The one thing I have noticed is that many five minute reviewers place the highest importance on colour resolution. It looks good, that's all that matters. How it plays, how smooth it is, if it's a good game are all secondary.
Not just the five minute reviewers, and not just older games. Gameplay is hard. Everything else is easy by comparison.
One big difference is in C64 games, the sprites are always the same size. Whereas on the Spectrum, because you're doing it in software, you have complete control over how big the sprites are going to be. It's a lot more versatile.
The same goes for scrolling - the C64 had to shift the whole screen; it couldn't scroll in a window. To get the stationary side-bar in Operation Wolf as the game screen scrolled, they were actually pixel-scrolling the scoreboard characters in software in the opposite direction just to make it appear to stand still, then covering the seam with a vertically repeated / recoloured sprite representing the life gauge. Top or bottom scoreboards required changing the scroll registers at just the right raster line to split the display behaviour. They usually leave a blank line or two as it can't be done instantaneously. The likes of Kikstart II could manage one scrolling section below another, but it could never do two side-by-side. Same goes for the SNES and Megadrive.
Can you really say that the C64 had superior hardware when on average the Spectrum performed tasks at twice the speed of the C64? Are you not letting the lure of the support chips cloud your judgement? Admittedly, the C64 did have a glorious sound chip. But which are better - apples or oranges?
I have to agree. I liked the Spectrum's quirks and limitations as well as liking it's strengths. I mean, the beeper could sound great (it often wasn't, in the early years, of course, but when it was done well it could produce very good music and sound effects), and I liked the rubber keyboard (which I thought was great for playing games, though I'd no doubt have hated to use it if I were a professional typist), and the 'clean' graphics (I mean clean as in all of the colours were bright, and not muddy).
Of course, that's my subjective opinion, and probably if I'd been a C64 or CPC or BBC owner then I'd have loved that machine instead, for all that machine's strengths and quirks. All I can really say is that no matter what I saw on my mates' C64s or CPCs, or the BBCs and Acorn Atoms that I saw in school, I never once wished I'd had that machine INSTEAD of the Spectrum. I loved almost the whole Spectrum experience, from the games, the magazines, the people we swapped games/tips/help with, and even now it's great to meet someone for the first time and find out that they were a Spectrum owner back in the day, and reminisce about the good times. And the games most people seem to remember are Manic Miner, Jetset Willy, Lords of Midnight, Knightlore, Dizzy (which I ****ing hate! :evil:), Head Over Heels, etc.
So, er, I basically have nothing to add to this discussion (sorry!). No, hang on - things I hated about or connected to the Spectrum;
- Microdrives (*so* unreliable, but when you bought a +D and a 3.5" drive you werein Speccy paradise!),
- The fact that Mr Do!, Get Dexter, and some other great games (what I can't recall now) were never released on the Spectrum,
- Skooldaze 3, Eye of the Moon, Miner Willy Meets the Taxman, The Megatree, Dynamite Dan 3, etc, never being released,
- Most of the magazine Sinclair User's run - well, I didn't hate SU until about 1987, when it became childish, 1983 to 85-ish was a mix of boring and interesting, then it became lot better, at least for games coverage, but then Kam-****ing-kazi Bear came along, the quality of the magazine fell to like 0.000000001% of it's former self, and made buying it so embarrassing,
- The magazine Your Spectrum becoming Your Sinclair. Your Sinclair was great, but Your Spectrum was my favourite computer magazine ever.
- Your Sinclair and Crash becoming pamphlets, same with Sinclair User, but that didn't have nearly so far left to fall,
- Multi-loads, *especially* when they were still multi-loads on the Spectrum 128K, even though often the entire game would have fit into the 128K's memory.
- Amstrad buying out Sinclair, because CPC and C64 owners took great delight in pointing out that us Spectrum owners were now Amstrad owners!
One big difference is in C64 games, the sprites are always the same size. Whereas on the Spectrum, because you're doing it in software, you have complete control over how big the sprites are going to be. It's a lot more versatile.
The same goes for scrolling - the C64 had to shift the whole screen; it couldn't scroll in a window. To get the stationary side-bar in Operation Wolf as the game screen scrolled, they were actually pixel-scrolling the scoreboard characters in software in the opposite direction just to make it appear to stand still, then covering the seam with a vertically repeated / recoloured sprite representing the life gauge. Top or bottom scoreboards required changing the scroll registers at just the right raster line to split the display behaviour. They usually leave a blank line or two as it can't be done instantaneously. The likes of Kikstart II could manage one scrolling section below another, but it could never do two side-by-side. Same goes for the SNES and Megadrive.
Not true. You could do software sprites on the C64. Look at Power Drift or Space Harrier by Chris Butler.
And there are games with scrolling windows and side-by-side views. War Cars Conatruction Set springs to mind. And look at the incredibly detailed graphics of Quedex, scrolling part of the screen.
I don't think anyone's saying that the C64 can't do software sprites, just that the slow CPU rather limits their usefulness. Isometric graphics where you're forced to use software sprites, for instance, tend to move at a bit of a plod on the machine compared to machines with faster CPUs. The C64 version of Head Over Heels was a very good effort though.
The scrolling is surprisingly flexible though, and a lot of hacks can be used to extend it beyond what the original designers had intended. On the whole, I'd think that smooth hardware scrolling is the single most effective hardware acceleration feature you could get on an 8-bit micro, and the C64 definitely turned up trumps there.
You could do software sprites on the C64. Look at Power Drift or Space Harrier by Chris Butler.
You mean those games with the blocky, character-cell occluding updates that C64 owners always used to point at on old Spectrum games and take the p*ss out of? :lol:
The same goes for scrolling - the C64 had to shift the whole screen; it couldn't scroll in a window. To get the stationary side-bar in Operation Wolf as the game screen scrolled, they were actually pixel-scrolling the scoreboard characters in software in the opposite direction just to make it appear to stand still, then covering the seam with a vertically repeated / recoloured sprite representing the life gauge.
Which isn't really a problem as such, you just have to design the game around the limitations... in a very similar way to how Spectrum coders do it. And it's not true to say that it had to be done that way either, because the scrolling can be handled in software; Flimbo's Quest does both hardware scrolling for the foreground and software scrolling for the background parallax, so taking just what the latter is doing and powering a game from that is possible. The question becomes "why bother since i can do it in hardware" really...
Top or bottom scoreboards required changing the scroll registers at just the right raster line to split the display behaviour. They usually leave a blank line or two as it can't be done instantaneously.
This isn't strictly true; the transition can be done instantly with a bit of planning (any register write happens pretty much when the write takes place) but the timing is pretty precise so hardware sprites moving over that split will interfere with things; for horizontal scrolling there are numerous examples like Hawkeye, Sanxion or Zybex where there's no gap or a small one one for presentation in the latter's case since it'd look less neat with the landscape touching the top of the score bar.
For vertical scrolling it's much trickier because there has to be somewhere for the line moving off to go (the Atari 8-bit has a lovely work-around for this) but it isn't actually impossible to write a maskless vertical scroll, have a look at Dan Dare 3 or the preview of Balls Of Scrolling Thunder for example.
The likes of Kikstart II could manage one scrolling section below another, but it could never do two side-by-side.
There's not much point in that particular case since there isn't that much vertical movement in Kikstart 2 to make it worthwhile, but it certainly isn't impossible to do if you design the game around it in the same way that Operation Wolf, 1943 - One Year After or Space Knight was designed around the scrolling.
There's not much point in that particular case since there isn't that much vertical movement in Kikstart 2 to make it worthwhile, but it certainly isn't impossible to do if you design the game around it in the same way that Operation Wolf, 1943 - One Year After or Space Knight was designed around the scrolling.
Well, whether it's horizontal or vertical movement, the hardware scrolling certainly can't deliver two independently scrolling windows on the same horizontal row. You'd have to software-shift one of them just to make it stand still compared to the other; never mind making it scroll in a different direction. I can't think of any obvious Speccy examples, but it's not something you'd have to worry about if you were doing everything in software.
All I can really say is that no matter what I saw on my mates' C64s or CPCs, or the BBCs and Acorn Atoms that I saw in school, I never once wished I'd had that machine INSTEAD of the Spectrum.
I was the opposite. I had a spectrum because at Christmas 1983 that was the must have machine (and it was just about affordable for many working class parents).
However, I do remember one or two kids at school having a C64. It was a monthly rite to take in the new issue of Crash or ZZap and look at the games. More often that not, it was wistful wishing that the spectrum game would look as good as the C64 game, and it hardly ever was. I remember playing California Games, Way Of The Exploding Fist, Pitstop on my mates C64 and feeling kinda gutted that the versions I could play at home where just not as good.
So much so, that as soon as I did have enough money to get what I wanted, rather than wish for it, I bought a NES, then an Amiga, then a Megadrive etc. etc.
IF I had the choice between a C64 and a Spectrum in 1984 (when the C64 developers were really hitting their stride) I would have got a C64.
Not just the five minute reviewers, and not just older games. Gameplay is hard. Everything else is easy by comparison.
I was amazed when I found out that the screen resolution of the Nintendo DSi is the same as the Spectrum. The graphics on the DSi "look" much finer to me but I suppose it is the increased palette and individual pixel colouring that does this?
Of course, that's my subjective opinion, and probably if I'd been a C64 or CPC or BBC owner then I'd have loved that machine instead, for all that machine's strengths and quirks. All I can really say is that no matter what I saw on my mates' C64s or CPCs, or the BBCs and Acorn Atoms that I saw in school, I never once wished I'd had that machine INSTEAD of the Spectrum. I loved almost the whole Spectrum experience, from the games, the magazines, the people we swapped games/tips/help with, and even now it's great to meet someone for the first time and find out that they were a Spectrum owner back in the day, and reminisce about the good times.
I agree and not just the Spectrum. The ZX81 and Spectrum period was immense fun. Mind you, I loved my CPC664 and Acorn Electron too.
I had left the Sinclair scene by then but agree it was not Clive's finest hour.
Although you could point out that Amstrad would rather shift Spectrums than their own CPC.
Technically I'd rather have had a CPC 6128 than upgrading to a Speccy 128 or +3, but since I wasn't getting anything until I earned my own money, and by then I found a nearly-new ST for ?175, it wasn't really much of an issue.
I think the main reason Amstrad bought out Sinclair was that it gave him a chance to take a competitor out of the market. The clincher was that he got a load of unsold stock at a knock down price that would pretty much cover the cost of the deal outright.
That they were able to re-engineer the Spectrum as the +2 and sell it at a substantially lower price than the CPC464 probably just came as a bonus to them. Although I'd presume that we've got Richard Altwasser to thank for that.
... Amstrad ... were able to re-engineer the Spectrum as the +2 and sell it at a substantially lower price than the CPC464 probably just came as a bonus to them. Although I'd presume that we've got Richard Altwasser to thank for that.
As far as I'm aware Altwasser only worked on the +3 and later models. Also, as best as I can tell, Amstrad contracted out the re-engineering of the 128 to a company in Hong Kong before it bought Sinclair. I can't find hard evidence to support it, but it does make sense given how little time there was between acquiring the company (April) and releasing the +2 (October).
As far as I'm aware Altwasser only worked on the +3 and later models. Also, as best as I can tell, Amstrad contracted out the re-engineering of the 128 to a company in Hong Kong before it bought Sinclair. I can't find hard evidence to support it, but it does make sense given how little time there was between acquiring the company (April) and releasing the +2 (October).
I thought Altwasser joined Amstrad just before the Sinclair takeover and, as such, I'd be very surprised if he'd had nothing at all to do with the +2 even if the work was mostly contracted out.
Still, if nothing else, we've got him to thank for keeping the original design so simple.
Well, whether it's horizontal or vertical movement, the hardware scrolling certainly can't deliver two independently scrolling windows on the same horizontal row.
We-ell... strictly speaking you can because it's possible to vertically split at least the horizontal scroll register (the vertical can't do it because of how the DMA fetches would get borked). And two independent windows scrolling at half a character per refresh either vertically or horizontally is also possible, i've had prototypes of the latter since the 1980s but no real use for them personally because i don't have an interest in designing games for multiple players.
I can't think of any obvious Speccy examples, but it's not something you'd have to worry about if you were doing everything in software.
But what stops the C64 doing it in software or a combination...? And if you can't think of any obvious Spectrum examples doesn't that say something about how often people wanted to do it in the first place? =-)
There's nothing to stop the C64 doing it in software; it's just going to have to do it more slowly than the Spectrum can that way.
Still, I'd think that you'd have to come up with a pretty contrived example to get the C64 scrolling less efficiently than the Spectrum. The only one that readily springs to mind for me is Nightshade, where Ultimate insisted that the C64 port use exactly the same technique as the original.
Still, I'd think that you'd have to come up with a pretty contrived example to get the C64 scrolling less efficiently than the Spectrum. The only one that readily springs to mind for me is Nightshade, where Ultimate insisted that the C64 port use exactly the same technique as the original.
I thought Altwasser joined Amstrad just before the Sinclair takeover and, as such, I'd be very surprised if he'd had nothing at all to do with the +2 even if the work was mostly contracted out.
Well given that the +2 has all the hardware bugs of the original 128 while the +3 doesn't I think that makes it more likely he had no involvement in the +2.
Still, if nothing else, we've got him to thank for keeping the original design so simple.
And to blame for thinking the ZX81 I/O would be adequate for the Spectrum too.
And to blame for thinking the ZX81 I/O would be adequate for the Spectrum too.
I'm not sure if that's really his fault either. After all, if the QL had been any good, the Spectrum's commercial life needn't have been much longer than either of its predecessors.
I think the main reason Amstrad bought out Sinclair was that it gave him a chance to take a competitor out of the market. The clincher was that he got a load of unsold stock at a knock down price that would pretty much cover the cost of the deal outright.
Agreed Matt. It was one of those Lord Sugar "east end, too good to miss" deals. A chance to Make a few (well a lot) extra Pounds.
I think the main reason Amstrad bought out Sinclair was that it gave him a chance to take a competitor out of the market.
That doesn't make sense though. He could have not bought it and it would have taken itself out of the market. I don't know why people are so negative about Amstrad. The Spectrum would have disappeared by the end of 1986 without the buyout.
I am not anti Amstrad at all Andrew. Personally I have used and owned many of their computers over the years and found them to be great products. They tended to be well made, reliable and do what they promised.
Im a little bit miffed that Amstrad didnt include a graphics upgrade with the +2
but apart from that I suppose Sir Clive wasn't into the speccy and would have ran it into the ground with his other projects.
That doesn't make sense though. He could have not bought it and it would have taken itself out of the market. I don't know why people are so negative about Amstrad. The Spectrum would have disappeared by the end of 1986 without the buyout.
Indeed. The main reason Amstrad bought Sinclair is because Sinclair had market share that Amstrad didn't, they didn't really care which computer was the successful one, as long as they owned it.
That doesn't make sense though. He could have not bought it and it would have taken itself out of the market. I don't know why people are so negative about Amstrad. The Spectrum would have disappeared by the end of 1986 without the buyout.
That's only assuming that Sinclair couldn't find another buyer, and once everyone found out how much stock they were sitting on, I'd be fairly confident that that would have happened.
Also, Amstrad wasn't buying just the Spectrum, but all of Sinclair's computers and their brand. You can perhaps argue that the Pandora and the second generation QL would never have got to market - let alone paper projects like the Loki - but it was Sugar that got to put the final nails into their coffins. Further, Amstrad ensured that any future computer that Sinclair could come up with wouldn't have his name on it. As it turns out, they needn't have worried about the Z88, but Sinclair was no stranger to ditching bankrupt companies and taking his pet projects with him.
I don't think I'm being negative about Amstrad, just realistic. They had room for Spectrum at the bottom of their range if they could make it cheaply enough, which they did. They also managed to make it a more robust and reliable machine and fix a lot of the bugs into the bargain. Does that sound a bit more positive?
That's only assuming that Sinclair couldn't find another buyer...
That seems a reasonable assumption. The only other electronics company where Sinclair might have found a home is Timex and I'd be surprised if they didn't at least bring it up with them. And the only other bloke with Maxwell's kind of money was Murdoch, who of course did end up owning Sinclair.
You can perhaps argue that the Pandora and the second generation QL would never have got to market
But they did anyway, the Pandora in the form of the Z88 and the QL in the form of the Q40 and Q60.
projects like the Loki
That was Martin Brennan's project. You can see the Konix Multisystem and Atari Jaguar as the successors of the Loki project.
I don't think I'm being negative about Amstrad
I should have clarified. I didn't mean you or Paddy. I meant the "Amstrad ruined Sinclair" crowd.
They had room for Spectrum at the bottom of their range
It might have been the cheapest computer they made, but didn't it continue to outsell the CPC?
They also managed to make it a more robust and reliable machine and fix a lot of the bugs into the bargain. Does that sound a bit more positive?
Yes, but I'd argue Timex did a better job of that in 1983. It's just a shame that Investronica had never heard of the TS2068 when they wrote the requirements for the original 128.
That seems a reasonable assumption. The only other electronics company where Sinclair might have found a home is Timex and I'd be surprised if they didn't at least bring it up with them. And the only other bloke with Maxwell's kind of money was Murdoch, who of course did end up owning Sinclair.
Timex certainly had the expertise and a stake in the Spectrum as it's manufacturers, but I suspect they wouldn't have been interested mainly on account of having made such a mess when they tried to sell the machines in the US.
That said, I'd be surprised if Amstrad would have been the last chance saloon. There were a fair few companies in the business of making Spectrum software at the time who could have put a bid together if nothing else.
But they did anyway, the Pandora in the form of the Z88 and the QL in the form of the Q40 and Q60.
The Z88 was obviously inspired by Pandora, but the machine Amstrad canned was a Spectrum-compatible with a CRT display. And by second generation QL, I was referring to Tyche; a bug-fixed machine with uncontended RAM and a floppy drive. Both machines could conceivably have been released in 1986.
Machines that came years later and without the Sinclair brand name on them would have been good enough for Amstrad. They'd achieved what they set out to do by then.
That was Martin Brennan's project. You can see the Konix Multisystem and Atari Jaguar as the successors of the Loki project.
Konix certainly never made it to market, and I'd think that the Jaguar has about as much to do with the Loki as the Nvidia Shield; ex-Sinclair engineers certainly got around though.
It might have been the cheapest computer they made, but didn't it continue to outsell the CPC?
That's a difficult one to call, as Amstrad claim three million sales for the CPC and the figure usually given for the +2 is two million, with a much smaller number of +3s out there. Obviously there were a decent number of CPCs sold before they started making Spectrums, but I expect things would have been about even during the period in which they were making both.
Yes, but I'd argue Timex did a better job of that in 1983. It's just a shame that Investronica had never heard of the TS2068 when they wrote the requirements for the original 128.
Or they could just have popped across the border to Portugal for a look what Timex were doing there. Then again, Portugal and Spain working together? Like that could ever happen. :wink:
Im a little bit miffed that Amstrad didnt include a graphics upgrade with the +2
but apart from that I suppose Sir Clive wasn't into the speccy and would have ran it into the ground with his other projects.
The problem then would be ensuring compatibility with existing games, and getting new games to take advantage of the upgrade. If you look at what happened with the Amstrad Plus range, there was a distinct lack of developers stepping forward to work on them.
Comments
Not just the five minute reviewers, and not just older games. Gameplay is hard. Everything else is easy by comparison.
The same goes for scrolling - the C64 had to shift the whole screen; it couldn't scroll in a window. To get the stationary side-bar in Operation Wolf as the game screen scrolled, they were actually pixel-scrolling the scoreboard characters in software in the opposite direction just to make it appear to stand still, then covering the seam with a vertically repeated / recoloured sprite representing the life gauge. Top or bottom scoreboards required changing the scroll registers at just the right raster line to split the display behaviour. They usually leave a blank line or two as it can't be done instantaneously. The likes of Kikstart II could manage one scrolling section below another, but it could never do two side-by-side. Same goes for the SNES and Megadrive.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
I have to agree. I liked the Spectrum's quirks and limitations as well as liking it's strengths. I mean, the beeper could sound great (it often wasn't, in the early years, of course, but when it was done well it could produce very good music and sound effects), and I liked the rubber keyboard (which I thought was great for playing games, though I'd no doubt have hated to use it if I were a professional typist), and the 'clean' graphics (I mean clean as in all of the colours were bright, and not muddy).
Of course, that's my subjective opinion, and probably if I'd been a C64 or CPC or BBC owner then I'd have loved that machine instead, for all that machine's strengths and quirks. All I can really say is that no matter what I saw on my mates' C64s or CPCs, or the BBCs and Acorn Atoms that I saw in school, I never once wished I'd had that machine INSTEAD of the Spectrum. I loved almost the whole Spectrum experience, from the games, the magazines, the people we swapped games/tips/help with, and even now it's great to meet someone for the first time and find out that they were a Spectrum owner back in the day, and reminisce about the good times. And the games most people seem to remember are Manic Miner, Jetset Willy, Lords of Midnight, Knightlore, Dizzy (which I ****ing hate! :evil:), Head Over Heels, etc.
So, er, I basically have nothing to add to this discussion (sorry!). No, hang on - things I hated about or connected to the Spectrum;
- Microdrives (*so* unreliable, but when you bought a +D and a 3.5" drive you werein Speccy paradise!),
- The fact that Mr Do!, Get Dexter, and some other great games (what I can't recall now) were never released on the Spectrum,
- Skooldaze 3, Eye of the Moon, Miner Willy Meets the Taxman, The Megatree, Dynamite Dan 3, etc, never being released,
- Most of the magazine Sinclair User's run - well, I didn't hate SU until about 1987, when it became childish, 1983 to 85-ish was a mix of boring and interesting, then it became lot better, at least for games coverage, but then Kam-****ing-kazi Bear came along, the quality of the magazine fell to like 0.000000001% of it's former self, and made buying it so embarrassing,
- The magazine Your Spectrum becoming Your Sinclair. Your Sinclair was great, but Your Spectrum was my favourite computer magazine ever.
- Your Sinclair and Crash becoming pamphlets, same with Sinclair User, but that didn't have nearly so far left to fall,
- Multi-loads, *especially* when they were still multi-loads on the Spectrum 128K, even though often the entire game would have fit into the 128K's memory.
- Amstrad buying out Sinclair, because CPC and C64 owners took great delight in pointing out that us Spectrum owners were now Amstrad owners!
Not true. You could do software sprites on the C64. Look at Power Drift or Space Harrier by Chris Butler.
And there are games with scrolling windows and side-by-side views. War Cars Conatruction Set springs to mind. And look at the incredibly detailed graphics of Quedex, scrolling part of the screen.
The scrolling is surprisingly flexible though, and a lot of hacks can be used to extend it beyond what the original designers had intended. On the whole, I'd think that smooth hardware scrolling is the single most effective hardware acceleration feature you could get on an 8-bit micro, and the C64 definitely turned up trumps there.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
Which isn't really a problem as such, you just have to design the game around the limitations... in a very similar way to how Spectrum coders do it. And it's not true to say that it had to be done that way either, because the scrolling can be handled in software; Flimbo's Quest does both hardware scrolling for the foreground and software scrolling for the background parallax, so taking just what the latter is doing and powering a game from that is possible. The question becomes "why bother since i can do it in hardware" really...
This isn't strictly true; the transition can be done instantly with a bit of planning (any register write happens pretty much when the write takes place) but the timing is pretty precise so hardware sprites moving over that split will interfere with things; for horizontal scrolling there are numerous examples like Hawkeye, Sanxion or Zybex where there's no gap or a small one one for presentation in the latter's case since it'd look less neat with the landscape touching the top of the score bar.
For vertical scrolling it's much trickier because there has to be somewhere for the line moving off to go (the Atari 8-bit has a lovely work-around for this) but it isn't actually impossible to write a maskless vertical scroll, have a look at Dan Dare 3 or the preview of Balls Of Scrolling Thunder for example.
There's not much point in that particular case since there isn't that much vertical movement in Kikstart 2 to make it worthwhile, but it certainly isn't impossible to do if you design the game around it in the same way that Operation Wolf, 1943 - One Year After or Space Knight was designed around the scrolling.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
I was the opposite. I had a spectrum because at Christmas 1983 that was the must have machine (and it was just about affordable for many working class parents).
However, I do remember one or two kids at school having a C64. It was a monthly rite to take in the new issue of Crash or ZZap and look at the games. More often that not, it was wistful wishing that the spectrum game would look as good as the C64 game, and it hardly ever was. I remember playing California Games, Way Of The Exploding Fist, Pitstop on my mates C64 and feeling kinda gutted that the versions I could play at home where just not as good.
So much so, that as soon as I did have enough money to get what I wanted, rather than wish for it, I bought a NES, then an Amiga, then a Megadrive etc. etc.
IF I had the choice between a C64 and a Spectrum in 1984 (when the C64 developers were really hitting their stride) I would have got a C64.
I was amazed when I found out that the screen resolution of the Nintendo DSi is the same as the Spectrum. The graphics on the DSi "look" much finer to me but I suppose it is the increased palette and individual pixel colouring that does this?
Paddy
I agree and not just the Spectrum. The ZX81 and Spectrum period was immense fun. Mind you, I loved my CPC664 and Acorn Electron too.
I never had ANY problems with my Microdrive. It was quick (compared to tape), reliable and looked cool (IMHO).
I had left the Sinclair scene by then but agree it was not Clive's finest hour.
Paddy
Technically I'd rather have had a CPC 6128 than upgrading to a Speccy 128 or +3, but since I wasn't getting anything until I earned my own money, and by then I found a nearly-new ST for ?175, it wasn't really much of an issue.
- IONIAN-GAMES.com -
That they were able to re-engineer the Spectrum as the +2 and sell it at a substantially lower price than the CPC464 probably just came as a bonus to them. Although I'd presume that we've got Richard Altwasser to thank for that.
As far as I'm aware Altwasser only worked on the +3 and later models. Also, as best as I can tell, Amstrad contracted out the re-engineering of the 128 to a company in Hong Kong before it bought Sinclair. I can't find hard evidence to support it, but it does make sense given how little time there was between acquiring the company (April) and releasing the +2 (October).
http://mister_beep.republika.pl/
I thought Altwasser joined Amstrad just before the Sinclair takeover and, as such, I'd be very surprised if he'd had nothing at all to do with the +2 even if the work was mostly contracted out.
Still, if nothing else, we've got him to thank for keeping the original design so simple.
We-ell... strictly speaking you can because it's possible to vertically split at least the horizontal scroll register (the vertical can't do it because of how the DMA fetches would get borked). And two independent windows scrolling at half a character per refresh either vertically or horizontally is also possible, i've had prototypes of the latter since the 1980s but no real use for them personally because i don't have an interest in designing games for multiple players.
But what stops the C64 doing it in software or a combination...? And if you can't think of any obvious Spectrum examples doesn't that say something about how often people wanted to do it in the first place? =-)
Still, I'd think that you'd have to come up with a pretty contrived example to get the C64 scrolling less efficiently than the Spectrum. The only one that readily springs to mind for me is Nightshade, where Ultimate insisted that the C64 port use exactly the same technique as the original.
"In software" doesn't mean "in software the way the Spectrum does it" though, doing it in characters will be pretty fast.
The same is true of The Bubbler. =-(
Well given that the +2 has all the hardware bugs of the original 128 while the +3 doesn't I think that makes it more likely he had no involvement in the +2.
And to blame for thinking the ZX81 I/O would be adequate for the Spectrum too.
I'm not sure if that's really his fault either. After all, if the QL had been any good, the Spectrum's commercial life needn't have been much longer than either of its predecessors.
Agreed Matt. It was one of those Lord Sugar "east end, too good to miss" deals. A chance to Make a few (well a lot) extra Pounds.
Paddy
That doesn't make sense though. He could have not bought it and it would have taken itself out of the market. I don't know why people are so negative about Amstrad. The Spectrum would have disappeared by the end of 1986 without the buyout.
Paddy
but apart from that I suppose Sir Clive wasn't into the speccy and would have ran it into the ground with his other projects.
Indeed. The main reason Amstrad bought Sinclair is because Sinclair had market share that Amstrad didn't, they didn't really care which computer was the successful one, as long as they owned it.
That's only assuming that Sinclair couldn't find another buyer, and once everyone found out how much stock they were sitting on, I'd be fairly confident that that would have happened.
Also, Amstrad wasn't buying just the Spectrum, but all of Sinclair's computers and their brand. You can perhaps argue that the Pandora and the second generation QL would never have got to market - let alone paper projects like the Loki - but it was Sugar that got to put the final nails into their coffins. Further, Amstrad ensured that any future computer that Sinclair could come up with wouldn't have his name on it. As it turns out, they needn't have worried about the Z88, but Sinclair was no stranger to ditching bankrupt companies and taking his pet projects with him.
I don't think I'm being negative about Amstrad, just realistic. They had room for Spectrum at the bottom of their range if they could make it cheaply enough, which they did. They also managed to make it a more robust and reliable machine and fix a lot of the bugs into the bargain. Does that sound a bit more positive?
That seems a reasonable assumption. The only other electronics company where Sinclair might have found a home is Timex and I'd be surprised if they didn't at least bring it up with them. And the only other bloke with Maxwell's kind of money was Murdoch, who of course did end up owning Sinclair.
But they did anyway, the Pandora in the form of the Z88 and the QL in the form of the Q40 and Q60.
That was Martin Brennan's project. You can see the Konix Multisystem and Atari Jaguar as the successors of the Loki project.
I should have clarified. I didn't mean you or Paddy. I meant the "Amstrad ruined Sinclair" crowd.
It might have been the cheapest computer they made, but didn't it continue to outsell the CPC?
Yes, but I'd argue Timex did a better job of that in 1983. It's just a shame that Investronica had never heard of the TS2068 when they wrote the requirements for the original 128.
Timex certainly had the expertise and a stake in the Spectrum as it's manufacturers, but I suspect they wouldn't have been interested mainly on account of having made such a mess when they tried to sell the machines in the US.
That said, I'd be surprised if Amstrad would have been the last chance saloon. There were a fair few companies in the business of making Spectrum software at the time who could have put a bid together if nothing else.
The Z88 was obviously inspired by Pandora, but the machine Amstrad canned was a Spectrum-compatible with a CRT display. And by second generation QL, I was referring to Tyche; a bug-fixed machine with uncontended RAM and a floppy drive. Both machines could conceivably have been released in 1986.
Machines that came years later and without the Sinclair brand name on them would have been good enough for Amstrad. They'd achieved what they set out to do by then.
Konix certainly never made it to market, and I'd think that the Jaguar has about as much to do with the Loki as the Nvidia Shield; ex-Sinclair engineers certainly got around though.
That's a difficult one to call, as Amstrad claim three million sales for the CPC and the figure usually given for the +2 is two million, with a much smaller number of +3s out there. Obviously there were a decent number of CPCs sold before they started making Spectrums, but I expect things would have been about even during the period in which they were making both.
Or they could just have popped across the border to Portugal for a look what Timex were doing there. Then again, Portugal and Spain working together? Like that could ever happen. :wink:
The problem then would be ensuring compatibility with existing games, and getting new games to take advantage of the upgrade. If you look at what happened with the Amstrad Plus range, there was a distinct lack of developers stepping forward to work on them.