Description

The ZX Spectrum released only a year after the ZX81 and vastly improved upon it in every way, with colour graphics, sound and rubber keys, the Spectrum had two models with 16K and 48K of ram, the 16K model could be sent to Sinclair to be upgraded to 48K as most software required the 48K model. The games of the Spectrum were defined by the bedroom coder movement where games were made by teens and young adults from their houses, this was made possible because like most computers of the time the Spectrum came with BASIC which had everything people needed to make a game. The Spectrum wasn’t nearly as powerful as its main competitor the Commodore 64 but was more popular in the UK because of its low price and vast library of games, over 24000 software products were released the highest of any computer from that era. In 1983 the USA suffered from a video game crash due to poor software on the Atari 2600 but the UK did not suffer due to the sucsess of the Spectrum and other micro computers from the time. Unlike the Commodore 64, very few Spectrum games had music and when they did it was a lot more primitive than their Commordore 64 such as the music for Manic Miner. Despite positive sales in Christmas of 1984, sales of the Spectrum declined in 1985 and Sinclair had to slash the price, despite the early decline the Spectrum was not discontinued until 1992. The Spectrum is one of the most important computers of its time with it introducing so many children across Europe to computing.