The developer of the Spectrum Vega discusses its new system
The Sinclair Spectrum Vega is making a lot of gamers very excited. After all, who wouldn't want to own an official Spectrum device that includes 1,000 games pre-loaded? Created by Retro Computers Ltd, the Vega is an official Sinclair product, an impressive deal in its own right. Coupled with the machine's rich legacy in the UK, it's not a surprise that the project smashed its £100,000 funding price in a mere matter of days.
The Vega promises to be plug-and-play and will feature a D-Pad and five buttons, as well as composite output. It's currently modelled on the original Spectrum. Chris Smith, the author of The ZX Spectrum Ula: How To Design A Microcomputer, is in charge of the Vega and is pleased to be creating an official Sinclair product. "It's pretty exciting really, but there is a big precedent to follow.'' he admits. "As it's a retro product, it had to maintain the familiar Sinclair styles of the Eighties so as to look and feel right."
One thing that doesn't feel right is the fact that a great many games aren't going to be easily playable due to a distinct lack of buttons. The likes of Elite, The Hobbit and Skool Daze (assuming rights are secured) will all suffer, even with the included virtual keyboard - which begs the question, why not just include a keyboard from the off?
"It was a balance between cost, functionality and form," explains Chris. "Most games can be played with a joystick alone, though often require a few additional keys. The Vega concept of a handheld gaming device is ideally suited to these types of games. Reproducing the ZX Spectrum keyboard on the Vega would have created an entirely different product, and one not suited to arcade games. This does leave text-based adventure games at a disadvantage, as an on-screen keyboard isn't an ideal control method, but we are working on novel text entry concepts and hope to provide a solution later."
Creating a Spectrum without a traditional keyboard isn't the only technical challenge Chris and his team has faced... "Cost is the deal breaker with a product of this type," he admits. "This is something Sinclair fought with in the Eighties, and we're continuing that today. Developing the low cost hardware for the Vega was difficult. We started with a custom chip design, but it was too expensive to tool up for fabrication unless we were producing hundreds of thousands of chips. So we decided to do more in software and less in hardware, and look for a commodity system-on-a-chip that would satisfy our requirements. This of course meant writing custom software for the chip, which also takes a long time.”
Despite these difficulties. Chris is confident in the Vega and isn't too surprised that there's still so much love for Sinclair's range of home computers. "It was the gameplay that made a game really enjoyable and addictive," he remarks, "not stupendous graphics and special effects because you couldn't do them. Gameplay was everything. Today, those games from the Eighties and Nineties are still as challenging and addictive as ever.
"Programming these 8-bit computers to get the most out of them is a real challenge, and people still get a lot of enjoyment and learn a great deal from pushing those machines to their limits. Programmers who cut their teeth on these early machines have a deep understanding and respect for what's going on under the lid of a computer."
Despite the popularity of the new device, the included games are proving a sticking point for some. Initially. Retro Computers Ltd was going to simply give a percentage of each Vega's profits to a charity, which is great for the charity in question, but not so good for the original owners. This stance has since changed however with developers now being given a choice of receiving 1 % or giving that 1 % to a charity of their choice. Furthermore the company is promising that 10% of future sales will be shared between developers, while another 10% will go to charity. It's also reaching out to developers on its official site, although that does feel a little like shutting the gate after the horse has bolted.
Considering the sheer popularity of the Spectrum and its vast catalogue of great games it's odd that no games or developers were revealed when the campaign launched. Paul Andrews, Retro Computers Ltd's managing director explained the secrecy. "We did not want to talk to developers prior to announcing what we were doing to the world, for all the obvious reasons: that it would have undoubtedly have leaked out, and we would have lost the impact which we clearly did have in the end with the announcement. It was nothing sinister, just we did not want to go live until the day we did.”
We'd argue that being able to reveal what games were actually available would be an even better selling point, leading to more sales, but it appears to have made little difference to the 2,000 odd people who have already backed the Vega.
The Vega's physical limitations certainly appear to be holding it back and we're still unsure how quickly rights for key games will be sorted but there's no denying that the ability to own an official Spectrum product with 1,000 legally licensed games appeals very strongly to us. Paul has revealed that the complete list of games will be announced shortly before the first devices are due to ship. Here's hoping that they live up to everyone's expectations.