a feature that I fully utilize.

Who is this for? Obviously the target audience is people like me who were there in the beginning and remember playing a lot of these games 40 years ago. Indeed, there are free Spectrum emulators available online if you know where to look. You don’t mind risking malware infection every time you search a ROM site. But part of the nostalgic gaming experience is sitting in front of the TV and watching recreations of machines you remember. And in “The Spectrum,” you also get the legendary rubber button, which presses under your finger when you hammer the leg sweep button in “The Way of the Exploding Fist.” I feel it.