59 Fun Facts About ZX Spectrum

The ZX Spectrum went on sale in 1982 in two versions that differed in what?

Memory size was the only difference: 16 KB or 48 KB of RAM. Most games soon needed the larger machine, so many owners of the cheaper one paid to have theirs upgraded.

How many ZX Spectrums were sold across all the official models?

About 5 million is the usual total for the official machines, and it leaves out the unlicensed clones built across Eastern Europe, so the true number of Spectrums was higher still.

The Spectrum was manufactured in Dundee by which company, better known for watches?

Timex assembled the Spectrum under contract in Dundee, and when its factory shut for the summer holiday in 1982 Sinclair's queue of waiting buyers grew to 40,000.

Which industrial designer created the Spectrum's case, rainbow motif and rubber keyboard?

Rick Dickinson replaced the hundreds of parts in a conventional keyboard with a design of four or five moving parts, because at Sinclair every design decision was driven by cost.

The name 'Spectrum' was chosen to emphasise what?

Its colour display set it apart from the black-and-white ZX81; during development the machine was called the ZX81 Colour or ZX82.

Which Olympic champion's 1984 Spectrum game became notorious as a 'joystick killer' for its frantic waggling?

Daley Thompson's Decathlon made players hammer two keys or waggle a joystick to make him run, a control borrowed from the arcade game Track & Field that wrecked many a joystick.

The cheaper of the two original ZX Spectrums went on sale in 1982 at what price?

£125 bought the entry model when the rival BBC Model B cost over £300, and within three months 30,000 buyers were still waiting for theirs.

The Spectrum's rubber keys were famously said to feel like what?

Dead flesh was the jibe that stuck to the rubber keys, and Sinclair answered it in 1984 with the hard plastic keyboard of the Spectrum+.

Which processor, running at 3.5 MHz, powered the ZX Spectrum?

The Zilog Z80A ran at 3.5 MHz; its 16-bit address bus could reach only 64 KB directly, which is why the Spectrum 128 needed bank switching.

Which single chip integrating the ZX Spectrum's essential hardware did Richard Altwasser design?

The ULA, an uncommitted logic array made by Ferranti, packed the video, keyboard and sound circuitry into one custom chip, which kept the Spectrum small and cheap.

Because colour was stored per 8x8 cell, the Spectrum suffered from what graphical limitation?

Attribute clash arose because each 8x8 cell could hold only two colours, ink and paper, so a moving sprite recoloured the background it crossed; the best games were drawn to hide it.

Besides its colours, each character cell on the ZX Spectrum could be set to extra brightness and what other effect?

Flashing was one bit in each cell's colour byte: when it was set, the ink and paper colours swapped at regular intervals, so text blinked on its own.

Which Nine Tiles programmer wrote most of the Spectrum's ROM code and its BASIC programming manual?

Steve Vickers adapted the ZX81's BASIC for the new machine, then quit with hardware designer Richard Altwasser within weeks of the launch to build a computer of their own, the Jupiter Ace.

How was a BASIC keyword such as PRINT entered on the original Spectrum's keyboard?

With a single keystroke: each key carried whole keywords, so pressing P gave PRINT, a Sinclair habit since the ZX80 that saved memory by storing each command as one byte.

Which on-screen message told a Spectrum owner that several minutes of waiting for a game had been wasted?

R Tape loading error meant the Spectrum had found the game on tape but could not read it in, so the whole load had to be started again from the beginning.

The original Spectrum's sound came from what?

A single-channel beeper could play only one note at a time, so, as Sinclair's own manual put it, anyone who wanted harmony would have to sing it themselves.

How was the ZX Spectrum sold at first?

By mail order only at first: demand ran far past the planned 20,000 machines a month, and only after long backlogs did chains such as WHSmith and Boots stock it.

Which right-hand man of Clive Sinclair left in the late 1970s to co-found the rival Acorn Computers?

Chris Curry had run Sinclair's side company Science of Cambridge; within a few years his new firm had beaten his old boss to the contract for the BBC's computer.

Clive Sinclair, the inventor behind the ZX Spectrum, was the long-serving chairman of which organisation?

British Mensa had Sinclair as its long-serving chairman, yet the home-computer pioneer said in later life that he did not use the internet himself.

Which Sinclair business computer, announced in January 1984, reached buyers months late and became a costly flop?

The QL, short for Quantum Leap, was announced before it was finished: working machines took until late summer 1984 to arrive, and the advertising watchdog upheld complaints about the delay.

The ZX Spectrum 128 launched in September 1985 in which country, financed by local distributor Investrónica?

Spain got it first because Sinclair developed the 128 with Investrónica, its distributor there; Britain had to wait until January 1986 while shops cleared unsold Spectrum+ stock.

Which chip gave the Spectrum 128 three-channel sound and MIDI compatibility?

The AY-3-8912 was the chip already used in the rival Amstrad CPC, and it sent its three-part music out through the television instead of a speaker inside the case.

Which businessman's company bought the Sinclair computer range and brand name for £5 million in 1986?

Alan Sugar's Amstrad bought the computers and the Sinclair name in April 1986 but not the company itself, then launched three more Spectrum models of its own.

Amstrad's ZX Spectrum +2 came with what built in?

A cassette recorder, which Amstrad called the Datacorder, was built in just as on its own CPC 464, and the +2 was sold purely as a games machine with a joystick and games in the box.

Amstrad's 1987 ZX Spectrum +3 passed over the common 3.5-inch floppy disk for one of what size?

3-inch disks were a non-standard format, but Amstrad already used them in its own CPC and PCW computers, so the same drive went into the +3.

Which 1983 release was the first title from the Spectrum software house Ultimate?

Jetpac, in which a spaceman rebuilds and refuels his rocket, arrived when many shop-bought games still contained reams of BASIC, and its smooth arcade action made Ultimate's name.

The ZX Microdrive, launched in July 1983, stored data on what?

A continuous loop of magnetic tape ran round each tiny cartridge in about eight seconds, but friction wore the tape so fast that Microdrives earned a name for unreliability.

Which company's joystick interface became the most widely supported add-on of its kind for the ZX Spectrum?

Kempston's interface let Atari-style joysticks plug into the back of the Spectrum, sparing its rubber keyboard from the pounding that action games dished out.

Which American computer, launched in 1982, was the ZX Spectrum's biggest rival for British home gamers?

The Commodore 64 cost far more than a Spectrum when it reached Britain, so Sinclair kept the budget end of the market while Commodore became its closest challenger.

The Stamper brothers, the team behind Knight Lore at Ultimate, went on to found which studio in 1985?

Rare grew out of Ultimate after the Stampers reverse-engineered Nintendo's console, a feat Nintendo had called impossible, and switched from Spectrum games to cartridges.

What was Knight Lore's isometric image-masking technique called?

Filmation drew rooms as masked isometric 3D; Ultimate said Knight Lore was finished before Sabre Wulf and held back a year so it would not kill that game's sales.

In Knight Lore, Sabreman has forty days to brew a cure for what?

A werewolf curse changes Sabreman at every nightfall, shown by an on-screen timer, and some of the castle's monsters attack him only while he is in wolf form.

Which composer wrote the tune that loops while Miner Willy explores the caverns of Manic Miner?

Edvard Grieg's In the Hall of the Mountain King loops through every cavern, which set the game apart when most Spectrum titles played in near silence.

Manic Miner was written after Bug-Byte's despatch manager asked for something like which arcade hit?

Donkey Kong was the brief from Bug-Byte's Alan Maton, but the finished game also borrowed heavily from Miner 2049er, an Atari platformer of the year before.

In Jet Set Willy, who will only let Willy go to bed once he has tidied up after the party?

Maria, his housekeeper, guards the bedroom until every item left over from the party is collected, a task that an infamous bug at first made impossible to finish.

Which show tune plays during the game in the original Spectrum release of Jet Set Willy?

If I Were a Rich Man, from Fiddler on the Roof, suits the plot: Miner Willy has spent the fortune he struck in Manic Miner on a clifftop mansion and a yacht.

Melbourne House's 1982 The Hobbit understood a subset of English called what?

Inglish let players type full sentences, down to adverbs such as attacking a goblin 'viciously', when most adventure games of the day took only short verb-and-noun commands.

Elite, by David Braben and Ian Bell, was first released in 1984 for which computer?

The BBC Micro got Elite first, in September 1984; Spectrum owners waited until the following year for a version that came with a plastic Lenslok lens as copy protection.

What was Nigel Alderton when he wrote the 1983 hit Chuckie Egg?

A teenage shop assistant: Alderton had a Saturday job at A&F Software's computer shop near Manchester, and the firm's own programmers crowded round his screen when he showed them the game.

In Skool Daze, Eric must steal what from the school safe?

His report card is locked in the safe, and Eric gets the combination by setting off the shields on the school walls, which confuses the teachers into giving it away.

Hungry Horace, the first Horace game of 1982, was a clone of which arcade hit?

Hungry Horace copied Pac-Man's maze-and-guards formula; its sequel Horace Goes Skiing bolted a Frogger-style road crossing onto the ski run.

Kevin Toms put a portrait of his own bearded face on the cover of which 1982 hit?

Football Manager grew out of a board game Toms had designed at the age of 11; he wrote the computer version entirely in BASIC and sold it through his own label, Addictive Games.

Dizzy, hero of the Oliver Twins' series for Codemasters, is what?

An egg, an anthropomorphic one named for the way he tumbles about, rescuing the Yolkfolk from the wizard Zaks.

Codemasters was founded in October 1986 by which brothers?

Richard and David Darling had quit school to write budget games for Mastertronic; in 1986 they sold their stake in it and, with help from their father, started Codemasters in Banbury.

Crash, the Spectrum magazine famed for Oliver Frey's covers, was launched from which Shropshire town?

Ludlow was where Roger Kean and the brothers Oliver and Franco Frey first sold games through a catalogue called Crash; it did so well that they turned it into a magazine in February 1984.

Your Sinclair's Hacking Away column printed lists of which command, typed in before a game to cheat?

POKE writes a number straight into memory, so one line typed in before a game loaded could hand the player infinite lives, and magazines printed pages of them.

The Sinclair C5 electric tricycle was assembled in South Wales by which maker of household appliances?

Hoover built the C5 at its washing machine factory in Merthyr Tydfil until August 1985, when a payment dispute with Sinclair stopped the line only months after the launch.

Which world-first product did Clive Sinclair produce in 1972?

A slimline pocket calculator, the Executive, was possible because its designers pulsed the power to the chip, cutting consumption so far that tiny button cells could run it.

The 1980 Sinclair ZX80 was one of the first computers sold in Britain for under what price?

£100 was the barrier: Sinclair advertised the ZX80, at £99.95 ready-built, as the first personal computer under that price, and a kit to solder at home cost less still.

In the 2009 BBC drama Micro Men, who played Clive Sinclair?

Alexander Armstrong played Sinclair as a man at war with the firm behind a competing computer; Sophie Wilson, one of that machine's real designers, appears briefly as a pub landlady.

One ending of Black Mirror: Bandersnatch plays data-tape audio that, loaded into a Spectrum emulator, produces what?

Loading the audio produces a QR code that links to a Tuckersoft website hosting a playable Spectrum version of the film's game Nohzdyve.

The Jupiter Ace, built in 1982 by two of the ZX Spectrum's designers, used which language instead of BASIC?

Forth set the Ace apart from the BASIC machines around it, but buyers stayed away: the machine flopped and its makers had folded by the end of 1983.

The ZX81, the Spectrum's predecessor, was notorious for which add-on that crashed the machine if it wobbled?

The 16K RAM pack was top-heavy and held on only by its edge connector, so a nudge could lose everything typed in; owners steadied it with Blu-Tack or double-sided tape.

The 1984 ZX Spectrum+ was assembled by AB Electronics in South Wales and which Korean firm?

Samsung built some of the machines in Korea, but the new model was the old one in a new case, and retailers reported up to 30% failing against 5 or 6% before.

The ZX Spectrum 128's large external heatsink earned the machine which nickname?

The Toast Rack got its name from the slatted heatsink bolted to its right-hand side, which cooled a voltage regulator that earlier models had kept inside the case.

Which Spectrum-compatible 8-bit computer did Miles Gordon Technology launch in December 1989?

The SAM Coupé came from a firm that made Spectrum add-ons, but it arrived when buyers were moving on to the Amiga and Atari ST, and its maker was in receivership within months.

Which communist country had some 100,000 Spectrums by 1988, making it the top home computer there?

Czechoslovakia had an estimated 100,000 Spectrums by 1988 though the machine was barely sold there officially: it was small enough to smuggle in past the high customs fees.

When Sinclair Research ran short of cash in 1985, which media tycoon announced a rescue takeover that never went through?

Robert Maxwell's bid, made through a subsidiary of his Pergamon Press, was called off within two months after Sinclair struck a deal with its bankers and suppliers.

The LOAD ZX Spectrum museum opened in 2020 in the town of Cantanhede, in which country?

Portugal's museum grew out of the collection of João Diogo Ramos, who was born in Cantanhede, and the town council joined a local Spectrum society to give it a permanent home.