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30 years ago today, launch of the Sinclair ZX Spectrum!

QLvsJAGUARQLvsJAGUAR
edited April 2013 in Sinclair Miscellaneous
Friday, April 23th 1982 - At a press conference at the Churchill Hotel, Clive Sinclair revealed to the world his new personal computer, the ZX Spectrum. The rest is history!

Happy 30th birthday anniversary, Speccy!

My birthday present is a video (follow link) for you guys to enjoy!
http://youtu.be/Kh4hkIyjdNE

Sinclair ZX Spectrum
30th Birthday Anniversary 2012
The Movie

Please have a look to the video description for more information including a *News Ticker* plus a download link to the exclusive "Media Kit".

Feel free to share/spread/use this as you like.

Cheers, Urs
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Comments

  • deadpan666deadpan666
    edited April 2012
    Hehe..had already watched the video before I saw this, as it popped up on Google when i typed in Speccy 30th!

    Nice work! :)
    The Black Cauldron (PC)
  • stevensteven
    edited April 2012
    Happy Birthday ZX Spectrum.

    Today's Google Doodle is good, celebrates both the 30th birthday and St George's Day, and it looks like it was actually done on one too :)
  • guesserguesser
    edited April 2012
    steven wrote: »
    Happy Birthday ZX Spectrum.

    Today's Google Doodle is good, celebrates both the 30th birthday and St George's Day, and it looks like it was actually done on one too :)

    Sadly not - see the "surprise" thread. They made a fairly fundamental error in that they missed one of the constraints of the speccy graphics - the fact that the bright bit is shared by both ink and paper colours. The google pic has bright yellow and non-bright cyan in the same square etc :(
    My rubbish website including the redrawn Amstrad schematics and the Sinclair Wiki.
  • GeoffGeoff
    edited April 2012
    QLvsJAGUAR wrote: »
    My birthday present is a video (follow link) for you guys to enjoy!
    http://youtu.be/Kh4hkIyjdNE

    Great smooth video.
    Thanks for putting me onto YouTube's stabilisation process.
    I loved the detailed credits.
    I am intrigued by John Mathieson's documentation.

    Can you share?

    Geoff.
  • Paddy ColemanPaddy Coleman
    edited April 2012
    Take a look on Google today - they have a Spectrum loading screen as their image! :-D

    Paddy
  • SaltorSaltor
    edited April 2012
    Very nice video!:-)
    Cultural association in south Italy
    www.apuliaretrocomputing.it
    Personal site
    www.sinclairitaly.wordpress.com
  • WookieeWookiee
    edited April 2012
    like the vid man
  • Mister BeepMister Beep
    edited April 2012
    Yes, Happy Birthday. :)
    ZX Spectrum 48K BEEPER Music:
    http://mister_beep.republika.pl/
  • itsallgooditsallgood
    edited April 2012
    I enjoyed that a lot :)
  • StevePSteveP
    edited April 2012
    Loved the Google page today, what a great present, but the video was terrific, I really enjoyed it, thanks for making it. I've emailed a link to my ZX pals to enjoy. The smooth video movement is something else, I'll have to see what that is all about on Youtube.
  • GolfareninswedenGolfareninsweden
    edited April 2012
    Happy B-day Speccy.

    Nice video.

    On this day 1982 this song was the number one in USA.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3T_xeoGES8

    In UK this song was number one.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JzzLOvFbjw

    Edit: Found this album on Spotify: http://open.spotify.com/album/6FEfZhC12zOULLsOSgJ9wV

    Cheers
    C Nonsense in BASIC, 0:1

    POKE 23607,0 or POKE 23659,0 or POKE 23609,255 or 10 POKE 23681,64 : LLIST

    http://fromhedberg.se/sidor/Retro/Fairlight/fairlight.htm
  • MrCheeseMrCheese
    edited April 2012
    That video is amazing. Very well put together. Thank you!
  • PegazPegaz
    edited April 2012
    Great video, especially the song. :)

    And of course... Happy birthday Speccy... You've always been special...
    http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/yu/index.php
    http://zx-pk.ru/
  • stevensteven
    edited April 2012
    guesser wrote: »
    Sadly not - see the "surprise" thread. They made a fairly fundamental error in that they missed one of the constraints of the speccy graphics - the fact that the bright bit is shared by both ink and paper colours. The google pic has bright yellow and non-bright cyan in the same square etc :(

    I didn't notice that, It looks like it's been fixed since last night, there's a chunk of bright cyan next to the yellow underbelly now.
  • AlvaromaAlvaroma
    edited April 2012
    A non official Google Doodle by hi-score celebrating 30th anniversary.

    http://www.hi-score.org/zxspectrum.htm
  • MrCheeseMrCheese
    edited April 2012
    Alvaroma wrote: »
    A non official Google Doodle by hi-score celebrating 30th anniversary.

    http://www.hi-score.org/zxspectrum.htm

    Love it!
  • SokurahSokurah
    edited April 2012
    Alvaroma wrote: »
    A non official Google Doodle by hi-score celebrating 30th anniversary.

    http://www.hi-score.org/zxspectrum.htm

    Great. Much better than the original one. :)
    Website: Tardis Remakes / Mostly remakes of Arcade and ZX Spectrum games.
    My games for the Spectrum: Dingo, The Speccies, The Speccies 2, Vallation, SQIJ.
    Twitter: Sokurah
  • JuanF. RamirezJuanF. Ramirez
    edited April 2012
    Sokurah wrote: »
    Great. Much better than the original one. :)

    Agree. Very good, mate! icon14.gif
  • IvanzxIvanzx
    edited April 2012
    Alvaroma wrote: »
    A non official Google Doodle by hi-score celebrating 30th anniversary.

    http://www.hi-score.org/zxspectrum.htm

    Hehe nice one! :)

    No tape loading error?? ;)
    <a href="http://rincondelspectrum.blogspot.de/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://rincondelspectrum.blogspot.de/</a>;
  • SpectrumSpectrum
    edited April 2012
    Happy Birthday, Speccy!
    What a good friend you are.
    I enjoyed both the official and not official Google doodles.

    I can't watch the video now (I'm at work) but I will do that when I'll be back home. =)

    Sweet memories...how many sweet memories are related to the Spectrum...
  • perini-psperini-ps
    edited April 2012
    That's excellent.

    It's just missing "D BREAK - CONT repeats" when the user presses space :-)
  • ZX OxoZX Oxo
    edited April 2012
    Hy, 30 years ago uncle clive changed my live.
    i love this maschine, today too. and i never owened a c64 !:D
    ZX Everyday in Germany
  • RetrobrothersRetrobrothers
    edited April 2012
    Thankyou Uncle Clive - I owe a lot to the good old Speccy!

    A little dedicated I put together is here

    Here's to the next 30!
  • chaosmongerschaosmongers
    edited April 2012
    More Tea, Vicar? released today - check out the Announcements forum :)

    (Well...gotta get as much advertising in as possible!)
  • Alessandro GrussuAlessandro Grussu
    edited April 2012
    This is my tribute photo on Flickr:

    6959767634_ec9d00a201.jpg

    and this is my article about the history of the Spectrum on the GamesArk website:

    http://www.gamesark.it/mostra_speciale.asp?c=154201220002396278&a=0&f=1&s=1
    Spectrumpedia, the most comprehensive book ever written about the Spectrum - Zankle Soft - Corrections for games incompatible with the +2A/+3 - TAP files for DivIDE/DivMMC - SetoLOAD fast tape loading scheme
  • Lee TonksLee Tonks
    edited April 2012
    So awesome to see all the excellent coverage everywhere today! Happy birthday to the Spectrum, and best wishes to you lot as well. :)
  • pottyboypottyboy
    edited April 2012
    Happy birthday to the little 8-bit wonder!!! :D

    To save time, here's what I posted over at retro gamer forums:

    Although my favourite computer is the Amiga, I just have to give a big thumbs up to the good ol' Speccy!

    My family didn't have one back in the day (my dad was a commodore lover, so by the time I was born in 1986, my family had a VIC-20 and a C128), but didn't mean I never owned or played on one. We didn't get a Spectrum until 1998. The story was that my family was helping out a jumble sale. Me and my brother spotted an Amstrad CPC, complete with monitor, joystick and loads of games on disk, going for ?5. We told our dad about it, and he said we should ask if we could test it. If it worked then we would buy it. Unfortunately, by the time we got back, the Amstrad had already gone! We then told our (then) uncle about this, he gave us his old +2 :) Great machine, and that tape deck was bloomin' reliable. Loaded even the most worn out of cassettes :) That model has since been replaced with a +3 as the tape drive stopped working a few years back.

    Despite it's quirks, it was a great little machine, no matter what model you use. Like many others, it was a machine that made me love and appreciate programming, thanks to its version of BASIC which, although limited, was very easy to understand. It was a machine that made programming FUN.

    To celebrate, I've uploaded 2 games. They are:

    BRIAN VS THE BULLIES

    This is a game that I wrote a while back using Jonathan Cauldwell's excellent Platform Game Designer. I actually wrote this for the Cronosoft Cassette 50 that chaosmongers announced a few years back (is that still going ahead?). It's a Jet Set Willy style game where you play as Brian, a schoolboy who's had all of his Speccy games nicked by the bullies and scattered around the school.

    It's a very short game, and does have collision detection issues (yes I am well aware of that!), but nevertheless for my first (and only) game made using the designer, I don't think it's too bad. Just don't expect anything amazing from it. That's just my opinion though, so download it today, give it a whirl and see what you think! It needs 48k minimum.

    http://www.filedropper.com/brianvsthebullies

    And as for the second game:

    BLITZ

    This is a conversion of the classic VIC-20 game that my dad wrote in BASIC back in the late 80s/early 90s for my aunty and uncle. A few years back, I decided to give it a bit of an improvement to make it a bit more like the VIC-20 original. Originally, it ran very slowly, and didn't make any sound as the buildings were being built. The sound of the bombs dropping on the buildings just simply went down a note for every hit. Also, when you crashed, it simply just made a very long beep. I've updated it now so that it makes random sounds when generating the buildings (just like in the VIC-20 original), plays the same order of notes as the original when your bombs hit the buildings, and made the screen flash red on and off when you crash. It also runs faster as I compiled it into machine code using HiSoft BASIC :-) I also compressed the game from 8k down to 3k :-)

    Blitz will run on all Spectrums, including the 16k machines.

    http://www.filedropper.com/blitz

    I'll upload these games to WOS later.

    Also, for those of you who are STILL eagerly awaiting for the completed version of my text adventure The Legend Of The Red Dragon, you will be glad to know that I recently restarted working on the game again. It's been given a complete revamp, with lots of changes to the story, characters etc. It's also going to be written in PAW, which I have been learning to use for the past few weeks. I must say that it's a pretty neat utility! I haven't started making the game in it yet, but I have been doing lots (and I mean LOTS) of planning and documentation. This includes things like the story, maps, character information etc. Once enough has been done, I may share some of this information with you guys.

    The reason why it has taken so long to develop this game is because I've had personal issues these past few years, so the project has been on and off since I released the original (and crappy) demo a few years back. Hopefully this time I will be able to finish this game and get it off my chest.

    Anyway, happy 30th birthday Sinclair ZX Spectrum! Here's to another 30 years!!!
  • zxbrunozxbruno
    edited April 2012
    Alessandro Grussu wrote: »
    and this is my article about the history of the Spectrum on the GamesArk website:

    http://www.gamesark.it/mostra_speciale.asp?c=154201220002396278&a=0&f=1&s=1

    In ewgf's writing style. :-)

    I'm bookmarking all these tributes and articles. Will probably have to save them all to a nice anniversary folder on my PC.
  • Ian HamiltonIan Hamilton
    edited April 2012
    Woo Hoo! Happy 30th Speccy. Here's to at least 30 more wonderful colour-clash filled years. :D
  • Alessandro GrussuAlessandro Grussu
    edited April 2012
    zxbruno wrote: »
    In ewgf's writing style. :-)
    Oh no. ewgf would have taken at least three times the space I took :razz:

    I don't know whether to translate it into English and put it on my website - after all, the sources I consulted are all in English already.
    Spectrumpedia, the most comprehensive book ever written about the Spectrum - Zankle Soft - Corrections for games incompatible with the +2A/+3 - TAP files for DivIDE/DivMMC - SetoLOAD fast tape loading scheme
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