News: 1597303931

I can't wait to get my hands on it.

I've ordered one as well, what could possibly go wrong.

The campaign’s creators say they had bad advice about tax on their first go-around and ended up shelling out from personal funds.

Hopefully [1]The Event at the end of this year won't cause the same problem this time around.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l28o6fJda1c

I just finished reading Jasper Fforde's latest novel, The Constant Rabbit. So when I read "The Event" I assumed there'd suddenly be a lot of spontaneously anthropomorphised rabbits. Then I felt sad.

Really liked those rabbits.

With all the losers who can't deliver on their empty promises these days, it's nice to see that there still are people who can not only promise, but actually ship a functioning product that does what it says on the tin.

And now, they're even improving on it.

If I were to buy any retro console, it would be theirs.

They deserve it.

*lol*

Yep, this machine is they they have added a keyboard using mac style butterfly keys on to a notirous dead flesh keyed system and ended up with is a flipping lovley keyboard feel that is up there with decent laptop keyboards and certainly feels like it's too nice for a kickstarter.

This sounds awesome. Based on their track record I'm confident that it'll be delivered. So much so that I've just created a kickstarter account and backed a project for the first time in my life.

So many happy memories of my Spectrum+ 48K (£179.99, booting it up Christmas morning 1985 and seeing what it could do) and watching Henrique's video for this project gave me a frisson of that old feeling. Fingers crossed. $425 well spent... I hope...!

I was on KS1, thus I have a Next. Yes, it is awesome. It really is. It's awesomer that I thought it would be. It's also way more than just a faster and better Spectrum, which is awesome in itself and is a major success (did I say it's awesome?!). As well as the improved Spectrumness (and backward compatibilty to 48k) it also runs other cores (FPGA, not emulation) like arcade boards and other retro cores like BBC Micro etc. I'm well chuffed with mine.

(Just a punter, not affillated to or friends with anyone on the ZXN team).

S.

I decided not to back this first time around given the Vega debacle, and kicked myself afterwards. The Next is a very capable machine; not just an enhanced Spectrum that can run Spectrum software and most peripherals, but can also masquerade as other machines, such as the BBC, CPC, and even arcade boards by flashing the FPGA with an appropriate core.

Credit to the Next team for pulling this off, despite the bad tax advice and having to top up the funds to achieve the initial launch out of their own pockets.

Needless to say, I've back this second round, and will look forward to receiving mine next year.

The 28mhz update was added to the orignal next a few months back. It was a case of revising the core for stability. This machine has had a load of enhancements such as other cores to download such as CP/M.

One of the other changes was to deal with hdmi where the TV/monitor provided power feedback so unplugging the 9v psu didn't fully power down the machine. I think there are a couple of. Other tweaks too.

I'd heard mutterings in the past year about tidying up the core further in an attempt to hit 56MHz. That could be a laugh.

Still, I've slammed down my cash. It's a shame the price is so high for what's pretty-much-certainly a toy to most people. It seems to have prices out a lot of folks. But I can see why it's expensive.

Three hundred quid? Bleedin' 'ell! That'll get you a decent 8k capable graphics card.

I can't get my head around people wanting to play 8-bit graphics games. I can remember the disappointment of what appeared on screen as compared to the illustration on the box. 'So the red and blue blocks are supposed to be Superman, and that green square is Jimmy Olsen?'

I think I'll give this a miss and spend £200 on a graphics card and the rest on a nice Scotch whisky.

I can't get my head around people wanting to play 8-bit graphics games.

Well, fair enough. It's clearly not a product for you then. Yeah it's a lot of money for an 8-bitter, but in truth it will show most 16-bit platforms a clean pair of heels. Having played with one, it's much more like a SNES when you get the enhanced software on it, and I expect that's underplaying its capabilities too.

It's a really nicely-specced, well-designed, well-balanced machine. No, it's not in the same league as chucking a £200 graphics card into an £800 PC, and nor is in the same league as a PS4 Pro, which is about the same cost. On the other hand, once I get mine you should pop round and have a shot. And I'll help you drink that whisky.

I'll pit Chuckie Egg or Jet Pac on a Spectrum against any game on your PC and £200 graphics card, any day of the week. ;-)

£300 quid will get you a decent 1440p capable GPU, anything above that is dubious without limiting yourself to 30fps or compromising on visual quality.

I thought the same when the Next came out the first time, but I didn't look very closely.

It isn't a modern 8 bit computer with bells on, it's a well engineered FPGA system capable of running a number of cores as they would run on the original chips, centred on the original Spectrum chipset with a number of graphical and sound enhancements, plus e.g. a viable CP/M environment.

More importantly it's a modern supported platform with an associated community. You could emulate a speccy and write your own code to add emulated features, but the chance of building a contributing community off that is low.

The alternative is a DE10 with I/O board and case, which won't cost an horrendous amount less than a Next, and doesn't include the same expansion facilities of the Next.

I was tempted by the DE10, but I suspect I'm going to go with the Next instead.

I’ll take 8 bit 80s games over any modern game any day of the week. Hit start, play. None of this preamble crap.

I really want one of these things, but I don’t have the spare minutes to enjoy it.

Note to Author: they hit their first stretch goal within hours - all machines now come with a whopping, maxed-out 2MB RAM!!

Ok my first home computer was a ZX spectrum back around 84, then later a +2 when it launched. I have so many found and happy memories attached to the ZX Spectrum. I am so very excited to be onboard for KS2 having missed KS1. I know its a toy and I appreciate its expensive, and I know I can play all the games I love on an emulator. But its just not the same. I know technically I am only playing via emu on the Next too. But its flicked all my emotion buttons.

Unlike (e.g.) the Vega and Vega+, the Next isn't an emulator; it's a hardware reimplementation and expansion of the original design.

It's not emulation.. it's a real spectrum designed by Rick Dickinson, the designer of the original Spectrum.

You can plug spectrum hardware in there, like an interface 1, and it'll work.

If an FPGA is defined as emulation, then the original spectrum was one too as it had a ULA at its heart (and the +2, +3 various different gate arrays). The only difference is the modern chips are programmable.

These retro computers mystify me. Sure, they'd be fun for about an hour of nostalgia. But after that, what have you got? A £300 computer with a tiny, tiny fraction of the capabilities of your mobile phone.

And the nostalgia is always bitter sweet. It's never as good as you seem to remember it.

Get an emulator, run it on the computer you have.

I could imagine spending £50 on a Spectrum keyboard coupled to an emulator running on my PC. Beyond that, I wasted enough time playing Spectrum games in when it was first released (£125 for a 16K version, had to wait ages).

There [1]was one from Elite Systems but as it was from Elite [2]it ended up in dispute .

They are of course now on eBay for silly money, like the Next.

[1] http://sinclair.recreatedzxspectrum.com/

[2] https://www.flickeringmyth.com/2017/05/elite-systems-issue-a-statement-regarding-the-recreated-zx-spectrum/

I love being told what to do with my money.

Spectrum emulators have been pretty well polished for some time now, and some of them will even play demos which are very reliant on hardware timings. Emulating the Spectrum Next, though, is very hard work. It's not just a Spectrum, but has loads of additional features which greatly increase the emulation overhead.

I'll admit to being a little skeptical until I actually saw the prototype and spoke to some of the people involved. It's way ahead of the Speccy and the people behind it are so enthusiastic and knowledgeable on the whole thing.

If you want the Spectrum from the 1980s, emulate it. Sure. You'll get no argument from me.

If you want what the Spectrum could have become, this is the puppy. And you can still program your own stuff on it (relatively) easily.

> Spectrum emulators have been pretty well polished for some time now, and some of them will even play demos which are very reliant on hardware timings

TBH, the Spectrum is probably the best understood and the most emulated hardware in the world. Partly because the design was brutally simple (albeit in a genius way), but also because this simplicity meant that millions of unofficial clones were produced in various third world and communist countries (e.g. Brazil, Russia).

Sadly, for all that all credit is due to the guys making it, I don't really see the point or need for the Next. I mean, it's a wonderful piece of kit, and something in my brain shouts "WE NEEDS THE SHINY" every time I see a picture of that glossy wee case with the little wee Spectrum colours down the side.

*fans self*

But at the same time, from a technical perspective, it's a solution looking for a problem. If I want to get into video game development, I'd be just as well tinkering with pygame on a raspberry pi or somesuch.

If I bought one, it'd just be for nostalgia's sake, and it'd just end up gathering dust after the initial oo'ing and aww'ing [*]. So as much as my credit card keeps twitching, I'm staying resolute.

But still. SHINY.

[*] Fun fact - I actually bought a reproduction ZX 48k case from one of the various Spectrum hardware sites and spray painted it white to match the special one which they made when they hit the 1-million mark on the Dundee production lines. It now has pride of place on one of the walls in my office :)

Why? But seriously, why? Are the games that good? I don't remember any of them on my mates' spectrums being all that brilliant. Even as a 15-year-old. And I had an atari video game, so the bar was fairly low.

I can't afford one, have no need for one and have made enough unauthorised purchases over the years to potentially end my happily married life without buying another thing, but...

I still want one of these. No of course it's not got much poke compared to modern machinery and the games are pretty basic but christ, I spent more time playing Jetpack than I ever have any modern games and enjoyed myself more. Do you need to justify something like this? IMO no absolutely not. It's to be bought and enjoyed just because it's a thing. And that should be celebrated :)

looks like The Lords of Midnight in the video. I never did complete it as my old dear managed to chuck away my copy of Crash magazine (might have been march 85 edition) which had a map!