Don't forget the ZX Spectrum!

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by brettallica

I'd never even heard of this thing until I Googled it just now. Looks like it was mainly a UK system. Am I right about that?

yes, which is why it isnt widely known (at least outside the UK and apparently Russia), and it's games dont turn up on the Wii like C64 games do.
A real shame as there's some great stuff available for it. Ultimate Play The Game are probably the most well known company, and they did brilliant packaging as well.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

[brettallica]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

yes, which is why it isnt widely known (at least outside the UK and apparently Russia), and it's games dont turn up on the Wii like C64 games do.
A real shame as there's some great stuff available for it. Ultimate Play The Game are probably the most well known company, and they did brilliant packaging as well.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

Originally Posted by quirkmanly

I know that there were some Spanish language titles produced, so I had always assumed that they were available on mainland Europe too, but it was a mainly British phenomenon. They were huge at my school.

They were eventually edged out by Commodore Amigas, Atari STs and the Sega Megadrive.

The system looks really cool, and I think I would like to try it. There appears to be a lot of support for emulators out there, so I might have to give that a gander. I bet these games look phenomenal on the good ol' big screen HDTV! Anyone have any experience with that?

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by brettallica

The system looks really cool, and I think I would like to try it. There appears to be a lot of support for emulators out there, so I might have to give that a gander. I bet these games look phenomenal on the good ol' big screen HDTV! Anyone have any experience with that?

yes, I plugged my 'new' 128k into my 40" HDTV via an RGB Scart (you have to get a special one made-up), and it looked fantastic. What's nice is that when the TV is set to zoom mode, the image fits the screen horizontally perfectly, as it takes off the top and bottom unused borders.

It's been a little awkward to keep the Speccy in the sitting room to use, with all the cables (and the Scart doesn't reach my sofa), so I've ended up putting it with the portable TV in the bedroom for now.

[kingofgrills]

I never did get the ZX Spectrum. My dad ordered the ZX 81 kit, which he assembled in his shop. He was an electrical engineer for the government, and always brought home random keyboards, oscilliscopes, and huge magnetic drives that were put out to be scrapped. Anyway, he wired one of the full-sized mainframe keyboards to the ZX 81, so we wouldn't have to use the crappy membrane keyboard.

After we had the ZX81 a while, we jumped to the Texas Instruments TI 99 4/A, and then the Commodore 64, followed by the C 128. I totally missed the Spectrum.

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by kingofgrills

I never did get the ZX Spectrum. My dad ordered the ZX 81 kit, which he assembled in his shop. He was an electrical engineer for the government, and always brought home random keyboards, oscilliscopes, and huge magnetic drives that were put out to be scrapped. Anyway, he wired one of the full-sized mainframe keyboards to the ZX 81, so we wouldn't have to use the crappy membrane keyboard.

After we had the ZX81 a while, we jumped to the Texas Instruments TI 99 4/A, and then the Commodore 64, followed by the C 128. I totally missed the Spectrum.

eBay. It's never too late.
You need one of the 128k or above models though, as they support RGB connections. The 16k and 48k models only have rf connections, which are on the same frequency as channel 5, and as such render the machine unusable.

[brettallica]

Check out this sweet system:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=260653497538

[serpheus]

I swapped my nes for a speccy a decision i regretted for a long time.

[Eidolon]

Originally Posted by brettallica

Check out this sweet system:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=260653497538

strange, i've never seen one designed like that before. He'll be lucky to sell it at that price.

[Eny-]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

yes, which is why it isnt widely known (at least outside the UK and apparently Russia), and it's games dont turn up on the Wii like C64 games do.
A real shame as there's some great stuff available for it. Ultimate Play The Game are probably the most well known company, and they did brilliant packaging as well.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org

It was big in Europe, not just the UK. I had 4 Speccy in my time. The 48k and then when the company got picked up by Amstrad the 128k +2, +2A and 3

Still have the +2 and +2A systems

[TheWildWhelk]

I'm running Windows XP Pro (Avid doesn't make friends with XP Home) so any recomendations for a top-notch ZX Spectrum emulator? I have loads of speccy game files, but not sure what's the best emulator to run 'em on for XP. Cheers guys...

[Eidolon]

try Worldofspectrum.org for advice.

Amstrad should make a BD player with a built in Speccy emulator.....

[Eidolon]

my +2a seems to have stopped loading tapes for some reason. Can't figure out what's wrong with it.

[TheWildWhelk]

Originally Posted by Eidolon

try Worldofspectrum.org for advice.

Amstrad should make a BD player with a built in Speccy emulator.....

My workload has finally eased and i've managed to find a fully shareware ZX Spectrum emulator that runs just fine on Windows 7, namely the first-class 'Fuse' emulator. Combined that with my library of Spectrum titles mostly gotten from WorldOfSpectrum.org and i'm extremely happy. Even managed to source the 'rarer' (ahaha!) titles from Ultimate Play The Game like Bubbler and Martianoids.

[L-Rouge]

Yea I had a ZX Spectrum 48k, I likely thrashed Starquake and Camelot the most, followed by Eric (a very cool Bomber man style game) and School Daze/Back to School and Ghost Rider. oohh and Capcom's Commando. I had a demo of Marsport (awesome) and Sweevo's World but the latter needed a password which I never nailed .