IT’S ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC HOME COMPUTERS EVER MADE, AND IT’S BACK IN PLUG-AND-PLAY FORM. WE SPEAK TO THE PEOPLE BEHIND IT TO FIND OUT WHY IT’S TAKEN SO LONG, AND GET A CHANCE TO GIVE OUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS AHEAD OF LAUNCH

words by nick thorpewords by nick thorpe

TO FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE SPECTRUM YOU CAN VISIT THE RETRO GAMES LIMITED WEBSITE USING THIS QR CODE

» [The Spectrum] Atwo-player beat-’em-up is something every plug-and-play machine needs, we think.

» [The Spectrum] Some number of games will be more modern homebrew games, like Alien Girl here.

» Chris Smith, chief technology officer at Retro Games Ltd.

» Darren Melbourne, licensing director at Retro Games Ltd.

» [The Spectrum] So far there’s a good variety of games to be had, but we don’t know the full 48 just yet.

"If all the things the Retro Gamer team could be surprised by, you wouldn’t think the device you’re seeing on these pages should rank very highly on the list. We didn’t think so either, but the more we thought about The Spectrum, the more it has surprised us. What initially seemed like something simple and obvious has given rise to a whole load of questions, which ultimately left us dumbfounded as to how the machine could even exist.

What is The Spectrum? It’s a full-sized recreation of the classic Sinclair computer in its original form, complete with working rubber keys. It comes with 48 built-in games ranging from Eighties icons to modern homebrew hits, and the ability to load your own games via USB memory stick. If you want to forego the slick menu and jump straight into a familiar grey prompt screen, that’s possible too. Naturally, it also has USB controller support and outputs video via HDMI at 720p. It’s going to be out on 22 November 2024 for £89.99, but we’ve already had our hands on a prototype version of the machine.

So, let’s take the surprises one by one. First of all, the timing – The Spectrum comes hot on the heels of The 400 Mini, which released on 28 March 2024, and we simply weren’t expecting a new machine so fast. As Chris Smith tells us, much of it comes down to the experience and growth within the company, which has previously created The C64 Mini and its full-size counterpart, The A500 Mini and The 400 Mini. “When we did The C64 Mini, we didn’t know what we were going to be doing next – the full-size 64, yes, but we didn’t know what we’d be doing past that. When we built the Atari, we knew what we were going to be doing next,” he explains. “We’ve got more staff, and the people we do have really understand the Spectrum. We set ourselves some goals around this to see how fast – not so much how fast – it’s more how efficiently can we do this?”

According to Darren Melbourne, a large driving force was simply proving that it could be done. “We had our company off-site at the beginning of January this year. We all sat in a room and we were with Stuart [Chiplin] at Plaion, and we said if we really pulled all the stops out, we could get a Spectrum released for Christmas. And he said, ‘There’s no way you can do that,’” he recalls. “I think quite a lot of it came down to proving Stuart wrong, so we literally pulled all the stops out to ensure that we could get it done for Christmas.” Chris admits, “It probably was a little bit too fast. It was ambitious, yes, but we’ve done it,” before elaborating on his sentimental reasons for the timing. “I was really, really motivated to get this done in this time frame. I remember Christmas 1983, it was a big time for the Spectrum. It just felt appropriate – for me, the Spectrum had to be out for Christmas, you know?”