Sadly I’m old enough to give you several paragraphs of memories revolving around the rubber-keyed Spectrum 48k. It’s quite an old computer but helped to kick-start the idea of having a machine in every home. Back then we would plug “the Speccy” into the a big hefty TV in the lounge, then we’d struggle with the treble control of a cassette player as 48k of raw data made its way down the audio cable. It was effectively a very slow and very short-range modem.. but who am I kidding, you probably don’t remember modems either.
The kids of today are blessed with far more advanced technology. Games don’t need 10 minutes to load and the answer to everything is just a Google away. Now Sir Clive Sinclair has decided to bring those classic games back, albeit in a sleek and pocket-sized device with far faster load times. The new Vega+ has an LCD screen and a thousand games already on board. It’s said to launch later this year and will cost about £100.
As “Retro Computers Ltd”, Sir Clive is raising funds via Indiegogo to realise his dream. They tell us..
It has a colour LCD so the user can play it anywhere. Additionally, it can be connected to a TV so the user does not need a computer monitor, and it comes complete with 1,000 licensed games built-in.
The user will also be able to download additional games free of charge from the thousands that are available on the web, so there is no need for users to pay any more than the cost of the basic product.
As I write they have £92,226 raised towards their £100,000 goal, so this looks set to be delivered soon.
I vividly remember having one and, like many others, I used to use the “hi-speed dubbing” feature on my stereo to copy games onto blank TDK90’s. Ahh… those were the days.
Shall I tell you all about my move to the Amiga A500, then the A1200, then a Pentium P60 PC? The one with the divide by zero bug? Oh, OK then…