The Spectrum

Overview

On the front of the box it advertises the included Crash magazine and the 48 included games. There is a picture of The Spectrum, along with the text 'PERSONAL COMPUTER', 'RETRO GAMES', and the PEGI age rating. The box contents are listed on one of the short side, which is as follows:

The Spectrum

Cables (HDMI & USB-C)

The Spectrum instruction booklet

Crash magazine

(AC adapter not included.)

As for the other short side it lists the features:

Emulates ZX Spectrum 16K/48K/128K/+2/+2A

Save & resume game

Rewind up to 40 seconds of gameplay

Multiple display options and CRT filter

Play games within one of 12 attractive frames

720p HD 50/60 Hz via HDMI

Via USB, connect your own devices, play your own games, and update the firmware.

(USB memory stick not supplied.)

Lastly, the back of the box promotes the 48 included games, which are listed, along with screenshots and art shown for Manic Miner, The Hobbit, Saboteur! Remastered, Head over heels, Match day II, Target: Renegade, and Alien Girl (Skirmish Edition).

The inner box is plain black aside for a picture of The Spectrum on the top. Opening the box reveals The Spectrum in a tray with a plastic protective piece. Lifting out the tray you will find The Spectrum introduction booklet (styled like the original Spectrum booklet) which is only a few pages and covers the basics of setting up The Spectrum.

A copy of the full manual (more detailed than the included one) can be found at:

https://retrogames.biz/support/thespectrum/manuals/

You also get a copy of the Crash magazine, 30 pages covering various games. Please note that Crash is a ZX Spectrum magazine that originally ran from 1984 to 1991 but returned in late 2020.

Finally, there is another, smaller box, which has the ZX Spectrum 'rainbow' in one corner, inside is an HDMI and USB-C cable.

Looking at The Spectrum in more detail, it has substantial weight to it, which is a nice touch to make it have the feel of an original ZX Spectrum. The top details and rubber keyboard are faithful to an actual ZX Spectrum, although it has 'retro' and 'The Spectrum' written top left on the machine rather than 'sinclair' and 'ZX Spectrum' respectively as on a ZX Spectrum. At the rear of The Spectrum is the 'HOME' push button, four USB ports (3 grouped together), 'TV' (HDMI) connector, 5VDC USB-C port, 'POWER' LED and push button. Disappointingly, the shiny plastic was already scratched on my unit.

On the bottom of The Spectrum are five screws and four feet, quite like what you'd find on a classic ZX Spectrum. There is a label which contains the wording:

The Spectrum

(c) 2024 Retro Games Ltd.

Also, the label shows RichCo (Asia) Ltd. as the manufacturer, specifies the input power as 5VDC 1A, model as RGL019, and the product's URL is given as retrogames.biz.

The full list of built-in games is as follows:

Alien Girl: Skirmish Edition
Ant Attack
Army Moves
Auf Wiedersehen Monty
Avalon
Bobby Bearing
Cosmic Payback
Devwill Too
Exolon
Fairlight
Firelord
Football Manager 2
Freddy Hardest
The Great Escape
Head over Heels
Highway Encounter
The Hobbit
Horace Goes Skiing
Jack the Nipper
Knot in 3D
The Lords of Midnight
Manic Miner
Match Day II
Movie
Nodes of Yesod
Penetrator
Phantis (Game Over II)
Pheenix
Pyracurse
Quazatron
Robin of the Wood
Saboteur! Remastered
Shovel Adventure
Skool Daze
Snake Escape
Spellbound
Starquake
Starstrike II
El Stompo
Stonkers
TCQ
Target: Renegade
Technician Ted - The Megamix
Tenebra
Trashman
The Way of the Exploding Fist
Wheelie
Where Time Stood Still

For more information about the games please see:

https://retrogames.biz/games/thespectrum/

The art for each game can be clicked on for detailed information about the game.

Getting started

Please note that due to firmware updates some information presented in this section may differ after an update is performed.

I used my Xiaomi 3A phone charger to power The Spectrum and I connected it to my TVI via HDMI, pressing the power button briefly caused the red power LED to come on after a few seconds and after a few more moments The Spectrum boot screen appeared followed by the Language selection screen:

According to my Elgato capture card The Spectrum was outputting at 720p 60Hz.

You can use The Spectrum's 5, 6, 7, and 8 keys to navigate the menu (the keys have arrow key symbols above them). As shown on the screen, press M key to confirm selection, and the screen will then indicate to press the B key to move to the next screen, which is the Television settings:

Which lets you select 50/60Hz - I selected 60Hz. After pressing the M key you must press the F key to run a television test. Press L to accept the setting (if there was a problem with your TV running 60Hz you wouldn't see the message to press L and it would revert to 50Hz).

Now that the initial setup has been done, you will be taken to the games carousel screen, with the first game selected, Alien Girl: Skirmish Edition.

Along the bottom of the screen are the controls; Q for help, A for saved games, Space for options, F for Favourite, L for sort, M to start game.

As mentioned, if you press Q (or 7) it brings up Help, which lists the keyboard and joystick controls for the selected game. As an example, the keyboard controls for Alien Girl: Skirmish Edition are:

Up Q

Down A

Left O

Right P

Fire Space

Home + O rewind gameplay

As you can see, the games don't use the standard WASD controls we're used to with modern computer games so it can take some getting used to. Fortunately, using a controller makes control much more natural.

Going back to the home screen, pressing A (or 6) brings up the saved games slot with a fancy cassette graphic:

Since I haven't saved yet the slots are of course empty.

The space key brings up the options window which lets you choose Display options, Language, and Advanced Options. Selecting Display options lets you choose between Sharp pixels and CRT effect, the border size, option to enable extended colours, and to choose the frame, of which there are 13, ranging from simple to detailed. After selecting a frame, a preview is shown on  the Display options screen.

As for the Advanced Options, it gives you the menu for System options, Boot mode, Switch to classic mode, System information, Legal notices, Shutdown device, and Factory reset. System options just lets you set the menu music, which defaults to 60%, and Boot mode lets you choose whether to boot into carousel or classic mode on start up. System information shows build information, which indicates build date of 1st Aug 2024 (assuming UK date format). This will likely change after a firmware update.

Back to the carousel, pressing the F key adds stars to the selected game, and pressing L sorts the games either by author, genre, year, publisher, favourite, or title (default). Lastly, press M to start the game, which happens in seconds - no tape loading like on an original machine.

The following screen shows the Alien Girl: Skirmish Edition title:

Notice the stylish frame around the game, which I selected from the 13 available.

As can be seen, the game is from 2021, and is a homebrew game.

You can press one of the number keys to choose between using the keyboard (1), or controller (2), thee Sinclair (3) option isn't valid for The Spectrum. Initially, I tried playing with with the keyboard but struggled due to the unusual keyboard controls so I tried various controllers until I settled on THEGAMEPAD controller, which came with Retro Games' The A500 Mini.

Here's some gameplay:

You can briefly press the Power or Home button to return to the carousel with the game suspended top right, press Enter to return to the game.

Next game I tried, El Stompo, another more recent homebrew game, here is the title screen:

Once again I had changed the frame.

Here is the game in action:

Note that the game has no music, only sound effects as the only audio.

You can view a games compilation video I did of some of the built-in games:

To get to classic mode from the carousel screen press the Space key to call up options, select Advanced Options, then Switch to classic mode. It will then boot into BASIC mode with '(c) 2024 Retro Games Ltd' message instead of the original Sinclair message. You enter programs in BASIC as you would on a real ZX Spectrum, here I've started to enter some simple code:

It's not too difficult typing on The Spectrum's built-in keyboard but you can also use a USB keyboard.

While in classic mode, pressing Power/Home button brings up the Options screen, which has options to select media, access saved games (allowing you to save in classic mode, which is very handy), select machine settings (machine type, tape loading speed, joystick type, map P1 and P2 joystick controls), Display options, Additional options, Switch to carousel mode, and Machine reset. From machine settings I selected 128K/+2 then machine reset and it booted into 128K mode.

You can hold Power button to shut down - the power LED will go off.

After moderate use The Spectrum feels slightly warm on the underside near the speaker grille.

Updating the firmware

Please see this link to learn how to update The Spectrum firmware:

https://retrogames.biz/support/thespectrum/upgrade/

A summary of firmware updates:

V1.0.1

Improves saving files to USB stick from Classic mode.

Improves virtual cassette navigation of .tap files.

-No longer available, the confirms:

Firmware 1.0.1 has been temporarily removed as some users have experienced compatibility issues. We will release an update in due course.

V1.0.2

Improves saving files to USB stick from Classic mode.

Improves virtual cassette navigation of .tap files.

Makes Kempston the default joystick, fixing joystick not being detected for USB programs unless game or machine default settings are set up.

Fixes saving error introduced by v1.0.1.

V1.0.3

Supports games and demos that perform per-scanline page flips or palette updates.

Allows keyboard tokens to be used in Spectrum SAVE filenames.

Makes Kempston the default joystick, fixing joystick not being detected for USB programs unless game or machine default settings are set up.

Improves virtual cassette navigation of .tap files.

Improves saving files to USB stick from Classic mode (see the manual Chapter 11. Saving programs and data for full details)

Improves undocumented Z80 behaviour.

Fixes saving of CODE with no attached writable media.

Fixes issue of rewind mode occasionally being inaccessible if machine settings or controller mapping has not been set up.

Troubleshooting

For help see:

https://retrogames.biz/support/thespectrum/

All content of this and related pages is copyright (c) James S. 2024