ZX Spectrum: Q&A with some of the folks who worked on legendary PC
As somebody who grew up with the Amstrad CPC in France (it was the best selling 8-bit micro there), I&#x27;ve always found the cult status of the ZX Spectrum in the UK difficult to rationalise. IMO, it&#x27;s the biggest f***ing rose-tinted reality distortion field in all of retrocomputing.<p>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 ?<p>Let me try to explain :<p>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.<p>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.<p>I can&#x27;t think of a <i>single</i> hardware advantage for the Spectrum.<p>Contrary to popular belief in the UK, the Amstrad&#x27;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&#x27;re all dwarfed by the C64&#x27;s ~15 million, though.<p>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 &amp; Spanish publishers that were all Amstrad-first.<p>In short : IMHO the most interesting and relevant 8-bit match is &quot;C64 vs Amstrad CPC&quot;. These two were actually playing in the same league.<p>Yet, the dominant conversation online today still seems to be all about &quot;C64 vs Spectrum&quot; 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.<p>Bitmap Books released a series of &quot;visual commpedium&quot; 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.<p>Some of this may be down to ignorance : I came across people who were simply unaware of the CPC&#x27;s graphics prowess compared to the Spectrum, as they had only ever seen &quot;green screen&quot; Amstrads, if any. Others had lazy Speccy ports in mind when they argued the CPC was slower and couldn&#x27;t do smooth scrolling (I show them Pinball Dreams : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;yl_MSCpGC0M?t=1377" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;yl_MSCpGC0M?t=1377</a>)<p>But I wonder if besides the nostalgia goggles &amp; ignorance, there&#x27;s maybe a different taste for pixel art aesthetics at play ?<p>I was stunned to hear that some people preferred the Spectrum in this games graphics comparison I&#x27;ve put together : <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;D7Ocd" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;imgur.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;D7Ocd</a><p>What ?! I&#x27;m curious to know what unbiased younger people think about that one...