Retro Gaming’s Journey From MacGyver To The Masses
As retro gaming moves closer to the mainstream, I’m going to explore the scene over the next few months. Before then, let’s look back at the retro handset I bodged together during lockdown.
Tag: zx spectrum
The Birth Of Retro Spectrum
I’ve been working away at building a small community around livestreams, clips, and reviews, of ZX Spectrum games. Here’s how it started and what the next few steps are.
Nostalgia is typing everything exactly as you see it printed
Usborne computing have released two new books for children to learn about computers and programming (they are Key Stage 1 level, if that means anything to you). ‘Lift The Flap Computers and Coding‘ and ‘Coding For Beginners Using Scratch‘ may be popular in school libraries in the next year or two, but it’s what Usborne released for free download next to these titles that excites me. The full range of their early 1980s Computer Guides… some of the books that started me programming on the ZX Spectrum. Including the classic ‘Computer Spacegames‘, which was the first of the guidebooks I remember. The full
Shut up, it’s not a ZX Spectrum
Lots of easy headlines from the tabloids for a crowd funding project that runs a ZX Spectrum emulator inside a joypad that looks a bit like a ZX spectrum if you removed all the keys, the programming language, the I/O ports, the edge connector, and Fantasy World Dizzt. It’s not a ZX Spectrum. It’s a console. And you can say ‘Bah Humbug’ all you like.
Rubber key mats, Z80s, and a USB Spectrum
One-off Etsy design of a USB keyboard in a ZX Spectrum housing. Its almost as expensive as the original ZX Spectrum. Part of me hopes that the guts of the Spectrum donated for this project are being hardwired into an Apple Bluetooth keyboard to make a futuristic iSpectrum.
LOAD "Google" SCREEN$
Congratulations on landing something memorable for the Google Doodle on the 30th anniversary of the ZX Spectrum, but (a) did we have to share it with St George and (b) given the lack of complexity on show, I suspect the designer was not a master of ZX Spectrum artwork… Yes it follows the rules, but there’s an art to packing in info on a Speccy Screen, and this isn’t quite it.
