Monster crowdfunding total raised for Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+

The champagne corks are popping down at Sir Clive Sinclair's Retro Computers after an Indiegogo tin-rattle to raise funds for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega+ passed its deadline with more than £360,000 pledged. The exact total raised during the 40-day campaign was £366,655 - 367 per cent of the original target required to …

[Yugguy]

To be fair

Although I said in another comment that you can access these all online/via emulators, it would be cool to have a portable take-anywhere unit that you can hold. Brings back memories of past such things.

[FuzzyWuzzys]

Re: To be fair

I remember breaking my PSP and running emulators on that, that was good. I also bought a couple of the Chinese Retro handheld consoles, like the GPV2 I think it was called, it had loads of emulators available that coders had written like Speccy, Megadrive, SNES, CBM64, MAME, etc, had SD cards for holding the roms. They sold it purely on the basis that it played retro game emulators, cost about £90, good little unit.

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one sure way to kill that nostalgic memory of a wonderful childhood experience, revisit it many years later.

Every time I've revisited a classic game that I loved as a kid, all it does is make me aware of how far things have come and how shallow games actually were back then. I have learnt that to keep some memories special its better to not go back there.

I wonder how many people will spoil their rose tinted memories with one of these? Especially when you can just as easily ruin your childhood memories with a raspberry pi or even your phone these days (as long as you still own the tapes/disks of course).

[Anonymous Coward]

ooh, I dunno

Last time I played Dune 2 (just before I gave away my old Amiga kit and softare collection to a friend the other year) it was still great fun, and miles better than the version revamped for PC's. And I've played Gods via WinUAE since then - still as good as it ever was, as were a few other old favourites I tried.

As for shallowness of games - hmmn.. maybe it depended on which games you played, but for me one of the outstandng things about the games I played back then was that the gameplay tended to be decent because the visuals alone wouldn't carry them.

[Matt Bridge-Wilkinson]

Re: ooh, I dunno

I still have my Amiga 1200 with 40 meg hard drive! Dune 2 was indeed brilliant, I now fancy a go on that, but I'm afraid. ;)

I'm not sure many Speccy games had as much depth, the Amiga and Atari ST really opened gaming up for me after years with Acorns and Spectrums. I do have fond memories of Head over Heels for example but I've never been brave enough to try it again in case I regret it.

[werdsmith]

Re: ooh, I dunno

I've still not seen a game that I've liked more than the early generation of coin operated arcade machines. Taito Space Invaders, Namco PacMan plus Galaxians, Defender, and the vector wire frame Asteroids. Still have a little game with these when I have 5 minutes.

[Yugguy]

Re: ooh, I dunno

Indeed

I have MAME on a laptop at home, and the games I play most are Galaxians, Phoenix, Moon Cresta and Contra.

[SteveK]

I'd agree with that. In the past I've spent hours fiddling around with a Spectrum (or C64 or Amiga) emulator to fire up some game long remembered through magenta-tinted glasses (Spectrum didn't do 'rose'), only to play it for 2 minutes and decide it was actually pretty crap. There were some good games that did revolutionary things and pushed the boundaries of the hardware and of games in general. But they just don't live up to the depth, complexity and polish of modern games.

It may be in part that back then (maybe it's part of being a child?) you filled in the gaps with imagination (that circle's a planet, these few triangles are a spaceship - in the mind all fully textured and photo realistic) but now you're used to having those aspects and not needing to use your imagination to fill what's not there.

[HollyHopDrive]

Nobody is making you buy one. I know the tech was shit, the loading times awful and input devices were by modern standards rubbish. But I've gone for I it becuase I still love that era becuase of it.

A lot of 70's comedy was crap. Some mothers do have em, Terry and June etc, but open all hours is still top class, better than the modern remake. So I will still sit and enjoy it now.

The modern jaguar xf is amazing but I still want an e-type, the s type was crap despite being newer I just can't buy one for £100.

[Sleepypete]

Nostalgia crisis

Haha oh yes. I played to death (and the distraction of the parents) games like Revs and Elite but ...

Frontier Elite 2 - how buggy was that ? Nostalgia would last until the first crash.

Elite vs Elite Dangerous - gimme the new one

Revs vs F1 2015 - ok, ok, gimme F1 2014 instead of the data pack update.

Still tempted by Tie Fighter on Gog though.

[Dave 126]

Re: Nostalgia crisis

Dune 2 is available for free on the Google Play Store - it plays very well on an Android tablet. Well worth revisiting.

[KroSha]

Re: Nostalgia crisis

You should try Oolite.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well we can confidently expect a product..

...sometime in the next 25 years then

[Fihart]

Re: Well we can confidently expect a product..

Probably spot on. Didn't Sinclair do a sort of crowdfunding in the 1980s by announcing products like the QL with a very long lead-time between payment and delivery

[John 110]

I hope you can...

...poke in the atic-atac infinite life poke, the only thing that made it possible to finish as far as my kids were concerned. Ah, we had many happy family hours mapping that spooky old house...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I hope you can...

I found Atic Atac a bit of a challenge when I was a kid. I now find it very easy to complete. Congratulationt. You have Escaped (sic)

:-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously tempted by this - more than the previous version of the Vega anyway.

Would have been nice however if the Vega would also emulate some of the "Russian" Spectrum's - which had a few software gems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Whats wrong with you? Don't you know what an apo'strophy i's for?

[Greg J Preece]

Aw bugger, I knew there was something I forgot to do last week.

[Philip Mather]

Needs a decent video output format before anyone will care...

"Headphone socket doubles as an A/V connection, allowing stereo audio and composite video connection to a TV. Supports PAL and NTSC formats."

[FuzzyWuzzys]

Fly in ointment...keys.

I've often found it a pain to use quite a few of the Speccy games on consoles due to the need to have to keep flipping up an onscreen keyboard to supply input. Very few design an opaque onscreen keyboard that allows you to see what you're typing into the game. It's usually fine once you're into a game that just needs the Kempston option set but don't think you'll be playing Rebelstar or The Hobbit on this gadget.

[AlexS]

If it could also double as a Mame emulator I would hand over my money.

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Very few arcade games were bettered by their home computer/console conversions. The best speccy games were the titles made for the platform. Stuff like Wizball, Lemmings, Manic Miner, most Ultimate games etc.

[Dave 126]

Lemmings on the Speccy? Oh no! :)

Played it to death on the PC, jealous of Amiga friends who had the music and sound effects. Never played a version without a mouse. Just found this site, which has Lemmings level editors and fan conversions for HP and TI calculators, amongst other platforms:

http://www.lemmingsuniverse.net/downloads.html

[William Towle]

> Lemmings on the Speccy? Oh no! :)

Heh. I bought it for the Speccy and don't mind admitting I enjoyed playing it.

The level selection was very limited due to support for a maximum 20 lemmings, and having to load each level from tape was a bind ... but the monochrome nature of the visuals didn't distract that much from the gameplay and the "target and track" method of control with a joystick was odd compared to mousing but ultimately sensible for the set of levels that were ported. The same algorithm for level codes on the Amiga was used, so if you had a walkthrough with them you could cheat :)

[icon choice: tribute to Skool Daze]

// I imagine both my ascii art and my complete walkthrough for the Amiga version are still out there thanks to other fans of the game, but I haven't checked in a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Could be interesting

I sold my 48/128k collection last year. Few thousand cassettes and a couple of the systems. Made a tidy sum from it.

It was hard replaying some of the games to realise just how shite they actually were, but also, it was good to play some and find that even now, with so much gaming under my belt, I still can't complete games like Super Robin Hood or BMX Simulator.

I'll buy this for the classics alone such as the shown, Skool Daze, and the on the go capability.

Oh, and Colony, which was my all time favourite. Goddamn ants.

[Mephistro]

I owned a Commodore, but...

I'll buy one of these, just to remember the fun of gaming sessions with friends' Spectrums. I still play, now and then, MULE in a C64 emulator and enjoy it.

And to the naysayers, these vintage games have a big advantage over -most- modern games: You can play many of these games in less than 30 minutes, which makes them ideal for a bus commute.

And regarding graphic quality, there are lots of (usually indy) titles nowadays that have shitty graphics but are really fun to play, e.g. "The binding of Isaac" and similar games. For me, gameplay beats graphics quality hands down.

Kudos, Sir Clive! ;-)

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rick Dickinson is, of course, the designer of the original ZX Spectrum computers"

Clarification; Dickinson was responsible for the iconic industrial design of the Spectrum case- and many of the concept designs that led up to it- along with that of other Sinclair computers such as the ZX80, ZX81, Spectrum+ and QL.

However, the technical design of the (internal) computer itself was by Richard Altwasser and Steve Vickers, amongst others.

[Anonymous C0ward]

It's not a real Spectrum until you see

R Tape loading error, 0:1