YOU’LL NEED THIS

A COPY OF RETRO VIRTUAL MACHINE.

32 and 64-bit versions are available for Windows and Linux, plus a 64-bit package for macOS. www.retrovirtualmachine.org

AT LAST, WE’RE FEATURING the machine we’ve been teasing for months: the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. To anyone outside the UK, this name may be meaningless, but in Britain the machine was a cultural icon. Far cheaper than anything Americans were exporting, the homegrown Spectrum was a working-class hero that spawned a generation of influential British coders.

Although the machine had cheap graphics and primitive sound, its rock-bottom price spawned a phenomenal budget gaming scene.

For anyone willing to look past its shoddy presentation, an anarchic game culture awaits, with classic titles unlike any other system.

–JOHN KNIGHT

1 DEVELOPMENT

The ZX Spectrum was developed under the leadership of British inventor Clive Sinclair, who was renowned for making electronics affordable through ruthless simplification.

>> Originally code-named the ZX82, the Spectrum built upon the ZX80 and ZX81—machines that helped establish budget UK computing—but brought a wave of improvements.

>> Depending on the model, Spectrums had either 16 or 48KB of RAM, and were powered by Zilog’s Z80A CPU. The microcomputer now had a color display; the name Spectrum was chosen to advertise its new eight-color palette.