- Stephen Nichol
Newbie adventures: at the ZX Spectrum Vega Launch
As a lot of people will be well aware, in November of last year (2014), a crowdfunding campaign to bring back the legendary British home computer, Sir Clive Sinclair's ZX Spectrum, as a handheld gaming device raised 150% of the target funds intended to be raised over 60 days, in just 36 hours.
Although some people have pointed out the lack of a keyboard on the device, which looks more like a console gamepad, it seems the promise of a 1000 built in 8-bit games, and an SD card slot for loading in additional games from archives such as World of Spectrum, and possibly other factors, appealed to the crowdfunding community.
At around the same, I was working on my first complete games, as - having not programmed very much since completing my programming apprenticeship in 1999 - I was looking to brush up my skills, and I decided that a trip down memory lane would be the best place to start.
A couple of months after completing those games, I had just finished reading 'I Woz' by Steve Wozniak, the man who created the first computer as we know them today, with a screen and a keyboard, and he had mentioned in the book, how his business associate Steve Jobs was much more bold than he was himself, in obtaining free samples of microchips and other parts so that they could build the Apple I.
When, having moved onto reading Retro Gamer Magazine, I noticed that the team behind the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega were still looking for games to make up the 1000 titles, I had a burst of confidence, and decided to do what I thought Steve Jobs would do and - despite my game being only a matter of months old and not from the 1980s - got in touch with the team and offered my game for use on the Vega.
That's how I came to be in London yesterday, the 8th July 2015, attending the launch of the Vega, and mingling with famous techies and developers who were active in the ZX Spectrum's heyday.
I know that people like someone with oodles of confidence but, I have to say that I felt like a bit of a dork being there. My game "Cap'n Rescue" was just a little AGD effort, and used only a very small amount of code written in a higher level language unique to that engine. By comparison, my Graphic Adventure "When Alex Didn't Do It", although written in the higher level GAC language - not dissimilar to BASIC - uses more code, of a greater size and complexity but, unfortunately, the Vega has only a virtual on-screen keyboard.
On the other side of the coin, however, the fact that my platformer is written in AGD means that the game flies along with optimised code compiled into machine code so - whilst coding in assembly language is considered cool and some even say a bit of a 'dark art', the end result with AGD is still quite pleasing.
The day was full of special moments, and the first had to be when I arrived 45 minutes early, having given myself plenty of time to get to the event from my home in the blustery North. There was a familiar looking white-haired man outside the building, who told me that he was Dr David Levy (the World Chess Champion, and chairman of Retro Computers Ltd) and said "You're a bit early, but you can go in - they're just setting up everything in there". To my surprise Dr Levy even shook my hand.
When the event started, we went up to the hall, where there were three tables with Vegas set up and people demonstrating the games.
Around 70 people mingled in the room, moving around from table to table and chatting with each other and the people demonstrating the consoles.
For those who haven't seen the newer pictures (take a look at the ones in this blog entry), the Vega looks a bit different from it's initial design on the crowdfunding website. Four additional buttons have been added to increase functionality, and the D-pad is now red rather than black. In size, it is similar to the dimensions of a console controller from any modern day console, and - although I didn't get to try one out - at that size it doesn't look like it can be very heavy.
The menu is a list in alphabetical order, which appears to give rapid selection, and the games load instantly. Cartridges, of course, were available for a time on the original ZX Spectrum but, the average shopper in the 1980's was quick to observe that tapes with the exact same software titles on them were much cheaper to buy, and could be loaded - thanks to Sinclair Research's excellent audio loading hardware design, from just about any domestic tape recorder which most people probably owned an example of already due to the popularity of tape as a media for commercial music distribution.
The result was that few cartridge games were released but, now that they have been converted to digital files, just about all the games can be loaded at this lightning fast speed.
I also observed some text at the bottom of the screen that read 'adventures', speculatively indicating that there is some sort of category or sort system in the menu.
A big question is - does the world need a physical Sinclair Spectrum device? Since the 8-bit computers stopped being stocked by retailers c1993, there have been a wealth of emulators available on PCs, mobile phones, and even the Nintendo DS (a little ironic given how the big name consoles took a chunk out of Sinclair/Amstrad's sales in the early 1990s).
These programs make the various devices pretend to be a ZX Spectrum, and most games work just fine on them so, would the retro gaming community want a product that they have to plug in to their telly and find shelf space along with all their other devices?
The answer I believe is - yes. With each update of Windows, Linux, Android etc., comes the likelyhood of an update required for the emulator. Each update requires effort in time and testing, and many of the people who have made these emulators have made them available for free or a very low price.
As well as the operating systems being updated, people are very often upgrading their hardware, providing further challenges to the emulator writers, and - it's worth pointing out that there are a wealth different computers, consoles, and mobile devices out there, with different CPU's, APU's, amounts of RAM, and graphics cards.
A physical device such as the Vega, although it's software or firmware is updateable, does something that the original ZX Spectrum did - it provides a standard setup that over the course of the existence of the model that will never change. The ZX Spectrum was supported commercially from 1982 to 1993, and has continued to be supported by the 'Speccy' community all the way up to the year 2015 and hopefully beyond. Not something that can be said about a modern day PC or Smartphone, which might well be out of date in a matter of months.
My only reservation is the choice to exclude a keyboard in favour of a virtual keyboard but, for the purpose of playing games, and with 1300 permissons having been granted for legendary 1980s and more recent titles to be used already, the Vega looks set to be a very economical solution for someone wishing to obtain a huge library of ZX Spectrum games and some hardware to play them on overnight.
Back to the event itself, at one point I was very hot and had to peel off my warmer layers of clothing and go and stand by the front door to catch the breeze. When I came back Dr Levy was just starting his speech, in which he mentioned that Sir Clive Sinclair himself was unfortunately unable to attend having had an accident a few weeks earlier. We were thanked for our various contributions and told that we would each be receiving a bottle of champagne.
During the event, some of us headed up to Parliament Hill for a delicious picnic, and although I didn't contribute to the conversation as much as I would have liked to, there was definitely a good feeling about being sat outside on a nice day, with the view out over London, in the company of those 8-bit development legends.
All that remained for this 34 year old latecomer to game making, was to get out of London just in time to miss the transport staff strike action, and back up to the North of England to consider if I will make any more ZX Spectrum games in the future.
Update (12/07/2015, a few days later) - Another factor that has been mentioned and completely skipped my memory is the issue of trying to control these classic 1980s games on modern devices with touchscreens and tilt sensors. This is something that works with varying degrees of success and sometimes no success at all, as the games were just never designed with these control systems in mind. The shape of the Vega is essentially a joypad, thus removing the touch/tilt control issues found with tablets, phones, etc.
Thanks for reading!
Stephen