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Sir Clive Sinclair is dead

Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
This probably won't gain much traction here as it's a British gaming related thing from the distant past, but Sir Clive Sinclair, responsible for the ZX (that's "zed-ecks") Spectrum has died.

In the early 80's, computers hadn't made much headway into British homes so he developed (along with other people like the dear departed Rick Dickinson) a series of computers that were extremely cheap to buy. While antiquated by today's standards these machines were most people's first exposure to computers and the likes of BASIC. From this, the British computing industry was born, leading to such luminaries as Rare, who as Ultimate Play The Game released some of the best and most impressive Spectrum (or Speccy, to its mates) games.

The 8 bit era here was largely dominated by the Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad CPC, with consoles as a distanst second place, and it's largely due to the work of people like Sir Clive.

Then he tried to get into the electric vehicle business 35 years too early, but that's another story...
 
ArugulaZ

ArugulaZ

Fearful asymmetry
It's really hard for an American to appreciate the Spectrum, considering that we had more powerful hardware at equivalent prices. Sometimes those prices weren't obtained through natural or even ethical means... the game crash of 1983 resulted in obscenely low costs for consoles, and an effort by Texas Instruments, Atari, et al to compete with the Commodore 64 on price doomed those computers. (Fun fact: Jack Tramiel kept prices low by essentially bilking parts manufacturers out of their products. He wouldn't pay for what he ordered, and anyone who kept sending him parts anyway would bankrupt themselves, letting him buy the companies and forgive himself of the debt he accrued.)

But yeah, to an American's eyes, ZX Spectrum games are rough. There are no sprites, no hardware scrolling, very few colors (with only two allowed to occupy the same 8x8 space on the screen), and a single channel buzzer in place of a more robust sound chip. Yet it was cheap and it was local, so that's what British folks used for many years. Overachieving arcade games like Midnight Resistance and Strider wound up on the Spectrum, around the time more impressive Sega Genesis versions were available. I'm pretty sure people are STILL making Spectrum games in 2021... it had that much of a grip on British pop culture.

I'd recommend that people watch the BBC film Micro Men. It's not an especially objective look at the home computer wars of Great Britain, but you'll still learn a lot. Thrill to nerds designing the BBC microcomputer while eating Chinese food with their multimeter probes! Feel a chill from Clive Sinclair's dubious hardware and volcanic temper! Feel slightly embarrassed for Chris Curry when he walks into a British version of Electronics Boutique and finds next to no games for his BBC Micro! Feel even MORE embarrassed for Clive Sinclair when his 16-bit QL craters and he's forced to sell his business to Alan Sugar, Great Britain's answer to Donald Trump!

Oh, what the heck. Here's a compilation of some of my favorite moments. (They're all of Clive Sinclair getting really mad.)

 
Phantoon

Phantoon

I cuss you bad
They were nowhere near in price over here. In the August 1983 issue of the UK's Your Computer Magazine there's advertisements from several retailers of microcomputers, and a full-page spread advertising a price drop for the Spectrum.
  • The 16K Spectrum was newly reduced from £125 to £99.95, and the 48K Spectrum was reduced from £175 to £129.95.
  • A nationwide dealership (confusingly named Spectrum) advertises the Commodore 64 at the much higher price of £345, as well as a clearance deal on Commodore's VIC-20 at £139.99. They offer the ZX Spectrum at the reduced prices mentioned above.​
  • By December 1984 the C64 was down to about £250 with a joystick and four games, but the Spectrum was still half its price.
Add inflation to that and the initial difference is even more yawning.

The C64 was a great computer, and technically better than the Speccy, but the Speccy punched way above its weight and from a game point of view one wasn't clearly better than the other.
 
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