The 8-Bit Experience - The Definitive Review (Part 1)
On The Sociology Of Difference And The Glory Of The ZX Spectrum
I own two Commodore 64s and three1 ZX Spectrums2. I recently moved one of my Spectrums into my day job workshop, partly to actually play the thing and partly to just have one around. As with any flagrantly unapologetic nostalgist, I find it surprisingly easy to generate warm, fuzzy feelings just by catching a glance of sunlight reflecting off Spectrum’s shiny rainbow motif, or the subtler albedo sheen off the corner of a rubber Symbol Shift key. The other machine lives in my subterranean bunker, where it sits on a couch next to my working Commodore 64. A happy little grouping that’s somewhat facilitated by the Spectrum being small enough to work as a cuddly toy of sorts, just taking up space but compact enough to be moved around as a kind of comfort object3. It’s as if the casual contact with it is part of some unconscious maintenance of a deep bond, an almost familial urge to keep the past in the present. Quite why I choose to do this is somewhat mysterious. It’s a reflexive thing for me, but I think it has something to do with remaining in contact with a time when different machines meant entirely different experiences.
It goes without saying that homogeneity is the standard in modern videogaming. Whatever marginal differences in architecture or capability we find between current platforms, there’s not a huge gulf or stylistic difference between cutting-edge Unreal 5 content and, say, launch titles on PlayStation 4. And this isn’t due to some law of diminishing returns - it’s got far more to do with coordinated unity of visuals over the last twenty years. Falling somewhere between the inexorable standardisation of Microsoft’s Direct-X specs and the idea that cross-platform projects mean identical experiences on different machines, I think my borderline inappropriate attachment to 8-bit home computers has as much to do with missing the vibrancy of those times than any appeal to increasingly distant childhoods. What I miss is the sense that each machine has its own distinct, and utterly distinct, personality. Our understanding of difference these days comes mostly from operating systems and formal branding, not in the entire expression of the machine. But it’s perhaps interesting to note how the past wasn’t entirely full of wildly exotic visuals and sounds, but followed a kind of twin-peak wave where two eras shouted their individuality far more loudly than the eras of relative unity that surrounded them. The hardware of the 1970s generated broadly similar results. From the profusion of Pong machines to the Atari, Intellivision and even Magnavox consoles, we see outputs that are generally similar in resolution, colour depth and so on. Chunky pixels and simple audio waveforms abound. Even the computers, the Apple, Texas Instruments, Tandy and Commodore machines of the late ‘70s shared much the same visual and audio capabilities. Yet by 1984, the 8-bit home computer ecosystem was wildly more diverse, with consoles sharing in this celebration of difference. Curiously though, the Motorola 68000 dominance and JAMMA standardisation of 16-bit arcade games seemed to lead to a homogenisation of styles for the next generation home machines. Just based on screenshots, it takes a trained eye to pick out the format from a still of some universally-ported arcade title. SNES, Megadrive, Amiga, ST, VGA PC even - they all look broadly the same. Even the Neo Geo would find itself in that company had it been home to the same ports of Mortal Kombat. At the time, this convergence seemed like maturity - the manufacturers were finally reaching the same level of perceived competence. We perhaps saw the differences between the 80s machines as inadequacies, as failures to anticipate what the optimum visual style would be, with the 16-bits righting that enforced, fallacious sense of the wrong. How amusing it is then, that the first 32-bit realtime polygon generation should return to a gloriously diverse set of answers to the question of what the cutting edge should look like. Most people would be able to tell that a PlayStation screenshot is wildly different from a Nintendo 64 one, even if there’d be some muddying of the water between Saturn, PlayStation and PC shots of Tomb Raider. Nonetheless, that generation’s also-rans, the Atari Jaguar and the 3D0, also brought their own peculiarities. That said, the difference was largely skin deep. These were artefacts of rendering approaches and in the Nintendo 64’s case, as much to do with limited storage determining the capabilities of the system rather than fundamentally different approaches to building that generation of videogame.
It’s hard to explain the differences between the 8-bits4 beyond the obvious visual styles, but some games on the Spectrum and Commodore 64 were wildly different versions of the same IP. Take the ports of Taito’s Chase HQ. Unmitigated chunky disaster on the Commodore 64, surprisingly faithful on the Spectrum 128k. But that was essentially displayed in monochrome, where funnily enough the Spectrum often excelled. I remember seeing a magazine review of Rogue Trooper and being absolutely thrilled at how close the black and white graphics matched the 2000ad comic art that I dearly loved, bio-chipped buddies and all. And of course, the Spectrum was idiosyncratically associated with the glory of the isometric, or quasi-isometric projection: the very best way to represent three-dimensional spaces on a two-dimensional plane. That 3 megahertz Z80 pulled off some heavy lifting with fully bespoke, per-game and hand-coded tiling routines with the kind of panache that the Commodore 64 struggled to match. And yet on the 64, a grand suite of blisteringly fast and buttery smooth arcade shooters that could have been shoved in a cabinet and made money in the arcades of the mid-80s. Games like Andrew Braybrook’s Uridium. The Spectrum version of that did well, but it was never going to be close. And it wasn’t just Braybrook’s virtuosity at work. The Commodore’s graphics chip defined the machine’s gaming capabilities, and the great programmers worked true magic with wild pushes beyond the VIC’s documented limits. These differences define that set of personality traits as fundamental aspects of the machines in question, with trends towards genre specialisations arising as a result. It was always odd to see how many isometric games born on the Spectrum stayed there, with maybe a few crossing sideways to the similarly Z80-powered Amstrads. I would eye Sweevo’s World jealously before Commodore 64 owners were graced with Head Over Heels, but nothing made up for the lack of Marble Madness: The Construction Set. To have such an instrumental game in proving the worth of graphical isometry AND offering infinite Marble Madness remain on the Z80 machines was a cruel blow, even if I could wallow in the Thalamus shooters to ease the pain5.
Interestingly, we characterise those 8-bit machines by their specific shortfalls as much as their strengths. The Commodore 64 for its lower-res blockiness and ungainly colour palette, the Spectrum for its colour-clash, beep-based audio, willingness to fall over. The C64 is lumbering but professional, the Spectrum agile but amateur. The Commodore is a solid block of machinery, the Spectrum a curiously small wedge. And with that came a sense of fragility in both hardware and software terms. Some of the Spectrum’s more impressive achievements still feel like the machine is only just keeping it together, and that it could all collapse at any second. That signature grey-bordered black screen of broken vertical lines resolving into the legend © 1982 Sinclair Research Ltd was always just in some unseen periphery, waiting to pounce. This could be particularly frequent if you had a less-than-solid connection for whichever joystick interface you were using, yet this intrinsic shoddiness lends charm to the machine. Even in the modern day, I can’t help but have my frustration tempered whenever my Spectrum crashes and I see that legend, as it’s par for course! It’s one more thing that makes the system special. The charm it brings promotes a certain forgiveness. I can’t say I feel the same about the PlayStation 2 or Nintendo Gamecube. Although they are both unique and distinct machines, it’s not necessarily for the way they played their games and more for what the platform holders allowed to happen with them. With the ZX Spectrum, its manner of gameplay, of expression, was as unique as its crash screen or its use of the keyboard to enter entire commands per key rather than just the letter. Of course much of this oddness is down to the decades of conventions we’ve amassed since. Our expectations of universality, of competence and constitution, of interface unity and so on are the result of multiple generations of development. The ZX Spectrum comes from a time where there were few rules to abide by, much like the arcades of just a couple of years prior to the Spectrum’s launch. Its individuality is almost accidental, much like its charm.
When it comes to the Spectrum I play on, I still feel that distinctive 42-year-old vibe when the machine turns on. Viewed through an 18-year-old flatscreen via composite video output, I’m still a little bit surprised when Manic Miner’s horrific title tune erupts from the Spectrum itself, rather than the screen’s speakers. I use The Future Was 8-Bit’s divMMC Future, a marvel of piracy/preservation enablement that shoves an SD card reader and a Kempston joystick interface into the back of any Spectrum. And, wonderfully, having that weight hanging off an edge connector makes for plenty of those soft-reset crashes whenever I want them. Sadly the propensity for my Spectrum to crash if you press a key (and get unlucky) has put an end to me attempting to play with the signature QAOP keyboard layout, but such is the nature of that 42-year-old edge connector on a board built to the cheapest possible price and then made even cheaper.6 But to sound like a broken record, that’s where the real charm comes from. The fragility is just as important as the vibrancy of the colours or the endearing chirrups and blips that mysteriously issue from the bottom-right-hand corner of the machine. I never really bought arguments that there’s anything objectively superior about playing original hardware instead of emulation, aside from machines like the Vectrex, Virtual Boy and the ZX Spectrum, where you really don’t get the full experience without the real thing. Because the flaws are the values to treasure. It’s just so wonderfully shit in a very British way, and the feel of the rubber keys, with their slight ‘pippy’ sensation as you press them, allies with the weird speaker and the tenuous stability and the bonkers on-screen colour regime and the lack of hardware scrolling or sprite support to create something so incredibly distinctive. Shitness is so commonly erased or alleviated by emulation trying its best to make the machine and software relationship frictionless and crash-free. And if you really want to play the Spectrum canon, then absolutely emulate the shit of it. But for the real emotions, to grasp the very soul of the beast, there’s no substitute for the rubber-keyed, 48k issue 27 ZX Spectrum. Dead flesh? Fuck off. It’s ultra-rare material for human interfaces and these days, you’re lucky to have the luxury of pressing it.
[21]
I have two 48k Spectrums and one Plus. The Plus has a dodgy keyboard and one of the 48Ks has a fucked RF modulator. I bought it with the intention of carrying out a allegedly very easy and straightforward mod to output composite video, but bottled it and instead bought another Spectrum that was recapped, reconditioned and with the composite mod already done. I too am surprised at how sensible a choice that was.
Also two Commodore Plus/4s (one dead), An Amiga 600 (dead) and an Amiga 1000 (alive but needs a Kickstart ROM), a ZX81 and two Atari STs (dead, plus one that boots but has a fucked floppy drive). I like to keep it modest. Really need to get an Amstrad. But I want a TI99/4A!
This reminds me of friend working at a computer reseller in the 90s and them having so many seemingly useless, unwanted ZX81s that they were using them as doorstops, swapping them out when they inevitably cracked.
Many apols for leaving out the other great 8-bit formats for this piece, namely the Acorn machines and the Amstrad CPC series. I didn't feel well-versed enough to really add them to the commentary, even though I have deeply fond memories of playing on both formats. And hey - fuck you, Atari 800/400 owners. Or Philips, Oric, Dragon, Texas Instruments, Tatung, MSX, Enterprise, MTX owners and even the dreaded Sam Coupe elite. Not really, but please don’t get upset by the lack of inclusion here. Commodore 16 and Plus/4 owners can rest easy though. They rule. I have a VIC-20 but no PET, which fills me with a profound sense of shame.
Thalamus’s shooters sit with Jeff Minter and Andrew Braybrook’s Commodore 64 work as real exemplars for how good that machine can be. Armalyte being a real fin-de-siècle masterwork and Hunter’s Moon being an ‘arcade plus’ exploration of the form in precisely the manner that Braybrook describes in the manual for his grand opus, Morpheus. We will be returning to Andrew Braybrook at some time in the future.
Seriously, all can be fine and you press some key and booooof - it’s all over and you’re being told the copyright’s from 1982 again. The divMMC Future has buttons you have to press to get to the file loader and yes, pressing these will also sometimes crash the machine. I really must dive deep into the pages of Crash and Your Sinclair scans to find period fixes for this issue (which was caused by wobbly weight on the edge connector). I think a wad of Blu Tack might do it? But that’ll probably make it too hot, so I’ll have to contrive some active cooling mechanism. This, my friends, is the true joy of ZX Spectrum ownership.
Specific board revisions after Issue 2 don't really matter. Nobody has an Issue 1 (only 16,000 made apparently) and Issue 2 is coolest because it was the first to have 48k inboard. Issue 3 is the most common so therefore nowhere near as cool and Issue 4 onwards are Plus models, which do not count as the chunky keys change the whole vibe. And not for the better.