5 ms·

As somebody who grew up with the Amstrad CPC in France (it was the best selling 8-bit micro there), I've always found the cult status of the ZX Spectrum in the

As somebody who grew up with the Amstrad CPC in France (it was the best selling 8-bit micro there), I've always found the cult status of the ZX Spectrum in the UK difficult to rationalise. IMO, it's the biggest f***ing rose-tinted reality distortion field in all of retrocomputing. I appreciate that the Spectrum was an affordable entry point into the fascinating world of computing, and that it had a bit of a first mover advantage in the UK market. But the vastly superior C64 was released only a few months later, and the also-British Amstrad CPC two years after that. How could the Speccy remain so popular ? Let me try to explain : The Amstrad had a built-in colour monitor + tape drive for the same price as the C64 (with also a cheaper green screen option), a fully RGB video signal (unlike the C64), a faster clocked Z80 CPU than the Spectrum, the best graphics capability of the three by far (16 colours 160x200 with a great palette, 4 colours 320x200, monochrome 640x200, no colour clash), the same AY sound chip found later in the 128K Spectrum, standard Atari-style joystick ports, a decent keyboard, and the easiest and most capable BASIC flavour too. The C64 had a weird palette (no red !), but also hardware sprites which allowed smooth arcade-like gameplay, and the undisputed king of sound chips : the SID. I can't think of a single hardware advantage for the Spectrum. Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the Amstrad's worldwide unit sales (3 million in 6 years) were not far from the Amiga (4 million in 7 years) or even the Spectrum (5 million in 10 years). They're all dwarfed by the C64's ~15 million, though. Software availability was similar : most games were released on all 3 platforms. The Amstrad did suffer from some disappointing (but easy to avoid) lazy Spectrum game ports from smaller UK publishers, but the larger ones (e.g. Ocean) also produced some of its finest games (the Amstrad ports of Gryzor, Chase HQ, Operation Wolf, Rainbow Islands, Dragon Ninja... are all the best 8-bit conversions of the arcade). This was also balanced by French & Spanish publishers that were all Amstrad-first. In short : IMHO the most interesting and relevant 8-bit match is "C64 vs Amstrad CPC". These two were actually playing in the same league. Yet, the dominant conversation online today still seems to be all about "C64 vs Spectrum" and I find that puzzling, as if people were still seriously arguing today that the Atari ST was a more capable and legendary computer than the Amiga. Bitmap Books released a series of "visual commpedium" art books featuring the Amiga (of course), the C64 (fair enough), the Spectrum (lol for a gfx book), but still not the Amstrad CPC to this day. Some of this may be down to ignorance : I came across people who were simply unaware of the CPC's graphics prowess compared to the Spectrum, as they had only ever seen "green screen" Amstrads, if any. Others had lazy Speccy ports in mind when they argued the CPC was slower and couldn't do smooth scrolling (I show them Pinball Dreams : https://youtu.be/yl_MSCpGC0M?t=1377 https://youtu.be/yl_MSCpGC0M?t=1377) But I wonder if besides the nostalgia goggles & ignorance, there's maybe a different taste for pixel art aesthetics at play ? I was stunned to hear that some people preferred the Spectrum in this games graphics comparison I've put together : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd What ?! I'm curious to know what unbiased younger people think about that one...

TMWNN 4y ago
>As somebody who grew up with the Amstrad CPC in France (it was the best selling 8-bit micro there), I've always found the cult status of the ZX Spectrum in the UK difficult to rationalise. IMO, it's the biggest f**ing rose-tinted reality distortion field in all of retrocomputing. I don't get it either. 64 was and is clearly the better choice over Spectrum—superior in every single way other than perhaps the BASIC—but the relatively small price difference even then (and even more 40 years later) was enough to cause many Britons to choose the latter. That said, there is a reason why 64 dominated the wealthier US, Canada, Germany, and Australia. The only explanation I can come up with is that we all feel nostalgia for our youth, no matter the circumstances. But there is a difference between respecting the creativity borne of technical limits (what happens with ZX81), and actually celebrating those limits as virtues as happens with Spectrum. One might feel nostalgic for the happy days of youth, even if one grew up in a poor ghetto. But not so much if one associated with others with better living quarters. Nowhere in the UK is a town where families could only afford Spectrums; rather, every schoolyard rang with debates between Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, and BBC Micro owners on their computers' merits. (They all uniformly pitied the owners of Oric, Dragon, and other true also-rans in the UK market.) It's one thing as a 13-year old Spectrum user to stand up to the taunts of the C64 owners by bravely citing any possible superiority (or, in this case, minimizing the uniform inferiority), but to still do so 40 years later?!?
- antod 4y ago
  Small price difference? When I bought a Spectrum as a kid, the C64 cost about 2/3rds again as much and way out of reach.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
Narishma 4y ago
> I was stunned to hear that some people preferred the Spectrum in this games graphics comparison I've put together : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd Maybe it has nothing to do with graphics. Having no nostalgia for either machines, in the video comparisons I've seen on youtube the Spectrum games tend to run much smoother than the CPC versions.

TMWNN 4y ago

>As somebody who grew up with the Amstrad CPC in France (it was the best selling 8-bit micro there), I've always found the cult status of the ZX Spectrum in the UK difficult to rationalise. IMO, it's the biggest f**ing rose-tinted reality distortion field in all of retrocomputing. I don't get it either. 64 was and is clearly the better choice over Spectrum—superior in every single way other than perhaps the BASIC—but the relatively small price difference even then (and even more 40 years later) was enough to cause many Britons to choose the latter. That said, there is a reason why 64 dominated the wealthier US, Canada, Germany, and Australia. The only explanation I can come up with is that we all feel nostalgia for our youth, no matter the circumstances. But there is a difference between respecting the creativity borne of technical limits (what happens with ZX81), and actually celebrating those limits as virtues as happens with Spectrum. One might feel nostalgic for the happy days of youth, even if one grew up in a poor ghetto. But not so much if one associated with others with better living quarters. Nowhere in the UK is a town where families could only afford Spectrums; rather, every schoolyard rang with debates between Spectrum, C64, Amstrad, and BBC Micro owners on their computers' merits. (They all uniformly pitied the owners of Oric, Dragon, and other true also-rans in the UK market.) It's one thing as a 13-year old Spectrum user to stand up to the taunts of the C64 owners by bravely citing any possible superiority (or, in this case, minimizing the uniform inferiority), but to still do so 40 years later?!?

antod 4y ago
Small price difference? When I bought a Spectrum as a kid, the C64 cost about 2/3rds again as much and way out of reach.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

Narishma 4y ago

> I was stunned to hear that some people preferred the Spectrum in this games graphics comparison I've put together : https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd https://imgur.com/a/D7Ocd Maybe it has nothing to do with graphics. Having no nostalgia for either machines, in the video comparisons I've seen on youtube the Spectrum games tend to run much smoother than the CPC versions.