History Platform / ZXSpectrum

* ''VideoGame/{{Commando}}''

The Spectrum+, introduced in 1984, was essentially a ProductFacelift, replacing the rubber keyboard with a plastic one, modeled after the failed Sinclair QL (an abortive attempt to create a business machine to compete with the IBM PC), and fixing some graphics bugs. The third and final Sinclair Spectrum, developed in collaboration with Spanish distributor Investronica, was the 128, in 1986. This had 128K of RAM, an even better BASIC, UsefulNotes/{{MIDI}}, a monitor port, and three-channel sound.

The Speccy is based on a couple of earlier computers, the [=ZX80=] and UsefulNotes/ZX81. These were little more than a Z80 processor, an incomplete 4K version of BASIC, 1K of RAM, and a membrane keyboard — the first releases were sold as kits. The Z80 drew the text-only screen (when it wasn't busy), video output was to a TV set, and programs were stored on audio cassettes. The primitiveness was deliberate — the [=ZX80=] was designed to be the cheapest computer on the market, and the [=ZX81=] made the original design even cheaper. The [=ZX81=] was only £70 (or $100) in 1981, and sold over a million units. The Speccy, designed to be the cheapest ''color'' computer on the market, improved on the [=ZX81=] with a 16K almost-complete BASIC, 16K or 48K of RAM, a video chip, a beeper, and a rubber keyboard.

The Speccy was released in April 1982 at £125 for the 16K model and £175 for 48K, dropping as time went on. Sinclair was swamped with orders. The low price allowed the Speccy to hold its own against more technologically advanced competitors such as the UsefulNotes/{{Commodore 64}}, UsefulNotes/BBCMicro and UsefulNotes/AmstradCPC. Sales figures went into the millions, mostly of the 48K model, and it brought Britain into the home computer age (and earned its inventor, Clive Sinclair, [[UsefulNotes/KnightFever a knighthood]][[note]]well, except for the little fact that Uncle Clive had nothing to do with the ''design'' of any of his company computer products; Speccy hardware was designed by Sinclair Research's Richard Altwasser, and Steve Vickers of the Nine Tiles wrote the system software, including Basic 48[[/note]]).

As a video game computer, the ZX Spectrum had some blatant technical deficiencies: games [[LoadsAndLoadsOfLoading loaded slowly]] (and quite noisily) from cassette tapes, and monochrome display windows were a frequent result of the graphics hardware's unique limitations on color[[note]]Specifically, an artefact called "attribute clash", in that attempting to add more than two colours in a tile results in rather glaring bleeding effects especially on complex artwork, workarounds to which have been devised by programmers throughout and after the Spectrum's commercial lifetime[[/note]]. Yet the Speccy's importance to the 1980s European video game scene should not be underestimated; practically every British video game company supported the system to a greater or lesser extent. The ease of porting games from ZX Spectrum to the Amstrad CPC and UsefulNotes/{{MSX}} often resulted in the reproduction of the Speccy's technical faults on those computers' more powerful hardware, much to players' annoyance.

The demise of the Speccy in the early 1990s isn't the end of the story. Because it's so simple, it's easy to clone. The first Speccy clone was an authorized version by Timex (yes, the wristwatch company) sold in the United States (for a few months), Portugal and Poland. The most ambitious Speccy-compatible computer was Miles Gordon Technology's SAM Coupé, which featured enhanced graphics and sound hardware that were intended to make it a low-end competitor to the UsefulNotes/AtariST and UsefulNotes/{{Amiga}}. Unauthorized Speccy clones started appearing in the Soviet Union in the mid-1980s, followed by several countries in eastern Europe, along with India, Brazil and Argentina. The Soviets used their clone of the chipset as an embedded system for controlling industrial machinery, and it's still in limited production in Russia.