How would this be different from running an emulator (I use ZXspin )? Sorry for the doofus question, but if there are no new speccy games and the old ones can only ever be what they are, what’s the point?
Good question. Superficially, not a lot. However.
It’s not an emulator, it’s recreated hardware. So you won’t have to wait for your device to boot up an underpinning OS and then load up Spin, it’ll be up and running by the time your finger’s let go of the power switch.
You won’t be limited by what the emulator makers have chosen to implement, so games that rely on some timing quirk or undocumented feature won’t explode. Theoretically at least.
It also contains new hardware, it’s got double the clock speed and four times the RAM of the old top-of-the-line 128. ULA+ brings enhanced video, hello 64-colour palette shifting. There’s a new sound chip in there (and the one from the 128). And so on.
if there are no new speccy games and the old ones can only ever be what they are, what’s the point?
Because there are new games for the Spectrum, people are still writing them (and tweaking the old ones to take advantage of ULA+). Granted not a vast amount, but there’s a passionate retro community behind the Speccy and if this thing sells then there are a number of people who will be all over it to see what it can do.
