Post by Riccardo RubiniSorry, I still prefer a computer that has a built-in interface, just like
the Commodore's did. It's was a better investment and it still would be
today, on parallel with modern technology.
As do I, but that doesn't take away the fact that there are many good
Speccy games out there if you look.
Post by Riccardo RubiniFewer people were able to buy computers here in Italy - my motherland was
definitely poorer than yours during the Commodore/Sinclair boom, circa 1983.
The typical computer was out of reach for many families here too,
until Sinclair came along...
Post by Riccardo RubiniThe fact people had few money made computers a sort of long-time
investments, that's why the majority chose the Commodore over the Sinclair,
regardless the fact Commodore computers were a little more expensive. It was
unthinkable, in those times, to upgrade every couple of years. And those
people ended up, indeed, with a good investment for a while, buying the C64.
The C64 got "old" in the early 90's, it was "current" during the whole 80's.
How long till a modern PC gets obsolete? A few months?
...which made home computers here a long-term investment. Consider
that the Sinclair Spectrum's commercial lifespan was around 10 years
here, for a computer that ended up costing around the £100 mark for
the 48k model, that's quite impressive. The PC market is crazy, and I
won't join that rat-race for sure.
Post by Riccardo RubiniThe Speccy, on the other side, saw many upgrades, which were mostly both
commercial and industrial failures. Sir Clive was just lucky. He knows that,
that's why he, despite a former interview he gave a couple of years ago,
prefers to stick playing poker, rather than returning to the computer
market. Besides, do you believe a real innovator would snub the Internet on
purpose? The guy had his fifteen minutes of glory in the eighties and now
he's just another millionaire who play cards on Saturday evenings.
Sir Clive was an inventor foremost. Making the home computer within
the reach of the typical British family, when unemployment was
raising, didn't fall down to luck. As for being a millionaire, I don't
know his financial situation, but the QL, his "super computer",
largely failed despite being a perfectly capable machine even for
1984. He then went on to develop the Cambridge Z88. I think that there
was some clause stipulated by Amstrad that he couldn't set up a rival
company to compete with it. I can't remember the facts.
Post by Riccardo RubiniI have read many articles about intellectual protectionism of the British
people, as well as people reporting, after trips made to London, that it's
quite hard to convince British people to buy foreigner goods, if a British
alternative is available ( ie. food, clothes, etc. ).
Really? I don't remember that. London is different to the rest of the
UK; in itself, it is something like the 8th biggest economy in Europe.
The same can't be said about the rest of the UK. In my own small town
of Cheshire (during the 80s), my family purchased what they could
afford regardless of where it was made. That's why we had American
computers and not British computers, but then I was lucky in that my
dad worked, even if it was just for £2 per hour. A lot of people
around me had parents who couldn't find jobs and had little or
nothing. I was one of the few children in school who had a computer at
home, and I was very lucky for that.
Post by Riccardo RubiniLet's face it: british people are mildly all nationalists and hence often
even racist. You easily read it in the press, when Italians are referred as
"greasy wops" by a Tory candidate or Germans called "krauts" by the
Advertising Standards Agency of UK.
Tories are generally Euro-sceptic, anti-socialist, pro-free trade,
don't believe in society and, if people find themselves unemployed,
have no sympathy. We are not all tories in the UK.
Post by Riccardo RubiniProbably because those American computers were so much better to win over
the inner British imperial grandeur of customers. Seriously, I don't know,
really. Because they are good? Most likely.
That kind of goes against your arguement above that the British only
buy British. Even after Margaret Thatcher - the women who split up
traditional working class communities and took away most of their jobs
for the sake of the richest 1 or 10% of the UK - put a BBC Micro in
every school, (that's right - BBC, how nationalistic is that?), people
still chose foriegn computers in their droves. The only British
manufacturer to do well was Sinclair and then maybe Amstrad. The CPC
was always 3rd place though in terms of home computing. And then Amiga
came along - yes, another foriegn import.
Don't believe everything your read about the UK. I remember speaking
to an eastern European who seemed to think that I would be earning at
least £20,000 per year (this was about 6 years ago). At the time, I
was earning less than half of that. and I had what I considered to be
a good job.
Post by Riccardo RubiniBritain is not the world. You might have seen a race between the two taking
place in the british market, but for the rest, expecially in Germany, Italy,
Austria, Spain and, ultimately, France, there was almost no real
competition. The pound exchange rate made often even poor men's computers
marketed as a gourmet food.
I never said Britian was the world. Of course, I don't know what
happened elsewhere, but to sell nearly a million computers in the UK,
when unemployment was raising and families couldn't afford luxuries,
was no mean feat. Even if I had Italian computer magazines from the
early 80s, I couldn't read them.
Post by Riccardo RubiniOf course, it's my opinion. But yet you have to tell me, right out of the
box, what the Speccy had to offer more than a programmable pocket
calculator. Just think of that hideous keyboard. Typing a letter or a Basic
listing on that? There's enough to shiver at the thought.
The Spectrum had 16 or 48k. The typical programmable calculator had
maybe 2 or 4k. Sinclair BASIC may have been a bit quirky, but you
could at least get started with it. It was easy to do things like make
loading screens, and of course you had 256 x 192 resolution, with 2
colours per 8 x 8 attribute block. The pallette might have been a bit
crude, but from the 8 colours available, 7 could be 'bright'.
Programmable calculators had a dot matrix screen with typically a
smaller resolution and no colour attributes at all. And the Spectrum
could use a standard TV, whereas I don't have any programmable
calculators that have a TV output. Later revisions had an AY sound
chip, 128k and got rid of the "one-touch" BASIC. This was therefore a
good machine for a first home computer for many people. It also
provided a good blank canvass for some quality games to be produced on
it. I'm not a big fan of the hardware, but I have to acknowledge how
fun the games could be. I'm not saying that all games were good
either. But playing R-Type, for instance, on an emulator just doesn't
do the game justice.
The irony here is that Sir Clive didn't make a games machine, he
wanted to make an educational computer. Children therefore coned their
parents into buying them a Spectrum to help with School work, when
what they really wanted was to play 3D Ant Attack or Jet Pac.
Post by Riccardo RubiniAw, that computer was even more crap than the Speccy, expecially when you
compare it with a PET.
Of course it was, but then again it sold well and got people
interested in home computing. For something so unsophisticated, this
was remarkable.
Post by Riccardo RubiniIt was dirt ( period ). CMD supported the C64 because the computer was so
widely successful that they could do so. The Speccy simply faded away and no
company would have made a penny supporting it throughout 2001. Despite the
C64 worldwide success, even in 2001 CMD was unable to pay its bills solely
by selling Commodore stuff.
Of course. But I suspect that the Spectrum software revival since 2002
has produced firstly some very good games and secondly has been more
sucessful when compared to anything released for the C64 in this time.
By released, I do of course mean onto real media. This is worth noting
because the Spectrum is much less sophisticated than the C64, and all
of the games have been released on cassette tape. People wouldn't
invest money and time into loading a game onto a Spectrum if it wasn't
worth playing.
Post by Riccardo RubiniAnd Sinclair just vanished, after selling a bunch of repackaged Speccy of
dubious quality.
Sinclair were swallowed up by Amstrad. The QL was dropped, and the
Spectrum was given an Amstrad makeover.
Post by Riccardo RubiniIt depens how you rank a game. I mean, following which rules Shaun ranks
games he likes and those he likes not. If you don't care about graphics, you
don't care about sound, you don't care about overall playbility and
compatibility with the average Joe's hardware, maybe not all Speccy games
were rubbish.
How many Spectrum games have you actually played in comparison to C64
games? If you were being objective, then you would explore all aspects
of 8-bit gaming. And you can't say that all Speccy games had poor
graphics or poor sound, because it isn't true. More recent examples,
such as Farmer Jack, prove that the AY-equipped Spectrum is perfectly
capable of producing sound, and I quite like the look and sound of
splATTR, although this is 128k only. I also remember being amazed by
Trapdoor, but when I was much younger.
Post by Riccardo RubiniI am not saying all VIC-20 games were better. Of course, some were poorly
coded. On the average, a game wisely coded for the VIC-20 would end up
looking and playing better than a Speccy 16k counterpart.
Really? Can you prove that? Looking better, as in more colourful but
also at a lower resolution. Perils of Willy has colour attribute clash
on the VIC-20, if my memory serves. And I know that Jelly Monsters has
colour attribute clash and flickering software sprites. That doesn't
make these games any less worthy of playing.
I'm not saying that all Speccy games were better. I simply make the
point that the Spectrum had and has some good games. I am not a fan of
the ZX Spectrum as a piece of hardware.
Post by Riccardo RubiniIt depends what you're after. Nowadays, personally speaking, if it weren't
for nostalgia, I would despise Commodore games as well. It's often hard for
me to look backwards rather than forward thinking at gaming; I do certainly
miss the vast fantasy of the 80's games, there were so many cool game ideas
back then contrary to now, but playing on the Speccy, even in emulation
mode, is so painful even the best idea seems spoiled and raped by the utter
machine's limitations.
I'll point out that emulation doesn't always do Speccy games justice.
R-Type, for instance, seems to play much better on a real machine. So
does splATTR and GameX.
Post by Riccardo RubiniThat's not true. I played many PC games, and the even the PC speaker, when
cleverly used, was able to play better music than the Speccy ever did.
You've played many PC games. How many Spectrum games have you played?
Have you even given them a chance? So, you have heard everything that
has been done with the Speccy's 'beeper'? It is quiet, but it can be
amplified quite easily.
Post by Riccardo RubiniI will avoid any comment on that.
Come to think of it, hmm.... RUBBER....!
Regards,
Shaun.