can u imagine how well the spectrum would have done if it was released from the start like this.. all they need do now is put in a decent soundchip and it would have ruled the world
Can u imagine how much would it cost in 1982? However it should be equipped with joystick sockets, a standard disk drive and there should be at least one more graphic mode. The soundchip is disputable, if there was the AY chip from the beginning, there would be no great beeper music today.
Because they were not made from the beginning. They added colours to the existing sprites and playground tiles. If a tile is repeated, the colours too. The other thing is the background - any pixel that was "on" could be re-coloured, but if there were no pixels "on", they remained in the background colour, usually black. In some games a static 256 colour picture in the ZX screen resolution was added as the background. It requires 64 KiB and cannot be changed during the game.
@AGWhiteman I don't want to disappoint you, but there are only 12 games modified to 256 colours. I would add even a third Z80 responsible for playing beeper music in game and colourful sprite control.
I can't see my original comment, but yeh I did have the idea of duplicating this idea with the eZ80 and making it modular with several potential cores.. maybe one day. i'd still like to get a ZX+3 emulator on the Atari Falcon
Many Spectrum/Amstrad/C64 games eventually came out on Amiga/AtariST so you got the 256-colour versions then. The first time I played Fire Force, the remake of my beloved Green Beret, I knew I would love the Amiga as much as my Speccy!
@graspee I can't agree with you CPC uses a palette of 27 colours in the low resolution, In the mid-res you can use only 4. This project can display 256 colours at once in the normal ZX resolution, which is an equivalent of CPC mid-res. However the project failed, because it based on 2 Z80 chips, one as the CPU, the other one as the graphic co-processor and it required re-writing games from the beginning. Now ULA+ is much better, it allows to use 64 of 256 clrs without the software modification.
@Abrimaal It's kind of irrelevant to my point that the graphics in this are better than an Amstrad though. I just meant if you change the whole graphics system then is it really a ZX Spectrum any more? I was pointing out that the Amstrad was another Z80-based machine which had a different way of doing graphics than a Spectrum. Blah, never mind, I wasn't trying to fight or anything.
This is undoubtedly very cool but Spectrum's charm was in how the worlds felt rendered as they were. Spectrum hard a gorgeous and unique feel all of it's own- in fairness all 8bits had their own great feel too but it was the flaws of the spectrum that many people love. And i had the amazing but contrasting C64
@unconditionalbranch This is what ZX Spectrum hardware should be capable to display not in 2009, but in 1986 when the model 128 was brought into production. Before this I saw interlaced graphics only in the title screen of Wolfenstein and the game Zodiac Strip (a video available in my channel)
This is not my work. I tested it many years after it was released. Modifying games seems to be re-writing them almost from the beginning. This project requires 2xZ80 running in sync. The second one is responsible only for the graphics. I've known that there are a few more games for this system, but I dont remember where to download them.
To me, this seems more like it could have been some way to develop a game for both Spectrum and PC, kind of like how the Game Boy Color had "Dual Mode" games which would play in B/W on B/W Game Boys and in color on the Game Boy Color.
It's great, no development for years though?? I am looking at doing a Spectrum emulator on the Atari ST/ Falcon and would like to include this ability! It's a Shame Sir Sugar didn't add the Second Z80! it would have been a winner!
Skomentuj ten film... For some reason even better, because it is able to display all 256 colours at once (like in arcade games), on popular 16bit computers (Amiga, Atari ST) games are usually in 16-32 colours selected from the palette. Only the resolution 256x192 of Spectrum is the poorest thing.
@SpiralPegasus You can play almost all games for ZX 48, but you will see nothing more than using a different emulator or a real machine. These 12 games were modified especially for this emulator.
Wow, this would have been awesome back in the mid 80s. I loved my Speccy but even then I though the GFX were a bit crap. Most games were monochrome or the sprites changed colours as they moved over the backgrounds. Knightlore looks pretty good here and I've just come from a few rounds of Crysis 2 :D
This is nice and everything, but at this point, is it a Spectrum any more? There are plenty of other Z80 computers with different or better graphics, e.g. CPC464, but they aren't Spectrums...
@Abrimaal You could display 4096 colors on Amiga 500 using HAM mode so compared to SAM 256 is nothing. ;) But those tricks on both machines require quite a lot from the CPU. btw. If you want to see a regular 128/russian ZX displaying more than 16 colors you should see "mescaline synesthesia by deMarche"
@graspee As we're about Amstrad. Do you know any good emulator that runs games immediately from the command line? Without browsing for disks and/or typing LOAD"name" RUN. An emu with user interface (a gamebase) would also be appreciated.
That's not right. It is emulating the original spectrum game. The difference is it is (conceptually) emulating eight z80s, all of which are running the spectrum game. However the image each z80 sees has been modified so that each sees different graphics and generates different displays. The emulator merges the results to generate the final display. One z80 gives you b&w (1-bit), eight z80 gives 256 colours per pixel (8 bit).
@norm7446 Yes, because there are 2 8bit processors, the second is responsible for graphics. Have you heard of SAM Coupe? This computer is able to display 16 colours at once from 127 and there is only one 8bit Z80 processor. It has 512 kB RAM and 6 channel stereo sound. But it was released much too late, in 1990 and none of the serious software labels was interested in this machine. If it was in 1986 instead of ZX 128 it would be a serious danger for Atari ST.
Well, the number of colors had wery little to do with the CPU using 8, 16 or 32 bits (regardless of whether we are talking about register, ALU, or external bus width). The number of colors in the 1977-83 era was basically limited by memory cost. Sure, there were clever ways to go around these limitations and get more colors, but most home computers designers had too little time, interest, knowledge or skills doing intricate solutions like that, unfortunately.
The problem with the Sam was that that although it had a 6mhz cpu and more colours. It still had memory contention issues. So it was only 15% faster but then it had more work to do with the extra colours. So it was kinda flawed
The SAM was to late - it was still 8-bit device. In 1989 year even Atari ST&Amiga was obsolete as indicator of tech-wave. . Tape recorder as mass-storage when people started switch to HDD? . GFX: 256x192px with 16 colours from pallete of 127? A bit better for STATIC pictures than 8-bit Atari XL from the late 70th years. . etc...
I went on the 256 Colors Spectrum website and I sent them an email, but their email is disabled. Do you know how to get in touch with those guys? Or do you know what I do need to colorize my games? Thanks Naser
Thanks for your interesting reply and I wish I had written my posts so it sounded less confrontational because when it comes down to we are "Brothers in Christ!". Hmm. "Brothers in Clive"?
+Miesiu K The sound was terribly distorted, not even resembling the original, so I didn't record it. I was running an emulator in another emulator, so I expected the distortions. Spec256 supports only the beeper, AY was not implemented.
Partially I agree. SAM Coupe should be introduced in 1986, instead of ZX 128. It would be a serious competitor for Atari ST. Released in 1990 it became noticed only by demoscene and enthusiasts, who always dreamed of a better Spectrum. None of the major software labels was interested in that machine.
Abrimaal You're kidding, right? The 8bit SAM Coupe couldn't be a competitor to the 16bit Atari ST back in the days of course... A SAM Coupe could (maybe) compare to a CPC+ in terms of graphics and sound. But even if compared to the CPC+, the enhanced Amstrad could offer 16 hardware sprites, 32 colors on screen (even 4096 on static screens) and a palette of 4096 colors (in contrast to the 128-color palette of the SAM and no hardware sprites). Don't let me remind here the Atari ST specs (compared to a SAM Coupe)...
+Abrimaal the Coupe wasn't ready in '86. Arguably it wasn't even ready when it was released but MGT had to get it it out the door. There really wasn't anything massively wrong with the 128, to be honest. The real killer was the QL. A nonstandard processor (neither fully 16bit nor quite backwards compatible), graphics that weren't a huge leap in resolution or color depth, built in bloody microdrives and a complete lack of the originally touted backwards compatability.
+TheTurnipKing The things were going too slowly at Sinclair comparing to other manufacturers. The major advantages of ZX were: cheap, easy to operate and customize. The popularity of QL was marginal. I didn't even know how it looked, before the 21st century, when I saw it on the web.
My cousin had one, poor bastard. Honestly, the QL was an interesting system in it's own right, but virtually everything about it was, in the grand scheme of things, historically a misstep. Of course, its easy to see that in retrospect. At the time, it was what Sinclair wanted to produce, and it seemed to have some early traction as the business machine they had wanted to produce. But, one can't help wondering what they might have made of the Spectrum with the time & money used developing the QL.
what a weird hybrid emulator tech.. it's not like these are binaries that look ilke the original game and play like it BUT in 256 colors.. no... just support for another z80 with custom logic running to suport extra colors and stuff. Weirdly awesome. Also, I realize modern emulators for the n64 and such support different textures... but this is all purely software based as an enhancement.. not simply repacking the rom with different textures and such.
Hmm there are plenty of games on the ZX Spectrum that have a decent color palette imo, like PSSST, Maniac Miner, Hypersports etc. Granted it could only display 16 colors at a time but still.
All used the same palette, it was fixed. That fixed palette, with horrible tasteless colors was spectrums biggest flaw. It had been rather simple, technically, however, to allow adjustments of these colors (seven 8-bit TTL latches that the Z80 could write 8-bit color values into, say).
I don't like it, I loved the 256 DOS gaming era but these spectrum games just look clunky and slow compared to the DOS games. It's best to just have the speccy games in their original 8 colour modes.
I don't know where to download version 2.8, I have 2.7 from WoS site. It opens and runs snapshots, but the snapshots are undesirable for me to work. And it doesn't support Full Screen and ULA+. Just another useless emulator.
Pour Zx Spectrum ou son émulateur Recherchez la clé pour ouvrir le coffre au trésor dans ce village plein de manoirs,souterrains et pièges en tout genres. Créez vous même votre aventure avec un éditeur graphique intégré. riri-linventeur.wixsite.com/les-debrouillards/zx-spectrum
Some channel You are correct about the brightness bit, however the black color didn't change, so there were 2 identical black colors. So technically, it had 15 different color tones. ;-)
The gameplay is just like in other computers designed in the 80s, some games are great, other are dull. What is annoying in ZX games is the menu Select Joystick, Define Keys. You start a game with 1, another game with 4, another with 0 or S. Sometimes there are pre-defined keys, usually unplayable. In other computers you have Press Fire to Play and function keys.
![Digital Circus Episode 4 [TRAILER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/abZtsmMUbJo/mqdefault.jpg)
![~10 euros ZX Spectrum Emulator [eng subs]](/img/1.gif)
can u imagine how well the spectrum would have done if it was released from the start like this.. all they need do now is put in a decent soundchip and it would have ruled the world
Can u imagine how much would it cost in 1982? However it should be equipped with joystick sockets, a standard disk drive and there should be at least one more graphic mode. The soundchip is disputable, if there was the AY chip from the beginning, there would be no great beeper music today.
That could have gave the Saga Master System a run for its money.
@@Abrimaal It would cost more than the PS3 launch price.
Not so simple :) Spec256 uses a second Z80 working as a GPU and the video RAM is 64 KB. Read more in the link in the description.
The LOAD command is the key J and for "" is Shift+P. You can load games (snapshots only) pressing F7 in the emulator.
Because they were not made from the beginning. They added colours to the existing sprites and playground tiles. If a tile is repeated, the colours too. The other thing is the background - any pixel that was "on" could be re-coloured, but if there were no pixels "on", they remained in the background colour, usually black. In some games a static 256 colour picture in the ZX screen resolution was added as the background. It requires 64 KiB and cannot be changed during the game.
@AGWhiteman I don't want to disappoint you, but there are only 12 games modified to 256 colours. I would add even a third Z80 responsible for playing beeper music in game and colourful sprite control.
I can't see my original comment, but yeh I did have the idea of duplicating this idea with the eZ80 and making it modular with several potential cores.. maybe one day. i'd still like to get a ZX+3 emulator on the Atari Falcon
Many Spectrum/Amstrad/C64 games eventually came out on Amiga/AtariST so you got the 256-colour versions then. The first time I played Fire Force, the remake of my beloved Green Beret, I knew I would love the Amiga as much as my Speccy!
@adamfullick - Well, yeah, but despite that the Speccy remained popular, even going so far as to making that glitch an in-joke.
@graspee I can't agree with you CPC uses a palette of 27 colours in the low resolution,
In the mid-res you can use only 4. This project can display 256 colours at once in the normal ZX resolution, which is an equivalent of CPC mid-res. However the project failed, because it based on 2 Z80 chips, one as the CPU, the other one as the graphic co-processor and it required re-writing games from the beginning. Now ULA+ is much better, it allows to use 64 of 256 clrs without the software modification.
Makes the Speccy look like a 16 bit...
@Abrimaal It's kind of irrelevant to my point that the graphics in this are better than an Amstrad though. I just meant if you change the whole graphics system then is it really a ZX Spectrum any more? I was pointing out that the Amstrad was another Z80-based machine which had a different way of doing graphics than a Spectrum.
Blah, never mind, I wasn't trying to fight or anything.
@youstones It doesn't work under Vista and Win7. I use Vista and DOS Box (or D-Fend Reloaded).
This is undoubtedly very cool but Spectrum's charm was in how the worlds felt rendered as they were. Spectrum hard a gorgeous and unique feel all of it's own- in fairness all 8bits had their own great feel too but it was the flaws of the spectrum that many people love. And i had the amazing but contrasting C64
@unconditionalbranch This is what ZX Spectrum hardware should be capable to display not in 2009, but in 1986 when the model 128 was brought into production. Before this I saw interlaced graphics only in the title screen of Wolfenstein and the game Zodiac Strip (a video available in my channel)
This is not my work. I tested it many years after it was released. Modifying games seems to be re-writing them almost from the beginning. This project requires 2xZ80 running in sync. The second one is responsible only for the graphics. I've known that there are a few more games for this system, but I dont remember where to download them.
To me, this seems more like it could have been some way to develop a game for both Spectrum and PC, kind of like how the Game Boy Color had "Dual Mode" games which would play in B/W on B/W Game Boys and in color on the Game Boy Color.
It's great, no development for years though?? I am looking at doing a Spectrum emulator on the Atari ST/ Falcon and would like to include this ability! It's a Shame Sir Sugar didn't add the Second Z80! it would have been a winner!
Skomentuj ten film... For some reason even better, because it is able to display all 256 colours at once (like in arcade games), on popular 16bit computers (Amiga, Atari ST) games are usually in 16-32 colours selected from the palette. Only the resolution 256x192 of Spectrum is the poorest thing.
A+. Job well done! It will be very nice of you if you post a detailed manaul on how to convert regular Speccy games into 256 colors. Thanks
@SpiralPegasus You can play almost all games for ZX 48, but you will see nothing more than using a different emulator or a real machine. These 12 games were modified especially for this emulator.
This would have given the Amiga and ST a run for their money. Looks beautiful!
I think not. lol
@@jasont6287 Well, maybe not the Amiga 😉
Wow, this would have been awesome back in the mid 80s. I loved my Speccy but even then I though the GFX were a bit crap. Most games were monochrome or the sprites changed colours as they moved over the backgrounds.
Knightlore looks pretty good here and I've just come from a few rounds of Crysis 2 :D
very nice, especially knight lore and sabre wulf look nicer, more playable than the original
This is nice and everything, but at this point, is it a Spectrum any more? There are plenty of other Z80 computers with different or better graphics, e.g. CPC464, but they aren't Spectrums...
Each sprite/tile is recoloured manually. I dont know any editor and converter. The project is suspended and I have no contact with the developer.
@Abrimaal You could display 4096 colors on Amiga 500 using HAM mode so compared to SAM 256 is nothing. ;) But those tricks on both machines require quite a lot from the CPU.
btw. If you want to see a regular 128/russian ZX displaying more than 16 colors you should see "mescaline synesthesia by deMarche"
@graspee As we're about Amstrad. Do you know any good emulator that runs games immediately from the command line? Without browsing for disks and/or typing LOAD"name" RUN. An emu with user interface (a gamebase) would also be appreciated.
I downloaded EmuZWin, but I cannot open any game (even for a normal Speccy). What's wrong?
That's not right. It is emulating the original spectrum game. The difference is it is (conceptually) emulating eight z80s, all of which are running the spectrum game. However the image each z80 sees has been modified so that each sees different graphics and generates different displays. The emulator merges the results to generate the final display. One z80 gives you b&w (1-bit), eight z80 gives 256 colours per pixel (8 bit).
@norm7446
Yes, because there are 2 8bit processors, the second is responsible for graphics.
Have you heard of SAM Coupe? This computer is able to display 16 colours at once from 127 and there is only one 8bit Z80 processor. It has 512 kB RAM and 6 channel stereo sound. But it was released much too late, in 1990 and none of the serious software labels was interested in this machine. If it was in 1986 instead of ZX 128 it would be a serious danger for Atari ST.
Well, the number of colors had wery little to do with the CPU using 8, 16 or 32 bits (regardless of whether we are talking about register, ALU, or external bus width). The number of colors in the 1977-83 era was basically limited by memory cost. Sure, there were clever ways to go around these limitations and get more colors, but most home computers designers had too little time, interest, knowledge or skills doing intricate solutions like that, unfortunately.
@blakegriplingph Eliminated by the new 64kB video RAM, where each pixel is defined individually.
Where's the attribute clash?
HELP how i can do LOAD""? How do i do the "" on a pC?
The problem with the Sam was that that although it had a 6mhz cpu and more colours. It still had memory contention issues. So it was only 15% faster but then it had more work to do with the extra colours. So it was kinda flawed
The SAM was to late - it was still 8-bit device. In 1989 year even Atari ST&Amiga was obsolete as indicator of tech-wave.
.
Tape recorder as mass-storage when people started switch to HDD?
.
GFX: 256x192px with 16 colours from pallete of 127? A bit better for STATIC pictures than 8-bit Atari XL from the late 70th years.
.
etc...
I went on the 256 Colors Spectrum website and I sent them an email, but their email is disabled. Do you know how to get in touch with those guys? Or do you know what I do need to colorize my games? Thanks Naser
Their email is defunct for long years. Maybe in this site you will find the software. There are some more games: www.yantragames.com/ZX256.html
There is a fundamental difference: SAM Coupe exists, Spec256 has never been built physically. Everything is emulated.
OleeeEEEEE😅🕹️ Up😜🥊uP ZX SpecTruM
Much love, many hours and hard work.
Thank you for remembering!
Playability is the best feature of Spectrum games, the worst is the graphics.
I prefer Spin 0.666 and the unfinished version 0.7, but ZWin can be also in my faves.
Why? If the software graphics have to be modified, that's a sign that they should just be ported to DOS instead.
You can run these games in a DOS emulator, using Windows command line.
You can run DOS programs in a DOS emulator, and also using 32-bit Windows command line.
The scrolling seems to be slower than the original...
Thanks for your interesting reply and I wish I had written my posts so it sounded less confrontational because when it comes down to we are "Brothers in Christ!". Hmm. "Brothers in Clive"?
Everything in the Sinclair Research was too late.
Can you play Chronos on this beauty?!
Did you make it ?
What about sound ?
+Miesiu K The sound was terribly distorted, not even resembling the original, so I didn't record it. I was running an emulator in another emulator, so I expected the distortions. Spec256 supports only the beeper, AY was not implemented.
double emulation? That's impressive! :)
do you use window 7?
Reminds me of what Sam Coupe computers were capable of.
Partially I agree. SAM Coupe should be introduced in 1986, instead of ZX 128. It would be a serious competitor for Atari ST. Released in 1990 it became noticed only by demoscene and enthusiasts, who always dreamed of a better Spectrum. None of the major software labels was interested in that machine.
Abrimaal You're kidding, right? The 8bit SAM Coupe couldn't be a competitor to the 16bit Atari ST back in the days of course... A SAM Coupe could (maybe) compare to a CPC+ in terms of graphics and sound. But even if compared to the CPC+, the enhanced Amstrad could offer 16 hardware sprites, 32 colors on screen (even 4096 on static screens) and a palette of 4096 colors (in contrast to the 128-color palette of the SAM and no hardware sprites). Don't let me remind here the Atari ST specs (compared to a SAM Coupe)...
+Abrimaal the Coupe wasn't ready in '86. Arguably it wasn't even ready when it was released but MGT had to get it it out the door.
There really wasn't anything massively wrong with the 128, to be honest. The real killer was the QL. A nonstandard processor (neither fully 16bit nor quite backwards compatible), graphics that weren't a huge leap in resolution or color depth, built in bloody microdrives and a complete lack of the originally touted backwards compatability.
+TheTurnipKing The things were going too slowly at Sinclair comparing to other manufacturers. The major advantages of ZX were: cheap, easy to operate and customize. The popularity of QL was marginal. I didn't even know how it looked, before the 21st century, when I saw it on the web.
My cousin had one, poor bastard.
Honestly, the QL was an interesting system in it's own right, but virtually everything about it was, in the grand scheme of things, historically a misstep.
Of course, its easy to see that in retrospect. At the time, it was what Sinclair wanted to produce, and it seemed to have some early traction as the business machine they had wanted to produce. But, one can't help wondering what they might have made of the Spectrum with the time & money used developing the QL.
What a boss machine it was !
It would be great if Spectrum games had good gameplay but gameplay in Spectrum games was terrible.
what a weird hybrid emulator tech.. it's not like these are binaries that look ilke the original game and play like it BUT in 256 colors.. no... just support for another z80 with custom logic running to suport extra colors and stuff. Weirdly awesome.
Also, I realize modern emulators for the n64 and such support different textures... but this is all purely software based as an enhancement.. not simply repacking the rom with different textures and such.
now it looks more 16 bit
normal ZX spectrum have rly bad palletes
Hmm there are plenty of games on the ZX Spectrum that have a decent color palette imo, like PSSST, Maniac Miner, Hypersports etc. Granted it could only display 16 colors at a time but still.
All used the same palette, it was fixed. That fixed palette, with horrible tasteless colors was spectrums biggest flaw. It had been rather simple, technically, however, to allow adjustments of these colors (seven 8-bit TTL latches that the Z80 could write 8-bit color values into, say).
and you are right.
игра хорошая но надо было сделать чтобы боеприпасы заканчивались и были несколько типов - это управляемые и неуправляемые тогда было бы интересней
I don't like it, I loved the 256 DOS gaming era but these spectrum games just look clunky and slow compared to the DOS games. It's best to just have the speccy games in their original 8 colour modes.
I don't know where to download version 2.8, I have 2.7 from WoS site. It opens and runs snapshots, but the snapshots are undesirable for me to work. And it doesn't support Full Screen and ULA+. Just another useless emulator.
Pour Zx Spectrum ou son émulateur
Recherchez la clé pour ouvrir le coffre au trésor dans ce village plein de manoirs,souterrains et pièges en tout genres.
Créez vous même votre aventure avec un éditeur graphique intégré.
riri-linventeur.wixsite.com/les-debrouillards/zx-spectrum
Its nice but I still prefer the original.
@unconditionalbranch 15*
What is the point of this please.
ZX Spectrum Games in 256 colours with no sound xD
(Spectrum only had 7)
Paulo Bonito
technically there was a bit for brightness, so one can claim that ZX had 4-bit color (16 different color tones)
Some channel You are correct about the brightness bit, however the black color didn't change, so there were 2 identical black colors. So technically, it had 15 different color tones. ;-)
Chris Nash This is logical. It doesnt matter if you multiply zero by 1 or by 1000, it will always be zero.
+azshaw123 Clearly it's to let people play 256-colour versions of games they loved. What a stupid question...
Very nice. But Spectrum games have very specific(horrible IMO) gameplay
The gameplay is just like in other computers designed in the 80s, some games are great, other are dull. What is annoying in ZX games is the menu Select Joystick, Define Keys. You start a game with 1, another game with 4, another with 0 or S. Sometimes there are pre-defined keys, usually unplayable. In other computers you have Press Fire to Play and function keys.
Well maybe. There was several games I liked on Spectrum. But they don't compare even close to 8bit Nintendo gameplay.
Well, Spectrum is in between PONG and NES :)