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Lets face it, we all know where all the leading console and games developers are right now. They're stuffing their faces full of raw fish in a country full of lots of tiny islands on the eastern continent of Asia. Japan. America may be excused from this, because the richest company in the world have created a new and popular console, the X-box, which is due for release in a couple months time.
But who are really the best designers?
Well, do the letters ZX mean anything to you? Or do you remember seeing a multicoloured logo on a black or grey background? Well I'm basically talking about the ZX Spectrum series, the UK's major console, or should I say (don't laugh) PC series?
The ZX series was the creation of none other than Surrey born Sir Clive Sinclair!
Yep, I said Surrey, in the United Kingdom! Great Britain had it's own successful series of computers that were used mainly for gamers and nerdy programmers who would copy programming code called 'Basic' out of magazines only to find that later on it didn't work! Even I have tried some of the Basic, copied from the ZX Spectrum 128k's manual only to find that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way, then having to search it all, line by line, until I finally got it to work.
So how well did Sir Clive do? And how come we don't see the brand name "Sinclair" on the market now?
Well it all began in 1979, when the Computer industry was well established but lacked something new. Computers, like the commodore, were able to make around £700 per unit, and Apple and Tandy had well established their reputations in the market.
However, Sir Clive knew that people would find it hard to build up the cash for anything like that, and decided to later release something which would turn the PC into a home arcade machine, for one seventh of the price! The ZX80, released January 1980. It was a small rubbery keyboard pad that connected to the aerial socket in televisions so that it could transmit the data straight onto your screen. Television gaming in the western world was born.
Now there was a problem with costs. The ZX80 was a great idea, but there had to be a way to sell it without too many components being produced for each unit. So, they used a large amount of ROM (Read Only Memory for computer boffins out there) which was around 4 Kilobytes, which contained an interpreter for the Basic code, specifically written for the ZX80. Another new idea was to use cheap, removable media which had been sitting right under their noses the whole time. Audio tapes. These could have Basic code recorded onto them so that they could be made and sold cheaply and be safe for younger children to use. This cut costs even more for Sinclair, as there wasn't need to make any cassette players of their own, just let the consumer buy the one they want, making sure it had microphone-in and audio-out jacks for transmitting the data. Now, this idea may sound a bit old fashioned nowadays, seeing as we're in the 21st Century, however, specifically designed data-tapes are still used to record systems, computer usage, and for many other reasons by businesses.
However, was Sir Clive Sinclair really prepared for the popularity the ZX80 would gain?
Well, in reality, he ZX80 had no competitors. The more expensive home computers were a lot more expensive, and some, like the BBC, couldn't handle games so well. There were some flaws with the ZX80 though. The touch-sensitive keypad was more like a touch-insensitive keypad, and the cassettes themselves couldn't hold or load multiple files. Only files seperate could be loaded after the current one, unlike computers now which can load many files in the same amount of time it takes to blink.
When it came to the end of the ZX80's console life, a 16-Ram expansion kit was released on the market (so the N64 wasn't the first!). It was really good excepts for the slightest movement in the air would cause the connection to fail.
So what happened next? The worlds first video-game console, at the time thought of as a home computer (come on, who used it for word processing?) had come to the end of it's shelf life. Sir Clive needed to come up with something new. He came up with the ZX81.
This machine was cheaper to make because 18 chips from the original ZX were replaced by one chip, and it was also backwards compatable. The ZX80 could also be upgraded with a special ROM pack which made it as powerful as the ZX81. But he did have something else up his sleeve. He promised to release a printer for the ZX81, to sell the ZX81's at half price to schools, and to include a half price printer with the school's ones too.
By March, Mitsui, the main importer of British goods to Japan, bought exclusive rights to sell the ZX81 in Japan. Again there was no competition and Sinclair virtually owned the market.
The ZX80 and ZX81 models had been so popular by 1982 that there were books published about them, third party peripherals were launched on the market, and the factories were producing over half a million per year! However, people were learning Basic very quickly and wanted something with a bigger capacity to use it on. They were turning to other manufacturers until.....
...The ZX Spectrum.
The ZX Spectrum was released in two models to start off with. You had the choice of the ZX Spectrum 16k for £125, or the bit more expensive ZX Spectrum 48k which was £175. The cheaper model was basically for those who hadn't quite grasped how to program with the previous machines, and later offered an expansion for £60 to make it just as powerful as the 48k model. Previous owners of ZX machines were in shock when these were released as they were able to display a higher resolution on screen (the pixels/dots were smaller giving better graphics), up to eight colours were available on screen at any time (Blue, Red, Magenta, Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black), there was a new sound generator on these models, and many more superior facilities made it jaw-dropping in the eighties.
There were some more simple improvements too. Gone were the days of the high-tech but unreliable touch-sensitive keypads. This time there were rubber keypads which were a vast improvement and were immediately more popular. And also, for the first time, Sinclair was able to compete in the same market as the BBC Acorn computers which were also in colour, but lacked the ability to use sprites (images that could move past each other instead of through each other) and were still more expensive. Sound effects were generated inside the keyboard of the ZX Spectrum, but they were basic bleeps to start off with.
Games companies were set up (including Rareware who were then called "Ultimate") by the retired and veterans of the previous ZX machines. In fact, many games companies were set up causing a mass market of video-games to be sold quite cheaply and in large numbers, especially in WH Smith stores around the country which became Britain's biggest seller of ZX Spectrums.
So what else happened? The ZX Spectrum was still being sold in the 1990's, even though the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy were already on the market, and many Commodore and Atari systems had been competing.
Well, better models were released, including the ZX Spectrum +2 which could utilise the power of a 128k chip, and a '+3' model which could use five-inch floppy disks (the same as 'b' drive disks on old computers) which meant very quick loading compared to the old tape system, and quick saving features too. Thousands of games were released and coming to the end of the systems lives, the cassettes had gone down to around ten pence each! That's cheaper than buying blank tapes! Many producers released the older games and more popular games again under new brands such as "The Hit Squad" and continued to make a small profit on them, however, Sir Clive Sinclair made a really bad mistake. He embarrased the company's name by trying to compete in the mororists market with the cheap, electric Sinclair C5. He failed badly with that (ever seen one on the roads lately?) and for some reason has never released anything since.
As the 1990's approached, the freshness of the ZX label seemed to deminish as Nintendo and Sega brought out new and improved home games consoles which the cassette formats couldn't compete with. People just lost interest in the Spectrums and only the hardcore fans continued using them and bought more software second hand.
So this is it. It wasn't the Japanese or the Americans who started off the concept of home video-gaming. It was us! The British! But still we get the new consoles last, we get most games last, but at least they're all tested on the Japanese and the Americans of whom we could call the video-gaming guinea-pigs!
Well, now you know the history of the British console and how a simple programming language, Basic, started off the games industry for us all. Of course there were already games like Pong (originally called "Tennis"), and Space Invaders in the arcades, but the size of the Spectrum is very small compared to the arcade machine and a bit more convenient. Infact, if it wasn't for Sinclair, we probably wouldn't see games like Banjo Kazooie or Conkers Bad Fur Day on current and future consoles! As I said above, Rareware started out on the Speccy, and they base some of their games/characters on their 'classic' games.
Here's to Sir. Clive Sinclair, who made home gaming what it is today!
NOTE: information adapted from many sources on the internet and from own knowledge from being an owner of a ZX Specrum 48k and a ZX Spectrum 128k +2
But who are really the best designers?
Well, do the letters ZX mean anything to you? Or do you remember seeing a multicoloured logo on a black or grey background? Well I'm basically talking about the ZX Spectrum series, the UK's major console, or should I say (don't laugh) PC series?
The ZX series was the creation of none other than Surrey born Sir Clive Sinclair!
Yep, I said Surrey, in the United Kingdom! Great Britain had it's own successful series of computers that were used mainly for gamers and nerdy programmers who would copy programming code called 'Basic' out of magazines only to find that later on it didn't work! Even I have tried some of the Basic, copied from the ZX Spectrum 128k's manual only to find that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way, then having to search it all, line by line, until I finally got it to work.
So how well did Sir Clive do? And how come we don't see the brand name "Sinclair" on the market now?
Well it all began in 1979, when the Computer industry was well established but lacked something new. Computers, like the commodore, were able to make around £700 per unit, and Apple and Tandy had well established their reputations in the market.
However, Sir Clive knew that people would find it hard to build up the cash for anything like that, and decided to later release something which would turn the PC into a home arcade machine, for one seventh of the price! The ZX80, released January 1980. It was a small rubbery keyboard pad that connected to the aerial socket in televisions so that it could transmit the data straight onto your screen. Television gaming in the western world was born.
Now there was a problem with costs. The ZX80 was a great idea, but there had to be a way to sell it without too many components being produced for each unit. So, they used a large amount of ROM (Read Only Memory for computer boffins out there) which was around 4 Kilobytes, which contained an interpreter for the Basic code, specifically written for the ZX80. Another new idea was to use cheap, removable media which had been sitting right under their noses the whole time. Audio tapes. These could have Basic code recorded onto them so that they could be made and sold cheaply and be safe for younger children to use. This cut costs even more for Sinclair, as there wasn't need to make any cassette players of their own, just let the consumer buy the one they want, making sure it had microphone-in and audio-out jacks for transmitting the data. Now, this idea may sound a bit old fashioned nowadays, seeing as we're in the 21st Century, however, specifically designed data-tapes are still used to record systems, computer usage, and for many other reasons by businesses.
However, was Sir Clive Sinclair really prepared for the popularity the ZX80 would gain?
Well, in reality, he ZX80 had no competitors. The more expensive home computers were a lot more expensive, and some, like the BBC, couldn't handle games so well. There were some flaws with the ZX80 though. The touch-sensitive keypad was more like a touch-insensitive keypad, and the cassettes themselves couldn't hold or load multiple files. Only files seperate could be loaded after the current one, unlike computers now which can load many files in the same amount of time it takes to blink.
When it came to the end of the ZX80's console life, a 16-Ram expansion kit was released on the market (so the N64 wasn't the first!). It was really good excepts for the slightest movement in the air would cause the connection to fail.
So what happened next? The worlds first video-game console, at the time thought of as a home computer (come on, who used it for word processing?) had come to the end of it's shelf life. Sir Clive needed to come up with something new. He came up with the ZX81.
This machine was cheaper to make because 18 chips from the original ZX were replaced by one chip, and it was also backwards compatable. The ZX80 could also be upgraded with a special ROM pack which made it as powerful as the ZX81. But he did have something else up his sleeve. He promised to release a printer for the ZX81, to sell the ZX81's at half price to schools, and to include a half price printer with the school's ones too.
By March, Mitsui, the main importer of British goods to Japan, bought exclusive rights to sell the ZX81 in Japan. Again there was no competition and Sinclair virtually owned the market.
The ZX80 and ZX81 models had been so popular by 1982 that there were books published about them, third party peripherals were launched on the market, and the factories were producing over half a million per year! However, people were learning Basic very quickly and wanted something with a bigger capacity to use it on. They were turning to other manufacturers until.....
...The ZX Spectrum.
The ZX Spectrum was released in two models to start off with. You had the choice of the ZX Spectrum 16k for £125, or the bit more expensive ZX Spectrum 48k which was £175. The cheaper model was basically for those who hadn't quite grasped how to program with the previous machines, and later offered an expansion for £60 to make it just as powerful as the 48k model. Previous owners of ZX machines were in shock when these were released as they were able to display a higher resolution on screen (the pixels/dots were smaller giving better graphics), up to eight colours were available on screen at any time (Blue, Red, Magenta, Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black), there was a new sound generator on these models, and many more superior facilities made it jaw-dropping in the eighties.
There were some more simple improvements too. Gone were the days of the high-tech but unreliable touch-sensitive keypads. This time there were rubber keypads which were a vast improvement and were immediately more popular. And also, for the first time, Sinclair was able to compete in the same market as the BBC Acorn computers which were also in colour, but lacked the ability to use sprites (images that could move past each other instead of through each other) and were still more expensive. Sound effects were generated inside the keyboard of the ZX Spectrum, but they were basic bleeps to start off with.
Games companies were set up (including Rareware who were then called "Ultimate") by the retired and veterans of the previous ZX machines. In fact, many games companies were set up causing a mass market of video-games to be sold quite cheaply and in large numbers, especially in WH Smith stores around the country which became Britain's biggest seller of ZX Spectrums.
So what else happened? The ZX Spectrum was still being sold in the 1990's, even though the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy were already on the market, and many Commodore and Atari systems had been competing.
Well, better models were released, including the ZX Spectrum +2 which could utilise the power of a 128k chip, and a '+3' model which could use five-inch floppy disks (the same as 'b' drive disks on old computers) which meant very quick loading compared to the old tape system, and quick saving features too. Thousands of games were released and coming to the end of the systems lives, the cassettes had gone down to around ten pence each! That's cheaper than buying blank tapes! Many producers released the older games and more popular games again under new brands such as "The Hit Squad" and continued to make a small profit on them, however, Sir Clive Sinclair made a really bad mistake. He embarrased the company's name by trying to compete in the mororists market with the cheap, electric Sinclair C5. He failed badly with that (ever seen one on the roads lately?) and for some reason has never released anything since.
As the 1990's approached, the freshness of the ZX label seemed to deminish as Nintendo and Sega brought out new and improved home games consoles which the cassette formats couldn't compete with. People just lost interest in the Spectrums and only the hardcore fans continued using them and bought more software second hand.
So this is it. It wasn't the Japanese or the Americans who started off the concept of home video-gaming. It was us! The British! But still we get the new consoles last, we get most games last, but at least they're all tested on the Japanese and the Americans of whom we could call the video-gaming guinea-pigs!
Well, now you know the history of the British console and how a simple programming language, Basic, started off the games industry for us all. Of course there were already games like Pong (originally called "Tennis"), and Space Invaders in the arcades, but the size of the Spectrum is very small compared to the arcade machine and a bit more convenient. Infact, if it wasn't for Sinclair, we probably wouldn't see games like Banjo Kazooie or Conkers Bad Fur Day on current and future consoles! As I said above, Rareware started out on the Speccy, and they base some of their games/characters on their 'classic' games.
Here's to Sir. Clive Sinclair, who made home gaming what it is today!
NOTE: information adapted from many sources on the internet and from own knowledge from being an owner of a ZX Specrum 48k and a ZX Spectrum 128k +2
lol yeah....can you imagine seeing the C5 becomming fashionable again.....well was it ever fashionable?
Yer... brings back memories of people with pedal powered pod cars... to the future!
Sonic
Sonic
I bet no one else reads it now cos of it's length.
As long as people realise Britain started the concept of home gaming on console format......
As long as people realise Britain started the concept of home gaming on console format......
Wow, nice topic its....errr...big.
Lets face it, we all know where all the leading console and games developers are right now. They're stuffing their faces full of raw fish in a country full of lots of tiny islands on the eastern continent of Asia. Japan. America may be excused from this, because the richest company in the world have created a new and popular console, the X-box, which is due for release in a couple months time.
But who are really the best designers?
Well, do the letters ZX mean anything to you? Or do you remember seeing a multicoloured logo on a black or grey background? Well I'm basically talking about the ZX Spectrum series, the UK's major console, or should I say (don't laugh) PC series?
The ZX series was the creation of none other than Surrey born Sir Clive Sinclair!
Yep, I said Surrey, in the United Kingdom! Great Britain had it's own successful series of computers that were used mainly for gamers and nerdy programmers who would copy programming code called 'Basic' out of magazines only to find that later on it didn't work! Even I have tried some of the Basic, copied from the ZX Spectrum 128k's manual only to find that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way, then having to search it all, line by line, until I finally got it to work.
So how well did Sir Clive do? And how come we don't see the brand name "Sinclair" on the market now?
Well it all began in 1979, when the Computer industry was well established but lacked something new. Computers, like the commodore, were able to make around £700 per unit, and Apple and Tandy had well established their reputations in the market.
However, Sir Clive knew that people would find it hard to build up the cash for anything like that, and decided to later release something which would turn the PC into a home arcade machine, for one seventh of the price! The ZX80, released January 1980. It was a small rubbery keyboard pad that connected to the aerial socket in televisions so that it could transmit the data straight onto your screen. Television gaming in the western world was born.
Now there was a problem with costs. The ZX80 was a great idea, but there had to be a way to sell it without too many components being produced for each unit. So, they used a large amount of ROM (Read Only Memory for computer boffins out there) which was around 4 Kilobytes, which contained an interpreter for the Basic code, specifically written for the ZX80. Another new idea was to use cheap, removable media which had been sitting right under their noses the whole time. Audio tapes. These could have Basic code recorded onto them so that they could be made and sold cheaply and be safe for younger children to use. This cut costs even more for Sinclair, as there wasn't need to make any cassette players of their own, just let the consumer buy the one they want, making sure it had microphone-in and audio-out jacks for transmitting the data. Now, this idea may sound a bit old fashioned nowadays, seeing as we're in the 21st Century, however, specifically designed data-tapes are still used to record systems, computer usage, and for many other reasons by businesses.
However, was Sir Clive Sinclair really prepared for the popularity the ZX80 would gain?
Well, in reality, he ZX80 had no competitors. The more expensive home computers were a lot more expensive, and some, like the BBC, couldn't handle games so well. There were some flaws with the ZX80 though. The touch-sensitive keypad was more like a touch-insensitive keypad, and the cassettes themselves couldn't hold or load multiple files. Only files seperate could be loaded after the current one, unlike computers now which can load many files in the same amount of time it takes to blink.
When it came to the end of the ZX80's console life, a 16-Ram expansion kit was released on the market (so the N64 wasn't the first!). It was really good excepts for the slightest movement in the air would cause the connection to fail.
So what happened next? The worlds first video-game console, at the time thought of as a home computer (come on, who used it for word processing?) had come to the end of it's shelf life. Sir Clive needed to come up with something new. He came up with the ZX81.
This machine was cheaper to make because 18 chips from the original ZX were replaced by one chip, and it was also backwards compatable. The ZX80 could also be upgraded with a special ROM pack which made it as powerful as the ZX81. But he did have something else up his sleeve. He promised to release a printer for the ZX81, to sell the ZX81's at half price to schools, and to include a half price printer with the school's ones too.
By March, Mitsui, the main importer of British goods to Japan, bought exclusive rights to sell the ZX81 in Japan. Again there was no competition and Sinclair virtually owned the market.
The ZX80 and ZX81 models had been so popular by 1982 that there were books published about them, third party peripherals were launched on the market, and the factories were producing over half a million per year! However, people were learning Basic very quickly and wanted something with a bigger capacity to use it on. They were turning to other manufacturers until.....
...The ZX Spectrum.
The ZX Spectrum was released in two models to start off with. You had the choice of the ZX Spectrum 16k for £125, or the bit more expensive ZX Spectrum 48k which was £175. The cheaper model was basically for those who hadn't quite grasped how to program with the previous machines, and later offered an expansion for £60 to make it just as powerful as the 48k model. Previous owners of ZX machines were in shock when these were released as they were able to display a higher resolution on screen (the pixels/dots were smaller giving better graphics), up to eight colours were available on screen at any time (Blue, Red, Magenta, Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black), there was a new sound generator on these models, and many more superior facilities made it jaw-dropping in the eighties.
There were some more simple improvements too. Gone were the days of the high-tech but unreliable touch-sensitive keypads. This time there were rubber keypads which were a vast improvement and were immediately more popular. And also, for the first time, Sinclair was able to compete in the same market as the BBC Acorn computers which were also in colour, but lacked the ability to use sprites (images that could move past each other instead of through each other) and were still more expensive. Sound effects were generated inside the keyboard of the ZX Spectrum, but they were basic bleeps to start off with.
Games companies were set up (including Rareware who were then called "Ultimate") by the retired and veterans of the previous ZX machines. In fact, many games companies were set up causing a mass market of video-games to be sold quite cheaply and in large numbers, especially in WH Smith stores around the country which became Britain's biggest seller of ZX Spectrums.
So what else happened? The ZX Spectrum was still being sold in the 1990's, even though the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy were already on the market, and many Commodore and Atari systems had been competing.
Well, better models were released, including the ZX Spectrum +2 which could utilise the power of a 128k chip, and a '+3' model which could use five-inch floppy disks (the same as 'b' drive disks on old computers) which meant very quick loading compared to the old tape system, and quick saving features too. Thousands of games were released and coming to the end of the systems lives, the cassettes had gone down to around ten pence each! That's cheaper than buying blank tapes! Many producers released the older games and more popular games again under new brands such as "The Hit Squad" and continued to make a small profit on them, however, Sir Clive Sinclair made a really bad mistake. He embarrased the company's name by trying to compete in the mororists market with the cheap, electric Sinclair C5. He failed badly with that (ever seen one on the roads lately?) and for some reason has never released anything since.
As the 1990's approached, the freshness of the ZX label seemed to deminish as Nintendo and Sega brought out new and improved home games consoles which the cassette formats couldn't compete with. People just lost interest in the Spectrums and only the hardcore fans continued using them and bought more software second hand.
So this is it. It wasn't the Japanese or the Americans who started off the concept of home video-gaming. It was us! The British! But still we get the new consoles last, we get most games last, but at least they're all tested on the Japanese and the Americans of whom we could call the video-gaming guinea-pigs!
Well, now you know the history of the British console and how a simple programming language, Basic, started off the games industry for us all. Of course there were already games like Pong (originally called "Tennis"), and Space Invaders in the arcades, but the size of the Spectrum is very small compared to the arcade machine and a bit more convenient. Infact, if it wasn't for Sinclair, we probably wouldn't see games like Banjo Kazooie or Conkers Bad Fur Day on current and future consoles! As I said above, Rareware started out on the Speccy, and they base some of their games/characters on their 'classic' games.
Here's to Sir. Clive Sinclair, who made home gaming what it is today!
NOTE: information adapted from many sources on the internet and from own knowledge from being an owner of a ZX Specrum 48k and a ZX Spectrum 128k +2
But who are really the best designers?
Well, do the letters ZX mean anything to you? Or do you remember seeing a multicoloured logo on a black or grey background? Well I'm basically talking about the ZX Spectrum series, the UK's major console, or should I say (don't laugh) PC series?
The ZX series was the creation of none other than Surrey born Sir Clive Sinclair!
Yep, I said Surrey, in the United Kingdom! Great Britain had it's own successful series of computers that were used mainly for gamers and nerdy programmers who would copy programming code called 'Basic' out of magazines only to find that later on it didn't work! Even I have tried some of the Basic, copied from the ZX Spectrum 128k's manual only to find that I had made a mistake somewhere along the way, then having to search it all, line by line, until I finally got it to work.
So how well did Sir Clive do? And how come we don't see the brand name "Sinclair" on the market now?
Well it all began in 1979, when the Computer industry was well established but lacked something new. Computers, like the commodore, were able to make around £700 per unit, and Apple and Tandy had well established their reputations in the market.
However, Sir Clive knew that people would find it hard to build up the cash for anything like that, and decided to later release something which would turn the PC into a home arcade machine, for one seventh of the price! The ZX80, released January 1980. It was a small rubbery keyboard pad that connected to the aerial socket in televisions so that it could transmit the data straight onto your screen. Television gaming in the western world was born.
Now there was a problem with costs. The ZX80 was a great idea, but there had to be a way to sell it without too many components being produced for each unit. So, they used a large amount of ROM (Read Only Memory for computer boffins out there) which was around 4 Kilobytes, which contained an interpreter for the Basic code, specifically written for the ZX80. Another new idea was to use cheap, removable media which had been sitting right under their noses the whole time. Audio tapes. These could have Basic code recorded onto them so that they could be made and sold cheaply and be safe for younger children to use. This cut costs even more for Sinclair, as there wasn't need to make any cassette players of their own, just let the consumer buy the one they want, making sure it had microphone-in and audio-out jacks for transmitting the data. Now, this idea may sound a bit old fashioned nowadays, seeing as we're in the 21st Century, however, specifically designed data-tapes are still used to record systems, computer usage, and for many other reasons by businesses.
However, was Sir Clive Sinclair really prepared for the popularity the ZX80 would gain?
Well, in reality, he ZX80 had no competitors. The more expensive home computers were a lot more expensive, and some, like the BBC, couldn't handle games so well. There were some flaws with the ZX80 though. The touch-sensitive keypad was more like a touch-insensitive keypad, and the cassettes themselves couldn't hold or load multiple files. Only files seperate could be loaded after the current one, unlike computers now which can load many files in the same amount of time it takes to blink.
When it came to the end of the ZX80's console life, a 16-Ram expansion kit was released on the market (so the N64 wasn't the first!). It was really good excepts for the slightest movement in the air would cause the connection to fail.
So what happened next? The worlds first video-game console, at the time thought of as a home computer (come on, who used it for word processing?) had come to the end of it's shelf life. Sir Clive needed to come up with something new. He came up with the ZX81.
This machine was cheaper to make because 18 chips from the original ZX were replaced by one chip, and it was also backwards compatable. The ZX80 could also be upgraded with a special ROM pack which made it as powerful as the ZX81. But he did have something else up his sleeve. He promised to release a printer for the ZX81, to sell the ZX81's at half price to schools, and to include a half price printer with the school's ones too.
By March, Mitsui, the main importer of British goods to Japan, bought exclusive rights to sell the ZX81 in Japan. Again there was no competition and Sinclair virtually owned the market.
The ZX80 and ZX81 models had been so popular by 1982 that there were books published about them, third party peripherals were launched on the market, and the factories were producing over half a million per year! However, people were learning Basic very quickly and wanted something with a bigger capacity to use it on. They were turning to other manufacturers until.....
...The ZX Spectrum.
The ZX Spectrum was released in two models to start off with. You had the choice of the ZX Spectrum 16k for £125, or the bit more expensive ZX Spectrum 48k which was £175. The cheaper model was basically for those who hadn't quite grasped how to program with the previous machines, and later offered an expansion for £60 to make it just as powerful as the 48k model. Previous owners of ZX machines were in shock when these were released as they were able to display a higher resolution on screen (the pixels/dots were smaller giving better graphics), up to eight colours were available on screen at any time (Blue, Red, Magenta, Green, Cyan, Yellow, White and Black), there was a new sound generator on these models, and many more superior facilities made it jaw-dropping in the eighties.
There were some more simple improvements too. Gone were the days of the high-tech but unreliable touch-sensitive keypads. This time there were rubber keypads which were a vast improvement and were immediately more popular. And also, for the first time, Sinclair was able to compete in the same market as the BBC Acorn computers which were also in colour, but lacked the ability to use sprites (images that could move past each other instead of through each other) and were still more expensive. Sound effects were generated inside the keyboard of the ZX Spectrum, but they were basic bleeps to start off with.
Games companies were set up (including Rareware who were then called "Ultimate") by the retired and veterans of the previous ZX machines. In fact, many games companies were set up causing a mass market of video-games to be sold quite cheaply and in large numbers, especially in WH Smith stores around the country which became Britain's biggest seller of ZX Spectrums.
So what else happened? The ZX Spectrum was still being sold in the 1990's, even though the Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Game Boy were already on the market, and many Commodore and Atari systems had been competing.
Well, better models were released, including the ZX Spectrum +2 which could utilise the power of a 128k chip, and a '+3' model which could use five-inch floppy disks (the same as 'b' drive disks on old computers) which meant very quick loading compared to the old tape system, and quick saving features too. Thousands of games were released and coming to the end of the systems lives, the cassettes had gone down to around ten pence each! That's cheaper than buying blank tapes! Many producers released the older games and more popular games again under new brands such as "The Hit Squad" and continued to make a small profit on them, however, Sir Clive Sinclair made a really bad mistake. He embarrased the company's name by trying to compete in the mororists market with the cheap, electric Sinclair C5. He failed badly with that (ever seen one on the roads lately?) and for some reason has never released anything since.
As the 1990's approached, the freshness of the ZX label seemed to deminish as Nintendo and Sega brought out new and improved home games consoles which the cassette formats couldn't compete with. People just lost interest in the Spectrums and only the hardcore fans continued using them and bought more software second hand.
So this is it. It wasn't the Japanese or the Americans who started off the concept of home video-gaming. It was us! The British! But still we get the new consoles last, we get most games last, but at least they're all tested on the Japanese and the Americans of whom we could call the video-gaming guinea-pigs!
Well, now you know the history of the British console and how a simple programming language, Basic, started off the games industry for us all. Of course there were already games like Pong (originally called "Tennis"), and Space Invaders in the arcades, but the size of the Spectrum is very small compared to the arcade machine and a bit more convenient. Infact, if it wasn't for Sinclair, we probably wouldn't see games like Banjo Kazooie or Conkers Bad Fur Day on current and future consoles! As I said above, Rareware started out on the Speccy, and they base some of their games/characters on their 'classic' games.
Here's to Sir. Clive Sinclair, who made home gaming what it is today!
NOTE: information adapted from many sources on the internet and from own knowledge from being an owner of a ZX Specrum 48k and a ZX Spectrum 128k +2