The Indiegogo project seems to have already made enough, which is interesting! Apparently, this is done under licence from Sky, who own the rights to Sinclair and the Spectrum. And it's an old coder and author of The ZX Spectrum ULA: How to Design a Microcomputer, Chris Smith, who has brought this project to fruition. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/sinclair-zx-spectrum-vega I do wonder, though, what emulator this is running - and whether it is done with permission, or if it'll be another Retron situation. Likewise, they want to bundle 1,000 games with it - do they have licences for all those games? Maybe, maybe not. Considering it's just a Spectrum emulator, I think it's quite expensive if it's going to be £100, and a bit late to the party - surely the likes of Raspberry Pi or any Android device can already emulate a Spectrum? Still, it's nice to see love for my first computer all these years later!
I recently saw Ben Heck make a portable Spectrum, with some real parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GcwcyL9LgM Nonetheless, this looks...eh? It doesn't have a controller, and right now can only use an on screen keyboard (from using my PS3, I can tell you that's the worst), no 3.5mm jack mentioned to load real tapes, and some of the best ZX Spectrum games (or at least best remembered) like Jetpac, are now owned by Microsoft, who I can't see letting their games go on a emulation system like this.
How does it not have a controller? It clearly IS the controller! It's meant as a games console - you don't NEED a keyboard. The Spectrum had joystick interfaces. And only one fire button. Remember it's an emulator - it'll have a button to load a list, then you scroll up and down the list and load the game. No tape loading. I do wonder about the license for some games. Ultimate weren't the only company to make Spectrum games, though! Still, as they have only made the odd half-hearted attempt to exploit Ultimate IP via Xbox Live, I would imagine they could be open to the idea of a licence deal. Don't forget the likes of Codemasters, Mastertronic and Virgin (merged into Sega, who'll churn old stuff out by the bucketload), U.S. Gold and Domark (merged into Eidos), Activision, Gremlin (now owned by Urbanscan), Psion, Imagine and Ocean (merged into Infogrames, now Atari), Ubisoft... and many publishers besides. Arguably, people would mention the likes of Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy and the Horace games as the most popular Spectrum games. Those were from Matthew Smith's Software Projects and Beam Software/Melbourne House, now known as Krome Studios Melbourne. As for Ultimate games, hardly the best remembered... Jet Pac Lunar Jetman Sabre Wulf Underwurlde Knight Lore Atic Atac Cookie Pssst Tranz Am Alien 8 Pentagram Nightshade Gunfright Cyberrun Martianoids Bubbler ...that's about it! Yup... I don't really remember half of them, either! The Sabreman series was cool, and the isometric Filmation games, but I was never a huge fan of Jet Pac. Don't get me wrong - I'm still not sure we need this device. It's interesting that it has so much support, though. I had thoughts of doing something similar neaerly 10 years ago, but there wasn't much interest. Funny how things change, eh?
I don't really see the point in this, especially for £100, when original ZX Spectrums can be bought for far less. At least something like the Neo Geo X made some sense, as it's portable and the Neo Geo library and original hardware are too expensive for most.
Agreed, I don't really see the point of the Vega. The ZX Spectrum was my first computer (48K, then 128K, then +2, I always meant to get a Russian clone model too, but never did) and is still my favourite 8 bit machine. It has some fantastic games, and I still play it via emulation now. If you want to use a real Spectrum, then you can use cassettes for authenticity, or you can use a hard drive with a real Spectrum, and there are SD card based loading systems too for the genuine Spectrums. And of course since you're using a real Spectrum, then you have a keyboard, which fixes a huge problem that the Vega has. If you'd prefer, the Spectrum is very well emulated on almost every device you can image. A PSP or Nintendo DS (or several other hand-held devices) gives you a perfectly compatible portable Spectrum ("perfectly compatible" as in it runs all of the games, not compatible directly with cassette tapes, of course, but every Spectrum game is available as emulator compatible rom files anyway), and the original XBox and other consoles have great Spectrum emulators. And of course the PC has (literally) dozens of great Spectrum emulators, I recommend ZX Spin, Specemu, and (if you like using DOS) X128. For more information about the Spectrum, go to http://www.worldofspectrum.org/ . The forums are the best English speaking Spectrum based forums (there are great Spanish/Polish/Russian/etc forums, but I don't speak their languages, sadly), the site has almost every Spectrum game available to download, and they even have all of the Spectrum magazines available for download, from Crash/Your Spectrum/Your Sinclair/Sinclair User/etc to lots and lots of fanazines. It really is everything a Spectrum fan could ever want. No doubt some people will love the Vega, but I can't see why.
It was at its goal when I posted this I use a Spectrum emulator from time-to-time on my Android phone. It's great. I also have several original machines. That's why, for me, it's not worth it. I still don't understand people saying Vega has a "huge problem" without a keyboard, though. You're really not looking at it correctly.... It uses ROMs, so it loads the games directly. No LOAD "". No keyboard required for loading. It's an emulator, so no doubt it will have a menu. That's controllable by a d-pad and button. It's intended as a GAMES console, not a perfect emulator of a Spectrum. Keyboard is unnecessary. The Spectrum used Kempston / Cheetah / Interface 2 joystick interfaces. Spectrum joysticks had ONE button. If it can emulate those (and Kempston is 1 2 3 4 5, Interface 2 is 6 7 8 9 0 - not hard), then it can play most games. Yeah, it can't play text games. Oh well. I'm hardly expecting to plug my Sinclair thermal printer in and use Tasword or start coding my own BASIC games and printing out the listing with it. It's not what it's intended for. Games console to run games, pure and simple. Of course, I'm not expecting to do anything with it, as I won't be getting one
Sigh, I loved the Spectrum, so many hours waiting for games to load, then crashing when you looked at the keyboard too hard. All time favourite Spectrum game: US Gold's Bruce Lee, I used to clock it over and over. I would imagine there is a ton of abandonware legally available, everyone was coding Spectrum games in their bedroom in the mid 1980s. I've tried the DS emulator, having the keyboard on the touchscreen is useful. Don't miss the tapes. Is the PSP emulator good?
