/vr/ - Retro Games

It was cheap and you could have infinite free or almost free games or even make your own, and you could learn to program on it.

you'd have to be a dole collector in order to find any enjoyment in a spectrum game

>>8810621
America is the land of Queer Fascism

It was really easy to develop and distribute games for and was cheap enough to be really widespread in Europe at the time. As a result it has a huge library of unusual little games made by amateur programmers of all backgrounds, giving a variety of unorthodox experiences. Even today it has a massive homebrew scene for aspiring indie devs.

it's a unique piece of old tech, simple as

>>8810637
keep your /pol/shit away from /vr/ you stupid culture war faggot

>>8810639
>and was cheap enough to be really widespread in Europe at the time
nobody had a Spectrum in Germany

>>8810651
Commodore had its main EU office in West Germany, of course everyone was using VolksComputeren there.

>>8810651
If you don't count commie Spectrum clones in Eastern Europe, the major Spectrum market outside the UK was in Spain.

>>8810667
Because it simply worked.

>>8810651
I only remember C64 being copious in the early days. After '85-86 it was half Amiga, half ST. The "systems" wars of my generation. Amigaians VS STlers

Commodore had a near-monopoly in all the Germanic/Nordic countries.

>>8810637
True

>>8810650
Shut up retard, he’s right

>>8810720
unironically kill yourself you lonely mindbroken homo this is like the one board where we don't need to constantly eyeroll at your schizo shit

>>8810621
They were so cheap even 3rd world shitholers like londonstanians could afford them.

>>8810621
>Please explain to a burgerlard the appeal of the Zed Ecks Spectrum. Without posting memes or catchphrases.
cheap computer for poor british fags and communists (that cloned the shit out of it).

>>8810639
> was cheap enough to be really widespread in Europe at the time
widespread it wasn't. commodore absolutely dominated europe when it came to sales. ussr nations cloned the spectrum because of tech sanctions during the cold war. spectrum's major sales were confined to the UK.

>>8810746
>poor british fags and communists
kek

>>8810621
It had sovl

>>8810621
The Spectrum opened the doors for the British IT industry and a lot of big-name game developers got their start on the Spectrum, Ultimate Play the Game (later became Rareware) for instance.

>>8810735
It is funny and sad how poor the UK was under Thatcher.

>>8810692
Because VIC is a swearword

>>8810912
Where exactly?

>>8810809
That was Labour's fault. Thatcher gets unfairly blamed for fixing the UK's problems.

>>8810924
Everything is Labour's fault t b h

>>8810785
>>8810809
>>8810667
yet it's notable that Germany never had their own personal computer industry like the UK did despite their reputation as a tech/manufacturing powerhouse

>>8810943
factually false but ok

>>8810943
that's mainly because the industrial lobby was so powerful in FRG and they commandeered most computer production and tech for factory use, so no consumer level computers got made.

Analogous to the videogame boom in Japan at the time in which anyone with the ability to register a trademark and code could produce a product regardless of its quality because there were no yardsticks to measure by. Britain had no industry giants on the scale of what Japan had too, it made for a different environment.

>>8810924
Spotted the Tory.

>>8810943
We had Walter, Dietz, TA, Kienzle and Nixdorf producing own hardware designs for mainframes, minis and micros in the 60s and 70s. East Germany always had VEB Kombinat Robotron.
In the early 80s we noticed that it's not worth building own hw designs directly so Germany focused on software and specialized research instead, getting the hardware cheap from mostly DEC and IBM. Turned out this was the right move.

t. oldfag

>>8810924
Kek retard

>>8810924
So who closed down the mines, then?

>>8810991
The mines needed to be closed down and it's a shame those red bastards didn't starve to death.

>>8810924
Everything's wrong now is their fault. They hate their own voters and bring tons of rapey Pakis in.

>>8810943
closest thing they had was the german branches of atari and commodore, which were huge and mogged their respective parent companies in many respects.

>>8810995

>>8811007
I accept your concession

>>8811000
>t. underage
Labour are absolute shit but they haven't been in power for 10 years and in that time immigration has gone through the roof

>>8810621
im an amerifat and still want one
once i get a monitor that supports pal (crt)
i plan on getting a proper speccy setup
the colors are neat but im an oldfag that gamed on monochromatic displays growing up

>>8810943
No need for it desu. We always leaned more into research regarding computing. The Fraunhofer Society during the 80s/90s/2000s held more IT-related patents than any other research organization worldwide.

So funny when zoomies start spouting the same bollocks their braindead parents told them around the dinner table

>>8811016
I'm past my 40s m8 and I remember a white Britain

>>8811027
Would you rather talk about Blair and his fuckups?

>>8811023
Get an Omni, they're $130, entirely new parts, 128k RAM, etc.
They're real-ass hardware clones with SD storage built in. Still PAL obviously, I use mine with a scaler that supports PAL.

>>8810809
The poorfaggotry of youropoors is always hilarious.

>>8811023
The only thing that looks legit in your post is the fat part

>>8810943
but is that a bad thing? the c64 was super big in Germany and STILL is to this day. people love it and clearly the c64 is far superior to the speccy.

I mean we Germans love point and click adventures and you got those nice Lucas adventures on your c64. don't think they speccy got that and I'm not even sure if it had a mouse but correct me if I'm wrong.

I've looked into zx spectrum emulation like 12 years ago and I've to admit the games were just fun and that's the appeal. it's simple stuff with its own very unique and distinctive style and it's fun.

what's a good emulator in 2022? I've had one back on win xp that had to change the colour mode to 16 bit and now in 2022 I only find shit emulators that even cost money.

just try out some zx spectrum games and see if you can have fun.

also I'm glad Germany never had it's own weird computer.
all of central Europe used the c64 and the demo scene is great while Britland had their speccy, Acorn, Amstad,BBC Micro (a TV station made a computer?) and that dragon pc from Wales. it's really super weird.

>>8811098
i want one
i just havent researched the omni enough

i almost got an egyptian zx with the tapedeck built in - but bidwars are brutal lately

>>8811557
why would I lie about this autistic shit

>>8811873
>why would i cope like this
tardism

>>8812185
why do you zoomers shit up every zx thread?

no other system gets this amount of annoying shiet

>>8812192
How old's your dad kiddo?

>>8810621
all the software was free due to piracy being easy as hell, you just copied a tape like copying a song.

I used to make my Commodore 64 owning friend seethe when I showed him Speccy 3D games like Elite running smoother.

>>8810943
Germany did have its homegrown computer industry... in East Germany. As expected, they were lagging behind First World competition.

If you were there, then you'd understand the working class, punk rock, British pride appeal of the speccy. Later on it was just cheap, but 82-87 was a time of great change and innovation that hasn't been seen since and the speccy was part of that.

>>8812580
If you were there, then you'd be old enought for 4chan.

>>8810621
what is the location of the beef

>>8812485
They made an IBM compatible machine in 89, I think. It's pretty rare and I missed a chance to get one for cheap a few years back. Now they're ridiculously overpriced. I'm still salty I didn't grab it when I had the chance.

>>8812654
It was 1986. Beautiful machine.

>>8812654
My dumb dream is to play Robotron 2084 on a Robotron computer.

>>8812485
>peasant level third world country machine
>still better than a ZX Speccy
kek at Bongtech

>>8810621
It was cheap and we were poor. Also, cartridge games were expensive as fuck but tapes were cheap and everyone had a generic cassette player they could plug in.

Wages in bongland are fucking garbage compared to burgerland equivalent jobs. For example, developers who do the same work as me make x3-4 as much, even outside of Silicon Valley (Which is more like x10). It was even worse before the internet.

Our income taxes are much higher, property taxes are higher, houses are extremely expensive. US land is cheap and you have more natural resources.

>>8812687
Also gas costs at least twice as much, which is one reason we all drive tiny cars.

>>8810667
>ficken zwanzig

Jaja

>>8812691
That's exactly why VIC-20 was renamed to VC-20 in Germany.

>>8810746
Speccy clones were all through Europe and the USSR, also in Brazil. The architecture was widespread.

>>8812714
this. the number of Spectrum clones and rip-offs were staggering, easily 50+.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ZX_Spectrum_clones

poorfags gotta poor

>>8812717
I love my "Дeльтa-c" from 1991, now with HDMI! Had to repair it a couple of years ago though.

The thing about speccy is it was good enough and it had innovative and fun games. 48k movwd gaming into the next level plus it was affordable.

Back then you played what you had and speccy was possible to have.

>>8812723
based. some of the Soviet speccy clones have real soul. Speccy lovers should check them out

>>8811098
Seconded on the omni, based.

The Zoomer X Speccer was a thing of great beauty and pizzazz.

Picked up a speccy the other day but turned out to have some problems. I think I've tracked it down to a bad transistor sending low voltage to the ram chips so ordered replacement part, hopefully can get it running. Speccys were never huge here in Aus, I had an amiga as a kid, so pretty excited to get the little guy running and finally experience the magic

You ever wonder what the indie game scene was like in the 80s? That's basically the speccy library.

>>8812723
Cool pic. What's that on the screen?

>>8810621
LUV ME SPECCY
LUV ME MATCHDAY
SIMPLE AS

>>8812768
"Rain" demo for 48k model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DOo0w5j-aY
It still blows my mind. 48k has only a tiny speaker that is controlled directly by CPU, so when it beeps it cannot do anything else. And yet the demo has graphics AND music at the same time.

>>8812773
Matt Smith already figured out how to do that for Manic Miner, it wasn't rocket science. Just use one cycle to do a short beep, then another to update the graphics, rinse and repeat.

>>8810621
Why does this absolute powerhouse of 8-bit arcade conversions trigger burgerdicks so much? The fact is not a single 8-bit system could touch the Spectrum when it came to bringing the 80s arcade experience home. R-Type, Rainbow Islands, Operation Wolf, Green Beret, Gryzor, The New Zealand Story, Chase HQ, Streetfighter 2, Strider, Space Harrier, Commando, Arkanoid, Bomb Jack, Mikie, Star Wars, the list just goes on and on.

It's the truest, bluest, spice melange there ever was.

>>8812781
Was this just due to the z80 allowing closer match to the arcade than the 6502 in the competition?

>>8812780
I know (but I never played MM back in the day), but it's still awesome. I myself played Simcity a lot, that was great, but totally silent.

>>8812781
kek no, half of the games on your list were better on the commodore 64

>>8810621
check out all the games by Ultimate AKA Rare on the speccy and you'll understand why its so loved.

>>8812737
Curiously there's like 40 on eBay at any given time —more than actual spectrums if you're searching from the US.

>>8812793
The Spectrum port of SimCity is absolutely remarkable, really impressive shit.

>>8811557
America is poor as shit as well though.

>>8810621
British people supported their British computer industry by buying British.
Americans abandoned their American computer industry by not buying Commodore and Atari and buying Japanese.

the ZX Spectrum was more than just appeal, it was about pride, economic support and promotion.

>>8810621
>cheap and widely-produced
>games are incredibly cheap- cheaper than any retail game's ever been, they were sold on tape often by small developers, think comic books and things like that in the states
>on top of this, many games lacked copy protection or were easily cracked, and thanks to the versatility of the casette tape format they were easily and cheaply copied and pirated, distributed to friends on the playground at school and shit
>plus, unlike the Commodore 64, the Spectrum was compatible with pretty much any portable casette player out there which many people already had just lying around, no need to get a floppy drive (which was expensive as fuck in Europe at the time)
>ease of use for programming/developing games (relative to other computers at the time), wide availability, and lack of expense drove programmer interest in large numbers, leading to the era of the "bedroom coder" which was arguably the first "indie scene" of the video game industry- who gave the Spectrum a very large and diverse library of software and video games

Even with all the Spectrum's faults, there was just nothing quite like it in the states. You couldn't just copy and pass NES cartridges around to your buddies and PC's were fucking expensive in the 80's (even the relatively-popular Commodore computers) so chances are you wouldn't have had one until the early 90's or so unless your family was pretty financially well off and saw utility in even having a home PC not just for video games and stuff.

>>8812781
It’s honestly tragic. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. The Speccy was a known arcade killer. Just look at Final Fight and SF2 on the Speccy, they’re arcade perfect, if not better. But Yankee scum can’t accept that and need to froth at the mouth about their gay Nintendos. Tragic really

>>8813161
>Americans abandoned their American computer industry by not buying Commodore and Atari and buying Japanese.

They simply chose to support Apple and IBM instead for the sake of California s-0y and "muh big business" respectively. The only relevant things even tangientially computer-related being sold in the states were video game consoles- and they were more popular since they weren't as expensive as computers were and no self-respecting middle class American was going to buy their little shits an expensive "state of the art" IBM clone just to play video games on. Kids who had access to a PC at the time were usually lucky enough to have rich white collar parents who liked doing work and taxes from home or would use one from a library or school.

>>8813183
I'm british but I'm a Commodore and Atari fanboy. I will never not be salty about the Amiga and Atari computers flopping in America.

>>8813183
>the only relevant JAPANESE things

>>8813196
I didn't even know the Amiga was a thing in the states until just a few years ago because the guy who trained me at worj talked about having one and how much he loved it despite inferior software support to other platforms.

>>8813206
And before anyone shits themselves over me calling Amiga software support "inferior," I'm specifically talking about its support in the states. There were very few Amiga devs here and most Eurodevs couldn't be bothered to convert and export their software for NTSC since the install base was tragically low out here.

>post removed for mentioning onions

Wow get fucked jannies. Fucking stupid niggers go ahead and ban me too, your board's a fucking joke anyway you lousy cocksucking troon faggot kikes.

>>8813341
With posts like this we evidently weren't missing anything

>>8812792
Most arcade ports weren't done with the source code so it wouldn't matter that much. Rodland was a source port (though that was a 68000 game so would be more beneficial for the Amiga) and Galaxian could have been a source port, it is an exceptionally good conversion and did use a Z80.

>>8813351
I'm imagining the kind of person with janny_soijak.png on their hard drive and I'm shedding a single tear for them.

>>8811575
man I did not read this

>>8813341

>>8811575
I last emulated speccy using, appropriately enough, the emulator called speccy. Give it a try and see if it works for you.

https://fms.komkon.org/Speccy/

This stuff is way before my time but I have to imagine that the software and game development scene over here in the states would have been a lot different if we had something as affordable as the Spectrum on offer. Maybe we did and I'm just ill-informed.
My dad wouldn't have been confined to programming stuff on the demo C64 at Wal-Mart as a kid. I don't think he ever actually owned a computer until he got an IBM-compatible in the latter half of college, some time around 1990 to 1992.
My stepdad is from the UK and he loved his Spectrum. He's spoken very fondly of it and his later computer, the Atari ST. Sounds like it was a very exciting time to be into computers and video games.

>>8812691
>>8812697
Could you elaborate for those less versed in such tongues?

>>8813387
German V is pronounced as English F. Germans would read VIC as Fik and that sounds similar to Ficken, German word for Fuck.
Commodore renamed the computer to prevent the entire nation from calling their machine Fuck-20.

>>8813447
>Fuck-20

But why? That's a good website.

>>8813379
I wonder if it would have had much impact. America had the Nintendo dominating it, as well as a bevy of other computers made in the states. Would people have bought a speccy in the US? I also wonder about the scene growth. Britain is a small place. You're talking about a place where if two people on opposite sides of the country wanted to collaborate, that it could be as trivial as a few hours train ride to meet up and work together. In America the same thing is simply impossible; You are heavily restricted in your ability to collaborate by the massive distances between major population centers. It's part of why everyone tends to go to the same few cities in order to be part of such and such scene. The internet has made that easier, but in the 80s? Forget about it. I'd be shocked if anything close to a scene had developed like what was in Britain.

>>8810667
>VolksComputer
Damn, that's sounds as if VIC-20 was distributed in late 1930s Germany.

>>8813447
That's pretty funny. Reminds me of a Japanese restaurant chain called First Kitchen. The name would be normal enough, except that Japanese pronounce First with a "Fa" or "Fuh" sound, and abbreviate kitchen (in this case) as "kin" or "keen", and so they refer to it casually as FaKin which sounds just like Fucking. So it's totally normal to go around Japan and ask wheres the fucking, do you like fucking, etc. Of course it only means to ask where you can get some good food.

This reminds me of when I found the town of Fucking, Austria, which recently renamed itself to Fugging. I find that to still be funny, especially when you route a travel plan from there to Shit, Iran.

>>8813468

>ZX Spectrum; Estimated 400,000,000 copies sold in the U.K. alone
>NES: sold only about 12,000.

Face it, the Speccy hate is just nintendrone burger cope

>>8810689
And no one in Spain knows what it is kek

>>8813453
The software industry in the US was (and is) clustered along the West Coast and in the 80s there was another "island" in Texas.

>>8810746
>>8812714

For what its worth the most common non-English language in Spectrum games is Spanish, followed by Italian, German, Russian and Czech.

The Spectrum scene feels like a time capsule of British youth culture of the 1980s, with lots of games influenced by punk music, comic strips and 2000AD. It can be fun immersing yourself in it for that reason, even if the games were never that playable.

>>8814747
It was an interesting time to be a kid. British telly in the 70s and 80s was classic, comics, magazines, music and games all had a distinct British flavour. Even had a quick war with the darkies over colonial clay, definitely the last hurrah of British spirit which is a real loss.

>>8810651
That's because everyone was on the spectrum in Germany.

>>8815778
It's funny because it's true.

>>8810621
It was better than nothin'

>>8812773
That's some good art but terrible poetry.

I agree with this list

https://youtu.be/BGxIivW75_g

>>8811575
While Maniac Mansion style point and clicks weren't a thing on spectrum, adventure games were huge. Both traditional text adventures and various types of graphical adventure games. The latter came roughly in three forms. Games with icon-based interfaces, games that combined graphical gameplay with command parsers (kind of like the early Sierra games) and "platform adventures" (Think Dizzy)

>>8816185
Heavy is an interesting game, not my favourite though. Lords of midnight is one of the most amazing games.

Why don't the LOL SPECCY GUYZ people consider the Gameboy was decently playable despite being graphically limited. A lot of Spectrum games are monochrome with a bit of colour, so there isn't a huge difference in capability bar decent sized companies with experience making games as opposed to a single bedroom coder or a small team. Even the 128k's sound chip is much the same, and both got some bad ports of certain arcade games as it was all the hardware could do.

>>8816331
>Why don't the LOL SPECCY GUYZ people consider
Because they're not here to talk about retro games, they're here to shitpost and "have fun" by dragging the conversation down to retard level.

>>8816185
did you ever play "Tir Na Nog"? my six year old self tried and just walked around until I got killed. I should give it a replay the atmosphere it has is pretty unique.
https://youtu.be/cUdO0DTU1ik

>>8816371
Try marsport.

>>8815990
>Lords of Midnight is the #1 Speccy game of all time.
never heard of it, what is it?

>>8816371
I remember Tir Na Nog and the sequel, Dun Darach, but I never got very far in them either.
>>8816649
Text adventure cross turn-based strategy from 3D first person perspective. Pretty damn unique game.

>>8816772
Tir Na Nog and Dun Darach were really difficult walking simulators, you need autistic levels of perseverance to beat them.

PRINT "Oy!"
PRINT "Me speccy!"

>>8816810
OI MATE WHERES 20 GOTO 10?

As we all know there's a term for "people heavily into Japanese culture." As an American into British stuff such as the ZX Spectrum, I feel like we need a term preferably of course coined by someone British.

>>8817224
>American into British
United Empire Loyalist

>>8817224
>>8817305
Kill yourselves, teaboos.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Teaboo

>>8817224
>>8817305
>>8817376

have you guys never heard the term "anglophile"

>>8812690
>we
>gas
You need to improve your LARPing game anon.

>>8817224
Paki.

>>8811098
>Still PAL obviously
That's fine for flat panel TVs, it would only be an issue if you're American and want to use it on a CRT.

>>8812471
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lKKy3l_5YI

>>8817224
Just embarrassing

>>8817378
Unless there's an emoji for it, no

>>8817224
delusional unless it's specifically old british rock in which case, very based

>>8817378
you mean like jimmy savile?

'Luv me speccy, luv me cornish pasty, luv me Team 17. Simple as.

>>8810621
80s bongs were poof af so they had to use this crap
i hated those shitty speccy ports with a passion, they brought the whole quality of the c64 ports down

>>8818347
>80s bongs were poof af so they had to use this crap
which is why I owned both spectrum an c64 in the 80's

>>8818550
why? why would you do that? spectrum is shit. it's pure shit man

>>8818561
Why would I upgrade from a spectrum to a c64?

>>8818585
>upgrade

>>8818561
every 3D vector game ran better on the speccy than the commy. cope.

>>8818347
>the whole quality of the c64 ports down
no that was U.S. Gold being a shitty developer

>>8817378
This anon is correct, the term has existed for a long time.

If you can appreciate Atari 2600 games then you can appreciate ZX Spectrum games.

Also as a burger who didn't want to deal with importing original hardware, the Omni has been a godsend.

>>8812687
>>8812690
>shit LARP
Why do you desperate idiots do this?

>>8822697
based omni anon —did you play around with the onboard wifi yet?

Speccys mono look is great, any game on a black background really shines.
Knight Lore is the dogs balls

>>8817378
Apparently they have not.

>>8810621
OIIII ME FOOKIN SPECCY
SIMPLE AS

>>8823271
Nah, haven't messed around with wifi at all, not sure what I'd even do with it except BBS or something. I've just been playing games on it, which is all I really wanted it for.

>>8823994
z80 files stopped launching on mine, no idea what the deal is. I wish I could figure out what the fuck the dipswitches do, I assume they got out of whack. the Omni kicks ass but the "documentation" is truly miserable.

>>8822697
False. Atari 2600 games run at 60fps. Speccy games literally never run that fast, and most of the time run at about 10 to 20fps.

>>8824070
imagine having this poor of an understanding of anything

>>8810963
You just made me remember. A friend got a job at an industrial beer brewery in Mexico because all the software for the machines is in German. He did some German courses while getting his Engineer degree. So he was being paid good money for an undergrad just existing as a walking translator because nobody else could work the machines.

>>8824042
Pic related is the configuration I have mine in, the system ROM in this setup would be the 128k toastrack. Keep in mind this is on an Omni V4 so the dipswitch orientation might be different on earlier models, I think the V3 and earlier were up=on while the V4 is up=off. And yeah, the documentation is definitely not ideal, but I guess that's what happens when it's basically been put together by users asking each other questions in the Facebook group.

>>8824070
There's more to a game that framerate. I do find it funny how many Spectrum fans say they can't get into 2600 games claiming that Atari is just too primitive, I usually just chalk it up to shit flinging though. If there's one thing the Spectrum has no shortage of it's shit flinging.

>>8824305
thanks anon, I'll check mine; I think this is how I have it iirc...

>>8810735
Yup south africa had them. My first kings of chose were on a spectrum

>>8824070
you wouldn't be playing the same type of games on the speccy though

atari = twitchy fast gameplay (defender, centipede, etc)

speccy = slow burn platformers, weird text games, puzzlers etc

>tfw too poor and ntsc to buy a spectrum
i just wanted to play jet set willy bros... there isn't even a port on my inferior pathetic nintendo and sega toys...

>>8810809
Thatcher was the last good leader they ever had. Dilate.

>>8824920
t. didn't live under Thatcher

>>8824665
There's a port for Game Boy, and it's dead on. Same CPU certainly helps.

>>8813370
why not?

>>8825023
the color is a lot of the appeal as well, but the GB port is pretty good

>>8810621
You can literally put pixels on the screen by putting assembly instruction into the basic prompt, no compiler or anything else necessary. This is pretty much begging the owner to try and make a game for it. You can do anything with graphics so programmers attempted all sorts of things even if the hardware wasn't up to it.
Its not really even deliberately that well engineered, it just happened to come out at a good time. The QL proved that sinclair didn't really have any idea what they were doing.

>>8824070
Donkey kong looks a lot better on spectrum. Some atari 2600 games were ported such as demon attack and enduro and they did run about 20 fps. Colecovision games often had that awful 8 pixel jump scrolling while spectrum has games with smooth 30 fps scrolling.

>>8825052
Ah, the version I tried is in color. Is there a B&W version as well?

https://pdroms.de/files/nintendo-gameboy-gb-gameboycolor-gbc/jet-set-willy

>>8825125
>You can literally put pixels on the screen by putting assembly instruction into the basic prompt, no compiler or anything else necessary
It's kinda magical, where I live we had a CZ knockoff and we'd get magazines with games you had to program in order to play, we'd spend like 3 hours copying the code, just to get bored after like half an hour.
Too bad me and my brothers were such useless little shits and never actually learnt to code for it.

>>8825380
>CZ knockoff
*ZX, CZ was the knockoff

is there a simple way to use a spectrum in ntsc regions?

>>8825437
Get an Omni with inbuilt display, or get a Next/Mister.

>>8825437
Emulate. That or use a Timex Sinclair 2068, but the compatability is low since literally all the Spectrum software is PAL. There is no easy way to use any original Sinclair hardware without easy access to a PAL display and a step down converter (or the ability to make your own PSUs)

I really like the "artstyle" (more like limitations) of the games, especially the new games that really push the system. The black background goes good with every color and this system spews primary colors at you really well, reminds me of blacklight artwork

>>8825629
>That or use a Timex Sinclair 2068, but the compatability is low since literally all the Spectrum software is PAL
The issue with the TS2068 is that its OS ROMs are different and not compatible with the ZX's. As for the NTSC/PAL issue none of the Spectrum line has any scanline IRQs so that's not likely to be an issue although games might run at higher speed on NTSC. It could be possible as well that some games don't work as they take advantage of PAL's longer screen render/blank.

>>8825941
Many games do use cycle based screen interrupts, Aquaplane for one.

>>8825941
It does have an IRQ to mark the vblank which you can use to synchronize the graphics. Probably not all games use it. If they do they might run into problems with NTSC.

>>8825941
Aquaplane does midline switches during the hblank which is very tricky owing to the lack of actual scanline IRQs and the Z80's long execution times--you need to be a real god of assembly language to pull that off. On PAL there's about 36 cycles available during hblank, on NTSC only about 28.

>>8825629
Doesn't the grey +2 model work on ntsc sets fine? I know i read that before somewhere.

>>8825125
>spectrum has games with smooth 30 fps scrolling
Even if you accept 30fps as "smooth" (it's not), "smooth 30fps" is literally impossible on a PAL system. You'll always have bad frame pacing trying to show 30fps on a 50Hz display.

>>8826802
he probably meant 25FPS but some speccy games ran at 50FPS. R-Type being one of them

>>8810632
>or even make your own, and you could learn to program on it
This is what I heard over and over again.
It's how Rare happened. Without this, no Rare, no Donkey Kong Country, no Banjo, etc etc etc. So huge that this ever happened.

>>8826860
>some speccy games ran at 50FPS. R-Type being one of them
Don't lie. The ZX Spectrum R-type port runs at 12.5fps. I can't think of a single Speccy game from the commercial era that runs at 50fps.

>>8826860
wut.

>>8810809
Yeah, but we were even poorer under the Labour gov. of the 70s. The difference was the noise. The make work miners of the 70s whose pittance "livelihood" was provided by the state and when the state couldn't afford to do that anymore we had no coal and no jobs and intermittent power. Thatcher made them all officially unemployed and on the dole as opposed to uselessly employed and on a different kind of dole. By the end of the 80s the path was set up for small businesses and upwardly mobile types to drag themselves out of skivvy work and into this new "middle class." And then Tony Blair came in and used all the wealth generated from this new middle class to fund the largest welfare state yet seen. And for a time things were good, until the americans imploded the world economy and took the blair welfare state with it.

>>8826883
They peaked in the Spectrum era, though.

>>8810634
> the dole
an author I really like Geoff Dyer talks about being on the dole as if it was the best thing ever.
Is it really that sweet?

>>8810621
it has the greatest game of all time, sqij!

>>8812485
>Z and Y changed places
>Everything else is exactly the same
What the fuck

>>8827418
the german language uses Z a lot and Y very little.

>>8827318
If you're a lazy cunt like me, it's great.

>>8824658
>twitchy fast gameplay (defender, centipede, etc)

>>8827418
>I-IS THAT A QWERTZ KEYBOARD?! AHHHHH! I'M GOING INSANE! HELP ME NITENDNIGGERS!
How do we deal with the zoomer mutt problem at this point

>>8827318
He's not the only one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3CR9tYBpW8

>>8817378
The queen's son is an Anglophile.

>>8824658
>weird text games
Tell me about these.

>>8828170
I'll bite your ankle. Tell me about your favourite text games

>>8828170
Stifflip & Co. is pretty weird.

>>8828240
>Stifflip & Co
>text game
Are you some sort of spastic?

>>8827941
>t. zoomer who never played 2600 on a crt

>>8828289
Well if you're looking for pure text adventures there were thousands of those but do they really count as weird?
85% of Stifflip was text anyway.

>>8825941
suggesting the timex in 2022 is completely ridiculous
although it is possible to mod it to be more compatible with speccy shit
coomlectors have gobbled them all up and they were kinda rare to begin with

the predecessor timex micro (black and white) seemed neat for frogger on tape

>>8828305
>Well if you're looking for pure text adventures there were thousands of those but do they really count as weird?
I'll ask again, are you some sort of spastic? Read that back to yourself, you wank off

>>8828303
>>8828312
Bed time, faggot

>>8828305
they ALL are weird
i was implying this in my original post

that entire style of gameplay is a relic of a bygone era - and the zx is stacked with them,
i know this, as an american, without ever even touching the hardware

>>8828338
its 2pm anonkun

>>8828341
>that entire style of gameplay is a relic of a bygone era
What if I told you interactive fiction (aka text adventures) is a living, active genre to this day? Virtually nothing commercial exists though, they can't compete with the free offerings, many of which make even Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls look crude.

>>8828343
A fucking leaf

>>8828371
>many of which make even Infocom and Magnetic Scrolls look crude.
Name two. Best of luck

>>8828384
From a writing standpoint: Spider and Web by Andrew Plotkin has its central puzzle require a mental shift that was jaw-dropping for me. Photopia by Adam Cadre is less gamey and more narrative, but moving and beautiful. Those are both old enough to be full-on retro, yet postdate the collapse of commercial IF by like a decade. (1998 was a banner year for IF)
Counterfeit Monkey by Emily Short is only nine years old, but is amazing on so many levels it's stunning.
From 2020, I'm told The Impossible Bottle by Linus Akesson is wonderful and full of clever puzzles, though I haven't played it yet. (I've been somewhat out of the IF loop the past couple of years, but I still talk to some of my friends from the community.)

So you see, Brendan Fraser, the genre survived the death of commercial text adventures and has been chugging along for decades.

>>8828441
Now that you've posted a spuriously dribble-piss effort, might I also ask if you ever played Cutthroats, Deadline, or The Guild of Thieves? Answers on your mom's arse

>>8825385
This looks a lot sturdier than a real Speccy, very cool.
>>8825629
I own two 2068s and would not recommend one to anyone for playing games. You need a Spectrum ROM cartridge to play anything, and then the joystick ports don't work nor the extra sound channels. It's really quite pointless when an Omni costs less and does about 100x more. A lot of modern TVs do PAL fine, and with CRTs you can just adjust the vertical hold. Also, you can just buy a compatible PSU for your country, you don't have to build anything... it's just a plain 9V adapter; but I've forgotten the polarity.

>>8828571
>This looks a lot sturdier than a real Speccy, very cool.
That was a cheap knock-off of hardware already cheaply smushed together. It's was never going to be sturdier than it original counterpart. Jesus Christ, you little spastics must've really got on your parent's nerves

>>8828378
even worse anonkun
i am in the bay area of california

>>8828571
https://www.retrotechlab.com/sinclair-zx-spectrum-power-supply-polarity-a-simple-guide/
https://dfarq.homeip.net/sega-genesis-power-supply-specs/

A Mega Drive PSU will work with a Spectrum and has a compatible center negative polarity.

>>8828636
hmm, I see what you mean but the Spectrum has a slightly higher amperage requirement (1.4A). While a Mega Drive PSU (1.2A) will work it might run warm and not be so good for it.

>>8828654
>>8828636
A Mega Drive PSU is fine as a bare Spectrum with no add-ons only draws 850ma.

>>8828493
Yes, yes, and yes. Those aren't even Infocom's best. (Though GoT is arguably Magnetic's best.)

>>8828493
>spuriously dribble-piss effort
Also you asked for two, I gave you four, fuck you.

>>8828571
>and with CRTs you can just adjust the vertical hold
But you won't get any color because the color signal PAL uses is completely different.

>>8828441
>Spider and Web
Bullshit "read the author's mind" puzzle that's famous purely for ignoring genre conventions.
>Photopia
Visual novel without the visuals.

Lost Pig is the best modern-era text adventure. Comedy is the only good adventure genre (both text and graphical), because it's the only genre that doesn't collapse when you run into the inevitable world model absurdities.

>>8828891
>ignoring genre conventions
Turning genre conventions on their head is exactly what I'd expect from any author who wants to do new and challenging things with the medium.
And there's no "read the author's mind" needed, you just need to catch on to the various clues that are dropped. I mean, it literally tells you the central conceit like two or three times in succession, right at the very beginning, in a way that you can't ignore. The usual trouble is that people have forgotten how it began by the time they get to the part where it becomes really important.

I'll grant you Photopia is light on the gamey end of things, but that's okay. I wanted my picks to cover a range of different angles, and that's my pick for the narrative story-heavy side of IF, for a game whose writing goes well above what you find in commercial IF.

>>8828612
I'm not sure how my parents are relevant to this conversation, but you've clearly never touched a spectrum. They're cheap as shit and flimsy by design. It's not at all unusual for 3rd world Spectrum clones to be more tank-like.
>>8828748
Absolutely. I only have a green phosphor CRT so I didn't think to mention it.

>>8829198
if you mean commie Spectrum clones, yes they were built like tanks because they didn't have to worry about market forces to keep the cost down and commie shit was as standard practice made to military specs

https://youtu.be/IagZIM9MtLo

Good for homework.

>>8826883
The Stampers could program already and had created some arcade games, they chose the Spectrum because they were already familiar with Z80.

>>8828240
Slaine was a weirdo text game.

>>8830115
Oh yeah, I played the C64 port. "Weird as fuck" is a good descriptor of its mechanics. Still fun though