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At a press conference at the Churchill Hotel on Friday the 23rd of April 1982, Sir Clive Sinclair revealed to the world his new home computer: the ZX Spectrum.
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| The ZX Spectrum is 25 years old! The "speccy" has
brought joy to millions of users in the UK and around the world. With games
such as Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and Atic Atac (to name
a few of the many thousands), it was a machine that brought affordable, quality
gaming entertainment to the masses. It also introduced many people to computer
programming, by using the Sinclair BASIC language. |
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| The famous rubber-keyed Spectrum was originally released in two versions, the 16K and 48K models. In October of 1984, Sinclair Research released the ZX Spectrum +, boasting a more "standard" keyboard. Next came their 128K model in early 1986, which also boasted 3-channel sound as well as the beeper. In 1986 Amstrad bought the Spectrum range, and they went on to release the ZX Spectrum +2 (with a built in tape player), and the ZX Spectrum +3 (with a built in disk drive) |  |
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Sabre Wulf on the ZX Spectrum |
The speccy scene is still very much alive and kicking. The games of
yesteryear can now be played via emulation on almost any platform around. The
official World of Spectrum web
site has a huge archive of thousands of games to download and play for free.
You can also download an emulator to play these games on, for almost any
platform (PC/Mac/etc). A thriving community also exists on the site's forums.
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