Top 10 most important countries for the Spectrum game-wise
Using infoseek with a little spare time and playing with the releases in each country, the results are somehow a little surprising, although I have used for this "research" every type of release, not only commercial, but also homebrew games.
This are the countries where the Spectrum was/is the most important/significant regarding gaming (which can give us an aproximate idea of how important the Spectrum was in that country)
1.U.K.
> 15.650 releases
2.Spain
> 4.717 releases
3.Russia
> 1.294 releases
4.Italy
> 546 releases
5.Germany
> 532 releases
6.Poland
> 385 releases
7.Czech Republic --> 384 releases
8.Netherlands
> 268 releases
9.Slovakia
> 165 releases
10.France
> 126 releases
What always surprises me is the low number of games released in Portugal (62) being so close to Spain, and the amazingly high number for Germany, where the Spectrum was never very popular...
This are the countries where the Spectrum was/is the most important/significant regarding gaming (which can give us an aproximate idea of how important the Spectrum was in that country)
1.U.K.
> 15.650 releases
2.Spain
> 4.717 releases
3.Russia
> 1.294 releases
4.Italy
> 546 releases
5.Germany
> 532 releases
6.Poland
> 385 releases
7.Czech Republic --> 384 releases
8.Netherlands
> 268 releases
9.Slovakia
> 165 releases
10.France
> 126 releases
What always surprises me is the low number of games released in Portugal (62) being so close to Spain, and the amazingly high number for Germany, where the Spectrum was never very popular...
Post edited by Ivanzx on
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Comments
no USA? thought the spec was at least semi-popular there
There was some good commercial games from France. Captain BLood, Hostages, The Light Corridor.
Agreed. I always had a soft spot for The Sidney/Vera Cruz Affair, personally...
Not really, Captain Blood was French-British made and Hostages, Light Corridor and most of the Infogrames conversions for the Spectrum were made by Spanish ;)
About the US question, no, it looks like the Timex never got off too much in USAland. Who knows how things would have been if the Spectrum was a success there, maybe we would have now 20.000 more titles in the archive...
I didn't know that!
I might have to revise my opinion of the French!
you're a comm-edian ;-) .. it was enough hassle to NTSC fix c64 games, in some cases let alone speccy ones :) . so that didn't help perhaps.
If so there's another 3 or 4 you can add tho the US quota ;)
I go on another forum (music related) and a lot of the folks are US based, only 1 mentioned about the timex machines.. and they mentioned the zx80 or 1 clone .. I guess it's the whole thing with the keyboard also.. remember the atari 800 etc pre-date the speccy by a fair bit and had proper keyboards
Most of the Americans I've seen or heard going on about Spectrums only discovered them fairly recently through European Youtube vids and the like....and apparently it's really difficult to...
1.Get a Speccy over there and...
2.Once you do, actually get it working
384 + 165 = 549
The result: We are better than Italy. :-P
http://www.zx-spectrum.cz
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekadv.cgi?what=1®exp=&yrorder=1&year=0&type=0&players=0&turns=0&memory=0&language=0&country=Ger&orgcountry=on&licence=0&feature=0&publi=0&release=0&format=0&scheme=0&scorder=1&score=0&have=1&also=1&sort=1&display=3&loadpics=0
I'd say that Spectrum had a good start in Germany but it later and actually quite fast lost to Commodore which almost completely wiped it out ;)
Speaking of France, as far as I know they really loved Amstrad CPC and made quite a lot of programs for it. Spectrum was quite neglected there.
Portugal was not official Sinclair market. Timex computers were seen more as a business than gaming. There was a Sinclair "boom" in Portugal after Amstrad take over.
Or maybe the number is so low because of language barrier...
Hahaha :D good one :)
But then maybe I should check Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, etc...because maybe URSS takes over Spain! :p
@Ralf: What you said about Germany is completely true. A pity that the C64 took over in this country.
About France, after having done research in many french magazines in search for Spectrum games, I can say that in the beginning the Spectrum was quite popular, or at least they got quite some releases. In 1985 the success started to go down drastically. But in the magazines from 1983-1985 you can see many reviews from Spectrum games.
As you said, later on the CPC dominated the market completely.
italy programs are rather miserable. it's quantity over quality.
little things sent by readers to the magazines, mostly.
;-)
Shameless!
:p
If I remeber correctly the UK company "US Gold" imported US games and converted them over to the zx spectrum....
Go to http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekadv.cgi and select "(any game)" as type and "Portugal" as release country.
Partially so, they also produced original games and a whole lot of coin-op conversions.
This is interesting :-)
Apologies for the brit-centric angle here, but I'd be interested in knowing the breakdown of the UK releases. I'm not suggesting me or anyone else looks into it as infoseek won't cover it, it would be an enormous piece of work and there are more grey areas than already mentioned.
The funny thing about Portuguese software is that the two most known Spectrum games are Paradise Cafe and Sex Crime, both erotic games.
It's too hot on the mainland, it's all you guys can think about :-D
not really, they just set up publishing deals with other companies .e.g epyx (quiksilva had them originally !!!)
they were a distro also, errm between them and Ocean , they had centresoft , joint owned ?
a lot of the speccy ports were by ocean or denton etc.
it's much like Int. Karate is put out in the US by activision given a different name also. the konami games imagine put out on c64 were put out by konami in the US.. some games have 2 versions e.g . cabal / afterburner etc.
not sure if you are aware there was "UK gold " (same folks) also , they put out dropzone on atari / c64
What do you mean with breakdown? Like how many irish, scottis, english, welsh, etc.?
Infoseek is really a great tool, maybe you can get what you want ;)
dam... not a single one that looks like I should waste the time playing it...
Most "Americans" who talk about the ZX Spectrum are either Timex users or British ex-pats.
Ivan, it's actually quite simple to understand why Portugal, although being close to Spain, didn't release many games.
1-My generation and the one that came after use English on a daily basis and I remember most kids and teenagers actually preferring to listen to music in English, watch movies with the original English audio, etc. We (I say "we" because I'm one of them) have always hated dubbed audio, translation of movie titles from English to Portuguese, etc. If we had to watch TV or go somewhere to watch a movie, English sounded normal and anything else than English sounded weird, our own language included. In Portugal no one wants to see Rambo speaking Portuguese. We like the stuff in the original language! The same applied to programs and games. Portuguese software was considered "meh" while software in English and Spanish was considered to be of high quality.
2-Although many Spaniards can't understand a thing we say, we can understand and read Spanish for the most part. :-P Therefore, the magazines and software that were available in Spain were accepted and used by us.
3-Portugal never gave a chance to young programmers who wanted to start their own game company. I say "Portugal" because I don't know who was to blame. But a lot of people from my generation will tell you "If you want to do this or that, you have to get out of Portugal". It's not just with software. It's the same with artists and some businesses. Portugal is not the land of opportunity. It's the land where you survive if you can.
4-Lazyness. We had plenty of software coming from the U.K. and Spain. We didn't see the need to come up with our own and were satisfied with the material we were getting from those two countries. I remember how fascinated I felt every time I grabbed the newest Microhobby or Your Sinclair. It was like a new comic book.
5-Pessimism. Many Portuguese believe they will fail even before they attempt something. They're used to being underdogs. Many Portuguese also believe everything from another country is better than their own. They're proud of their food and some manufacturing, but in many things they feel inferior.
6-Piracy. There was so much tape copying in Portugal that 99% of the Spectrum users knew it would be virtually impossible to make money selling something made in Portugal. Even the businesses were making copies of software while people waited! Many "legitimate" stores sold Spectrums and some original games but also had plenty of copies for sale with their own store inlay!
7-Advertising. People wanted to have the games they saw on the Spanish and British magazines. Once something became popular everyone would copy from everyone else. City Connection was mentioned once on TV, by one of the authors, only because he had a segment where he would talk about new Amiga, PC and Spectrum games each week. He used the opportunity. That was the only reason it was "advertised". I never saw a Portuguese game being advertised on any of the magazines or Spectrum material that was available back then.
The erotic games made in Portugal only became popular because 1-they were erotic games , 2-tape copying and 3-word of mouth.
I hope that clarifies it.