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## ZX Spectrum Memorial Thread

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Lago PARANOIA
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### ZX Spectrum Memorial Thread

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Post by Lago PARANOIA » Fri Oct 03, 2014 6:51 pm

Being a typical ugly American, I used to be pretty snobby and dismissive towards the ZX Spectrum, until I found out about its price tag. The specs might not be very whizbang in a vacuum, but for a 100 pound launching price in 1982 that's one hell of bargain.
I just have a few questions:
How much money would it have cost to have packaged the ZX spectrum with a better GPU and sound chip? The technical specifications otherwise are pretty competitive with other 8-bit consoles of its eras, but the graphics... yeah. They aren't very good, even compared to other consoles/computers. I know the ZX is a working man's computer but I feel that charging an extra 30-40 pounds for a better GPU and/or sound chip would've made it completely demolish the competition of that generation both overseas and in Europe.
What are the best games for the ZX that aren't platformers or shoot-em-ups? Any good adventure games or RPGs?

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

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Fwib
  Knight-Baron
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  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

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Post by Fwib » Sat Oct 04, 2014 12:19 am

I figure it should be possible to look up the costs for the graphics and sound hardware the C64 had and just add that to the cost of a Spectrum.
A Spectrum 48K was £175 at launch and the C64 was $595 later the same year. At 57p/dollar that makes the spectrum about half the price. I guess that the C64 also dropped its price the next year, but I don't know numbers for that.
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