When was zx spectrum released

It was his first project straight out of college and he was thrown in at the deep end. He had to squeeze a full keyboard and many other functions onto a very small area, have keys that moved, and a very efficient and cost-effective solution. The result would become a classic and iconic example of '80s product design. Even though the majority of consumers were skeptical that they needed a home computer, several hit the market at around the same time. The Commodore 64, the Dragon 32, and the BBC Model B were all tough competitors, but Sinclair came in cheaper, and with its very small but stylised look, it was one that felt more like a high tech toy.

It was within the price range of skeptical parents when their kids wanted a home computer ostensibly for playing games! Manufactured in the Timex factory in Dundee, the ZX Spectrum led to Dundee becoming a vibrant game development cluster that's still a significant one today, with Abertay University offering the first computer games degree in the world in And yet that was the ZX Spectrum revolution. All this success culminated in a knighthood for Britain's most famous geek, arise Sir Clive Sinclair, whilst newspapers carried many stories of teenage 'whizz kid' game developers getting rich and buying fast cars.

Software publishers and developers sprang up everywhere to feed this new market. These were pocket money games that kids could afford to buy weekly. Mastertronic was first, but was quickly followed by Firebird, Players, Codemasters, and then many more. With customers buying a game a week, many new games were needed.

This led to enormous opportunities for young game developers, and the variety of games available exploded. Whilst creativity was going wild, and the diversity was giving rise to new genres, the quality was very random. However, this gave opportunity to the leading magazines, Crash and Your Sinclair, that thrived on rating and advising players on what they should buy. We, meanwhile, watched from afar and saw that whilst the Spectrum was the biggest market for computer games, it's one that we had missed In , we'd made our choice to buy a Dragon 32, because of its proper keyboard.

By this point we knew exactly how to make great games fast and this was a relatively soft market, with most good games developers on other computers. In , after the huge success of Super Robin Hood our first game published by then newcomer Codemasters , they arranged to convert it to the Spectrum.

We started into our next game, Ghost Hunters, and a Spectrum turned up in the post from Codemasters co-founder David Darling, with a note: "Here's a gift, why don't you put Ghost Hunters on to this yourselves and have all the royalties. We spoke to a friend working at Bath University in electronics and asked him if it was possible to link our Amstrad to the Spectrum, since we had an Assembler ROM and disk drive on this. The Speccy used audio cassette tapes for loading and saving programs and data.

Users had to be very careful to adjust the volume in order to get a program or game to load properly. The ZX Spectrum quickly became a symbol of British technological progress and introduced home computers to the masses. Many teenagers soon realized they could be paid to do what they enjoyed most: Video games.

A few years later, I even coded some programs for local companies and associations that I was involved with. I was not a coder of games --I never created any famous game or anything like that," Ramos continued. The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was officially discontinued in However, one of the most loved home computers of all time remains active and alive thanks to enthusiasts, collectors, and historians around the world. The ZX Spectrum will never die, and so, we celebrate its birthday every year.

Sir Clive Sinclair is an English entrepreneur and inventor globally known, loved, and recognized for his work in consumer electronics during the late s and early s. Sinclair has influenced generations and has gained special recognition and admiration by many electronic and software engineers as well as electronics enthusiasts, collectors, and historians of vintage electronics all over the world.

Both Tedeschi and Ramos have contributed hours of personal and dedicated work to collect and share their passion and collections with thousands of others around the world.

Enrico Tedeschi was an Italian historian and collector of vintage electronics. He possessed 10, artifacts as part of his personal collection. He organized the world's first dedicated public exhibition on Sinclair's work, which included many consumer electronics successes as well as the ill-fated C5 electric trike.

The main printed circuit board was kept as small and dense as possible, which resulted in a very lithe chassis just 23x14x3cm, compared to the monstrous 40x21x7cm Commodore 64 and gargantuan 40x35x8cm BBC Micro. The ZX Spectrum was wrapped in a plastic case and weighed just grams 1. In short, the ZX Spectrum was simply better engineered than its contemporaries — much like iPhone , except Apple uses its engineering and supply line advantage to squeeze out higher profits, rather than slashing prices.

Home Computing ZX Spectrum: 30 years old, and still one of the cheapest computers ever made. This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page.