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NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2025 14:15:47 +0000
From: Spalls Hurgenson <spallshurgenson@gmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: Retro Spectrum - my thoughts
Date: Tue, 15 Apr 2025 10:15:45 -0400
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On Tue, 15 Apr 2025 09:32:06 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:

>On 14/04/2025 19:08, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:
>> On Mon, 14 Apr 2025 11:08:43 +0100, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> So the obvious question, what is it. It’s a Raspberry Pi based Spectrum
>>> 48k/128k emulator in a case pretty much identical to the original rubber
>>> keyed wonder. They added some weights to get the right feel and also
>>> modern features such as HDMI, USB, save/rewind games, controller support
>>> and, shock horror, a power switch. What it’s not is say a Spectrum Next
>>> which is an ‘emulator’ using FPGA’s to provide soft hardware and they’ve
>>> also supercharged it. It’s also significantly more expensive, x3, and
>>> even more so on the second hand market.
>>>
>>> I missed the first production run last year but for this year’s one I
>>> just thought why not as I’m a sucker for nostalgia and the Spectrum was
>>> a big part of my life and the U.K. in general so at £89.99 why not.
>>>
>>> I’ve played a few of the games that are included (I need to get a USB
>>> loaded with some more of my favourite games) and my initial reaction is
>>> it’s fun although the games are even harder than I remember. I’ve failed
>>> to even get past the second level on the classic that is Manic Miner.
>>> The other one, there’s something about having a physical device that
>>> elevates it to another level. Oh and who thought QAOP was a good key
>>> combination.
>>>
>>> My overall conclusion is that it it’s never going to become, as I very
>>> much expected, my main gaming platform but instead it will be something
>>> I fire up now and again for a change of pace. There’s also a nice
>>> community of old farts online (sound familiar?).
>>>
>>> Could it end up gathering dust before the end of the year, possibly but
>>> heh I can always sell it for more than I bought it for.
>> 
>> Not having any real nostalgia for the Speccy (or, really, any of the
>> 8-bits) I can't get too excited about devices like this. In general,
>> I'm much happier resorting to emulation anyway, but if I did want to
>> run it on hardware, I'd want _real_ hardware over an FPGA hack. That's
>> not to dismiss the effort put into these devices, but I don't really
>> get the point if you're going to end up emulating anyway. I'm just of
>> the sort who thinks, "Just do it on the PC you already own", ya know?
>> 
>> A lot of the old-timey games aren't really very good, anyway, and once
>> you get past the nostalgic thrill of seeing them again, you start
>> seeing all the defects that forty-years of game-development have
>> worked very hard at improving. Ridiculous key-mappings included. ;-)
>> 
>> (although I think QAOP is better than OLZX, which I also recall being
>> somewhat common. And people nowadays bitch about old-school games
>> using the cursor keys...)
>
>Yeh, without the nostalgia part* they are pretty worthless. For me the 
>Spectrum was about the games and not what was in the box so this is an 
>ideal solution as having that physical device plays into that nostalgia 
>and means I can kinda look past just how basic the games were.
>
>In the online group I'm using there are the inevitable 'purists' that 
>insist that you should only use real hardware - no I'm not using my old 
>12" Sony Trinitron thank you very much! I'm fine if that's what floats 
>their boat but it's the way they act as though they are objectively 
>right that annoys me. Unfortunately almost every hobby has a share of 
>people like that.


I'm not really a purist (despite the fact that, yes, I have a computer
for DOS games, another for Win9x games, a third for WinXP...).
Emulation isn't perfect but then again, neither is running it on
native hardware. Especially on such a fragmented platform as PCs,
where you could get radically different experiences depending on what
hardware you have installed.

(I'm not an expert in any way on the Speccy, but I know 8-bits weren't
totally immune to this either, even on computers that were largely
used 'stock'. Depending on the date of manufacture (or just quality
control) the chips -particularly the PLAs and SID - on a C64 could be
different enough that games would look and sound slightly different
for different users. There was no 'pure' experience)

And the disadvantages of 'real' hardware are usually enough to
counter-balance any claims to purity anyway (assuming you can even get
it to work anymore!). I mean, the Speccy's chicklet keyboard alone
would be enough to make me go screaming into the night. ;-)