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Our object is to find people's real needs

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to develop products which have real benefit to people

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in whatever way.

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And to do that at a price that they can afford to do

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for Tempe, what anyone can do for a pound.

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My father was always thinking about the next

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invention, new ideas.

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They were pretty much constantly in his mind

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and always tinkering with the next big thing.

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He played poker and cards a little bit,

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but um, didn't have much hobbies outside

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of the inventing and the designing.

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So, uh, that was where his heart was. I think

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What drove Clive professionally was he's an ideas person,

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so he wanted to come up with something completely new

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that everybody would adopt, often price-based.

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So what really interested him was to come up

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with something really low price point

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and with really clever engineering.

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That's really what his goal was.

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To have a product that everybody wanted and everybody needed

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A precious,

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a precious,

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it's a precious

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Clive Sinclair we knew about

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because he would be on the news.

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You knew who he was, some great British inventor,

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but I don't think we sort

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of realized at the time the significance of

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what he was innovating in and what it would lead to.

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One of the strengths of Clive was that he was newsworthy.

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He could capture a lot of Colin inches.

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He was a personality, he was a bit of a maverick.

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People wanted to know what was he gonna say,

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what was he gonna do next?

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And people interviewed him, people wrote about him.

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And by attracting

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and absorbing that interest, of course he brought business

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to Sinclair Research.

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He sold the products through his own persona.

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Clive started in journalism, so he would write

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for practical electronics or practical wireless.

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And one of the first products he did

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was actually called the Micro Midget.

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That was like 1958, which was a predecessor

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to the Micro Matic, but it was a similar thing.

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It was a matchbox size radio

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and it took him a while to commercialize.

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But, um, this product was hugely successful by mail order.

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PLA always had a very strong preference for mail order.

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There isn't a lot of inventory sitting out there,

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and if you can advertise very effectively,

53
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you are giving up less of your profit margin than

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you are to a retailer.

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Part of the reason why this was so low cost was

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because he found out that transistors that were thrown away

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as rejects, you could test them

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and they're actually good enough to use in a radio.

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So he'd buy these transistors for next to nothing,

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And then hobbyists could buy those

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and you'd buy them by the thousand

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or something, separate them into little bags, test them,

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and then sell 'em as tested components.

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I think the strategy was to make things were small,

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make things that were appealing to an audience

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that we already knew,

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and make them have better margins built into them.

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So you had to make them

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with cheaper components if you could find them

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and make them in ways that would be easier

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for them to put together.

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So we didn't have too much to spend on repairing.

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So Clive used to do mail order amplifiers.

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So if you wanted to build a set a PA system in the,

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in the sixties, you could buy one of these electronics kits,

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get some speakers, and you've got a PA system.

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And one of his early customers, in fact was Alan Sugar.

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So Alan Sugar used to turn up at the Sinclair office,

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he would buy all the reject amplifiers, repair them,

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then sell 'em on the market stall.

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And that was quite something

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because obviously Alan Sugar did his own range

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of stacking Hi-Fi,

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and then obviously Amstrad

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became a competitor against Sinclair.

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Later on,

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When I first met Clive, it was obvious immediately

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that he was an incredibly bright guy.

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Clive always read an enormous amount of technical journals

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so he knew what was going on in numerous fields

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of electronics, display technology,

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semiconductors, et cetera, et cetera.

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All the technical stuff. He would read the the literature

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and could pick it up very quickly.

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But his bookcase at home was heaving with techie stuff.

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I know when he designed the square eel, which was one of the

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satellite dishes, he had a book on the kitchen table,

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four inches thick, something like, uh, the theory of

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of satellite dish design.

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And, you know, he could read that style of book like a novel

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Live Sinclair started his own company in the 1960s

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and his first breakthrough was the small pocket calculator

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in 1972.

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The executive calculator builders the world's slimmest

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lightest calculator.

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It's a really, really nice design

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and it's got this really clever way

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of just recessing these little round buttons

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inside a square recess there to give the feel

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that the buttons are bigger than they are.

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But actually the moving part is only

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the, the round bit in the middle.

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And it sold incredibly well

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From an engineering point of view.

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It was very interesting because they had to turn it on

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and off with a certain frequency

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and that would allow you

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to use it just operating from batteries

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and not, uh, power supply. You

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Were talking about calculators that sat on your desk

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plugged into the mains.

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So these things were quite big

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to have the pocket calculator like this one

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and such a thin pocket calculator of

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that other calculators at the time

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that would come out later were much deeper.

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You know, this was a, a real triumph.

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I think that if you had told Clive

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that all he could ever do was build calculators,

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albeit more advanced calculators, the thought of

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that would've been too terrifyingly boring to him.

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He was very interested in display technology.

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He'd had a small TV previously in the late sixties

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that had not been a commercial success.

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He had ideas about semiconductors, about televisions,

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about electric vehicles.

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So Clive was thinking about those things years, years ahead

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and was always anxious to take whatever

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financial success he had in any one area

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and start investing in his next projects.

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This is the newest way to tell the time

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the Black Watch developed in Britain by Sinclair.

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Its electronic, its moving parts digital

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to tell you the time precisely and quartz controlled.

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So you are sure that time is right. In

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Fact, well, the Black Watch had some issues

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with chip shortage problems at first.

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One of the suppliers pulled out, uh, which caused lots

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of issues, but also the very first black watch is if you

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went in there was static, it would reset the time

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and that was a major issue.

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Very unfortunate for Sinclair

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because they sold a huge amount and got a huge amount back.

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The black watch very easily got zapped

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by static electricity.

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So if you had too much nylon in your carpet, your watch

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suddenly would be, you know, not reading the correct time

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or any time at all.

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It is zero zero out.

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I think even getting too close to a television

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with the black watch could be a problem.

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There's a problem they fixed quite soon,

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but it caused major issues for the business.

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A design modification was made,

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which involved putting some sort of shield

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inside the plastic case.

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And this made it very, very difficult to assemble

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because the case had not been designed to have room

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for a a shield inside it.

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But again, when sold in kit form,

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that became the buyer's problem.

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That wasn't a Sinclair problem any longer.

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It was a story where somebody sent back a black watch

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and the song was, came with a letter that said,

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we've solved the problem on the black watch

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and had a great nail hammered straight through the

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Thing. I mean, I laugh

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about it and I don't feel guilty about it

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because I know from having talked to many, many people

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over the years who say, oh yeah, I I've still got one

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of your black watches waiting for me to finish work on.

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I know that they enjoyed it.

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If it was too easy to put together,

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they'd have got no satisfaction out of it at all.

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So the actual people were sort

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of happy putting them together themselves,

187
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but it was right at the end of Sinclair Radionics

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and they did have a lot of problems financially.

189
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That was when cl thinking about doing computers quite early

190
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on in the seventies, he decided if he was gonna do

191
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something, the next big thing it needs to be on,

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on a completely another level being the XX 80.

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So the Mark 14 I think was a sort of almost stopgap product

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to get a bit of turnover in.

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And there was a couple of other products around at

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that time, like the risk calculator watch again,

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it was a sort of quickly hashed together product

198
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to get some turnover in with

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what re limited resources they had at the time.

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But really what client had been planning for years is

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to do a, a low cost home computer,

202
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a very slick design, local cost home computer.

203
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And he'd been talking about it for some time.

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So back in the middle of the seventies,

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we didn't have computers at home,

206
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so Apple was doing their first things in us.

207
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Commodore Atari in Europe.

208
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Clive Sinclair realized he could, uh, try to,

209
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to do something in that field also.

210
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Well, it was a new market which was dominated

211
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by the Americans and where

212
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clearly if the cost could be reduced substantially,

213
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the the market could be expanded.

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It seemed to me that the prices then being charged were such

215
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that the appeal was the sales were going more

216
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to the small businessmen than to the,

217
00:11:19,370 --> 00:11:20,510
the man in the, in the home.

218
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They had been designed origin of the man in the home,

219
00:11:22,650 --> 00:11:24,670
but small businesses were proving the biggest market

220
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'cause they're really just too expensive for personal use.

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So I set about seeing if there was some way

222
00:11:29,990 --> 00:11:31,230
of really bringing the cost down

223
00:11:31,290 --> 00:11:33,590
by a major factor, and that's what we achieved.

224
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Of course,

225
00:11:41,530 --> 00:11:45,710
Let me tell you about the most exciting ad

226
00:11:46,450 --> 00:11:49,030
that's ever been printed anywhere in the history

227
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of the universe was

228
00:11:50,390 --> 00:11:54,150
that 39 pounds single board computer.

229
00:11:54,450 --> 00:11:58,030
And it was just like suddenly there was something that was

230
00:11:58,540 --> 00:12:00,590
like potentially within my budget.

231
00:12:01,210 --> 00:12:04,390
And as it happened, you know, it was a full six months

232
00:12:04,960 --> 00:12:07,710
after ordering it, before I actually had it in my hands.

233
00:12:08,370 --> 00:12:11,230
But this is Sinclair in a nutshell, wasn't he, uh,

234
00:12:12,190 --> 00:12:13,550
bringing us to the future early?

235
00:12:13,980 --> 00:12:17,270
Because there was this amazing chip

236
00:12:17,300 --> 00:12:20,550
that we used in the MK 14 that we knew that there was

237
00:12:21,070 --> 00:12:22,790
a greater level of interest in that

238
00:12:22,790 --> 00:12:24,310
because it was called a computer.

239
00:12:24,840 --> 00:12:27,310
Clive had a good idea of what was going on with some

240
00:12:27,310 --> 00:12:29,470
of those early computers,

241
00:12:29,770 --> 00:12:32,710
but basically his method of competing was

242
00:12:32,730 --> 00:12:35,070
to steer away from them, never

243
00:12:35,330 --> 00:12:37,310
to go head on against somebody.

244
00:12:38,010 --> 00:12:40,790
So his goal had been, well, I'm just gonna make something

245
00:12:41,450 --> 00:12:44,150
way smaller, way less expensive,

246
00:12:44,290 --> 00:12:47,430
and um, affordable to a much bigger mass market.

247
00:12:48,190 --> 00:12:50,030
I knew what computers were, I didn't understand

248
00:12:50,050 --> 00:12:52,830
how they worked, but there was something about

249
00:12:52,830 --> 00:12:53,870
them that I knew I wanted.

250
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I knew they could make decisions for you

251
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and that fascinated me.

252
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But how it was done wasn't clear to me

253
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how you would program a computer

254
00:13:02,850 --> 00:13:07,390
and that I didn't figure that out until I had an MK 14.

255
00:13:07,940 --> 00:13:09,430
That, that was my moment

256
00:13:09,490 --> 00:13:13,350
of enlightenment was following the manual for the MK 14,

257
00:13:13,620 --> 00:13:16,070
getting numbers to go in and stay in.

258
00:13:16,300 --> 00:13:18,430
Okay, that was the first part of it.

259
00:13:18,450 --> 00:13:20,150
And then discovering

260
00:13:20,150 --> 00:13:22,750
that those numbers could represent decision points.

261
00:13:23,020 --> 00:13:25,270
It's a very rudimentary design.

262
00:13:25,650 --> 00:13:27,830
So you've got this little display here,

263
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which is actually the same display as used in calculators.

264
00:13:31,530 --> 00:13:32,830
So that's where that comes from.

265
00:13:33,090 --> 00:13:34,590
And you have these little bubbles

266
00:13:34,590 --> 00:13:36,430
that go over the, the segments there.

267
00:13:36,450 --> 00:13:37,950
So they look bigger than they really are.

268
00:13:38,250 --> 00:13:40,030
The little magnifying glasses on each one.

269
00:13:40,030 --> 00:13:42,830
Little tiny touch keyboard, nice and cheap there.

270
00:13:42,930 --> 00:13:44,670
And it's based around this chip here,

271
00:13:44,670 --> 00:13:47,670
which is colloquially known as the scam chip, SEMP.

272
00:13:47,730 --> 00:13:49,070
And if you wanna program this thing,

273
00:13:49,130 --> 00:13:50,750
you're programming in machine code.

274
00:13:51,090 --> 00:13:54,270
So you were typing in hex codes here for the op codes

275
00:13:54,410 --> 00:13:55,430
and you only had

276
00:13:55,430 --> 00:13:58,150
that little tiny LED display there to get the results back.

277
00:13:58,450 --> 00:14:01,550
You got involved in the assembly process

278
00:14:01,850 --> 00:14:04,070
and you've got a much more intimate connection

279
00:14:04,070 --> 00:14:06,670
with the product that eventually arose from it.

280
00:14:07,110 --> 00:14:08,750
MK 14 was a, uh,

281
00:14:08,870 --> 00:14:11,310
a build it yourself fun thing with a difference.

282
00:16:06,910 --> 00:16:08,570
So I was born in 1969.

283
00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:13,410
What you without face, you look so young. Yeah, 1969.

284
00:16:13,910 --> 00:16:17,250
So I was like 1110 in 79

285
00:16:17,880 --> 00:16:20,250
when things like the Atari 2,600 were dropping

286
00:16:20,390 --> 00:16:21,530
and what we now consider

287
00:16:21,530 --> 00:16:24,250
to be the modern video gaming age was starting.

288
00:16:24,470 --> 00:16:27,490
And what you've gotta remember is this was completely new.

289
00:16:27,770 --> 00:16:29,650
I sort of envy my kids 'cause of their youth

290
00:16:29,990 --> 00:16:32,250
and the standard of the video games, the quality of

291
00:16:32,250 --> 00:16:35,010
what they get to experience now and the ease of multiplay

292
00:16:35,010 --> 00:16:36,850
and organizing your friends and all joining up

293
00:16:36,850 --> 00:16:38,450
and running around these incredible worlds.

294
00:16:38,510 --> 00:16:40,850
But I wouldn't change it for what we had,

295
00:16:40,850 --> 00:16:43,250
which was a perspective of no video games.

296
00:16:43,830 --> 00:16:46,290
And then that extraordinary change happening

297
00:16:46,290 --> 00:16:47,330
because it was just

298
00:16:47,910 --> 00:16:51,010
Insane, ho ho, ho. It's

299
00:16:51,140 --> 00:16:52,140
Magic.

300
00:16:53,110 --> 00:16:53,730
You know,

301
00:17:00,000 --> 00:17:01,170
it's magic.

302
00:17:05,660 --> 00:17:07,490
Never believe it's

303
00:17:12,740 --> 00:17:13,740
Never been away.

304
00:17:15,020 --> 00:17:19,690
Never seen A day winning on my pillow in the

305
00:17:19,960 --> 00:17:23,610
Morning, lazy day in bed.

306
00:17:24,620 --> 00:17:26,050
Music in my head.

307
00:17:26,900 --> 00:17:29,210
Crazy music playing in the

308
00:17:29,240 --> 00:17:30,240
Morning.

309
00:17:34,150 --> 00:17:38,770
Oh it's magic. You know,

310
00:17:57,930 --> 00:18:01,070
The 1970s was so analog in so many ways.

311
00:18:01,490 --> 00:18:02,630
It was so real.

312
00:18:02,730 --> 00:18:06,310
You know, g plan furniture and like very simple food.

313
00:18:06,730 --> 00:18:09,030
If your town had a cappuccino bar,

314
00:18:09,210 --> 00:18:10,630
it was like living on the Riviera.

315
00:18:10,730 --> 00:18:14,590
It was so unusual. From that came the kind of neon,

316
00:18:14,760 --> 00:18:18,350
crazy multicolored world of eighties and computer gaming.

317
00:18:18,770 --> 00:18:20,830
It, it's like being smacked in the face

318
00:18:20,890 --> 00:18:22,350
by the tango character.

319
00:18:22,350 --> 00:18:25,230
It's like, it was so vivid, multicolored

320
00:18:25,250 --> 00:18:28,230
and extraordinary both in terms of the features

321
00:18:28,230 --> 00:18:29,590
that the new world

322
00:18:29,590 --> 00:18:31,910
of consumer electronics were suddenly delivering

323
00:18:32,450 --> 00:18:33,510
in place of what?

324
00:18:33,510 --> 00:18:35,590
Nothing. It was it, it was like new

325
00:18:35,930 --> 00:18:37,230
but also the design,

326
00:18:37,250 --> 00:18:38,870
the product design that we were getting.

327
00:18:39,010 --> 00:18:42,070
So my first memory of owning, not just seeing

328
00:18:42,070 --> 00:18:44,390
but owning a personal computer was a ZX 80.

329
00:18:44,530 --> 00:18:46,870
And I bought option number two, the cheaper version

330
00:18:46,970 --> 00:18:49,790
or other than my dad did, which was a bag of parts

331
00:18:49,850 --> 00:18:51,390
and I assembled it with my dad.

332
00:18:52,980 --> 00:18:54,710
They needed to have a computer that was going

333
00:18:54,710 --> 00:18:56,190
to appeal to the masses.

334
00:18:56,410 --> 00:18:58,790
The X 80 is that step towards

335
00:18:59,180 --> 00:19:00,670
what would later to be the X 81,

336
00:19:01,170 --> 00:19:02,170
ZX 80. I remember

337
00:19:02,170 --> 00:19:05,190
by that stage he'd left Sinclair Radio ons

338
00:19:05,190 --> 00:19:08,190
and set up his own new company, Sinclair Research

339
00:19:08,330 --> 00:19:10,110
and moved to much smaller offices.

340
00:19:10,330 --> 00:19:12,390
So we're away from the big St I'S office

341
00:19:12,570 --> 00:19:14,070
and just in basically a couple

342
00:19:14,070 --> 00:19:17,310
of rooms in Kings Parade Center of Cambridge, he realized

343
00:19:17,380 --> 00:19:20,710
that the computer would be a huge hit if only it was

344
00:19:20,710 --> 00:19:24,070
affordable by just average normal families.

345
00:19:24,090 --> 00:19:26,230
If you can get that market, it's massive.

346
00:19:26,450 --> 00:19:28,870
So I think he was concentrating on, I know

347
00:19:28,870 --> 00:19:31,870
what the price needs to be then work backwards from there

348
00:19:31,870 --> 00:19:34,550
for on all of the components to get that price point.

349
00:19:34,870 --> 00:19:36,190
A proper computer. Uh,

350
00:19:36,190 --> 00:19:38,230
affordable prices. No one had done that before.

351
00:19:38,810 --> 00:19:40,430
The Z 80 chip was brilliant.

352
00:19:40,650 --> 00:19:42,830
Uh, XOG licensed the design,

353
00:19:42,890 --> 00:19:45,390
so it was available from multiple number of foundries.

354
00:19:45,450 --> 00:19:46,950
So there was competition in the market.

355
00:19:47,090 --> 00:19:49,990
You could get the Z 80 at really a quite reasonable price.

356
00:19:51,110 --> 00:19:55,270
Secondly, the Xog Z 80 did help pave the way certainly

357
00:19:55,270 --> 00:19:58,550
for Sinclair to reach the price points for the Z 80

358
00:19:58,810 --> 00:20:00,030
and ZX 81.

359
00:20:00,030 --> 00:20:02,430
And as you know, it was used by a lot

360
00:20:02,430 --> 00:20:04,070
of other home computer makers as well.

361
00:20:04,490 --> 00:20:08,790
The Z 80 was so general purpose that it was used in

362
00:20:09,310 --> 00:20:11,110
thousands and thousands of different applications.

363
00:20:11,230 --> 00:20:14,470
I mean the, you know, the ZX 80 was in those days one

364
00:20:14,470 --> 00:20:16,310
of thousands of different applications.

365
00:20:16,730 --> 00:20:18,230
So for us, the Z 80

366
00:20:18,770 --> 00:20:22,190
was using high volume in the first chess game

367
00:20:22,260 --> 00:20:24,270
players in 1980.

368
00:20:24,270 --> 00:20:28,510
When the ZX 80 came out, the highest volume application was,

369
00:20:28,570 --> 00:20:31,150
uh, chess game that that spoke to you,

370
00:20:32,370 --> 00:20:34,070
One C three number

371
00:20:34,950 --> 00:20:37,670
R two seven, you know,

372
00:20:38,770 --> 00:20:40,150
the computer voice.

373
00:20:40,810 --> 00:20:43,910
It was kind of fun. And they were making hundreds

374
00:20:43,910 --> 00:20:46,590
of thousands of those a quarter in those days.

375
00:20:46,590 --> 00:20:48,300
Those were high volume application.

376
00:20:48,300 --> 00:20:51,030
Today you laugh because, you know, with cell phones

377
00:20:51,030 --> 00:20:53,030
that you make, uh, millions a day.

378
00:20:53,170 --> 00:20:54,170
You know,

379
00:20:55,490 --> 00:20:58,230
CEX eight is a complete computer selling

380
00:20:58,230 --> 00:20:59,350
for just under a hundred pounds

381
00:20:59,410 --> 00:21:00,590
and it's applied with a manual.

382
00:21:01,010 --> 00:21:03,350
It plugs straight into a conventional television,

383
00:21:04,270 --> 00:21:05,310
straight into the aerial socket.

384
00:21:05,310 --> 00:21:06,790
There's no modification of the set.

385
00:21:07,290 --> 00:21:09,990
And if you wish to record your programs into

386
00:21:10,070 --> 00:21:11,390
a standard cassette recorder.

387
00:21:12,090 --> 00:21:14,870
And the great thing about the ZX 80 is that

388
00:21:15,190 --> 00:21:17,030
although there were computers before that were available

389
00:21:17,170 --> 00:21:19,990
to individuals to buy, they cost several hundreds of pounds.

390
00:21:20,280 --> 00:21:21,470
We've brought it down to a hundred,

391
00:21:21,550 --> 00:21:23,510
a hundred pounds without any sacrifice.

392
00:21:23,850 --> 00:21:25,270
You can learn the program on it

393
00:21:25,370 --> 00:21:27,990
and subsequently use it perhaps in your job or at

394
00:21:27,990 --> 00:21:28,990
Work. The ZX 80

395
00:21:28,990 --> 00:21:31,390
is certainly not a powerful machine,

396
00:21:31,650 --> 00:21:34,710
but it was a very influential one and a very popular one.

397
00:21:34,810 --> 00:21:37,470
It was also very influential on Jack Tramel.

398
00:21:37,500 --> 00:21:40,190
When Jack Tramel decided that he wanted to do the VIC 20,

399
00:21:40,770 --> 00:21:41,950
it was essentially

400
00:21:41,950 --> 00:21:44,710
because he'd had a trip to the United Kingdom

401
00:21:44,930 --> 00:21:46,470
and he'd seen the ZX 80

402
00:21:46,850 --> 00:21:49,550
and he'd seen that this computer was being bought by people

403
00:21:49,770 --> 00:21:52,270
and sold at a very affordable price

404
00:21:52,540 --> 00:21:53,910
that wasn't making a loss.

405
00:21:54,250 --> 00:21:56,230
So he went back to his people and,

406
00:21:56,290 --> 00:21:59,270
and that was his famous phrase, we want to produce computers

407
00:21:59,270 --> 00:22:02,070
for the masses and not the classes. It

408
00:22:02,070 --> 00:22:04,430
Was white with a white clean keyboard

409
00:22:04,850 --> 00:22:06,470
and white has a real

410
00:22:07,230 --> 00:22:10,230
seventies science fiction association XX 80 straight

411
00:22:10,230 --> 00:22:11,310
outta 2001.

412
00:22:12,190 --> 00:22:15,310
I got it. And I remember thinking it pretty futuristic

413
00:22:15,540 --> 00:22:18,110
that I remember showing it to a, a, a friend of mine saying,

414
00:22:18,110 --> 00:22:19,270
do you believe this is a computer?

415
00:22:19,860 --> 00:22:21,310
He's sort of looking at it going, uh,

416
00:22:26,450 --> 00:22:29,700
When I saw the ZX 80 for the first time, I was astonished

417
00:22:29,700 --> 00:22:31,500
because the computers I'd been used

418
00:22:31,500 --> 00:22:34,500
to from nearly 10 years earlier, you'd need

419
00:22:34,500 --> 00:22:35,900
to load up the programs

420
00:22:35,900 --> 00:22:37,900
with paper tape than you could run it.

421
00:22:37,900 --> 00:22:40,820
Whereas the ZX 80, you connect it to the tv,

422
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:42,540
you plug it in and it just works.

423
00:22:42,640 --> 00:22:44,780
It sits there waiting for you to type things in.

424
00:22:44,780 --> 00:22:46,180
And I thought, well, you know,

425
00:22:46,180 --> 00:22:47,420
where's the paper tape reader,

426
00:22:47,480 --> 00:22:50,060
the punch card readers sort of things. I had

427
00:22:50,060 --> 00:22:52,060
A friend who had a ZX 80, that's

428
00:22:52,060 --> 00:22:54,260
where I first started dabbling with programming at home.

429
00:22:54,260 --> 00:22:56,140
That wasn't at the school or anything.

430
00:22:56,540 --> 00:22:59,580
I adored it, I covered it. I really, really wanted it.

431
00:23:00,760 --> 00:23:04,460
The ZX 80 is really something that change, uh, and

432
00:23:04,720 --> 00:23:08,620
and demonstrated to Clive Sinclair that he was right.

433
00:23:08,710 --> 00:23:12,580
There was a market, an opportunity for launching computers.

434
00:23:12,800 --> 00:23:16,700
But when we look at it even now from the 21st century,

435
00:23:16,850 --> 00:23:19,860
when we look at it and we realize we're talking about a

436
00:23:20,030 --> 00:23:23,980
black and white computer, no sound one k of memory

437
00:23:24,530 --> 00:23:27,340
with this very, uh, I wouldn't say annoying

438
00:23:27,340 --> 00:23:30,980
because I think it is fascinating feature when you press a

439
00:23:31,040 --> 00:23:32,980
key, the screen flickers.

440
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:36,460
So all these kind of things show how limited it was

441
00:23:37,240 --> 00:23:41,820
and at the same time it shows you that if that had success,

442
00:23:42,660 --> 00:23:44,740
anything that you could evolve on top

443
00:23:44,740 --> 00:23:47,030
of it would have a huge potential.

444
00:23:47,030 --> 00:23:48,030
Obviously the journey

445
00:23:48,030 --> 00:23:50,350
of computing has been about the cost coming down,

446
00:23:50,530 --> 00:23:52,430
the size coming down and the power going up.

447
00:23:52,450 --> 00:23:54,270
That's been something that has been iconic within

448
00:23:54,410 --> 00:23:55,550
the journey of computing.

449
00:23:55,690 --> 00:23:57,230
And no other industry really does that.

450
00:23:57,410 --> 00:23:59,830
So the importance of the processes,

451
00:23:59,860 --> 00:24:01,990
because it was the microprocessor revolution

452
00:24:02,090 --> 00:24:04,910
that's kickstarted this entire industry.

453
00:24:05,010 --> 00:24:07,230
So having AZ 80 processor that you could buy

454
00:24:07,230 --> 00:24:09,670
for a few pounds enabled this.

455
00:24:10,170 --> 00:24:12,470
Now Richard, you divided what's available on the market

456
00:24:12,580 --> 00:24:14,190
into three broad sections.

457
00:24:14,210 --> 00:24:15,350
So where does the newcomer,

458
00:24:15,350 --> 00:24:17,390
who knows nothing at all about computers start?

459
00:24:17,780 --> 00:24:19,990
Well, for the newcomer, I'd recommend this first category,

460
00:24:19,990 --> 00:24:21,830
which really covers machines from 50

461
00:24:21,890 --> 00:24:23,990
to a hundred pounds and far and away.

462
00:24:23,990 --> 00:24:26,350
The best example here is the Sinclair's XX 81.

463
00:24:26,580 --> 00:24:28,630
Over half a million of them have been made and sold.

464
00:24:28,730 --> 00:24:29,750
Now, uh, I'D

465
00:24:29,750 --> 00:24:32,150
Really, the X 81 was designed to be sold

466
00:24:32,370 --> 00:24:33,990
to your average person on the street

467
00:24:33,990 --> 00:24:35,510
that had an interest in computers

468
00:24:35,730 --> 00:24:37,830
but didn't necessarily know what they wanted from it.

469
00:24:37,970 --> 00:24:41,110
So this term home micro computer was out there,

470
00:24:41,110 --> 00:24:42,190
it was in the news all the time.

471
00:24:42,730 --> 00:24:44,030
So this had to appeal to them.

472
00:24:44,250 --> 00:24:46,350
And the way this was packaged in the small box

473
00:24:46,350 --> 00:24:48,710
with this manual, everything you needed just plug it into

474
00:24:48,710 --> 00:24:50,750
your tv fitted that bill the case.

475
00:24:51,610 --> 00:24:54,670
Now we've got something that looks actually really nice.

476
00:24:55,060 --> 00:24:57,590
It's still small, it's still got the same kind of keyboard,

477
00:24:58,090 --> 00:24:59,710
but this fills a bit more finished,

478
00:24:59,940 --> 00:25:02,510
more like a general product that you would buy in the shop.

479
00:25:02,620 --> 00:25:04,390
This thing was sub 100 pound.

480
00:25:04,600 --> 00:25:07,390
Other things out there were 200, 300, 400 pound.

481
00:25:07,660 --> 00:25:09,390
It's not like they just saved a few pound off.

482
00:25:09,900 --> 00:25:12,350
This thing was really, really cheap in comparison.

483
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:15,190
These were in boxes on the shelves in W eight Smiths

484
00:25:15,370 --> 00:25:16,870
and Boots and places like that.

485
00:25:17,330 --> 00:25:18,870
And people were picking up those boxes

486
00:25:19,050 --> 00:25:20,430
and saying, I'd like to buy one of these.

487
00:25:20,780 --> 00:25:22,350
That hadn't really happened before.

488
00:25:22,690 --> 00:25:23,830
You know, this was one of the

489
00:25:23,830 --> 00:25:24,870
first machines to be doing that.

490
00:25:25,530 --> 00:25:27,990
So when you opened that box, you wanted to see something

491
00:25:27,990 --> 00:25:29,430
that looked the part like a piece

492
00:25:29,430 --> 00:25:30,990
of consumer electronics and you

493
00:25:30,990 --> 00:25:34,470
Did And you could code it

494
00:25:34,850 --> 00:25:36,190
and to begin, there was no software.

495
00:25:36,190 --> 00:25:37,270
You just wrote your own.

496
00:25:37,770 --> 00:25:39,630
And an awful lot of people have started

497
00:25:39,630 --> 00:25:43,390
to buy these weak computers in order to learn to program,

498
00:25:44,530 --> 00:25:46,270
not to play games or anything like that.

499
00:25:46,330 --> 00:25:50,310
The same with Spectrum. And the point was the price point

500
00:25:51,130 --> 00:25:54,030
was accessible to core a families

501
00:25:54,130 --> 00:25:56,070
who could never have afforded hundreds

502
00:25:56,070 --> 00:25:57,870
of pounds on a personal computer.

503
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,790
Clive Sinclair, I didn't really know anything about him,

504
00:26:02,090 --> 00:26:04,430
but all I knew about was that in the magazines

505
00:26:04,430 --> 00:26:05,470
of these little adverts

506
00:26:05,470 --> 00:26:07,790
for a ZX 80 little advert for E ZX 81.

507
00:26:07,850 --> 00:26:11,560
So eventually I went, yeah, okay, that I can afford.

508
00:26:11,940 --> 00:26:13,160
We were all in our mid-teens.

509
00:26:14,140 --> 00:26:18,560
So we were all just beginning to get into this whole idea

510
00:26:18,560 --> 00:26:20,080
of home computing.

511
00:26:20,550 --> 00:26:21,880
When I started, I started

512
00:26:21,880 --> 00:26:23,320
with the Sinclair Aesthetic City one.

513
00:26:23,320 --> 00:26:25,920
I like to talk when I give speeches about what that meant

514
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:28,320
to be, trying to make a game in one K of memory

515
00:26:28,580 --> 00:26:31,520
and then show how we went from one K to 16 K

516
00:26:31,940 --> 00:26:34,040
and how mind bending that was

517
00:26:34,060 --> 00:26:37,160
to go 16 times more in one leap.

518
00:26:37,220 --> 00:26:38,440
It was such an enormous leap

519
00:26:38,440 --> 00:26:40,960
that people started making things like flight simulators

520
00:26:41,020 --> 00:26:42,760
and I shield them screenshots

521
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,230
of the sign on flight simulator running in 16 K.

522
00:26:46,650 --> 00:26:48,270
But then I show them the eBay logo

523
00:26:48,450 --> 00:26:51,350
and I go, this eBay logo takes more than 16 K.

524
00:26:51,770 --> 00:26:53,950
And so in the space of that eBay logo,

525
00:26:53,950 --> 00:26:55,750
they wrote an entire flight simulator.

526
00:26:55,770 --> 00:26:57,350
It starts to put it all into perspective

527
00:26:57,370 --> 00:26:58,470
and people go, I get it.

528
00:26:58,650 --> 00:27:00,830
It was such an amazingly different time.

529
00:27:01,090 --> 00:27:02,590
We looked at what everybody else was doing

530
00:27:02,610 --> 00:27:04,830
and what had gone out there and we would try to figure out

531
00:27:04,830 --> 00:27:07,030
how it was done, but we didn't know whether something was

532
00:27:07,230 --> 00:27:08,870
possible or not possible until we actually

533
00:27:08,940 --> 00:27:09,990
went and and did it.

534
00:27:10,010 --> 00:27:13,670
So we were never stymied by can't be done.

535
00:27:14,010 --> 00:27:15,710
It was always how can we do it?

536
00:27:16,170 --> 00:27:19,430
XX 80 and the XX 81 gave rise to that scene

537
00:27:19,520 --> 00:27:22,470
where you could create your own gaming invention,

538
00:27:22,730 --> 00:27:23,910
record it and distribute it.

539
00:28:08,570 --> 00:28:10,150
So when the ZX 81 was launched,

540
00:28:10,210 --> 00:28:11,750
of course we read the reviews.

541
00:28:11,970 --> 00:28:13,830
Um, we knew that sales were going well,

542
00:28:13,930 --> 00:28:16,590
but we were very much focused on

543
00:28:16,700 --> 00:28:18,070
what was gonna be the next machine.

544
00:28:18,290 --> 00:28:20,310
And you have to remember that we'd launched two

545
00:28:20,310 --> 00:28:22,390
machines in two years running.

546
00:28:23,050 --> 00:28:26,710
We knew that in 12 months time, the whole world, the market,

547
00:28:26,930 --> 00:28:29,910
all the zx 80 81 fans would expect a new model.

548
00:28:29,970 --> 00:28:31,590
So yeah, we were very much heads down

549
00:28:31,690 --> 00:28:33,870
and I was starting to think together with Jim

550
00:28:33,870 --> 00:28:36,030
and Clive, what sort of a machine would this be?

551
00:28:36,090 --> 00:28:39,310
So we knew we had to launch something at the 1982

552
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:40,590
April exhibition.

553
00:28:40,690 --> 00:28:42,790
We knew that it had to be better for games players

554
00:28:43,210 --> 00:28:45,590
and also better for those that wanted to learn programming.

555
00:28:45,650 --> 00:28:47,350
So we decided we needed color,

556
00:28:47,530 --> 00:28:49,990
we needed high resolution graphics, we needed sound

557
00:28:50,090 --> 00:28:52,350
and we needed something of a moving key keyboard.

558
00:28:52,610 --> 00:28:55,830
So those were the basic specifications regarding the name.

559
00:28:56,230 --> 00:28:58,710
I think probably everybody assumed it would be ZX

560
00:28:58,710 --> 00:29:00,390
82, you know, one a year.

561
00:29:00,610 --> 00:29:03,110
But we quickly realized that we were making a rod

562
00:29:03,110 --> 00:29:05,070
for our own backs as soon as that was launched,

563
00:29:05,170 --> 00:29:06,670
of course then we'd be expected

564
00:29:06,670 --> 00:29:08,550
to make another one 12 months later.

565
00:29:09,370 --> 00:29:11,910
So we needed a name that would

566
00:29:12,430 --> 00:29:15,030
describe the product rather than the year of its launch.

567
00:29:15,130 --> 00:29:16,790
So Steve and I came up with Rainbow.

568
00:29:16,930 --> 00:29:18,710
We loved the idea, we wanted to call it the rainbow.

569
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:22,670
Clive came up with a much more scientific technological

570
00:29:22,670 --> 00:29:23,910
sounding name of spectrum

571
00:29:24,170 --> 00:29:26,350
and of course that's the one that stuck. But

572
00:29:26,350 --> 00:29:29,430
The other thing you need to understand about Clive was

573
00:29:29,430 --> 00:29:32,750
that he was fiercely, fiercely patriotic.

574
00:29:33,210 --> 00:29:36,470
He would do anything he could not

575
00:29:36,490 --> 00:29:39,110
to be dependent on Japanese technology.

576
00:29:39,610 --> 00:29:41,110
And he would try to buy

577
00:29:42,040 --> 00:29:45,110
chips from the few British manufacturers

578
00:29:45,130 --> 00:29:48,710
who were still making chips like Ferranti

579
00:29:49,350 --> 00:29:52,190
Ferranti were really benefiting from the success

580
00:29:52,250 --> 00:29:53,390
of the ZX 81.

581
00:29:53,390 --> 00:29:55,910
You know, they were selling their ULA in in volumes

582
00:29:55,910 --> 00:29:57,110
that they'd never appreciated

583
00:29:57,110 --> 00:29:59,630
before they'd got into the consumer market.

584
00:29:59,970 --> 00:30:02,830
And they were determined to bend over backwards

585
00:30:02,830 --> 00:30:04,590
to roll out the red carpet to give us

586
00:30:05,110 --> 00:30:07,150
whatever help we needed to ensure

587
00:30:07,150 --> 00:30:08,750
that the ZX spectrum was a success.

588
00:30:09,250 --> 00:30:13,790
He wanted to do something for high technology in Britain.

589
00:30:14,090 --> 00:30:18,710
He wanted manufacturing to be done in Scotland, which it was

590
00:30:18,810 --> 00:30:20,750
as long as it possibly could be.

591
00:30:21,090 --> 00:30:22,550
It was only with reluctance

592
00:30:22,550 --> 00:30:24,750
that he gave into commercial pressures

593
00:30:24,750 --> 00:30:28,350
and realized that global economics dictated

594
00:30:28,350 --> 00:30:30,750
that assembly jobs got done elsewhere.

595
00:30:36,650 --> 00:30:37,950
The spectrum compared

596
00:30:37,950 --> 00:30:40,750
with the ZX 81 right from the off it was going

597
00:30:40,750 --> 00:30:45,750
to be color for games.

598
00:30:46,240 --> 00:30:48,710
Color seemed essential and better graphics.

599
00:30:49,050 --> 00:30:52,950
So that needed different hardware, it needed extra software

600
00:30:52,970 --> 00:30:54,190
to deal with the fact

601
00:30:54,190 --> 00:30:57,390
that pixels had colors associated with them.

602
00:31:00,930 --> 00:31:02,110
So that meant

603
00:31:02,110 --> 00:31:05,590
that it certainly needed extra memory allocated

604
00:31:05,650 --> 00:31:06,790
to the color information

605
00:31:07,330 --> 00:31:09,870
and it needed some extra code for dealing

606
00:31:09,980 --> 00:31:11,150
with the different colors.

607
00:31:11,860 --> 00:31:14,710
That was a big thing. It was gonna be the colored ZedX 81.

608
00:31:15,250 --> 00:31:16,790
So one of the reasons that we decided

609
00:31:16,810 --> 00:31:18,830
to have high resolution pixels

610
00:31:18,830 --> 00:31:21,230
and lower resolution color was based on

611
00:31:21,290 --> 00:31:22,390
the way the human eye works.

612
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:24,390
Human vision can resolve

613
00:31:24,390 --> 00:31:27,270
to much finer detail brightness luminance, if you like,

614
00:31:27,270 --> 00:31:28,590
than we can resolve color.

615
00:31:28,930 --> 00:31:33,030
And the PAL TV system took advantage of that so that the,

616
00:31:33,050 --> 00:31:35,190
the bandwidth of the luminance signal was three

617
00:31:35,190 --> 00:31:36,470
or four times greater than the

618
00:31:36,470 --> 00:31:37,590
bandwidth of the chromate signal.

619
00:31:37,810 --> 00:31:39,990
And we also knew at that time that the Oracle

620
00:31:40,130 --> 00:31:43,350
and CFAs TeleTech standards also followed a similar pattern.

621
00:31:43,420 --> 00:31:45,310
They set color per character,

622
00:31:45,330 --> 00:31:47,870
but of course you could address individual pixels.

623
00:31:47,930 --> 00:31:49,230
So that was the background

624
00:31:49,410 --> 00:31:53,070
and the reasoning behind choosing high resolution pixels,

625
00:31:53,070 --> 00:31:54,590
but lower resolution color.

626
00:31:54,680 --> 00:31:56,950
We've got the color clash. You know, why did you do that?

627
00:31:57,330 --> 00:31:58,910
So why did we make that compromise?

628
00:31:59,610 --> 00:32:00,870
We had to meet a price point.

629
00:32:01,090 --> 00:32:02,990
The spectrum was made by some,

630
00:32:02,990 --> 00:32:04,630
within a different kind of mos entirely.

631
00:32:05,370 --> 00:32:08,390
It was, um, what would give our features in a minimal sort

632
00:32:08,390 --> 00:32:09,710
of way, rather than doing color per

633
00:32:09,710 --> 00:32:10,910
pixel, it was color per block.

634
00:32:11,450 --> 00:32:14,390
And that's, that's okay, but it's, it's a hack.

635
00:32:14,980 --> 00:32:17,590
It's kind of will get us to the end cheaply kind of way.

636
00:32:17,970 --> 00:32:20,270
We could have gone for hardware sprites,

637
00:32:20,290 --> 00:32:22,710
the chips were available, we could have put special chips

638
00:32:22,710 --> 00:32:23,870
and additional memory in so

639
00:32:23,870 --> 00:32:25,870
that we could have multicolored sprites,

640
00:32:25,890 --> 00:32:28,910
moving invisibly across a background without

641
00:32:28,930 --> 00:32:30,110
any degradation of color.

642
00:32:30,290 --> 00:32:32,750
We could have gone for something that approximates

643
00:32:32,750 --> 00:32:34,430
to much later computer standards

644
00:32:34,430 --> 00:32:36,350
where every single pixel on the screen has

645
00:32:36,370 --> 00:32:37,510
its own color palette.

646
00:32:37,510 --> 00:32:39,790
But again, think of the additional memory that's needed.

647
00:32:39,790 --> 00:32:42,030
Think of the additional chips that would be needed

648
00:32:42,090 --> 00:32:44,470
for all the address mapping, all of the video buffering.

649
00:32:44,520 --> 00:32:46,270
Again, we needed to meet a price point.

650
00:32:46,330 --> 00:32:47,470
So that was the compromise.

651
00:32:55,570 --> 00:32:59,270
So it used cassette tapes for storing programs

652
00:32:59,490 --> 00:33:02,390
and that had been a bit crude on the ZX 81.

653
00:33:02,530 --> 00:33:05,150
So on the spectrum that was much improved.

654
00:33:05,250 --> 00:33:08,070
You had headers so that the programs had names

655
00:33:08,290 --> 00:33:10,110
and you could look for the one you wanted.

656
00:33:10,650 --> 00:33:13,110
And when you're loading from Tate, there are lots

657
00:33:13,110 --> 00:33:14,190
of signals coming through.

658
00:33:14,490 --> 00:33:17,150
And the spectrum we found, if you fed that through

659
00:33:17,170 --> 00:33:19,710
to the TV display, you know, pretty patterns

660
00:33:19,710 --> 00:33:21,550
but you, you could also see what was going on.

661
00:33:21,790 --> 00:33:23,070
Sinclair didn't wanna sell you a

662
00:33:23,070 --> 00:33:24,190
cassette deck that you didn't need.

663
00:33:24,470 --> 00:33:25,910
'cause again, it's a huge piece

664
00:33:25,910 --> 00:33:27,190
of money on the end of the price.

665
00:33:27,290 --> 00:33:29,110
So let's use something that's already out there.

666
00:33:29,290 --> 00:33:31,150
The home cassette recorder that everybody had them.

667
00:33:31,340 --> 00:33:33,830
This was all about getting into the hands of people

668
00:33:34,380 --> 00:33:35,910
that may have been on the fence

669
00:33:36,010 --> 00:33:37,990
and may not have got into computers at

670
00:33:37,990 --> 00:33:39,830
that's fine by keeping it cheap.

671
00:33:40,090 --> 00:33:42,270
Our object is to find people's real needs

672
00:33:42,410 --> 00:33:45,590
to develop products which have real benefit to people

673
00:33:46,170 --> 00:33:47,270
in whatever way.

674
00:33:47,450 --> 00:33:50,030
And to do that at a price that they can afford to do

675
00:33:50,090 --> 00:33:52,230
for Tempe, what anyone can do for a hand.

676
00:33:52,520 --> 00:33:55,350
Steve and I joined Clive for the launch.

677
00:33:55,730 --> 00:33:59,270
And I have to say I was blown away by the popularity.

678
00:33:59,510 --> 00:34:01,550
I knew that we had something special for the whole morning.

679
00:34:01,690 --> 00:34:03,950
The crowds were four deep around our stand.

680
00:34:04,000 --> 00:34:05,910
Clive had offered that first thousand people

681
00:34:06,010 --> 00:34:07,030
to order a spectrum

682
00:34:07,250 --> 00:34:08,870
and offer cash would get it, uh,

683
00:34:08,870 --> 00:34:10,270
with an accelerated delivery time.

684
00:34:10,290 --> 00:34:12,630
People were just queuing up with money to spend.

685
00:34:12,810 --> 00:34:15,350
But it wasn't just the volume of interest,

686
00:34:15,350 --> 00:34:16,710
it was also the level of detail.

687
00:34:16,930 --> 00:34:18,710
We were behind a couple of teenagers and,

688
00:34:18,710 --> 00:34:19,710
and we just listened.

689
00:34:19,710 --> 00:34:21,910
They enthused about the Zuck

690
00:34:22,030 --> 00:34:23,190
spectrum, you know, which was great for us.

691
00:34:23,250 --> 00:34:25,310
But what amazed us was they knew

692
00:34:25,920 --> 00:34:28,070
every single detail of the spec.

693
00:34:28,370 --> 00:34:29,790
It had only been launched that morning.

694
00:34:29,890 --> 00:34:31,710
It had been a secret the day before,

695
00:34:31,710 --> 00:34:32,950
but they'd absorbed everything

696
00:34:32,950 --> 00:34:34,070
and they were interested in it.

697
00:34:37,090 --> 00:34:40,350
The release of the spectrum changed the nature

698
00:34:40,530 --> 00:34:42,670
of the UK games industry

699
00:34:42,820 --> 00:34:46,910
because with the ZX 81, it was still a little bit geeky

700
00:34:47,090 --> 00:34:48,470
and a little bit hobbyist.

701
00:34:48,970 --> 00:34:52,110
But with the spectrum, all of a sudden you had kind

702
00:34:52,110 --> 00:34:53,470
of mass market products.

703
00:34:53,730 --> 00:34:56,550
The look of the spectrum really was driven by necessity

704
00:34:56,900 --> 00:35:01,230
because the whole drive behind it was to create a computer

705
00:35:01,290 --> 00:35:02,950
as cheaply as possible for the masses.

706
00:35:03,530 --> 00:35:06,790
So the Commodore 64, which did look like a proper computer,

707
00:35:07,260 --> 00:35:08,430
obviously retailed

708
00:35:08,430 --> 00:35:10,390
for a lot more than the spectrum ever did. The

709
00:35:10,390 --> 00:35:14,590
Commodore 64, remember it costs less than two 30 pounds.

710
00:35:14,810 --> 00:35:17,550
And don't forget it has the enormous memory.

711
00:35:18,130 --> 00:35:21,910
And I think as a result of this necessity, they actually,

712
00:35:21,910 --> 00:35:23,070
whether you call it by accident

713
00:35:23,070 --> 00:35:25,830
or design, they actually created something

714
00:35:26,340 --> 00:35:27,870
that became uniquely iconic

715
00:35:27,980 --> 00:35:30,070
because it did look different from everything else.

716
00:35:30,470 --> 00:35:32,190
I remember just being really struck

717
00:35:32,330 --> 00:35:34,830
by the form factor and the design.

718
00:35:35,340 --> 00:35:38,550
I've always loved things that look like the future,

719
00:35:39,090 --> 00:35:42,470
but I remember the BBC micro just being this chunky, clunky,

720
00:35:42,520 --> 00:35:44,670
noisy sort of beige

721
00:35:44,670 --> 00:35:46,790
but yellow by the time it hit our classrooms,

722
00:35:46,910 --> 00:35:48,270
machines that weren't attractive.

723
00:35:48,410 --> 00:35:50,950
So the ZX spectrum for me was a revelation

724
00:35:50,950 --> 00:35:54,030
because it was so slim I couldn't understand how it was

725
00:35:54,030 --> 00:35:58,070
so slim and sleek, the little rainbow on the side.

726
00:35:58,550 --> 00:36:00,270
I sort of never understood what that was for,

727
00:36:00,410 --> 00:36:01,510
but I presumed it was

728
00:36:01,510 --> 00:36:04,230
because then the games would be in color, you know,

729
00:36:05,250 --> 00:36:06,990
and the buttons just felt nice.

730
00:36:07,290 --> 00:36:08,630
So I felt like it was something you

731
00:36:08,630 --> 00:36:09,830
could probably put in your school bag.

732
00:36:10,380 --> 00:36:14,110
Five worried a great deal about how things looked.

733
00:36:14,370 --> 00:36:16,110
The external appearance was always

734
00:36:16,340 --> 00:36:17,590
very, very important to him.

735
00:36:17,730 --> 00:36:20,710
And he surrounded himself with very, very good designers.

736
00:36:20,820 --> 00:36:23,870
Rick Dickenson that came on to design most

737
00:36:23,870 --> 00:36:27,630
of the computers was just a brilliant guy at translating.

738
00:36:27,660 --> 00:36:29,070
What, uh, Kai wanted,

739
00:36:31,170 --> 00:36:33,110
And this is one of the things that I think people miss

740
00:36:33,530 --> 00:36:34,990
for me, Sinclair,

741
00:36:35,220 --> 00:36:38,190
it's not about his knowledge of electronics.

742
00:36:38,390 --> 00:36:41,510
I relate to him because of his talent for product design.

743
00:36:41,770 --> 00:36:43,230
The product design that he brought

744
00:36:43,370 --> 00:36:46,070
to everything he did was something that

745
00:36:46,560 --> 00:36:47,910
until Apple came along

746
00:36:47,910 --> 00:36:50,590
and Steve Jobs, I can honestly say I'd never seen. I

747
00:36:50,590 --> 00:36:53,270
Thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen.

748
00:36:53,690 --> 00:36:54,910
And in a way I still do.

749
00:36:55,010 --> 00:36:56,110
The more I look at this,

750
00:36:56,810 --> 00:36:58,750
the more I can sort of smell my bedroom.

751
00:37:00,070 --> 00:37:01,430
I don't mean that in an unpleasant way.

752
00:37:01,550 --> 00:37:02,950
I mean the, the, the atmosphere,

753
00:37:03,230 --> 00:37:05,270
although I was a teenage boy, I just mean that kind of,

754
00:37:05,810 --> 00:37:08,830
you know, sort of red curtains there.

755
00:37:09,850 --> 00:37:11,670
Ano style bookshelf over there full

756
00:37:11,670 --> 00:37:14,630
of my James Herbert collection bunk beds over there.

757
00:37:15,330 --> 00:37:17,750
Little white MFI computer desk here

758
00:37:17,750 --> 00:37:19,110
with a black and white tell there.

759
00:37:19,110 --> 00:37:21,430
And then this little thing here like that I can, yeah,

760
00:37:21,590 --> 00:37:22,630
I mean that is mad.

761
00:37:22,970 --> 00:37:26,150
That's where Sir Clive Sinclair's understanding of form

762
00:37:27,170 --> 00:37:30,270
the emotional connection we have to objects.

763
00:37:30,270 --> 00:37:33,270
There is something in our genes that, uh,

764
00:37:33,410 --> 00:37:35,070
brings an emotional connection

765
00:37:35,070 --> 00:37:36,550
to certain shapes, objects, and colors,

766
00:37:37,030 --> 00:37:38,830
Regardless of what goes on under the bonnet.

767
00:37:38,830 --> 00:37:40,710
That must be one of the most iconic

768
00:37:41,660 --> 00:37:43,070
designs of the 20th century.

769
00:37:43,650 --> 00:37:45,430
And it is, isn't it? I mean in terms of its impact,

770
00:37:45,430 --> 00:37:47,960
but just in terms of its, yeah, I,

771
00:37:48,040 --> 00:37:49,560
I I shall use the B word I think.

772
00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:50,680
I think it's beautiful.

773
00:37:54,080 --> 00:37:57,640
I think it's a timeless design, what the spectrum gave us.

774
00:37:57,940 --> 00:38:00,040
So I think the work of Rick Dickinson

775
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,880
and his team was amazing from a cosmetic point of view, it's

776
00:38:04,160 --> 00:38:06,600
A balanced, subtle approach.

777
00:38:07,070 --> 00:38:09,920
Nothing shouts at you, it's not fighting for attention.

778
00:38:10,300 --> 00:38:12,960
The famous rainbow in this colored text here,

779
00:38:13,500 --> 00:38:16,280
it just starts singing, it starts coming alive

780
00:38:16,820 --> 00:38:19,400
and that rainbow is synonymous with the product.

781
00:38:19,420 --> 00:38:21,080
People seem to really like it.

782
00:38:21,500 --> 00:38:24,640
The rainbow stripe on the bottom right, it's a thing

783
00:38:24,640 --> 00:38:25,720
of absolute beauty.

784
00:38:26,020 --> 00:38:29,320
And the Sinclair logo itself, the font get out of town.

785
00:38:29,820 --> 00:38:31,920
It was obviously decided for the next iteration,

786
00:38:31,980 --> 00:38:35,080
the color one that we need to up our game slightly

787
00:38:35,290 --> 00:38:36,990
and get some tactile feedback.

788
00:38:37,570 --> 00:38:39,710
And that tactile feedback comes in the form

789
00:38:39,710 --> 00:38:40,950
of an elastomeric

790
00:38:40,970 --> 00:38:43,950
or a rubber keyboard, we'll call it rubber shall we, is not.

791
00:38:44,090 --> 00:38:47,190
And then you've got that popping, that tactile feedback

792
00:38:47,210 --> 00:38:51,030
and you can engineer tune it to get the right feed to it.

793
00:38:51,250 --> 00:38:53,990
But it's still made at a cost.

794
00:38:54,330 --> 00:38:56,430
But clearly it was an improvement over the 80

795
00:38:56,530 --> 00:38:59,790
and the 81 of course it got famously

796
00:39:00,900 --> 00:39:05,870
described in one early review as having all the feel

797
00:39:05,930 --> 00:39:07,350
of dead human flesh.

798
00:39:07,630 --> 00:39:09,030
I think were the words that were used.

799
00:39:11,330 --> 00:39:13,270
I'm one of those that loved the

800
00:39:13,910 --> 00:39:15,070
touching the, the rubber key.

801
00:39:15,130 --> 00:39:18,390
So I don't refer to it as the dead flash experience.

802
00:39:18,710 --> 00:39:21,070
I really enjoyed it because it's what I had. It was magical.

803
00:39:21,370 --> 00:39:24,710
So even if it was not perfect, you don't remember that

804
00:39:24,770 --> 00:39:26,430
and you forget those details very easily.

805
00:39:26,710 --> 00:39:29,910
I found the tactile sense of them really nice, kind

806
00:39:29,910 --> 00:39:31,910
of like rubbing my finger on the edges

807
00:39:31,910 --> 00:39:33,870
of the keys was just really nice for some reason.

808
00:39:34,290 --> 00:39:36,230
But to use not so great.

809
00:39:36,290 --> 00:39:40,110
But obviously Clive Sinclair's little shortcut keys

810
00:39:40,170 --> 00:39:43,150
for programming helped reduce the amount

811
00:39:43,150 --> 00:39:44,270
of keys you had to press.

812
00:39:44,710 --> 00:39:46,150
I had friends with the original rubber

813
00:39:46,240 --> 00:39:47,550
keyed 48 K spectrum.

814
00:39:47,810 --> 00:39:50,310
Um, most of them had trouble loading games

815
00:39:50,310 --> 00:39:51,790
because the J key had gone

816
00:39:51,810 --> 00:39:54,070
and you had to press the J was the shortcut for the load.

817
00:39:54,410 --> 00:39:56,830
And as it was the key that was pressed by far the most.

818
00:39:57,090 --> 00:39:58,670
And when that one went, you were in trouble

819
00:39:58,890 --> 00:40:01,270
and the quotation marks were the next thing to go as well

820
00:40:01,270 --> 00:40:04,430
because to load from tape on the 48 k, it was load, uh,

821
00:40:04,430 --> 00:40:05,910
quotation mark, quotation marks.

822
00:40:05,930 --> 00:40:08,070
So those were the keys that went first. So

823
00:40:08,190 --> 00:40:09,830
There was a whole learning curve with learning

824
00:40:09,850 --> 00:40:12,470
to program using all these shortcut operations.

825
00:40:12,490 --> 00:40:15,070
But at the same time it was a really nice

826
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:16,550
experience 'cause it was new.

827
00:40:16,790 --> 00:40:18,790
I think the spectrum as a piece of design,

828
00:40:18,940 --> 00:40:20,870
it's unparalleled in what it is.

829
00:40:20,970 --> 00:40:24,030
You see a 48 K ZX spectrum, you immediately know what it is.

830
00:40:24,290 --> 00:40:25,910
In fact with all the different spectrum models,

831
00:40:26,210 --> 00:40:27,670
you know from the design, what they

832
00:40:27,670 --> 00:40:30,510
Are and unusually the Sinclair products were black

833
00:40:30,930 --> 00:40:33,190
and most of the other contemporary products were

834
00:40:33,240 --> 00:40:34,510
beige, weren't they in the day?

835
00:40:35,090 --> 00:40:39,030
The beige kind of dominant aesthetic of computing it is

836
00:40:39,030 --> 00:40:40,150
for the business community.

837
00:40:40,150 --> 00:40:42,150
Whereas Sir Clive wasn't held back by that.

838
00:40:42,290 --> 00:40:45,230
He wanted to make an impact. He understood his market.

839
00:40:46,760 --> 00:40:49,430
There were so many computer companies in the UK

840
00:40:49,450 --> 00:40:51,270
during the early mid eighties

841
00:40:51,770 --> 00:40:52,950
and they all wanted to slice

842
00:40:52,950 --> 00:40:56,390
of the same pie machines like ARI 800.

843
00:40:56,890 --> 00:40:58,830
The revived versions came a bit too late.

844
00:40:59,210 --> 00:41:01,270
The Acorn electron obviously had supply problems

845
00:41:01,270 --> 00:41:04,430
and that arrived about a year too late to make an impact.

846
00:41:04,830 --> 00:41:08,350
BBC Micro was great machine but incredibly expensive

847
00:41:08,410 --> 00:41:10,830
and not many games were available for it.

848
00:41:10,830 --> 00:41:13,550
Very much an educational orientated machine.

849
00:41:13,690 --> 00:41:16,830
So the spectrum just had a clear path, I think, to the home

850
00:41:16,890 --> 00:41:19,270
and the games industry and cut, cut straight through it.

851
00:41:19,690 --> 00:41:22,910
By that time we'd missed out on the BBC contract.

852
00:41:23,240 --> 00:41:24,470
Acorn had got it with

853
00:41:24,470 --> 00:41:26,870
what I considered a much more boring computer.

854
00:41:27,330 --> 00:41:29,870
The government hopes to have a computer in every secondary

855
00:41:29,870 --> 00:41:31,190
school by the end of the year.

856
00:41:32,250 --> 00:41:35,510
But it was classic, it was more boring

857
00:41:35,510 --> 00:41:36,870
because it actually worked.

858
00:41:37,810 --> 00:41:39,430
It could sit in a classroom.

859
00:41:39,970 --> 00:41:41,510
The keys were more reliable,

860
00:41:42,090 --> 00:41:43,830
the whole thing was more predictable.

861
00:41:44,050 --> 00:41:46,310
The BBC was a competitor to it

862
00:41:46,370 --> 00:41:48,150
and Clive was always disappointed

863
00:41:48,150 --> 00:41:52,270
that Acorn had won the rights for the BBC Micro

864
00:41:52,650 --> 00:41:54,790
and the education programs.

865
00:41:54,930 --> 00:41:59,030
But the reality is we sold several times more aesthetic

866
00:41:59,470 --> 00:42:02,110
spectrums without the support of British government.

867
00:42:02,290 --> 00:42:03,830
On the BBC micro side,

868
00:42:04,050 --> 00:42:05,870
I'd say the spectrum was the big one.

869
00:42:06,350 --> 00:42:09,030
Spectrum made the market, whereas BBCB never really had

870
00:42:09,030 --> 00:42:10,510
that same kind of vibe.

871
00:42:10,690 --> 00:42:12,950
The spectrum was a bit more mass markety really.

872
00:42:13,130 --> 00:42:15,910
And the BBB was still a bit kind of, um, snooty.

873
00:42:16,730 --> 00:42:21,350
And this machine is credited as the machine, uh, that sort

874
00:42:21,350 --> 00:42:22,630
of kickstart our games industry.

875
00:42:22,770 --> 00:42:24,990
And people that are working in the games industry now cut

876
00:42:24,990 --> 00:42:27,430
their teeth programming games on the spectrum.

877
00:42:28,090 --> 00:42:30,710
I'm sure the, the spectrum did start the British

878
00:42:31,130 --> 00:42:32,510
gaming and compute scene.

879
00:42:32,810 --> 00:42:35,990
It because it was just so successful.

880
00:42:36,710 --> 00:42:39,070
I think it just came about at exactly the right time.

881
00:42:39,490 --> 00:42:41,470
The spectrum really was the one

882
00:42:41,470 --> 00:42:42,670
that sparked the game scene.

883
00:42:42,810 --> 00:42:44,670
It was affordable. There was a Christmas

884
00:42:44,670 --> 00:42:46,630
where everybody just seemed to get one.

885
00:42:46,630 --> 00:42:47,990
They were selling out everywhere.

886
00:42:48,330 --> 00:42:49,790
You went downstairs on Christmas morning

887
00:42:49,790 --> 00:42:51,430
with your fingers crossed, hoping your parents

888
00:42:51,450 --> 00:42:53,150
had managed to get one as well. It was

889
00:42:54,030 --> 00:42:56,910
December, 1983 when I was surprised at Christmas

890
00:42:57,380 --> 00:42:59,550
with a brand new Spectrum, 48 k.

891
00:42:59,570 --> 00:43:01,030
It was mine and my brother's. That's

892
00:43:01,030 --> 00:43:02,030
where everything really kicked off.

893
00:43:02,130 --> 00:43:03,750
It was in color, it was on your TV

894
00:43:03,750 --> 00:43:05,110
screen and it was beautiful.

895
00:43:05,950 --> 00:43:09,710
I badged my parents who said I might be able to get a, a,

896
00:43:09,790 --> 00:43:10,990
a spectrum for my birthday,

897
00:43:11,090 --> 00:43:13,070
but there was a definite emphasis on the might be.

898
00:43:13,090 --> 00:43:15,590
But then I remember coming home from school a couple of days

899
00:43:15,590 --> 00:43:17,830
before my birthday and my mum said, look down

900
00:43:17,830 --> 00:43:20,190
between the two, between the sofa and the chair

901
00:43:20,330 --> 00:43:23,190
and their in a Boots carrier bag was a brand new ZX

902
00:43:23,310 --> 00:43:24,710
spectrum, 48 k as well.

903
00:43:25,110 --> 00:43:27,270
I did one of these kids go mad things,

904
00:43:27,330 --> 00:43:28,350
you know, like it was mine.

905
00:43:28,370 --> 00:43:30,310
And there it was and I couldn't believe it.

906
00:43:30,410 --> 00:43:32,910
And I was like, wow. And then I set it up then obviously,

907
00:43:32,910 --> 00:43:35,710
and then was on it off until my dad came home from work

908
00:43:35,710 --> 00:43:37,150
and said, right, I wanna watch the TV now.

909
00:43:37,270 --> 00:43:38,830
I really wanted to get the Sinclair spectrum.

910
00:43:39,050 --> 00:43:41,150
And so I had a very strange thing happen to me.

911
00:43:41,410 --> 00:43:43,630
My grandmother, I was at her house one day

912
00:43:43,630 --> 00:43:44,950
and she said, I wanna talk to you.

913
00:43:45,010 --> 00:43:47,710
And I'm like, okay. And she goes to me, you know,

914
00:43:48,010 --> 00:43:49,310
I'm getting pretty old now

915
00:43:49,610 --> 00:43:53,470
and someday I don't wanna think I left you like some pea

916
00:43:53,520 --> 00:43:54,710
Potts or something like that.

917
00:43:55,010 --> 00:43:57,870
And so I want to give you some money just so I know

918
00:43:57,870 --> 00:43:59,030
that you're not gonna end up

919
00:43:59,030 --> 00:44:00,630
with silverware or that kind of thing.

920
00:44:00,890 --> 00:44:04,190
And so she gave him like a hundred pounds or 150 pounds.

921
00:44:04,530 --> 00:44:07,270
And at that time that was a really big deal

922
00:44:07,270 --> 00:44:09,030
because that was my Sinclair spectrum.

923
00:44:09,290 --> 00:44:11,190
And so by buying that computer,

924
00:44:11,700 --> 00:44:13,230
that was the knee in the curve for me.

925
00:44:13,390 --> 00:44:16,070
'cause suddenly I was able to, to take off, difficult

926
00:44:16,070 --> 00:44:17,630
For me to have an insight into

927
00:44:17,740 --> 00:44:19,230
what it meant to other people.

928
00:44:20,450 --> 00:44:24,950
To me it just made it possible for me

929
00:44:24,950 --> 00:44:29,550
to get into computing probably four years,

930
00:44:29,860 --> 00:44:31,790
five years before I might

931
00:44:31,790 --> 00:44:33,550
otherwise have been able to afford it.

932
00:44:34,130 --> 00:44:39,070
It was cheap, it was color and my brother liked it as well.

933
00:44:39,290 --> 00:44:43,110
So did I like the design? Yeah, great.

934
00:44:43,370 --> 00:44:46,670
But I think the first thing I did was open it up.

935
00:44:47,070 --> 00:44:49,710
I had probably in all honesty, more interested in

936
00:44:49,980 --> 00:44:51,950
what was under the hood than anything else.

937
00:44:52,180 --> 00:44:54,510
Like, um, into hardware. The

938
00:44:54,510 --> 00:44:58,310
Machine seemed impossibly small, like how can you pack all

939
00:44:58,310 --> 00:45:02,230
of this power, this obscene amount of ram,

940
00:45:02,680 --> 00:45:04,470
these bitmap graphics and all of

941
00:45:04,470 --> 00:45:06,390
that into this tiny little box?

942
00:45:07,010 --> 00:45:08,190
It was very understated.

943
00:45:08,590 --> 00:45:11,630
I mean, at that time when the leaflet was doing the rounds,

944
00:45:11,630 --> 00:45:15,150
nobody knew just how rubbery those keys would feel.

945
00:45:15,890 --> 00:45:17,150
So it still looked amazing.

946
00:45:17,810 --> 00:45:22,390
So for me it was really, this is an arcade capable machine

947
00:45:22,500 --> 00:45:25,990
that you can have at home at a ridiculous price, which meant

948
00:45:26,780 --> 00:45:31,110
that it was a perfect blank slate for new people coming in

949
00:45:31,410 --> 00:45:33,270
to do things that had never been done before.

950
00:45:43,290 --> 00:45:45,070
The spectrum was incredibly important

951
00:45:45,070 --> 00:45:47,510
because up until that point, whether it's the ZX 80

952
00:45:47,530 --> 00:45:50,390
or the ZX 81, they were black and white.

953
00:45:50,420 --> 00:45:52,990
They didn't have proper keyboards and so on.

954
00:45:52,990 --> 00:45:56,190
And here we had this product in either 16 K form

955
00:45:56,190 --> 00:45:58,990
or 48 K form that had memory to go with it.

956
00:45:59,130 --> 00:46:02,310
So we had for the first time in the spectrum, uh,

957
00:46:02,310 --> 00:46:05,150
products which you could actually do something with.

958
00:46:05,850 --> 00:46:07,310
And what most

959
00:46:07,330 --> 00:46:09,990
of the software developers decided here

960
00:46:09,990 --> 00:46:11,150
was a games playing machine.

961
00:46:11,290 --> 00:46:13,910
So the ZX spectrum became the doan

962
00:46:13,910 --> 00:46:16,070
of the developers of computer games.

963
00:46:16,490 --> 00:46:18,790
And it was the games playing

964
00:46:18,860 --> 00:46:21,910
that really made the spectrum the success that it was.

965
00:46:22,250 --> 00:46:26,990
The spectrum was there at the time when it was affordable

966
00:46:27,010 --> 00:46:28,470
for parents to say, okay,

967
00:46:28,570 --> 00:46:30,590
as a main Christmas present or whatever.

968
00:46:31,460 --> 00:46:32,720
Yet we can stretch to that.

969
00:46:33,060 --> 00:46:35,840
And I think that was the opening for many, many kids

970
00:46:36,300 --> 00:46:37,640
to get not into just games,

971
00:46:37,700 --> 00:46:40,560
but into fiddling about with basic programming.

972
00:46:41,260 --> 00:46:44,360
And it meant because of the limitations of of the spectrum.

973
00:46:44,900 --> 00:46:47,440
The programmers had to be really, really creative

974
00:50:23,570 --> 00:50:25,990
For an aspiring games developer for,

975
00:50:26,090 --> 00:50:28,290
for someone who's interested in that sort of thing.

976
00:50:28,330 --> 00:50:30,830
The spectrum was ideal. You go to a shop, you pick it up,

977
00:50:30,970 --> 00:50:33,950
you unbox it, it's there, you plug it in,

978
00:50:34,230 --> 00:50:36,710
Plugging it in, and then you telly

979
00:50:36,710 --> 00:50:38,670
and then you'd just be sitting there with this in your hand.

980
00:50:42,570 --> 00:50:44,070
It was absolutely nuts.

981
00:50:44,090 --> 00:50:46,350
The notion that this screen would do things

982
00:50:46,350 --> 00:50:47,750
that you'd only seen on films

983
00:50:47,780 --> 00:50:50,870
that you'd only seen on Star Trek was, uh,

984
00:50:50,950 --> 00:50:53,070
I mean it must just have been absolutely mind

985
00:50:53,070 --> 00:50:54,390
blowing, but of course you're there.

986
00:50:54,390 --> 00:50:56,550
You don't realize your mind is being blown.

987
00:50:56,550 --> 00:50:58,070
You just know that you don't wanna look away.

988
00:50:58,750 --> 00:51:02,030
I just became absolutely fascinated by the whole thing.

989
00:51:02,490 --> 00:51:06,150
And I remember like type a small piece of Caribbean

990
00:51:06,690 --> 00:51:08,590
and seeing the result on the screen,

991
00:51:09,350 --> 00:51:11,070
I was absolutely gob smugged.

992
00:51:11,150 --> 00:51:13,670
I couldn't believe it. I thought, wow, this is amazing.

993
00:51:14,210 --> 00:51:17,630
You know, I just like typed in a few lines of something

994
00:51:17,690 --> 00:51:19,750
and this happened on the screen.

995
00:51:20,390 --> 00:51:23,470
I think the best thing about the spectrum was it was a

996
00:51:23,470 --> 00:51:24,550
big box of bites.

997
00:51:24,650 --> 00:51:25,830
You can do anything you want with it.

998
00:51:25,830 --> 00:51:27,710
Uh, you didn't have to know anything particular.

999
00:51:27,850 --> 00:51:29,230
And you can make simple basic games

1000
00:51:29,330 --> 00:51:31,470
and then as you progress, you can learn assembly language

1001
00:51:31,890 --> 00:51:33,310
and make more complicated games,

1002
00:51:33,810 --> 00:51:35,230
but you can start making them yourself.

1003
00:51:35,730 --> 00:51:37,070
It was so accessible

1004
00:51:37,260 --> 00:51:39,670
that everyone could make their own games.

1005
00:51:40,810 --> 00:51:43,870
And it came with a very good programming manual,

1006
00:51:43,880 --> 00:51:46,310
which at the back had a reference section

1007
00:51:46,500 --> 00:51:50,310
regarding programming in machine code, which I understood

1008
00:51:50,310 --> 00:51:52,430
that programming in basic alone,

1009
00:51:52,450 --> 00:51:54,390
you couldn't really create decent games.

1010
00:51:54,450 --> 00:51:57,350
It was too slow. So I had to learn machine code

1011
00:51:57,850 --> 00:51:59,830
and that's when I started dabbling

1012
00:51:59,830 --> 00:52:01,310
and trying to get as much information

1013
00:52:01,610 --> 00:52:04,550
as I could about programming in machine code.

1014
00:52:06,440 --> 00:52:08,550
Steve was the author of the manual.

1015
00:52:08,950 --> 00:52:10,630
I edited it, made a few comments.

1016
00:52:10,850 --> 00:52:12,910
It wasn't just aimed at showing people how

1017
00:52:12,910 --> 00:52:14,350
to plug the device in and load games.

1018
00:52:14,450 --> 00:52:16,310
We really wanted it to be an instruction manual

1019
00:52:16,310 --> 00:52:18,910
to help people to learn to program in basic.

1020
00:52:20,130 --> 00:52:22,350
So the Spectrum manual, I approached it more

1021
00:52:22,350 --> 00:52:25,150
or less the same as with the ZX 81 Manual.

1022
00:52:25,290 --> 00:52:26,630
No, no special differences.

1023
00:52:26,810 --> 00:52:28,830
And in fact, some of the material was

1024
00:52:29,160 --> 00:52:30,230
valid for both of them.

1025
00:52:30,530 --> 00:52:33,870
So I I more or less lifted it from the ZX 81 manual and,

1026
00:52:33,930 --> 00:52:35,110
and reused it.

1027
00:52:35,490 --> 00:52:38,750
It reads as though a human being is writing to you.

1028
00:52:39,470 --> 00:52:40,710
I, I wanted to try

1029
00:52:40,710 --> 00:52:43,110
and anticipate what the reader needed to know

1030
00:52:43,890 --> 00:52:45,190
and address that.

1031
00:52:45,890 --> 00:52:47,590
And clearly history has shown that a lot

1032
00:52:47,590 --> 00:52:49,350
of people learn basic through that manual.

1033
00:52:49,570 --> 00:52:51,230
It had a lot of humor in it.

1034
00:52:51,660 --> 00:52:53,110
Steve's particular brand of humor,

1035
00:52:53,630 --> 00:52:55,750
I know Clive wasn't completely happy

1036
00:52:55,750 --> 00:52:57,390
with my style of writing.

1037
00:52:57,730 --> 00:53:01,950
All sorts of completely flaky, extraneous ideas coming in

1038
00:53:02,130 --> 00:53:04,390
and trying to get across the serious ideas

1039
00:53:04,450 --> 00:53:05,550
of how you would use it.

1040
00:53:06,090 --> 00:53:07,350
Bit Monty Python ish.

1041
00:53:07,350 --> 00:53:10,270
Sometimes from time to time I get emails saying I

1042
00:53:10,270 --> 00:53:11,390
so much enjoyed the manual.

1043
00:53:11,530 --> 00:53:12,670
You know, sort of one or two

1044
00:53:16,980 --> 00:53:18,470
Popular computing weekly.

1045
00:53:19,150 --> 00:53:21,270
I think it was one of the best magazines ever.

1046
00:53:21,530 --> 00:53:23,070
It was like a tiny little thing.

1047
00:53:23,450 --> 00:53:25,430
And it was a weekly magazine, which was amazing.

1048
00:53:25,530 --> 00:53:28,430
So we didn't have to wait too long for the next issue.

1049
00:53:29,380 --> 00:53:32,080
And they also covered the machine code.

1050
00:53:32,080 --> 00:53:34,600
They, they used to have a small section about machine code.

1051
00:53:34,700 --> 00:53:39,440
And, and I, I read this article in one issue where it said,

1052
00:53:39,740 --> 00:53:42,040
if you wanna become a really good programmer,

1053
00:53:42,040 --> 00:53:43,200
successful programmer,

1054
00:53:43,500 --> 00:53:45,520
you must forget about the basic language

1055
00:53:45,820 --> 00:53:49,520
and learn machine code without even knowing the difference.

1056
00:53:49,960 --> 00:53:51,240
I said, well that's what I'm gonna do.

1057
00:53:51,540 --> 00:53:53,400
And it was that kind of what people were doing

1058
00:53:54,150 --> 00:53:55,520
with the spectrum and stuff

1059
00:53:55,520 --> 00:53:57,520
that actually got me into doing a little bit of coding.

1060
00:53:57,680 --> 00:53:59,360
I was never good enough or bright enough

1061
00:53:59,360 --> 00:54:03,120
and in mathematics at all to do anything proficient.

1062
00:54:04,020 --> 00:54:07,040
But as a hobbyist, you could explore, you could play around,

1063
00:54:07,180 --> 00:54:11,720
you could take some of the very early computing magazines

1064
00:54:11,720 --> 00:54:14,600
and with their endless long forever pages of listings,

1065
00:54:14,780 --> 00:54:16,160
you would type 'em, they'd never work.

1066
00:54:16,160 --> 00:54:17,600
They would never ever work first time.

1067
00:54:17,600 --> 00:54:19,640
But if you were inquisitive enough, you started playing

1068
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:21,080
around with that bit of code

1069
00:54:21,220 --> 00:54:22,680
and working out what was going wrong

1070
00:54:22,820 --> 00:54:24,280
and fixing it as you went along.

1071
00:54:24,460 --> 00:54:25,640
And eventually slowly,

1072
00:54:25,800 --> 00:54:28,600
I wrote the most horrendous space invaders again one day.

1073
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:30,240
And it was just appalling pretty much.

1074
00:54:30,820 --> 00:54:34,000
But, you know, that was, that was my genesis of, of gaming.

1075
00:54:34,420 --> 00:54:35,480
It was an iterative process.

1076
00:54:35,570 --> 00:54:37,400
You'd type it in, then you'd suddenly figure out,

1077
00:54:37,400 --> 00:54:38,880
well it won't run what I done.

1078
00:54:39,140 --> 00:54:40,720
Missed out a piece of punctuation

1079
00:54:40,720 --> 00:54:42,760
and it was scanning down the page trying to find

1080
00:54:42,950 --> 00:54:44,080
what you'd missed and and

1081
00:54:44,080 --> 00:54:45,160
putting it in and getting it working.

1082
00:54:45,420 --> 00:54:47,480
And when you did it, it was a real sense of achievement.

1083
00:54:47,780 --> 00:54:49,560
And so it literally was something that had

1084
00:54:49,560 --> 00:54:51,320
that we had never seen anything like before.

1085
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:52,600
You know, you sat in front of a TV

1086
00:54:53,260 --> 00:54:55,080
and you know, you just basically consumed the

1087
00:54:55,080 --> 00:54:56,120
output that came at you.

1088
00:54:56,500 --> 00:54:57,880
And that was fun for many decades.

1089
00:54:58,060 --> 00:55:00,000
But the, but the ability to really kind of turn

1090
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:01,720
that output into input

1091
00:55:01,720 --> 00:55:03,440
and to type in even just a basic program

1092
00:55:03,580 --> 00:55:05,000
or just kind of waggle the joystick

1093
00:55:05,000 --> 00:55:07,520
and see the character move around on, on the screen.

1094
00:55:07,700 --> 00:55:09,480
Arthur C. Clarke has this great quote about

1095
00:55:09,480 --> 00:55:11,680
how any sufficiently advanced technologies

1096
00:55:11,680 --> 00:55:12,960
indistinguishable from magic.

1097
00:55:13,460 --> 00:55:17,600
And at that time when we were doing those basic programs

1098
00:55:17,600 --> 00:55:19,160
and playing those basic games, we'd literally

1099
00:55:19,160 --> 00:55:20,280
never seen anything like it.

1100
00:55:20,280 --> 00:55:22,480
And so it really did feel like a form

1101
00:55:22,480 --> 00:55:23,520
of digital magic to us.

1102
00:55:23,640 --> 00:55:24,640
I think

1103
00:55:25,030 --> 00:55:29,870
Sinclair was still at the stage of the product lifecycle,

1104
00:55:30,040 --> 00:55:33,550
which all products have, where it was still being

1105
00:55:34,410 --> 00:55:36,230
really targeted at the people

1106
00:55:36,490 --> 00:55:38,670
who don't really mind if it works.

1107
00:55:39,140 --> 00:55:41,550
They just like to tinker around until it does.

1108
00:55:41,690 --> 00:55:43,990
And this stage of product lifecycle

1109
00:55:44,730 --> 00:55:46,950
is early adopters, innovators.

1110
00:55:47,570 --> 00:55:50,190
And when he was targeting those people,

1111
00:55:50,560 --> 00:55:51,950
Clive, he was happiest.

1112
00:55:52,240 --> 00:55:55,350
Developing gamers on the Sinclair spectrum in the early

1113
00:55:55,350 --> 00:55:57,230
days was a little bit difficult,

1114
00:55:57,430 --> 00:55:58,910
a little bit uh, unreliable.

1115
00:55:59,270 --> 00:56:03,750
I has a 48 K spectrum with dual ZX micro drives

1116
00:56:04,090 --> 00:56:07,390
and these were amazingly primitive devices.

1117
00:56:07,540 --> 00:56:09,670
Yeah, these little micro drive cassettes which had this

1118
00:56:09,820 --> 00:56:11,990
endlessly of tape going inside them. The

1119
00:56:11,990 --> 00:56:14,750
Micro drive was inexpensive attached to the spectrum.

1120
00:56:15,010 --> 00:56:17,030
It had the right capacity, it had the right speed,

1121
00:56:17,060 --> 00:56:18,750
essentially it was a cassette head

1122
00:56:18,750 --> 00:56:20,390
and that was one of the beauties of it, is

1123
00:56:20,390 --> 00:56:22,990
that Clive had taken some readily available components,

1124
00:56:22,990 --> 00:56:24,710
which were high-tech in themselves

1125
00:56:24,710 --> 00:56:26,210
and leveraged it in his concept.

1126
00:56:26,420 --> 00:56:28,470
It's actually surprising how reliable they were,

1127
00:56:28,830 --> 00:56:31,070
considering how basic the technology was.

1128
00:56:31,610 --> 00:56:33,790
The carts he put in, either you got a,

1129
00:56:33,910 --> 00:56:35,630
a reliable one which you could use a lot,

1130
00:56:35,630 --> 00:56:37,630
or you got an unreliable one, which you really had

1131
00:56:37,630 --> 00:56:38,990
to throw away after a while.

1132
00:56:39,170 --> 00:56:40,590
It was that hit or miss.

1133
00:56:40,910 --> 00:56:43,470
I didn't have too many problems developing.

1134
00:56:43,650 --> 00:56:45,510
It wasn't very fast, but it did work.

1135
00:56:46,270 --> 00:56:48,870
I dunno how well the micro drive did fare in the market.

1136
00:56:49,260 --> 00:56:51,110
It's a very, very flimsy piece of tape.

1137
00:56:51,170 --> 00:56:52,910
If it doesn't go from one reel to another,

1138
00:56:52,970 --> 00:56:54,910
it goes round in a spiral on itself.

1139
00:56:54,910 --> 00:56:57,310
So it has to slip past itself so that there has

1140
00:56:57,310 --> 00:56:58,750
to be some wear and tear. When

1141
00:56:58,750 --> 00:57:00,990
I saw the adverts for micro drive, they seem to be, oh,

1142
00:57:00,990 --> 00:57:02,390
the answer for the spectrum.

1143
00:57:02,750 --> 00:57:05,430
'cause it seems to take ages loading and saving tapes.

1144
00:57:05,560 --> 00:57:08,030
There were these little gizmos which were going

1145
00:57:08,030 --> 00:57:09,270
to be like disc drives

1146
00:57:09,330 --> 00:57:12,190
and they had tiny little cartridges that you could put in,

1147
00:57:12,530 --> 00:57:15,310
but I had so much frustration in trying to make them work.

1148
00:57:15,550 --> 00:57:18,190
I really got near to crunching it with a hammer.

1149
00:57:18,630 --> 00:57:20,030
I really did feel like doing it.

1150
00:57:20,030 --> 00:57:21,830
But they went back to Sinclair

1151
00:57:21,890 --> 00:57:23,510
and I actually got my money back for those

1152
00:57:23,510 --> 00:57:25,230
and I said, they're not for purpose.

1153
00:57:25,610 --> 00:57:26,950
One of the other problems we used

1154
00:57:26,950 --> 00:57:29,110
to have was spectrum overheating all the time,

1155
00:57:29,110 --> 00:57:31,790
especially when you had your gizmos on the back.

1156
00:57:32,070 --> 00:57:34,230
I heard of people kind of standing a glass

1157
00:57:34,290 --> 00:57:35,990
of ice water by them.

1158
00:57:36,330 --> 00:57:38,870
We used to use fans in the office for a while,

1159
00:57:39,410 --> 00:57:41,310
but we used to find that switching on

1160
00:57:41,310 --> 00:57:44,390
and off the fans sometimes could make your machines crash.

1161
00:57:44,490 --> 00:57:46,430
So those weren't terribly popular.

1162
00:57:46,970 --> 00:57:49,750
In the end, I bought another keyboard for the spectrum

1163
00:57:50,250 --> 00:57:52,470
and threw the rubber keyboard away and,

1164
00:57:52,490 --> 00:57:55,550
and the circuit board from the spectrum can of lay right

1165
00:57:55,770 --> 00:57:58,630
inside the other keyboard, which gave it a lot of room.

1166
00:57:58,650 --> 00:58:01,190
And that's how I spent most of my time programming.

1167
00:58:01,370 --> 00:58:03,550
So the rubber keys didn't last sort

1168
00:58:03,550 --> 00:58:04,750
of more than a few months.

1169
00:58:05,500 --> 00:58:08,510
This is the spectrum that an attack, zombie. Zombie.

1170
00:58:08,610 --> 00:58:10,390
And if the mask was written on

1171
00:58:11,050 --> 00:58:13,790
and conveniently the top will come off

1172
00:58:13,970 --> 00:58:17,910
and there's my little modifications

1173
00:58:17,940 --> 00:58:20,350
that allowed mapping the softie in.

1174
00:58:20,460 --> 00:58:24,510
That was a way for me to connect the softie to the spectrum.

1175
00:58:25,050 --> 00:58:28,190
So the advantage of having your work on another machine

1176
00:58:28,240 --> 00:58:32,590
where it'll stay pristine even if this crashes. The beauty

1177
00:58:32,590 --> 00:58:34,430
Of the spectrum in regards to

1178
00:58:35,220 --> 00:58:37,350
that experimental approach was

1179
00:58:37,350 --> 00:58:39,830
that it was a beautiful blank slate.

1180
00:58:40,250 --> 00:58:43,070
It was a block of memory, a block of screen memory,

1181
00:58:43,280 --> 00:58:44,510
block of attribute memory.

1182
00:58:44,650 --> 00:58:47,670
Here's a fast processor, off you go. That was it.

1183
00:58:47,670 --> 00:58:48,790
That's all you had to work with.

1184
00:58:48,930 --> 00:58:52,070
So you had to fashion everything from those raw

1185
00:58:52,070 --> 00:58:53,430
ingredients, especially

1186
00:58:53,430 --> 00:58:55,550
On the spectrum because you didn't have anything.

1187
00:58:55,610 --> 00:58:58,510
No hardware, sports, no nothing. You have to do everything.

1188
00:58:58,570 --> 00:58:59,870
You have to be really creative.

1189
00:59:00,020 --> 00:59:03,950
Technically, all those limitations allowed people like me

1190
00:59:04,090 --> 00:59:05,830
to try unlimited things.

1191
00:59:06,750 --> 00:59:10,070
I always knew the computers for, for having fun

1192
00:59:10,250 --> 00:59:11,270
and entertaining people.

1193
00:59:13,030 --> 00:59:15,890
By the time the Sinclair Spectrum arrived,

1194
00:59:16,390 --> 00:59:17,570
it was Peyton the obvious.

1195
00:59:17,960 --> 00:59:19,010
They were for only one thing

1196
00:59:19,010 --> 00:59:20,970
and that was making interactive movies.

1197
00:59:21,410 --> 00:59:25,030
Of course, not only did we have moving stuff on a little

1198
00:59:25,030 --> 00:59:26,390
screen, it had color.

1199
00:59:26,660 --> 00:59:30,110
This was a toy shop just like Austin Wells must have felt

1200
00:59:30,110 --> 00:59:31,190
when he had Free Reign.

1201
00:59:31,370 --> 00:59:33,550
And if this was gonna be my Austin Wells moment,

1202
00:59:33,800 --> 00:59:34,950
let's make Citizen Kane.

1203
00:59:35,110 --> 00:59:39,070
I thought, yeah, we can do this now We've got a Sinclair 48

1204
00:59:39,350 --> 00:59:42,270
K ZX spectrum, let's go make Citizen came.

1205
00:59:42,450 --> 00:59:46,950
So I feel I could make movies in 1982. Oh boy.

1206
00:59:50,250 --> 00:59:53,870
Now I'd seen a couple of three D games on the ZX 81,

1207
00:59:53,990 --> 00:59:55,910
A little Game with a Tyrannosaur Rex Running

1208
00:59:55,910 --> 00:59:57,870
through a maze was one that I remember.

1209
00:59:58,290 --> 01:00:00,390
And I thought you could do this with the kind

1210
01:00:00,390 --> 01:00:02,950
of shoot 'em up if you kind of had spaceships

1211
01:00:02,970 --> 01:00:04,270
and you were flying into the game.

1212
01:00:04,970 --> 01:00:07,550
It was about the time Star Wars was very big.

1213
01:00:07,550 --> 01:00:10,670
And I thought, ah, if I do a game that's like Star Wars,

1214
01:00:10,670 --> 01:00:11,710
people are bound to love that.

1215
01:00:11,710 --> 01:00:13,470
And I have spaceships flying out the game.

1216
01:00:13,650 --> 01:00:17,510
So three D Space Wars was the concept from the start.

1217
01:00:17,570 --> 01:00:20,710
And to make it feel like a scene in Star Wars

1218
01:00:20,710 --> 01:00:23,310
where you're flying into a crowd of fighters

1219
01:00:23,330 --> 01:00:24,710
and they're all flying around you.

1220
01:00:24,930 --> 01:00:27,230
At that time, no one had done a

1221
01:00:27,230 --> 01:00:28,390
three D game on the spectrum.

1222
01:00:28,490 --> 01:00:30,550
So I thought, right, I'm coming up with something new.

1223
01:00:30,870 --> 01:00:32,470
I think there were a couple that came out

1224
01:00:32,530 --> 01:00:33,830
by the time it was published,

1225
01:00:33,880 --> 01:00:36,910
there was a three D motorbike game where motorbike was kind

1226
01:00:36,910 --> 01:00:39,030
of riding through a forest of trees,

1227
01:00:39,210 --> 01:00:41,750
but there certainly wasn't any around when I started.

1228
01:00:41,930 --> 01:00:43,830
So that gave me a feeling that, yeah, I,

1229
01:00:43,990 --> 01:00:45,030
I was onto something new.

1230
01:00:45,290 --> 01:00:47,590
The sound on the ZX spectrum was really very simple.

1231
01:00:47,610 --> 01:00:49,430
We had a, what we called a little beeper,

1232
01:00:49,540 --> 01:00:52,790
ingenious programmers could develop square waves to drive it

1233
01:00:52,790 --> 01:00:54,590
and create something that approximated

1234
01:00:54,610 --> 01:00:56,150
to different tones of music.

1235
01:00:56,210 --> 01:00:57,830
It, it was very, very simple.

1236
01:00:58,020 --> 01:01:00,350
Well all you can do with a spectrum is um,

1237
01:01:00,570 --> 01:01:04,030
switch the speaker on and off, you know, as one bit

1238
01:01:04,810 --> 01:01:09,550
and an attack just you have to generate a frame of graphics

1239
01:01:10,050 --> 01:01:12,470
and then make some kind of a click.

1240
01:01:12,730 --> 01:01:14,910
You could maybe do a tiny little bit of a beep

1241
01:01:14,970 --> 01:01:15,990
or a little bit of noise

1242
01:01:16,050 --> 01:01:17,910
as you can hear footsteps in anti-tax.

1243
01:01:17,930 --> 01:01:19,430
So it draws a frame of graphics,

1244
01:01:20,180 --> 01:01:22,310
does a tiny bit of white noise.

1245
01:01:24,900 --> 01:01:27,000
I'm often asked whether I can make music as well

1246
01:01:27,000 --> 01:01:28,880
as graphics and code and I can't.

1247
01:01:28,990 --> 01:01:31,200
Someone else supplied the music for Saboto

1248
01:01:31,580 --> 01:01:34,720
and I always wanted to get the music playing

1249
01:01:34,720 --> 01:01:36,600
during the game, but I was new to this.

1250
01:01:36,860 --> 01:01:39,400
So in the game I played some beeps.

1251
01:01:39,460 --> 01:01:40,640
No music, no interrupts,

1252
01:01:40,710 --> 01:01:42,360
just an occasional white noise sound.

1253
01:01:42,430 --> 01:01:43,430
When you kick someone,

1254
01:01:44,540 --> 01:01:47,780
Spectrum sound basically involved, you could

1255
01:01:48,380 --> 01:01:49,380
directly move the speaker,

1256
01:01:50,120 --> 01:01:51,780
but you can only move it in or out.

1257
01:01:51,780 --> 01:01:53,180
You don't have any fine control.

1258
01:01:54,260 --> 01:01:57,880
Now bear in mind that sound continues continuously,

1259
01:01:58,740 --> 01:02:01,080
but you have to do other things like the graphics,

1260
01:02:01,210 --> 01:02:04,430
which take rather more time up than everything else.

1261
01:02:05,720 --> 01:02:09,980
So on the spectrum, any music I played, I had

1262
01:02:09,980 --> 01:02:11,260
to do little bursts of.

1263
01:02:11,440 --> 01:02:15,580
So at each intra, which occur 50 times a second,

1264
01:02:16,260 --> 01:02:18,500
I put some sound out, just a little burst

1265
01:02:18,560 --> 01:02:20,160
of sound at whatever frequency

1266
01:02:20,160 --> 01:02:21,280
it needs to be at that moment.

1267
01:02:25,850 --> 01:02:29,150
So there's this distinct 50 hertz hum

1268
01:02:29,220 --> 01:02:31,470
because the whole sound was being broken up

1269
01:02:31,470 --> 01:02:32,630
into these little chunks.

1270
01:02:32,630 --> 01:02:35,670
Every 50th of a second, which rung

1271
01:02:35,670 --> 01:02:37,990
through everything was never gonna sound that a commodore,

1272
01:02:40,930 --> 01:02:43,950
the color, the sound limited though it was,

1273
01:02:44,610 --> 01:02:47,750
and the memory of the spectrum compared to the 81.

1274
01:02:47,750 --> 01:02:48,910
And the 80 meant

1275
01:02:48,910 --> 01:02:51,710
that there were some really terrific games developed

1276
01:02:51,890 --> 01:02:53,310
for it very quickly.

1277
01:02:53,850 --> 01:02:56,430
And that took off like wildfire

1278
01:02:57,050 --> 01:03:01,350
and Clive's attitude was that it would take care of itself.

1279
01:03:01,530 --> 01:03:03,910
He hadn't set out to develop a machine

1280
01:03:03,910 --> 01:03:05,310
for people to play with.

1281
01:03:05,850 --> 01:03:08,870
He acknowledged that that's what they did do with it.

1282
01:03:08,870 --> 01:03:11,310
And that drove sales and that was all well and good,

1283
01:03:11,810 --> 01:03:16,270
but he let the software people take care of the software.

1284
01:03:44,770 --> 01:03:47,070
So I think for a lot of people, their first experience

1285
01:03:47,070 --> 01:03:48,830
of video games was going into the arcade.

1286
01:03:49,250 --> 01:03:51,910
And the arcade was such an exciting place.

1287
01:03:51,950 --> 01:03:54,670
You've got explosions, grabs, loads of colors,

1288
01:03:55,210 --> 01:03:58,790
but they wanted to recreate that into their home computer.

1289
01:03:58,900 --> 01:04:00,470
Growing up in the early eighties,

1290
01:04:00,690 --> 01:04:01,990
it was all about the arcades.

1291
01:04:01,990 --> 01:04:04,950
That was where the best games were. These amazing games.

1292
01:04:05,320 --> 01:04:07,350
You'd go to the arcades, it would just be rows

1293
01:04:07,350 --> 01:04:09,270
and rows of brilliant arcade games.

1294
01:04:19,250 --> 01:04:21,230
And I was always pestering my parents to go

1295
01:04:21,230 --> 01:04:22,350
to the Seasides or wherever.

1296
01:04:22,450 --> 01:04:24,510
So the opportunity to have a machine

1297
01:04:25,040 --> 01:04:28,990
which could replicate this experience in some form at home

1298
01:04:29,500 --> 01:04:32,950
cheaply and easily was obviously very attractive to me.

1299
01:04:37,890 --> 01:04:39,910
The arcades were incredibly important.

1300
01:04:40,100 --> 01:04:41,510
When you go back to the early eighties,

1301
01:04:41,540 --> 01:04:43,710
it's the golden age of the arcades.

1302
01:04:43,710 --> 01:04:46,390
There are so many games that are so popular.

1303
01:04:46,930 --> 01:04:49,990
And already on the ZX 81, there were versions

1304
01:04:50,010 --> 01:04:52,110
of Space Invaders, very crude,

1305
01:04:52,210 --> 01:04:55,990
but playable versions of games as well as original games.

1306
01:04:56,040 --> 01:04:57,670
Games like three D Monster MAs

1307
01:04:57,670 --> 01:04:59,470
that had their own momentum. The

1308
01:04:59,690 --> 01:05:01,390
ZX 81 died off very quickly.

1309
01:05:01,650 --> 01:05:02,910
The spectrum was coming out

1310
01:05:03,170 --> 01:05:05,590
and Arctic immediately bombed me a spectrum

1311
01:05:05,970 --> 01:05:08,030
and I taught myself how it worked

1312
01:05:08,090 --> 01:05:11,870
by writing an unbelievably bad Space Invaders Clone,

1313
01:05:11,880 --> 01:05:14,710
which was never released, but it taught me how to use it.

1314
01:05:14,810 --> 01:05:17,430
And I went on to writes Cosmic Debris,

1315
01:05:17,520 --> 01:05:20,630
which was Asteroid's claim, all claims in most days.

1316
01:05:21,260 --> 01:05:24,910
Totally unimaginative really, which Arctics sold again.

1317
01:05:25,050 --> 01:05:27,270
But this time on a pretty good royalty deal,

1318
01:05:27,590 --> 01:05:30,670
I was pretty much on 25% verb, all the early games.

1319
01:05:31,250 --> 01:05:33,390
So almost as soon as the spectrum came out,

1320
01:05:33,610 --> 01:05:36,670
you started seeing immediately lots of versions

1321
01:05:36,670 --> 01:05:40,230
of games like Space Invaders, Pacman Asteroids,

1322
01:05:40,340 --> 01:05:41,990
missile Command Logger.

1323
01:05:42,210 --> 01:05:43,630
We ripped off arcade games

1324
01:05:43,700 --> 01:05:47,150
because Arcade Games were the only games that served

1325
01:05:47,210 --> 01:05:48,510
as reference pieces.

1326
01:05:49,250 --> 01:05:50,510
We all went to the arcades

1327
01:05:51,090 --> 01:05:53,470
and we wanted to copy what we saw.

1328
01:05:54,020 --> 01:05:56,350
It's how you learn anything, right? You imitate.

1329
01:05:56,690 --> 01:05:58,510
And you'd have that instant connection

1330
01:05:58,510 --> 01:05:59,550
because you'd see a game

1331
01:05:59,550 --> 01:06:01,230
and you'd go, oh, it's just like Space Invaders,

1332
01:06:01,240 --> 01:06:03,070
which was like Spectral Invaders.

1333
01:06:03,290 --> 01:06:05,830
Or you'd have Defender except instead

1334
01:06:05,830 --> 01:06:07,670
of er on the end it would be a on the end,

1335
01:06:07,670 --> 01:06:09,190
just subtle little changes like that.

1336
01:06:09,330 --> 01:06:11,790
So they did realize early on

1337
01:06:11,790 --> 01:06:13,830
that these games could be replicated,

1338
01:06:13,930 --> 01:06:16,990
but they also realized that the game should be different

1339
01:06:17,100 --> 01:06:19,990
because the way in which we played them was a lot different.

1340
01:06:19,990 --> 01:06:21,350
Instead of being in an arcade

1341
01:06:21,610 --> 01:06:23,750
and shoving coins in a machine to keep going,

1342
01:06:24,090 --> 01:06:26,510
we were at home and the game should be able

1343
01:06:26,510 --> 01:06:28,830
to involve us a little bit more than those arcade games.

1344
01:06:32,690 --> 01:06:36,190
The game design for Chucka came about mostly nicking ideas

1345
01:06:36,190 --> 01:06:38,030
from what I loved playing in the arcades.

1346
01:06:38,260 --> 01:06:41,110
It's a cross between Space Panic, which is a platform,

1347
01:06:41,110 --> 01:06:43,030
letters game and Donkey Kong.

1348
01:06:43,170 --> 01:06:45,310
And then a few ideas that I just chucked in myself.

1349
01:06:45,390 --> 01:06:46,390
A bit of a mishmash really.

1350
01:06:46,830 --> 01:06:49,470
I realized that you could do pixel movements on the

1351
01:06:49,670 --> 01:06:52,030
spectrum, even though the received wisdom was that you,

1352
01:06:52,050 --> 01:06:53,870
you couldn't, everything had to be character movement.

1353
01:06:54,050 --> 01:06:56,910
And so I wanted to do a game, which was pixel movement.

1354
01:06:57,080 --> 01:06:58,710
Pixel movement was an advantage just

1355
01:06:58,710 --> 01:07:00,230
because it was technically superior.

1356
01:07:00,370 --> 01:07:02,350
It would be better to play, it would look better.

1357
01:07:02,610 --> 01:07:03,630
You could make a better game.

1358
01:07:06,270 --> 01:07:08,190
Everyone that owned a ZX Spectrum played Jet Pack.

1359
01:07:08,270 --> 01:07:11,070
There's something about Jet Pack I think that made you feel

1360
01:07:11,070 --> 01:07:14,790
that you were emulating the archaic experience that most

1361
01:07:14,790 --> 01:07:16,230
of us were having in the early eighties.

1362
01:07:16,890 --> 01:07:19,030
And it was an important thing though.

1363
01:07:19,050 --> 01:07:21,070
Can I take that arcade experience Home with Me

1364
01:07:21,550 --> 01:07:22,830
Ultimate or Ultimate Play?

1365
01:07:22,830 --> 01:07:24,510
The Game as they were often known back then,

1366
01:07:24,580 --> 01:07:25,990
were an incredible company.

1367
01:07:25,990 --> 01:07:27,950
Obviously the two stampers behind them,

1368
01:07:28,170 --> 01:07:29,190
The Stamper Brothers,

1369
01:07:29,300 --> 01:07:30,990
they had Arcade experience themselves.

1370
01:07:30,990 --> 01:07:33,630
They had created their own minor arcade games.

1371
01:07:33,890 --> 01:07:36,670
So when they started to make ZX Spectrum games in the home,

1372
01:07:36,860 --> 01:07:39,510
they were really able to bring that experience

1373
01:07:39,510 --> 01:07:41,630
of already making arcade games through to create

1374
01:07:42,270 --> 01:07:43,710
a game in Jet Pack Lap.

1375
01:07:43,710 --> 01:07:46,190
To me, even if it's only in 16 K,

1376
01:07:46,690 --> 01:07:48,910
it feels like not just an arcade game,

1377
01:07:48,910 --> 01:07:52,070
but a superb arcade game that has all the qualities

1378
01:07:52,410 --> 01:07:53,830
that's an arcade game should have.

1379
01:07:53,930 --> 01:07:55,710
And so when Ultimates came out with that,

1380
01:07:55,790 --> 01:07:58,070
I think especially in terms of going

1381
01:07:58,070 --> 01:08:01,630
beyond perhaps Arcade clones, that was a game changer

1382
01:08:01,770 --> 01:08:02,950
for original software.

1383
01:08:03,430 --> 01:08:04,910
Ultimate Play of the Game brought out a load

1384
01:08:04,910 --> 01:08:07,550
of games at once, which worked on the 16 K Spectrum as well.

1385
01:08:07,550 --> 01:08:09,470
Like Trans Am was amazing

1386
01:08:09,470 --> 01:08:12,630
because you had this whole world of driving round America

1387
01:08:12,890 --> 01:08:14,830
and just being able to explore this entire

1388
01:08:14,860 --> 01:08:16,390
land was brand new.

1389
01:08:16,550 --> 01:08:19,870
I I loved that. TransAm, which was a driving game,

1390
01:08:19,870 --> 01:08:22,830
very similar to the Arcade game Rally X by Namco.

1391
01:08:22,850 --> 01:08:24,310
So they weren't exactly original,

1392
01:08:24,410 --> 01:08:25,990
but the games they made were brilliant

1393
01:08:26,250 --> 01:08:27,670
and they looked good as well.

1394
01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:29,390
Attic Attack, I played for hours.

1395
01:08:29,580 --> 01:08:33,310
That was just a simple Maze game with repeating graphics

1396
01:08:33,730 --> 01:08:34,870
and doors in different places

1397
01:08:35,250 --> 01:08:37,470
and that occupied me for just as many hours.

1398
01:08:38,030 --> 01:08:39,950
I never finished it. I think I got pretty

1399
01:08:39,950 --> 01:08:41,190
close, but I never finished it.

1400
01:08:46,550 --> 01:08:48,550
I think Ultimate was the one that you went for for Quality.

1401
01:08:48,890 --> 01:08:51,350
Jet Pack, Luna, jet Man, a Sable Wolf.

1402
01:08:51,530 --> 01:08:54,110
It wasn't just the game, it was the box. It came in as well.

1403
01:08:54,210 --> 01:08:55,670
And they were the ones that you wanted.

1404
01:08:55,670 --> 01:08:57,550
They were a little bit more, but they were worth waiting

1405
01:08:57,610 --> 01:08:58,790
for and worth saving up for

1406
01:08:58,970 --> 01:09:01,510
To really kind of justify the nine pound 99

1407
01:09:01,510 --> 01:09:02,630
that these games were selling for.

1408
01:09:04,110 --> 01:09:05,650
You really got to kind of up your game,

1409
01:09:05,650 --> 01:09:07,330
kinda the beautiful artwork on Night Law

1410
01:09:07,330 --> 01:09:08,690
and Alien eight, et cetera,

1411
01:09:08,990 --> 01:09:11,730
and the kind of expensive looking black box.

1412
01:09:12,110 --> 01:09:13,290
Is this something you wanted to own

1413
01:09:13,390 --> 01:09:14,970
and touch as well as the game itself?

1414
01:09:15,080 --> 01:09:15,970
Plus as well as that

1415
01:09:15,970 --> 01:09:17,130
you knew you were buying a quality game?

1416
01:09:17,370 --> 01:09:18,290
'cause it's ultimate play. The Game

1417
01:09:23,300 --> 01:09:25,170
Night law was an amazing game

1418
01:09:25,170 --> 01:09:28,450
because it suddenly brought cartoon style graphics

1419
01:09:28,790 --> 01:09:31,250
to the spectrum and also in another dimension as well.

1420
01:09:31,330 --> 01:09:32,730
I know Antech had already done it,

1421
01:09:32,790 --> 01:09:34,290
but this was on a different level.

1422
01:09:34,320 --> 01:09:36,290
This was, I think some people compared it

1423
01:09:36,290 --> 01:09:37,650
to a Disney cartoon back then,

1424
01:09:37,650 --> 01:09:39,210
which maybe might have been a bit fanciful,

1425
01:09:39,270 --> 01:09:41,010
but it did really look that good.

1426
01:09:41,030 --> 01:09:42,690
It was a completely different type of game.

1427
01:09:42,950 --> 01:09:45,290
By the time I got a Spectrum, which was about a year

1428
01:09:45,290 --> 01:09:46,850
after night, Laura had come out, a lot

1429
01:09:46,850 --> 01:09:49,570
of other people had worked out how Night Law worked

1430
01:09:49,950 --> 01:09:51,730
and they'd done a lot of similar games.

1431
01:09:52,070 --> 01:09:53,810
So as usual, there were a lot of games

1432
01:09:53,810 --> 01:09:54,930
that were very similar to that

1433
01:09:54,990 --> 01:09:56,890
and a lot of clones of night law.

1434
01:09:57,190 --> 01:10:00,170
But it stands out as the original and also the best

1435
01:10:00,170 --> 01:10:02,010
because it was the game that basically created

1436
01:10:02,010 --> 01:10:03,610
that whole style of gameplay. People

1437
01:10:03,630 --> 01:10:05,970
Who started making games

1438
01:10:06,070 --> 01:10:08,130
and experimenting with the hardware

1439
01:10:08,130 --> 01:10:11,370
that then became available, like the ZX spectrum, you know,

1440
01:10:11,370 --> 01:10:13,690
you were always trying to do something a bit more

1441
01:10:14,010 --> 01:10:15,610
interesting and trying to push the boundaries

1442
01:10:15,630 --> 01:10:17,930
and that is what characterizes the video

1443
01:10:17,930 --> 01:10:19,330
games industry even today.

1444
01:10:19,630 --> 01:10:21,490
So always sort of pushing on those different ways

1445
01:10:21,490 --> 01:10:23,850
of telling stories or different ways of having fun. That's

1446
01:10:23,850 --> 01:10:27,650
Why we had such a wave of creative games in the eighties,

1447
01:10:27,650 --> 01:10:30,610
which probably haven't seen since some of these games were,

1448
01:10:30,990 --> 01:10:32,290
if you had them now, they would be

1449
01:10:32,290 --> 01:10:33,490
groundbreaking at the time.

1450
01:10:33,950 --> 01:10:36,730
It just meant an entirely new world was opened up.

1451
01:10:47,540 --> 01:10:49,010
Manic Minor when that came out.

1452
01:10:49,010 --> 01:10:51,490
Definitely felt like a level ahead of a lot

1453
01:10:51,490 --> 01:10:53,290
of the other games that had come out the spectrum.

1454
01:10:53,690 --> 01:10:56,490
I mean, it wasn't quite inspired by minor 2049

1455
01:10:56,490 --> 01:10:58,410
or a game that Matthew Smith really loved.

1456
01:10:58,470 --> 01:11:00,530
But the way that the game was created,

1457
01:11:01,030 --> 01:11:03,410
it was created in a way to appeal to everybody.

1458
01:11:03,750 --> 01:11:08,290
The reason I find manic miner being such a classic is the

1459
01:11:08,290 --> 01:11:09,930
fact that you are always in peril.

1460
01:11:10,390 --> 01:11:11,770
All the bodies are on screen at once

1461
01:11:11,990 --> 01:11:14,180
and there's about eight of them on most screens.

1462
01:11:14,610 --> 01:11:18,630
So in that little bit of screen real estate, there's peril.

1463
01:11:18,660 --> 01:11:19,990
Like at every point.

1464
01:11:20,140 --> 01:11:21,630
Manning Miner was a genius game.

1465
01:11:21,630 --> 01:11:22,870
Matthew Smith was a legend.

1466
01:11:23,480 --> 01:11:26,310
First level, the perfect entry into any platform game.

1467
01:11:26,520 --> 01:11:27,310
First of all, when you

1468
01:11:27,310 --> 01:11:28,350
played it, you didn't know what you were doing.

1469
01:11:28,350 --> 01:11:29,710
It was a very, very hard level.

1470
01:11:29,810 --> 01:11:31,190
But then eventually you knew where to jump.

1471
01:11:31,570 --> 01:11:34,150
You knew where the floors that collapse were,

1472
01:11:34,410 --> 01:11:36,310
and you could eventually work your way to the top,

1473
01:11:36,310 --> 01:11:38,350
pick up the item, go back down

1474
01:11:38,350 --> 01:11:39,830
to the bottom, get to the next level.

1475
01:11:39,860 --> 01:11:41,430
What it really did well, it kind

1476
01:11:41,430 --> 01:11:42,710
of prepared you for the rest of the game.

1477
01:11:43,200 --> 01:11:46,110
Manic Minor was, you know, probably the the one first game

1478
01:11:46,110 --> 01:11:47,630
that really got me

1479
01:11:47,890 --> 01:11:48,950
and we played it,

1480
01:11:49,150 --> 01:11:51,590
I can't remember like an all summer holiday, you know,

1481
01:11:51,590 --> 01:11:54,830
forever a mother Shane up the stairs, get down, get outside.

1482
01:11:55,550 --> 01:11:57,470
I was like, where your other, including guns.

1483
01:11:59,010 --> 01:12:00,390
For me, I think one of the best games

1484
01:12:00,390 --> 01:12:02,390
of all time is Jetset Willie by Matthew Smith,

1485
01:12:02,530 --> 01:12:04,830
who made the original manic minor, Jetset Willie expanded.

1486
01:12:05,200 --> 01:12:07,790
There was a lot more rooms you could go up down.

1487
01:12:07,850 --> 01:12:09,230
You could change rooms rather than being

1488
01:12:09,230 --> 01:12:11,510
stuck in one room all the time. It was impossibly hard.

1489
01:12:12,160 --> 01:12:13,870
Jesse Willy was the big one, wasn't it?

1490
01:12:13,950 --> 01:12:15,350
A seminal platform game.

1491
01:12:15,540 --> 01:12:18,790
What those platform games did was take the page turning

1492
01:12:18,790 --> 01:12:21,510
element of an adventure, which was obviously my big thing.

1493
01:12:21,510 --> 01:12:23,710
Like what happens next? I get through to the next stage

1494
01:12:24,140 --> 01:12:26,190
with the more basic arcade element.

1495
01:12:26,510 --> 01:12:28,230
I mean, crikey, I played that for hours

1496
01:12:28,330 --> 01:12:29,790
and tried all the pokes as well.

1497
01:12:29,810 --> 01:12:32,310
The little pokes you'd used to do, 'cause it had a bug in

1498
01:12:32,310 --> 01:12:33,310
It. Ingested was a

1499
01:12:33,310 --> 01:12:34,990
very well known bug called the Attic Bug.

1500
01:12:35,250 --> 01:12:37,190
And basically if you entered the attic room,

1501
01:12:37,650 --> 01:12:39,750
it would corrupt many other screens in the game.

1502
01:12:40,170 --> 01:12:42,190
So if you hadn't collected the things you had

1503
01:12:42,190 --> 01:12:43,590
to collect from those screens, the game

1504
01:12:43,590 --> 01:12:44,750
became un completable.

1505
01:12:45,100 --> 01:12:47,670
Also, there was a infinite death routine, a thing

1506
01:12:47,670 --> 01:12:49,390
where if you stepped off a ledge,

1507
01:12:49,450 --> 01:12:50,470
you would fall down a screen

1508
01:12:50,470 --> 01:12:52,310
and then when you died, you would go back to the top

1509
01:12:52,310 --> 01:12:53,830
of the screen and fall down and down

1510
01:12:53,850 --> 01:12:55,230
and down again and lose all your lives.

1511
01:12:55,770 --> 01:12:57,670
So basically the game was incredibly hard,

1512
01:13:03,130 --> 01:13:04,130
Really. It gave

1513
01:13:04,130 --> 01:13:07,670
the tools of production to the hands of millions

1514
01:13:07,850 --> 01:13:09,350
and you made your own fun

1515
01:13:09,690 --> 01:13:12,550
and it enabled you to kind of get your head around, okay,

1516
01:13:12,550 --> 01:13:14,190
well this is a set of instructions

1517
01:13:14,190 --> 01:13:15,310
that I need to give this machine.

1518
01:13:15,360 --> 01:13:18,830
Let's see what I can do. It just fed that curiosity again,

1519
01:13:18,830 --> 01:13:20,710
that creativity, that creative spark,

1520
01:13:20,890 --> 01:13:22,030
that's what drives innovation.

1521
01:13:22,030 --> 01:13:25,150
It's what drives curiosity and creativity. There

1522
01:13:25,150 --> 01:13:27,710
Was a massive variation in the type of games we had.

1523
01:13:27,770 --> 01:13:31,350
So instead of one company making 10 games that everyone had

1524
01:13:31,350 --> 01:13:33,350
to play, there was so many different things,

1525
01:13:33,490 --> 01:13:34,790
it appealed to so many different people.

1526
01:13:35,050 --> 01:13:36,470
So someone who likes football games

1527
01:13:36,730 --> 01:13:38,230
or football would like football games.

1528
01:13:39,310 --> 01:13:41,630
Somebody who likes maths might like a puzzle game.

1529
01:13:42,450 --> 01:13:44,190
So it cater for everyone.

1530
01:13:44,640 --> 01:13:47,990
Other computers have as well, but this was cheap.

1531
01:13:48,130 --> 01:13:51,270
It was in everyone's houses, it was color. It's beautiful.

1532
01:13:54,050 --> 01:13:58,390
The spectrum for me opened my eyes to art in computer games.

1533
01:13:58,830 --> 01:14:00,510
I found it fantastic and amazing.

1534
01:14:00,730 --> 01:14:02,390
The color, the things you could do on screen,

1535
01:14:02,570 --> 01:14:04,190
it was really basic at the time and,

1536
01:14:04,210 --> 01:14:06,870
and the way the colors worked on the spectrum meant you

1537
01:14:06,870 --> 01:14:08,790
couldn't have individual colors or individual colored

1538
01:14:08,810 --> 01:14:11,190
pixels, but it kind of almost made it like a challenge

1539
01:14:11,370 --> 01:14:14,110
to create things that did work within those boundaries.

1540
01:14:14,490 --> 01:14:16,950
So if you've got two colors moving in front of each other,

1541
01:14:17,140 --> 01:14:20,590
then you could still only have those two colors on one

1542
01:14:20,590 --> 01:14:22,750
square, where really you should have three,

1543
01:14:23,090 --> 01:14:24,430
but that is impossible.

1544
01:14:24,690 --> 01:14:27,670
So you'd have all these, uh, graphics changing color

1545
01:14:28,210 --> 01:14:30,190
and taking on the color of the background.

1546
01:14:30,850 --> 01:14:32,150
Um, but we just got used to it.

1547
01:14:32,250 --> 01:14:33,470
It wasn't, it wasn't that bad.

1548
01:14:33,650 --> 01:14:36,310
You couldn't do graphics on the spectrum without knowing how

1549
01:14:36,310 --> 01:14:37,710
to work around tribute clash.

1550
01:14:37,890 --> 01:14:41,150
It started the great video games C Crash I never even knew

1551
01:14:41,150 --> 01:14:43,310
about until I watched YouTube five years ago.

1552
01:14:43,570 --> 01:14:46,110
But I'm telling you what color clash really

1553
01:14:46,300 --> 01:14:47,710
what I don't know what you're talking about.

1554
01:14:48,730 --> 01:14:49,830
And, and I don't care.

1555
01:14:50,550 --> 01:14:52,750
I mean, I was just discovering girls break

1556
01:14:52,750 --> 01:14:54,750
dancing and computer games.

1557
01:14:54,970 --> 01:14:56,790
Do you think I'm gonna care about a color clash?

1558
01:14:57,260 --> 01:14:59,910
This is awesome. It was my opportunity to do

1559
01:14:59,910 --> 01:15:02,150
what I couldn't afford to continue to do in the arcade.

1560
01:15:02,430 --> 01:15:03,990
I could spend all day and all night doing this

1561
01:15:04,360 --> 01:15:05,630
color clash be damned.

1562
01:15:10,490 --> 01:15:12,430
The amount of games that we used to get

1563
01:15:12,430 --> 01:15:13,710
through was just incredible.

1564
01:15:13,720 --> 01:15:15,870
There were so many that we played for five minutes,

1565
01:15:16,100 --> 01:15:18,510
some we played for hours, some we played for days

1566
01:15:18,510 --> 01:15:19,830
and days and days and days and days.

1567
01:15:19,920 --> 01:15:21,870
There was a whole genre around that time

1568
01:15:21,890 --> 01:15:25,670
of things like Jet Set, Willy Manic, minor Monte on the Run

1569
01:15:25,820 --> 01:15:27,590
that were just so good at gameplay.

1570
01:15:27,590 --> 01:15:29,710
They had so much in them, so much

1571
01:15:29,710 --> 01:15:31,270
to look at while you're playing as well

1572
01:15:31,410 --> 01:15:33,430
and could be so frustrating to just get

1573
01:15:33,430 --> 01:15:35,070
that jump pixel perfect

1574
01:15:35,920 --> 01:15:36,920
Daily. Thompson's

1575
01:15:36,920 --> 01:15:38,990
good at track and field daily.

1576
01:15:39,350 --> 01:15:41,710
Thompson's good at track and field daily.

1577
01:15:42,110 --> 01:15:44,110
Thompson's good at track and field daily.

1578
01:15:44,390 --> 01:15:46,430
Thompson's good at track and field, everybody.

1579
01:15:46,430 --> 01:15:49,750
Come on just me then. Yeah, and that's a real thing.

1580
01:15:49,750 --> 01:15:51,150
And I remember that from the playground.

1581
01:15:51,280 --> 01:15:53,390
Daily Thompson's decathlon to me,

1582
01:15:53,910 --> 01:15:56,350
I was a massive athletics fan as well.

1583
01:15:56,810 --> 01:16:00,190
So Daily Thompson was a bit of a hero of mine.

1584
01:16:00,290 --> 01:16:02,670
So when, when there's a game of your hero,

1585
01:16:03,100 --> 01:16:04,590
it's always quite nice Daily

1586
01:16:04,870 --> 01:16:07,750
Thompson's decathlon, that finger bashing exercise

1587
01:16:07,750 --> 01:16:11,190
and that pixel perfect jump to get the long jump right

1588
01:16:11,250 --> 01:16:13,030
or throw the javelin at the right point.

1589
01:16:13,260 --> 01:16:17,310
Fantastic games that that, that really did grab you and, and

1590
01:16:17,310 --> 01:16:19,110
and, and keep your attention for hours.

1591
01:16:19,530 --> 01:16:22,430
One of the most amazing games I ever played was Antech.

1592
01:16:22,610 --> 01:16:23,830
In the early days of the spectrum.

1593
01:16:24,000 --> 01:16:25,910
First of all, I was completely stunned.

1594
01:16:26,510 --> 01:16:28,830
I remember unloading it up where you were given the choice

1595
01:16:28,850 --> 01:16:30,430
of either playing a boy or a girl.

1596
01:16:30,660 --> 01:16:33,550
Obviously these days we we're kind of used to that sort

1597
01:16:33,550 --> 01:16:35,790
of thing, but it was very unusual back in 1983.

1598
01:16:36,050 --> 01:16:38,950
And then you had this really creepy city,

1599
01:16:39,080 --> 01:16:41,710
which is very evocatively shown on the cover,

1600
01:16:41,810 --> 01:16:43,190
and it's full of these giant ants

1601
01:16:43,260 --> 01:16:44,950
Looking at other games that are around,

1602
01:16:45,150 --> 01:16:46,750
I I I really hated things

1603
01:16:46,900 --> 01:16:49,190
that appeared on screen that didn't do anything.

1604
01:16:49,190 --> 01:16:50,350
They were like decoration.

1605
01:16:50,650 --> 01:16:54,270
So I kind of wrote a, a consistent little universe

1606
01:16:54,960 --> 01:16:58,590
where if you could see it, it was there and really worked.

1607
01:16:58,690 --> 01:17:00,190
If it was there, you could climb on it.

1608
01:17:00,280 --> 01:17:01,790
There was no decoration in that.

1609
01:17:01,850 --> 01:17:04,110
It was like a complete little universe

1610
01:17:04,180 --> 01:17:06,830
with a miniature version of physics. So

1611
01:17:06,930 --> 01:17:08,950
Antech was the first isometric game I saw.

1612
01:17:09,310 --> 01:17:10,630
I remember that vividly

1613
01:17:10,860 --> 01:17:15,190
because I found it super confusing when you could rotate the

1614
01:17:15,190 --> 01:17:18,390
camera and you had to, to see things from the other angle

1615
01:17:18,390 --> 01:17:20,470
because the ants could be coming from anywhere.

1616
01:17:20,640 --> 01:17:23,830
Characters were behind things because that never happened

1617
01:17:23,830 --> 01:17:25,670
before with any other game that I knew of.

1618
01:17:25,770 --> 01:17:27,990
And you have to avoid these giant ants

1619
01:17:27,990 --> 01:17:30,230
that are stalking you at every term while you're trying

1620
01:17:30,230 --> 01:17:31,630
to find the boy or the girl.

1621
01:17:31,770 --> 01:17:33,830
So for its time, it's an amazing game

1622
01:17:34,010 --> 01:17:35,550
and I think, I think, yeah, it's,

1623
01:17:35,580 --> 01:17:37,350
it's quite rightly revered today as well.

1624
01:17:40,220 --> 01:17:43,520
One of the games I left a big imprint on me was saboteur.

1625
01:17:43,740 --> 01:17:45,280
And the main reason for that,

1626
01:17:45,380 --> 01:17:47,880
it was the first time I saw environmental

1627
01:17:47,880 --> 01:17:49,600
storytelling in action.

1628
01:17:49,860 --> 01:17:52,440
If you remember, the spectrum was a lot about text.

1629
01:17:52,440 --> 01:17:54,280
Adventure games were very descriptive.

1630
01:17:54,380 --> 01:17:56,680
You will be someone telling you where you are,

1631
01:17:57,100 --> 01:17:58,600
why you're there, where do you want

1632
01:17:58,600 --> 01:18:00,160
to go now, or you have arcade games.

1633
01:18:00,300 --> 01:18:04,320
But Aire was about telling a story without actually

1634
01:18:04,320 --> 01:18:05,360
saying out loud.

1635
01:18:05,700 --> 01:18:07,200
You are certainly up for no good

1636
01:18:07,200 --> 01:18:09,480
because you are getting into a company in the middle

1637
01:18:09,500 --> 01:18:11,480
of the night using a dinghy.

1638
01:18:11,860 --> 01:18:14,960
And then once you are in there, you are killing guards and,

1639
01:18:14,960 --> 01:18:16,200
and there are these dogs around.

1640
01:18:16,260 --> 01:18:19,160
And then you figure out this is an underground facility

1641
01:18:19,160 --> 01:18:21,880
because there is a a, a tube system going from A to B.

1642
01:18:21,900 --> 01:18:24,520
So all these things start to play with my mind.

1643
01:18:24,780 --> 01:18:27,680
And I was building a story of why I was there,

1644
01:18:27,980 --> 01:18:30,800
and that told me so much about game design

1645
01:18:31,140 --> 01:18:34,840
and how to make people get sucked into a universe.

1646
01:18:35,620 --> 01:18:37,990
This is why I hold saboteur in such high esteem.

1647
01:18:38,660 --> 01:18:41,550
Your mission in saboteur is to break into a building,

1648
01:18:41,860 --> 01:18:44,790
find a disc, plant a bomb, and then escape by helicopter.

1649
01:18:45,050 --> 01:18:46,870
If you read the instructions, you'd know that,

1650
01:18:46,930 --> 01:18:48,030
but no one reads the instructions.

1651
01:18:48,030 --> 01:18:49,350
They'll get pirate copies of their friends.

1652
01:18:49,410 --> 01:18:51,310
The number of people who said, oh, it's really easy,

1653
01:18:51,310 --> 01:18:54,590
you just go to the helicopter and, oh, I, I only had a copy.

1654
01:18:54,750 --> 01:18:55,790
I didn't read the instructions.

1655
01:18:56,210 --> 01:18:57,830
One of the things I should have done is say,

1656
01:18:58,170 --> 01:18:59,950
you have failed your mission if you just go

1657
01:18:59,950 --> 01:19:02,070
to the helicopter, but I didn't.

1658
01:19:02,330 --> 01:19:05,150
It says mission successful and it shouldn't. It's a bug.

1659
01:19:05,450 --> 01:19:08,110
The spectrum had a very high resolution for the time.

1660
01:19:08,350 --> 01:19:09,830
I don't think any other computer had

1661
01:19:09,830 --> 01:19:11,070
as high resolution as a spectrum.

1662
01:19:11,490 --> 01:19:14,510
So it did mean that in the hands of talented artists,

1663
01:19:14,890 --> 01:19:17,390
you had some amazing pictures on the spectrum

1664
01:19:17,530 --> 01:19:20,550
and graphics, most notably loading screens,

1665
01:19:20,550 --> 01:19:22,270
which have become an art form in themselves.

1666
01:19:22,450 --> 01:19:23,990
And you had to watch these

1667
01:19:24,050 --> 01:19:25,710
for several minutes while the game loaded

1668
01:19:25,970 --> 01:19:28,270
and the artists often went to town on them

1669
01:19:28,270 --> 01:19:30,070
and made sure that these were absolutely brilliant.

1670
01:19:30,070 --> 01:19:31,070
These loading screens,

1671
01:19:43,620 --> 01:19:45,790
Well a loading screen would be for someone

1672
01:19:45,810 --> 01:19:47,470
to watch while the game loaded.

1673
01:19:47,690 --> 01:19:49,350
If you loaded a game without a loading screen,

1674
01:19:49,350 --> 01:19:50,790
you're sitting there staring at a black

1675
01:19:50,890 --> 01:19:52,470
screen for five minutes.

1676
01:19:53,010 --> 01:19:54,910
And even though it did add to the loading time,

1677
01:19:55,330 --> 01:19:56,350
it was part of the package.

1678
01:19:56,490 --> 01:19:59,070
Uh, I always try to base my loading screens on the artwork,

1679
01:19:59,170 --> 01:20:00,830
so I'd interpret the artwork

1680
01:20:00,850 --> 01:20:02,750
of the game on the screen of the spectrum.

1681
01:20:03,290 --> 01:20:05,350
So I always think it was just like a little bit

1682
01:20:05,350 --> 01:20:07,520
of extra detail that didn't have to be there,

1683
01:20:07,810 --> 01:20:09,990
but gave you just something to look at.

1684
01:20:10,010 --> 01:20:12,310
And so something that looked pretty while you waited

1685
01:20:12,450 --> 01:20:14,190
for three or four minutes for the game load.

1686
01:20:14,970 --> 01:20:17,270
Now what happened with me, I was still at school at the

1687
01:20:17,270 --> 01:20:20,550
time and an early sort

1688
01:20:20,550 --> 01:20:22,310
of proper video game developer in

1689
01:20:22,310 --> 01:20:23,550
Manchester Co binary design.

1690
01:20:24,270 --> 01:20:26,670
I came in work experience for a week

1691
01:20:27,170 --> 01:20:30,030
and now as I could draw graphics a little bit, they said,

1692
01:20:30,030 --> 01:20:32,750
oh, draw a loading screen for this game.

1693
01:20:33,170 --> 01:20:36,470
So I sat down and sat on the spectrum, plug it away,

1694
01:20:36,470 --> 01:20:39,830
drew a loading speed, and he said, oh, that's quite good

1695
01:20:39,830 --> 01:20:42,270
that, um, this is like Wednesday now.

1696
01:20:42,490 --> 01:20:44,150
You ate till five. Could you do another one?

1697
01:20:44,270 --> 01:20:45,350
We've got this other guy. Could

1698
01:20:45,350 --> 01:20:46,390
you do a loading screen for that?

1699
01:20:46,500 --> 01:20:48,950
Yeah, okay, got to Friday.

1700
01:20:50,560 --> 01:20:52,300
Do you think you could stay for another week?

1701
01:20:52,470 --> 01:20:53,940
We've got a load of loading screens.

1702
01:20:53,960 --> 01:20:55,540
And I said, well, I'll ask my mom,

1703
01:20:55,680 --> 01:20:56,940
you know, follow the school up.

1704
01:20:57,360 --> 01:21:01,140
Stayed for for two weeks. I just did loads of graphics.

1705
01:21:01,810 --> 01:21:03,860
Some of the loading screens were beautiful art,

1706
01:21:03,970 --> 01:21:05,220
like, like the covers of crash.

1707
01:21:05,380 --> 01:21:07,900
A loading screen would come up, which served no purpose

1708
01:21:08,520 --> 01:21:12,100
at all except the aesthetic pleasure in the six minute

1709
01:21:12,120 --> 01:21:13,580
or seven minute pause waiting

1710
01:21:13,600 --> 01:21:15,020
for the actual game to kick in.

1711
01:21:15,400 --> 01:21:17,060
And again, it was on your telly

1712
01:21:17,060 --> 01:21:20,540
and you'd put it there, you'd put it on your telly and

1713
01:21:20,540 --> 01:21:21,700
and there it wasn't glorious

1714
01:21:21,700 --> 01:21:23,580
technicolor winking back at you.

1715
01:21:23,600 --> 01:21:25,940
It was, it was like nothing else before or sins.

1716
01:21:33,100 --> 01:21:36,180
Magazines were an easy way of finding an echo chamber

1717
01:21:36,520 --> 01:21:37,700
for people that were like-minded

1718
01:21:38,120 --> 01:21:41,500
and to find out what you should be saving for, maybe how

1719
01:21:41,500 --> 01:21:42,860
to complete a particular game

1720
01:21:42,880 --> 01:21:44,540
or cheat codes, that sort of stuff.

1721
01:21:44,570 --> 01:21:46,540
They had a role to play that well.

1722
01:21:46,540 --> 01:21:47,860
It was impossible to ignore.

1723
01:21:48,070 --> 01:21:50,700
There was a real kind of window shopping thing as well,

1724
01:21:50,830 --> 01:21:52,860
being able to understand what was coming,

1725
01:21:52,860 --> 01:21:54,260
when it was gonna be available, how much it was

1726
01:21:54,600 --> 01:21:55,900
to fantasize about having

1727
01:21:55,900 --> 01:21:57,260
that put it on your Christmas list,

1728
01:21:57,280 --> 01:21:58,620
on your birthday list, whatever.

1729
01:21:59,220 --> 01:22:00,260
Magazines were the only way of doing that.

1730
01:22:00,370 --> 01:22:03,020
They were almost sort of like game of porn, weren't they?

1731
01:22:03,020 --> 01:22:05,020
They, they were so necessary.

1732
01:22:05,300 --> 01:22:08,220
I relied on those magazines as my lifeblood

1733
01:22:08,220 --> 01:22:09,460
to teach me some techniques

1734
01:22:09,460 --> 01:22:13,340
that I wasn't gonna pick up on my own, your computer crash.

1735
01:22:13,840 --> 01:22:16,380
And also to some extent personal computer world.

1736
01:22:16,380 --> 01:22:18,620
They were doing some game reviews quite early on

1737
01:22:18,760 --> 01:22:21,500
and they were small pieces, but they were important

1738
01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:23,000
For me. The amazement

1739
01:22:23,000 --> 01:22:24,300
I got from looking at magazines

1740
01:22:24,300 --> 01:22:25,420
and looking at all the graphics

1741
01:22:25,520 --> 01:22:27,380
and all the ideas that people were coming up

1742
01:22:27,380 --> 01:22:29,340
with was the thing that I looked at back then.

1743
01:22:29,340 --> 01:22:32,060
And even today I'll be drawn to a game on how it looks,

1744
01:22:32,440 --> 01:22:33,780
not necessarily how it plays.

1745
01:22:34,210 --> 01:22:36,180
Getting one of these magazines once a month.

1746
01:22:36,250 --> 01:22:38,860
That was our gateway to find out what was happening.

1747
01:22:38,930 --> 01:22:40,340
They shared lots of tips as well.

1748
01:22:40,360 --> 01:22:42,180
You could write in, you could ask them how

1749
01:22:42,180 --> 01:22:43,420
to expand your spectrum.

1750
01:22:43,600 --> 01:22:45,940
You could ask them what upgrades to get, how

1751
01:22:45,940 --> 01:22:47,220
to plug a joystick in.

1752
01:22:47,220 --> 01:22:49,100
And that was crucial for spreading

1753
01:22:49,100 --> 01:22:50,740
knowledge to the user base.

1754
01:22:51,080 --> 01:22:53,420
And they expanded that into the letters pages.

1755
01:22:53,560 --> 01:22:55,580
So we would write letters. You couldn't go on the internet

1756
01:22:55,580 --> 01:22:56,940
and write a comment on anything.

1757
01:22:56,940 --> 01:22:58,660
You had to write an actual letter

1758
01:22:59,240 --> 01:23:01,780
and send it off to Lloyd Mangram at crash.

1759
01:23:01,920 --> 01:23:03,940
And he would reply in some pithy manner.

1760
01:23:04,390 --> 01:23:06,910
There was a regular feature in Sinclair user

1761
01:23:06,960 --> 01:23:08,510
where people would send in a list

1762
01:23:08,510 --> 01:23:10,190
of all the adventures they'd completed

1763
01:23:10,330 --> 01:23:11,910
and people would solve your problems for you.

1764
01:23:11,930 --> 01:23:14,310
And I called myself the Perlin goblin

1765
01:23:14,650 --> 01:23:16,750
and a list of adventure games that I'd solved

1766
01:23:17,370 --> 01:23:19,030
and you had to send me 20 pence

1767
01:23:19,140 --> 01:23:20,430
with a stamps addressed envelope

1768
01:23:20,430 --> 01:23:23,070
and I would send back a solution by return of posting.

1769
01:23:23,210 --> 01:23:25,830
So the magazines gave you this sense of being part

1770
01:23:25,830 --> 01:23:27,230
of a much broader community.

1771
01:23:27,530 --> 01:23:29,710
It felt like you were at the frontier of something

1772
01:23:29,730 --> 01:23:32,390
and you were in a way, you were the first generation ever

1773
01:23:32,410 --> 01:23:33,990
to be doing this kind of thing

1774
01:23:34,010 --> 01:23:36,390
and interacting with technology in this kind of way.

1775
01:23:36,390 --> 01:23:38,150
And the magazines almost had a kind

1776
01:23:38,150 --> 01:23:40,310
of a uniting theme to them.

1777
01:23:40,730 --> 01:23:42,870
And I remember inhaling them,

1778
01:23:42,990 --> 01:23:44,550
I remember reading them cover to cover

1779
01:23:45,240 --> 01:23:48,950
Quite a few, um, magazines, computer and video games,

1780
01:23:48,970 --> 01:23:51,310
and a few others had art tools about me.

1781
01:23:51,510 --> 01:23:54,590
I remember one about sto the gist of the article was

1782
01:23:54,590 --> 01:23:57,230
that there was this guy from used to be a seeding fixer

1783
01:23:57,450 --> 01:23:58,630
and now he's running games

1784
01:23:59,340 --> 01:24:01,990
with sophisticated ai Bingo trick.

1785
01:24:01,990 --> 01:24:02,990
Yeah,

1786
01:24:03,620 --> 01:24:06,950
Well it's fantastic fun for a start off to do an interview

1787
01:24:06,970 --> 01:24:09,110
and then see, oh, I did an interview

1788
01:24:09,110 --> 01:24:11,030
and then, you know, the first time you do that, it's like,

1789
01:24:11,030 --> 01:24:12,350
there's me in a magazine.

1790
01:24:12,450 --> 01:24:15,350
Hey mom, look here I am. You know, it was always pleasant.

1791
01:24:15,550 --> 01:24:17,950
I don't think I read a bad review or anything like that.

1792
01:24:20,630 --> 01:24:22,870
I spotted something that looked a bit wilder,

1793
01:24:22,930 --> 01:24:25,310
had this incredible bright, colorful,

1794
01:24:25,440 --> 01:24:27,550
crazy fantasy almost cover

1795
01:24:28,090 --> 01:24:30,110
and it was just called being Bold crash.

1796
01:24:31,010 --> 01:24:35,390
And suddenly I found a spiritual home from me

1797
01:24:35,490 --> 01:24:39,390
and my spectrum in a magazine that celebrated games

1798
01:24:39,410 --> 01:24:40,510
and brought them to life.

1799
01:24:41,010 --> 01:24:44,350
And the interesting thing was that was I think probably the,

1800
01:24:44,410 --> 01:24:46,270
the genius that Roger

1801
01:24:46,370 --> 01:24:49,750
and Ollie had then in that they actually got teenagers in

1802
01:24:49,750 --> 01:24:51,910
after school to play those games

1803
01:24:52,010 --> 01:24:53,070
and give them their comments.

1804
01:24:53,170 --> 01:24:54,470
But you had this injection of

1805
01:24:54,580 --> 01:24:57,070
what people your age actually thought.

1806
01:24:57,610 --> 01:25:01,110
So it talked absolutely directly to the audience

1807
01:25:01,110 --> 01:25:02,710
and it made it so different to everything else.

1808
01:25:03,410 --> 01:25:04,910
But we were also a very small unit.

1809
01:25:04,940 --> 01:25:09,870
It's only me, Oliver, Franco, Matthew Del. And that was it.

1810
01:25:10,390 --> 01:25:13,070
Handling 15 to 20, 14

1811
01:25:13,130 --> 01:25:15,670
to 16 year old school boys as the reviewers.

1812
01:25:15,930 --> 01:25:17,310
It would've been very difficult for us

1813
01:25:17,370 --> 01:25:20,310
to have taken on a multi-format magazine at the time.

1814
01:25:20,690 --> 01:25:22,990
We were aware that the spectrum was doing well.

1815
01:25:23,050 --> 01:25:25,470
It was definitely establishing a, a good sales base.

1816
01:25:25,570 --> 01:25:26,830
So it was all we cared about

1817
01:25:26,840 --> 01:25:28,750
until the 64 came along. They could

1818
01:25:28,750 --> 01:25:30,070
Quite easily make or break a game.

1819
01:25:30,210 --> 01:25:31,710
You had to play the game with them

1820
01:25:31,770 --> 01:25:33,630
and make sure they had early shots

1821
01:25:33,730 --> 01:25:35,110
of the games you were developing.

1822
01:25:35,210 --> 01:25:36,990
You got them involved as much as you could.

1823
01:25:37,290 --> 01:25:38,790
And yeah, it was part of it.

1824
01:25:38,790 --> 01:25:40,630
We got to know these people very well.

1825
01:25:40,930 --> 01:25:42,270
As soon as Saboteur was on sale,

1826
01:25:42,320 --> 01:25:43,910
there was no feedback, there's no internet.

1827
01:25:44,020 --> 01:25:46,350
Gradually people started to write in saying,

1828
01:25:46,370 --> 01:25:48,830
we love your game and Crash loved it as well.

1829
01:25:49,290 --> 01:25:53,390
So the reviews were the main feedback at the time.

1830
01:25:53,810 --> 01:25:55,590
And the great thing about Newsfield,

1831
01:25:55,650 --> 01:25:57,110
it was like a big family.

1832
01:25:57,320 --> 01:25:59,710
Roger Ley took the business very seriously

1833
01:25:59,710 --> 01:26:01,470
of making very good magazines.

1834
01:26:01,470 --> 01:26:03,590
That's what they were super bash at at in terms of

1835
01:26:03,590 --> 01:26:05,030
what it was covering and what it was doing

1836
01:26:05,050 --> 01:26:06,270
and how it was speaking to its

1837
01:26:06,470 --> 01:26:07,470
Audience. And the cover

1838
01:26:07,470 --> 01:26:08,830
had to reflect that it had

1839
01:26:08,830 --> 01:26:10,790
to attract the readership that we wanted.

1840
01:26:10,930 --> 01:26:13,510
And the only way to do that was to be as dramatic

1841
01:26:13,890 --> 01:26:17,270
and in a sense, realistic as possible to attract them.

1842
01:26:20,630 --> 01:26:25,030
I think art was terribly important to burgeoning video games

1843
01:26:25,630 --> 01:26:29,150
industry because given the fact that the, the actual pixels

1844
01:26:29,490 --> 01:26:31,550
and the moving sprites didn't live up

1845
01:26:31,570 --> 01:26:35,550
to whatever the game's title was at all, you needed art

1846
01:26:35,610 --> 01:26:38,630
to create the make-believe in the Player's

1847
01:26:38,630 --> 01:26:40,350
mind was the game.

1848
01:26:40,530 --> 01:26:44,350
So Little Blob here was actually Indiana Jones or whatever.

1849
01:26:44,990 --> 01:26:49,750
I think that governed my entire work with Crash.

1850
01:26:50,370 --> 01:26:51,990
You were sort of carried along on a wave

1851
01:26:52,260 --> 01:26:53,670
because the reviewers

1852
01:26:53,970 --> 01:26:57,470
and the readers who wrote in, they were all enthusiastic.

1853
01:26:57,530 --> 01:27:01,670
So you suddenly felt part of this exciting new thing.

1854
01:27:02,170 --> 01:27:03,510
And to me it was exciting

1855
01:27:03,510 --> 01:27:08,110
because I'd always wanted to make movies and I didn't.

1856
01:27:08,650 --> 01:27:11,870
But this felt a bit like that being part of

1857
01:27:12,390 --> 01:27:14,230
a whole new segment of entertainment

1858
01:27:22,430 --> 01:27:24,950
Spectrum was like a big bang really.

1859
01:27:25,250 --> 01:27:27,070
It really took off from every point

1860
01:27:27,070 --> 01:27:28,870
of view really from the number of games coming out,

1861
01:27:28,870 --> 01:27:30,350
the quality of those games coming out,

1862
01:27:30,530 --> 01:27:32,110
the companies that were getting started.

1863
01:27:32,330 --> 01:27:35,070
And those companies were smarter in terms of knowing about

1864
01:27:35,070 --> 01:27:36,750
how to get their games reviewed, wanting

1865
01:27:36,750 --> 01:27:38,950
to get their games reviewed, advertising

1866
01:27:38,950 --> 01:27:40,190
and marketing their games and

1867
01:27:40,190 --> 01:27:41,470
improving the quality of their games.

1868
01:27:41,650 --> 01:27:42,870
So it really was a big bang.

1869
01:27:49,570 --> 01:27:51,550
So of course you had people creating their own games,

1870
01:27:51,810 --> 01:27:55,350
but we didn't have the means of distribution as we have now.

1871
01:27:55,730 --> 01:27:56,950
Uh, because we didn't have the internet.

1872
01:27:57,130 --> 01:27:58,750
You had to actually physically put,

1873
01:27:58,970 --> 01:28:00,470
put games in people's hands

1874
01:28:00,730 --> 01:28:03,270
In the early days before you had the likes of WH Smith

1875
01:28:03,270 --> 01:28:04,430
and Boots taken on games,

1876
01:28:04,770 --> 01:28:07,190
you had these little tiny independent computer game shops

1877
01:28:07,210 --> 01:28:09,030
and they were just the only real way at the time.

1878
01:28:09,160 --> 01:28:11,310
Apart from mal order, we could go into a shop,

1879
01:28:11,740 --> 01:28:14,870
look at the game, get to know the guy who runs a shop,

1880
01:28:14,940 --> 01:28:16,310
play the games on the computers,

1881
01:28:16,650 --> 01:28:19,350
and really sort of get into the world. The

1882
01:28:19,550 --> 01:28:20,670
Computer shops would've godsend

1883
01:28:20,670 --> 01:28:24,230
because if it wasn't for the computer shops,

1884
01:28:24,350 --> 01:28:25,430
I wouldn't be in the games industry.

1885
01:28:25,490 --> 01:28:26,550
Now, when I went in

1886
01:28:26,550 --> 01:28:29,550
and said, do any computer companies commit into the shop?

1887
01:28:29,740 --> 01:28:31,710
Yeah, I said, can you get me a phone number?

1888
01:28:32,710 --> 01:28:34,710
I went in the next week and he got me a phone number

1889
01:28:34,770 --> 01:28:36,710
and phoned up, said, can I have an interview?

1890
01:28:36,730 --> 01:28:38,910
And basically I was working the next Monday

1891
01:28:39,340 --> 01:28:41,630
They did become beehives of activity.

1892
01:28:41,650 --> 01:28:44,190
Places like Just Micro in Sheffield,

1893
01:28:44,560 --> 01:28:46,710
which eventually became Gremlin just

1894
01:28:46,710 --> 01:28:47,830
Micro stood out to me.

1895
01:28:48,170 --> 01:28:50,190
It looked like a fun shop to be in.

1896
01:28:50,190 --> 01:28:51,310
They were interested in the games.

1897
01:28:51,310 --> 01:28:52,870
They would let me know what was coming out.

1898
01:28:52,870 --> 01:28:54,470
They would let me know what was good, what was

1899
01:28:54,490 --> 01:28:55,490
Bad. We spoke about,

1900
01:28:55,490 --> 01:28:56,590
you know, what it was he

1901
01:28:56,590 --> 01:28:57,670
was making, et cetera.

1902
01:28:57,850 --> 01:28:59,510
And it soon become apparent

1903
01:28:59,510 --> 01:29:02,010
that there was an opportunity there to use this talent

1904
01:29:02,010 --> 01:29:04,790
that was coming into the shop to start summing of our own.

1905
01:29:04,890 --> 01:29:06,470
As well as Pete coming into the shop.

1906
01:29:06,490 --> 01:29:09,150
We had, uh, Tony Crower coming into the shop.

1907
01:29:09,620 --> 01:29:11,630
He'd already been producing some games

1908
01:29:11,690 --> 01:29:13,270
for Alligator Software. I

1909
01:29:13,430 --> 01:29:14,870
Remember the shop quite well 'cause I used

1910
01:29:14,870 --> 01:29:17,230
to have a sat job selling computers just up the

1911
01:29:17,230 --> 01:29:18,270
road in another shop.

1912
01:29:18,330 --> 01:29:20,070
And I just used to go down to the shop

1913
01:29:20,210 --> 01:29:23,070
and load it up on their computers, see what people thought

1914
01:29:23,070 --> 01:29:24,910
of my games before they were released.

1915
01:29:24,970 --> 01:29:26,710
So it was quite fun for that 'cause it was

1916
01:29:26,710 --> 01:29:28,110
before the ages having qa.

1917
01:29:28,690 --> 01:29:31,550
So the QA was going into the shop and letting people play it

1918
01:29:31,550 --> 01:29:33,030
and see what they think or other,

1919
01:29:33,030 --> 01:29:35,230
it was me playing it, you know, how good it is. How did

1920
01:29:35,230 --> 01:29:37,270
We go about building Gremlin?

1921
01:29:37,610 --> 01:29:38,870
I'd already watched the,

1922
01:29:38,930 --> 01:29:40,950
the guys at Imagine Software in Liverpool

1923
01:29:41,050 --> 01:29:42,110
do exactly the same.

1924
01:29:42,130 --> 01:29:43,750
Matter of fact, a guy that used to work

1925
01:29:43,750 --> 01:29:44,950
for Alaska, it's the same as I did.

1926
01:29:44,950 --> 01:29:46,070
A chap called Mark Butler

1927
01:29:46,200 --> 01:29:49,030
where some other guys started Imagine Software.

1928
01:29:49,370 --> 01:29:51,990
And I think it was too good an opportunity to miss.

1929
01:29:52,090 --> 01:29:54,030
And then it was a case of convincing Pete

1930
01:29:54,030 --> 01:29:55,950
that he didn't need to go to university.

1931
01:29:56,100 --> 01:29:57,790
He'd be far better working with us

1932
01:29:58,170 --> 01:29:59,990
and creating computer games.

1933
01:30:00,370 --> 01:30:02,510
One day I went in and Ian Stewart was there

1934
01:30:02,510 --> 01:30:03,950
and he called me over and said, uh,

1935
01:30:04,130 --> 01:30:05,190
can you actually write games?

1936
01:30:05,440 --> 01:30:07,230
Don't know. I'm thinking about writing one.

1937
01:30:07,370 --> 01:30:08,550
And he gave me the idea

1938
01:30:08,650 --> 01:30:10,590
of we're wanting this character Monte Mo.

1939
01:30:10,650 --> 01:30:12,510
So Monte Moley is his, what he looks like.

1940
01:30:12,510 --> 01:30:13,510
He's, he's down to me

1941
01:30:13,510 --> 01:30:15,470
and my mother trying to decide what he should look like.

1942
01:30:15,710 --> 01:30:18,070
I think Pete would've started this when the minor strike

1943
01:30:18,170 --> 01:30:21,230
was first kicking off and Arthur Scargill

1944
01:30:21,230 --> 01:30:23,670
and obviously Sheffield right in the middle of everything,

1945
01:30:23,980 --> 01:30:27,590
just set my brain running as to what this game could be.

1946
01:30:27,770 --> 01:30:29,870
And I suppose we were a little bit brave putting, uh,

1947
01:30:30,090 --> 01:30:31,750
an effigy of Arthur Scargill

1948
01:30:31,750 --> 01:30:33,030
and the product to put, uh,

1949
01:30:33,130 --> 01:30:34,670
it seemed appropriate at the time

1950
01:30:34,930 --> 01:30:37,230
and it gained us an amazing amount

1951
01:30:37,230 --> 01:30:38,870
of coverage with Local Press.

1952
01:30:39,030 --> 01:30:41,270
I think we've got in total about 13 minutes

1953
01:30:41,370 --> 01:30:44,550
of prime news time, including, and finally,

1954
01:30:45,130 --> 01:30:47,430
And finally the latest thing in computer games.

1955
01:30:47,970 --> 01:30:50,830
It may be politically biased, but it is highly topical.

1956
01:30:51,290 --> 01:30:52,390
The villain of the piece,

1957
01:30:53,030 --> 01:30:56,790
a minor called Arthur Scargill, the hero.

1958
01:30:57,000 --> 01:30:59,110
Monty Mole has to get his coal for the winter

1959
01:30:59,210 --> 01:31:02,310
and run a gauntlet of flying pickets and cans of Hairspray.

1960
01:31:02,760 --> 01:31:05,110
Monty winds using a ballot paper.

1961
01:31:05,850 --> 01:31:08,750
Now, once that happened, we started getting demos coming

1962
01:31:08,750 --> 01:31:11,790
through the Post people calling us, people coming

1963
01:31:11,790 --> 01:31:14,510
to Sheffield to bring their demos in, et cetera.

1964
01:31:14,610 --> 01:31:17,790
But what we were quite good at was identifying people

1965
01:31:17,900 --> 01:31:21,630
that had an ability and the skills to join us

1966
01:31:21,770 --> 01:31:23,950
and to start making more products.

1967
01:31:24,180 --> 01:31:26,270
Gremlin used to make some of my favorite games.

1968
01:31:26,370 --> 01:31:28,510
It was really a hotbed for UK games.

1969
01:31:28,780 --> 01:31:30,830
Gremlin Graphics had a great reputation.

1970
01:31:30,980 --> 01:31:32,150
They were a great bunch of people.

1971
01:31:32,220 --> 01:31:34,150
Melbourne House were also a publisher.

1972
01:31:34,260 --> 01:31:36,870
They produced some amazing games throughout the eighties.

1973
01:31:37,770 --> 01:31:40,630
You may have noticed I'm actually wearing a classic Spectrum

1974
01:31:40,700 --> 01:31:42,550
game T-shirt, which is why

1975
01:31:42,550 --> 01:31:43,990
of the Exploding Fist Melbourne House.

1976
01:31:44,550 --> 01:31:48,150
A very early street fighter esque game for the Spectrum.

1977
01:31:48,410 --> 01:31:51,630
It was just a really fun kung fu style game.

1978
01:31:52,860 --> 01:31:55,670
Quicksilver were a very big publisher early on.

1979
01:31:55,670 --> 01:31:58,070
They produced a game called Four D Time Gate,

1980
01:31:58,070 --> 01:32:00,590
which was a very fast space.

1981
01:32:00,590 --> 01:32:03,230
Shoot 'em up. And that was an amazing game for the time.

1982
01:32:03,290 --> 01:32:06,030
And I think that helped establish certainly Quicksilver

1983
01:32:06,030 --> 01:32:07,830
as one of the early Runners Bug Bite.

1984
01:32:07,830 --> 01:32:09,590
They published Matthew Smith's Manic Minor

1985
01:32:09,810 --> 01:32:13,110
and you also had the quirky publishers like Ulta Mater.

1986
01:32:13,110 --> 01:32:15,430
There were a lot of publishers like that, smaller publishers

1987
01:32:15,430 --> 01:32:18,390
that struggled once the spectrum became a

1988
01:32:18,390 --> 01:32:19,470
real commercial concern.

1989
01:32:20,210 --> 01:32:22,870
The real game changer was a company called Master tro

1990
01:32:22,870 --> 01:32:24,910
because Master Tro did a deal

1991
01:32:24,960 --> 01:32:28,790
where their games would be distributed into places

1992
01:32:28,790 --> 01:32:31,510
where you wouldn't normally find video games, for instance,

1993
01:32:31,610 --> 01:32:34,110
the little corner shop where you buy a newspaper.

1994
01:32:34,330 --> 01:32:36,790
So to have these budget games, which retailed

1995
01:32:36,790 --> 01:32:40,230
for 1 99 was a real boon to any spectrum owner.

1996
01:32:47,300 --> 01:32:49,870
There's your classic Master TRO game,

1997
01:32:50,260 --> 01:32:53,950
this is called Tank Tracks one pound 99 for a place called

1998
01:32:54,610 --> 01:32:56,790
Top Fair, which I don't remember, I'm sure

1999
01:32:56,790 --> 01:32:57,830
that's gone by the wayside.

2000
01:32:58,730 --> 01:33:02,750
And a very basic cassette tape instructions

2001
01:33:04,370 --> 01:33:07,670
on Pound 99 Who Caress Brilliant.

2002
01:33:08,060 --> 01:33:10,750
More importantly, the games actually got good as well.

2003
01:33:11,330 --> 01:33:14,630
So what you could buy for 1 99 changed a lot.

2004
01:33:14,930 --> 01:33:18,150
And it changed in 1985 with the release

2005
01:33:18,150 --> 01:33:20,590
of a game called Finders Keepers, which was the first game

2006
01:33:20,590 --> 01:33:22,790
of the Magic Night trilogy coded by David Jones.

2007
01:33:23,060 --> 01:33:25,830
Finders Keepers were so good that Master TRO realized

2008
01:33:25,860 --> 01:33:27,310
that they were doing themselves in a bit

2009
01:33:27,310 --> 01:33:29,110
by retailing these games for 1 99

2010
01:33:29,210 --> 01:33:30,830
and they should create a special label

2011
01:33:30,830 --> 01:33:32,590
where they could charge an extra pound

2012
01:33:32,590 --> 01:33:33,870
because the games were that good.

2013
01:33:33,870 --> 01:33:35,790
And when David Jones produced Spellbound,

2014
01:33:35,880 --> 01:33:37,110
which had the wind motion

2015
01:33:37,240 --> 01:33:39,150
where you could select different things from the menu

2016
01:33:39,150 --> 01:33:40,990
that dropped down, that was another game changer.

2017
01:33:41,310 --> 01:33:43,670
'cause people just realized that you could get a lot more

2018
01:33:43,670 --> 01:33:46,270
value for money for just three pounds. Bell

2019
01:33:46,350 --> 01:33:47,790
Bound was a lot more a eventually than,

2020
01:33:47,790 --> 01:33:51,310
than Fineness Keepers and enabled you to select things and,

2021
01:33:51,310 --> 01:33:53,230
and build up more complicated commands

2022
01:33:53,530 --> 01:33:55,470
and enabled me to input stranger

2023
01:33:55,530 --> 01:33:56,870
and more interesting puzzles.

2024
01:33:56,870 --> 01:34:01,470
In Storm Ringer finished the first

2025
01:34:01,580 --> 01:34:03,750
trilogy of the actual proper venture games.

2026
01:34:03,840 --> 01:34:04,910
Storm Ringer. Sold well

2027
01:34:04,970 --> 01:34:07,870
and had very good previews, very good reviews.

2028
01:34:08,340 --> 01:34:10,830
Even with Storm, I was still a bedroom coder,

2029
01:34:11,090 --> 01:34:13,510
but it was a bedroom in the house I bought from the profits

2030
01:34:13,510 --> 01:34:14,670
of the previous games.

2031
01:34:14,890 --> 01:34:17,150
And all of a sudden I think people realized

2032
01:34:17,150 --> 01:34:19,790
that you could produce these games on a budget,

2033
01:34:20,220 --> 01:34:22,150
sell them on a budget, and make a lot

2034
01:34:22,150 --> 01:34:23,190
of money, sell a lot of units.

2035
01:34:23,530 --> 01:34:25,310
And the games could actually crucially

2036
01:34:25,310 --> 01:34:26,470
be quite decent as well.

2037
01:34:26,700 --> 01:34:28,470
That when Code Masters formed,

2038
01:34:28,580 --> 01:34:30,190
they pretty much made it a wall.

2039
01:34:30,190 --> 01:34:32,190
You know, we'll, we're just going to sell budget games

2040
01:34:32,190 --> 01:34:35,190
because turns out a lot of people are interested in that

2041
01:34:35,410 --> 01:34:37,750
and we can make a lot of money doing that.

2042
01:34:37,810 --> 01:34:41,270
And they did games like Dizzy Professional Ski Simulator,

2043
01:34:41,520 --> 01:34:45,790
grand Prix Simulator, BMX, actually very playable games just

2044
01:34:45,810 --> 01:34:46,990
for a couple of quids.

2045
01:34:47,210 --> 01:34:49,270
And eventually the big labels kind

2046
01:34:49,270 --> 01:34:50,430
of cottoned onto that as well.

2047
01:34:50,730 --> 01:34:53,270
And so you end up with the likes of the hit squad

2048
01:34:53,410 --> 01:34:55,910
and kicks where studios like Ocean

2049
01:34:55,910 --> 01:34:58,270
and US Gold are re-release in their old games.

2050
01:34:58,730 --> 01:35:01,070
So the budget market ends up becoming, again,

2051
01:35:01,190 --> 01:35:03,510
a pretty big thing that helped sustain the spectrum.

2052
01:35:04,090 --> 01:35:06,150
As the night got darker, so to speak,

2053
01:35:13,490 --> 01:35:18,070
It did become obvious to me that software was so important

2054
01:35:18,370 --> 01:35:19,750
to the spectrum

2055
01:35:20,140 --> 01:35:22,590
that we shouldn't just leave it up to other people.

2056
01:35:23,170 --> 01:35:25,150
And I hired someone

2057
01:35:25,530 --> 01:35:29,910
to work at Sinclair whose job was to act as a liaison

2058
01:35:29,910 --> 01:35:31,470
with software developers.

2059
01:35:31,610 --> 01:35:34,070
Uh, and Clive was very, very opposed to that.

2060
01:35:34,190 --> 01:35:35,750
I had a real fight with him over that.

2061
01:35:36,050 --> 01:35:38,710
It was one of the few times that I dug my heels in

2062
01:35:38,710 --> 01:35:41,950
and said, Clive, we are hiring her or I'm leaving.

2063
01:35:42,290 --> 01:35:45,150
The interview with Clive was completely bizarre.

2064
01:35:45,340 --> 01:35:46,510
Well, it was at he's flat

2065
01:35:46,810 --> 01:35:49,910
and he is not a very easy person to talk to.

2066
01:35:50,050 --> 01:35:53,150
He doesn't say anything who have to start going, gab,

2067
01:35:53,150 --> 01:35:54,950
go Gab, which I did nervously.

2068
01:35:55,170 --> 01:35:57,270
He then offered me a cup of coffee

2069
01:35:57,650 --> 01:36:01,070
and I made a huge mistake in accepting

2070
01:36:01,380 --> 01:36:02,790
because he looked furious

2071
01:36:03,610 --> 01:36:05,510
and he then had to make me a cup of coffee.

2072
01:36:05,850 --> 01:36:07,990
And during making me a cup of coffee, he said nothing.

2073
01:36:08,330 --> 01:36:09,590
And I sort of stood in the kitchen

2074
01:36:10,050 --> 01:36:13,790
and then we went into the drawing room, an enormous room,

2075
01:36:14,490 --> 01:36:15,750
and he still said nothing

2076
01:36:15,890 --> 01:36:20,390
and sat at the far end from me miles away, me and my coffee

2077
01:36:20,930 --> 01:36:22,110
and my shaking hand.

2078
01:36:23,810 --> 01:36:28,390
And uh, we sat there and I said, it's lovely room.

2079
01:36:28,870 --> 01:36:31,150
I said, nervously. Hmm.

2080
01:36:31,610 --> 01:36:32,870
He said, and then

2081
01:36:32,870 --> 01:36:35,150
after a bit, I said, do you have much

2082
01:36:35,710 --> 01:36:36,990
software for the spectrum?

2083
01:36:37,370 --> 01:36:41,950
And he said, no, it was peripheral.

2084
01:36:42,420 --> 01:36:46,390
What he was interested in was the hardware and lab

2085
01:36:47,090 --> 01:36:48,110
and the engineers.

2086
01:36:48,650 --> 01:36:52,790
Almost every time the subject of software came up,

2087
01:36:52,870 --> 01:36:57,430
particularly if the software was games, Clive was always

2088
01:36:58,210 --> 01:37:00,750
likely to question the value of doing it.

2089
01:37:01,130 --> 01:37:04,310
It was not our core mission to sell software

2090
01:37:04,810 --> 01:37:07,310
or even to encourage the development of software.

2091
01:37:07,450 --> 01:37:09,790
Our business was to sell computers.

2092
01:37:10,490 --> 01:37:13,870
So I'd say that he accepted the software

2093
01:37:13,930 --> 01:37:15,950
and he accepted the role of the Spectrum

2094
01:37:16,690 --> 01:37:18,990
as a predominantly games playing machine.

2095
01:37:19,410 --> 01:37:21,990
But it wasn't what he'd had in mind when he developed the

2096
01:37:21,990 --> 01:37:23,910
product and it wasn't what he wanted

2097
01:37:23,930 --> 01:37:26,910
to spend his time on when he had bigger

2098
01:37:26,970 --> 01:37:30,430
and better hardware development projects to do.

2099
01:37:33,630 --> 01:37:35,630
I didn't get an induction. I ended up next

2100
01:37:35,650 --> 01:37:38,550
to Jane Boothroyd, who was then UK sales

2101
01:37:38,570 --> 01:37:39,750
and marketing manager.

2102
01:37:40,010 --> 01:37:42,910
And she was responsible for selling the hardware.

2103
01:37:43,250 --> 01:37:44,470
And there was a pile

2104
01:37:44,470 --> 01:37:46,910
of cassettes on the desk, piles on the floor.

2105
01:37:47,330 --> 01:37:48,790
And there was no way of knowing

2106
01:37:49,450 --> 01:37:50,670
if there were any good or not.

2107
01:37:51,130 --> 01:37:53,070
So I thought, how do I make a start on this?

2108
01:37:53,830 --> 01:37:55,870
I had no budget, no money to spend.

2109
01:37:55,890 --> 01:37:58,710
It wasn't going to cost anything. There was just me.

2110
01:37:59,570 --> 01:38:03,430
And then I thought, I better get some of the users

2111
01:38:03,890 --> 01:38:05,830
to start testing this stuff.

2112
01:38:06,060 --> 01:38:09,070
Then I set off to the local sixth form colleges

2113
01:38:09,410 --> 01:38:10,590
to find my testers.

2114
01:38:11,130 --> 01:38:14,590
And they each did about 15 cassettes a week.

2115
01:38:15,170 --> 01:38:17,390
And each week they were allowed

2116
01:38:17,390 --> 01:38:18,590
to keep two or three of them.

2117
01:38:18,930 --> 01:38:21,710
The rejects not the real ones, you know, the rejects

2118
01:38:22,290 --> 01:38:23,430
and that's how I paid them.

2119
01:38:24,130 --> 01:38:28,750
But there was this thing about the spectrum was far more

2120
01:38:28,750 --> 01:38:30,310
than just a games machine.

2121
01:38:30,610 --> 01:38:34,710
And it was important for the marketing strategies such

2122
01:38:34,730 --> 01:38:38,110
as there was that we sold it as a workhorse

2123
01:38:38,110 --> 01:38:40,310
that could do useful things in the home

2124
01:38:40,660 --> 01:38:43,590
because that would then support parental

2125
01:38:43,950 --> 01:38:45,190
decisions to buy it.

2126
01:38:45,610 --> 01:38:48,230
And that's what led to my idea

2127
01:38:49,090 --> 01:38:53,790
of developing educational software alongside a respectable

2128
01:38:54,160 --> 01:38:55,270
publishing company.

2129
01:38:55,880 --> 01:38:59,630
There was a wonderful man called Tony Feldman at McMillan

2130
01:38:59,860 --> 01:39:02,590
Education and he'd just been made director

2131
01:39:02,590 --> 01:39:03,990
of their digital division.

2132
01:39:04,570 --> 01:39:06,270
And we developed the range

2133
01:39:06,730 --> 01:39:08,230
and it was all right,

2134
01:39:08,560 --> 01:39:11,390
maybe being respectable made it not very exciting,

2135
01:39:12,210 --> 01:39:13,830
but, um, it was all a bit worthy.

2136
01:39:14,250 --> 01:39:15,670
But that was the whole point of it.

2137
01:39:19,930 --> 01:39:22,230
We then had this amazing launch.

2138
01:39:23,110 --> 01:39:24,990
I couldn't believe we'd swung it.

2139
01:39:25,570 --> 01:39:30,470
Harold McMillan, former Prime Minister was then about 93

2140
01:39:30,930 --> 01:39:33,270
to my astonishment, he agreed to come

2141
01:39:33,290 --> 01:39:35,110
to this pesky software launch.

2142
01:39:35,450 --> 01:39:36,470
He agreed to come.

2143
01:39:36,970 --> 01:39:38,670
And as soon as Clive heard

2144
01:39:39,060 --> 01:39:42,190
that Harold McMillan was coming, he said he'd come.

2145
01:39:42,650 --> 01:39:45,150
And so we had this swanky hotel

2146
01:39:45,570 --> 01:39:49,030
and instead of Computer Weekly and Sinclair user

2147
01:39:49,210 --> 01:39:52,310
and a few sort of trade press people,

2148
01:39:52,810 --> 01:39:54,870
we had the world's press.

2149
01:39:55,210 --> 01:39:57,190
The room was absolutely packed

2150
01:39:57,570 --> 01:40:00,350
and I had no idea what Clive was going to say,

2151
01:40:00,350 --> 01:40:01,630
which applied him with a script,

2152
01:40:02,010 --> 01:40:05,430
but he never used to say the script ever, ever.

2153
01:40:05,970 --> 01:40:10,030
And he got up and said something and then he came to the end

2154
01:40:10,250 --> 01:40:12,430
and he said, well, I'm very honored

2155
01:40:12,570 --> 01:40:14,430
to have Harold McMillan here,

2156
01:40:14,850 --> 01:40:17,630
and I'm sure he would like to say a few words now.

2157
01:40:17,930 --> 01:40:19,790
And he sort of started to sit down

2158
01:40:20,530 --> 01:40:23,830
and there was absolutely no movement from McMillan.

2159
01:40:24,290 --> 01:40:28,190
He sat there and Clive, who I'd never seemed

2160
01:40:29,030 --> 01:40:32,510
disconcerted like that, he sort of said sir

2161
01:40:32,810 --> 01:40:34,030
and tapped him on the shoulder.

2162
01:40:36,290 --> 01:40:37,430
He kind of woke up

2163
01:40:37,770 --> 01:40:41,870
and then very, very slowly stood up,

2164
01:40:42,160 --> 01:40:43,710
great deal of theatrics.

2165
01:40:43,900 --> 01:40:47,910
Then he looked right at everybody and he then made a speech.

2166
01:40:48,770 --> 01:40:50,750
He made a speech about the software,

2167
01:40:51,330 --> 01:40:53,110
he made a speech about the spectrum.

2168
01:40:53,970 --> 01:40:55,390
He spoke without notes.

2169
01:40:56,250 --> 01:40:58,470
It was just fantastic, extraordinary.

2170
01:40:58,660 --> 01:41:00,390
Everybody was mesmerized.

2171
01:41:01,170 --> 01:41:02,390
And he finally said,

2172
01:41:02,390 --> 01:41:04,670
and the thing that pleases me most

2173
01:41:04,890 --> 01:41:09,230
of all is all this has come from where so much

2174
01:41:09,460 --> 01:41:11,790
that is great in the world comes

2175
01:41:12,380 --> 01:41:15,310
including this young man on my right.

2176
01:41:15,410 --> 01:41:19,190
And he tapped, virtually tapped Clive on his bald

2177
01:41:19,220 --> 01:41:21,270
head and everybody went.

2178
01:41:23,370 --> 01:41:26,590
He said, Scotland 'cause of course says Scottish.

2179
01:41:26,930 --> 01:41:28,070
And then he sat down

2180
01:41:28,730 --> 01:41:31,590
and the entire room stood up and applauded him.

2181
01:41:31,900 --> 01:41:32,900
Extraordinary.

2182
01:41:41,050 --> 01:41:43,070
The name Spectrum became used

2183
01:41:43,130 --> 01:41:47,590
for much more than just this rubber key 48 K.

2184
01:41:47,590 --> 01:41:50,510
Most of the times computer spectrum is a name given

2185
01:41:50,610 --> 01:41:54,990
to the plus the 128 K, the plus two, the plus two A

2186
01:41:54,990 --> 01:41:57,590
or plus two B, the plus three and many, many others.

2187
01:41:58,180 --> 01:42:00,950
Another very relevant development

2188
01:42:00,950 --> 01:42:05,870
that five Sinclair did was in 1984, the synco ql

2189
01:42:08,450 --> 01:42:10,150
You are about to witness Sir Clive

2190
01:42:10,200 --> 01:42:11,630
Sinclair's Quantum Leap.

2191
01:42:15,900 --> 01:42:17,110
He's come up with a computer

2192
01:42:17,410 --> 01:42:20,310
to rival these machines at a fraction of their cost.

2193
01:42:20,570 --> 01:42:25,030
The QL was a sad story because it was developed

2194
01:42:25,170 --> 01:42:26,430
and launched too quickly.

2195
01:42:27,150 --> 01:42:29,910
I mean, I literally saw it as a block

2196
01:42:29,910 --> 01:42:32,470
of wood on the boardroom table in November.

2197
01:42:32,850 --> 01:42:34,710
And when I asked when it was going to be launched,

2198
01:42:34,910 --> 01:42:35,990
I was told February.

2199
01:42:36,290 --> 01:42:38,670
And I said, but this is just a block of wood.

2200
01:42:39,290 --> 01:42:43,030
You know, it's a, it was just a visual, just a visual.

2201
01:42:43,450 --> 01:42:46,230
You never had any idea was to how much of it was real,

2202
01:42:46,330 --> 01:42:48,350
how much was really going on. You know,

2203
01:42:48,490 --> 01:42:50,910
The QL was conceived as a business machine,

2204
01:42:50,930 --> 01:42:52,350
so it was a complete break

2205
01:42:52,850 --> 01:42:56,350
and the QL absorbed an enormous amount

2206
01:42:56,350 --> 01:42:58,030
of product development effort.

2207
01:42:58,390 --> 01:43:01,150
I just don't think there was enough time

2208
01:43:02,010 --> 01:43:04,390
to think about the future of the spectrum.

2209
01:43:04,530 --> 01:43:07,990
And if anyone has said the Spectrum could have a very long

2210
01:43:08,100 --> 01:43:12,070
life with upgrades, new versions be backward, compatible,

2211
01:43:12,290 --> 01:43:14,230
run all the old software, et cetera,

2212
01:43:14,290 --> 01:43:15,390
it could have a long life.

2213
01:43:15,850 --> 01:43:18,950
The media objection would've been, well, yeah,

2214
01:43:18,950 --> 01:43:20,230
but who's gonna do that work?

2215
01:43:20,320 --> 01:43:25,030
Who's going to maintain the product with upgrades

2216
01:43:25,090 --> 01:43:28,310
and so on because everyone's so busy with everything else.

2217
01:43:28,810 --> 01:43:32,550
My feeling about the QL was that Clive really wanted

2218
01:43:32,610 --> 01:43:34,870
to come up with a serious business computer

2219
01:43:35,050 --> 01:43:36,190
and he felt the combination

2220
01:43:36,190 --> 01:43:39,270
of a more powerful microprocessor addressing more memory

2221
01:43:39,490 --> 01:43:41,710
and the micro drives made it a business platform.

2222
01:43:41,770 --> 01:43:44,430
You know, if I took away anything from that, I did sense

2223
01:43:44,500 --> 01:43:47,070
that Clive kind of lost interest in the spectrum.

2224
01:43:47,280 --> 01:43:49,230
There was a strong feeling of wanting

2225
01:43:49,250 --> 01:43:51,150
to concentrate on the new stuff.

2226
01:43:51,410 --> 01:43:54,430
We had the qr, but we also had a laptop.

2227
01:43:54,570 --> 01:43:56,510
We had Pandora various sort

2228
01:43:56,510 --> 01:43:58,390
of under wrap pieces of hardware.

2229
01:43:58,810 --> 01:44:02,470
We don't wanna waste time among the, the spectrum is boring,

2230
01:44:02,580 --> 01:44:04,030
it's so last year, you know,

2231
01:44:04,250 --> 01:44:06,790
and of course the fact that we had an installed base

2232
01:44:07,210 --> 01:44:10,830
of millions people to sell add-on products

2233
01:44:10,890 --> 01:44:13,710
to basic portfolio analysis says

2234
01:44:13,710 --> 01:44:17,230
that Stretch was our cash cow that was bringing in the cash

2235
01:44:17,650 --> 01:44:19,750
to fund all these blooming developments.

2236
01:44:20,120 --> 01:44:22,230
There was so much competition

2237
01:44:22,570 --> 01:44:24,750
for the engineering resources as well.

2238
01:44:25,230 --> 01:44:29,150
I was hiring people to work on current projects

2239
01:44:29,250 --> 01:44:33,390
and projects for next year's computers like the ql.

2240
01:44:33,690 --> 01:44:37,190
And the next minute I find out Clive had had a few beers

2241
01:44:37,190 --> 01:44:40,390
within a pub and offered them a job working on some

2242
01:44:41,190 --> 01:44:42,350
artificial intelligence project.

2243
01:44:42,900 --> 01:44:46,190
He'd hired all these engineers, innovators

2244
01:44:46,410 --> 01:44:49,510
to work at the meta lab, million pounds a year.

2245
01:44:49,510 --> 01:44:51,950
It was gonna cost us and fundamentally everything,

2246
01:44:51,970 --> 01:44:53,430
all the attention had been going into

2247
01:44:53,430 --> 01:44:54,590
new, new, new, new, new.

2248
01:44:54,890 --> 01:44:57,950
The main thrust of Meta Lab is now, um,

2249
01:44:58,170 --> 01:44:59,830
as you would would expect to the,

2250
01:44:59,930 --> 01:45:01,230
the the future of computing.

2251
01:45:01,410 --> 01:45:03,150
We have a, a massive program there

2252
01:45:03,150 --> 01:45:05,350
of very advanced computer development works,

2253
01:45:05,450 --> 01:45:06,590
all the things that go with it.

2254
01:45:06,850 --> 01:45:09,270
Um, semiconductor technology, um,

2255
01:45:10,010 --> 01:45:12,190
all the peripherals printers, displays,

2256
01:45:12,190 --> 01:45:13,630
very advanced display technology.

2257
01:45:13,800 --> 01:45:15,070
Every, everything in that field.

2258
01:45:15,410 --> 01:45:16,870
The other areas that were working in there,

2259
01:45:16,870 --> 01:45:19,670
of course are known to principles or television and, and,

2260
01:45:19,670 --> 01:45:20,790
and possibly some vehicle work.

2261
01:45:21,290 --> 01:45:22,590
It really was chaos

2262
01:45:22,890 --> 01:45:25,750
and it was driven by Clive's desire to move on

2263
01:45:25,750 --> 01:45:26,910
to the next big thing.

2264
01:45:27,210 --> 01:45:31,390
And the resources you could have commanded to maintain

2265
01:45:31,580 --> 01:45:33,510
what you'd got, they just weren't there.

2266
01:45:33,890 --> 01:45:37,150
They'd been earmarked for more exciting things

2267
01:45:37,850 --> 01:45:40,390
And meanwhile, if you listened,

2268
01:45:41,130 --> 01:45:43,110
people told you what was needed.

2269
01:45:43,420 --> 01:45:47,390
They needed a spectrum with more memory they needed, oh,

2270
01:45:47,410 --> 01:45:50,270
and with a different graphics and a better keyboard

2271
01:45:50,450 --> 01:45:51,750
and this and that and the other.

2272
01:45:52,250 --> 01:45:54,870
And so we did start rather belatedly

2273
01:45:55,290 --> 01:45:57,750
to produce the products the customers were asking for.

2274
01:45:58,770 --> 01:46:00,910
We should have been doing it the previous year.

2275
01:46:01,180 --> 01:46:04,310
Yeah, we should have, it's a matter

2276
01:46:04,330 --> 01:46:06,110
of regret that we weren't,

2277
01:46:11,580 --> 01:46:13,590
This is the ZX spectrum plus,

2278
01:46:14,080 --> 01:46:16,030
which was CL Sinclair's C quarter

2279
01:46:16,290 --> 01:46:17,510
ZX spectrum with the rubber keyboard.

2280
01:46:17,690 --> 01:46:21,190
The spectrum 48 K plus was an attempt by Sinclair

2281
01:46:21,190 --> 01:46:22,910
to address two of the main criticisms

2282
01:46:22,910 --> 01:46:23,910
of the original spectrum.

2283
01:46:24,410 --> 01:46:27,350
The first one was that there was no power button.

2284
01:46:27,690 --> 01:46:30,110
So every time you wanted to play a new game,

2285
01:46:30,170 --> 01:46:32,230
you literally had to unplug it.

2286
01:46:32,330 --> 01:46:33,950
And the second thing was the keyboard, which

2287
01:46:34,310 --> 01:46:36,990
although we revere it to a certain extent today

2288
01:46:37,290 --> 01:46:40,750
and admire it for its eccentricity back in the day,

2289
01:46:40,890 --> 01:46:42,190
did get quite a lot of criticism.

2290
01:46:42,770 --> 01:46:45,790
So as a result, Sinclair wanted to design a new keyboard,

2291
01:46:45,800 --> 01:46:47,630
which actually came from the ql.

2292
01:46:47,810 --> 01:46:49,710
So they got this keyboard and they put

2293
01:46:49,710 --> 01:46:52,470
that into a new spectrum along with a reset button.

2294
01:46:53,090 --> 01:46:56,910
So the 48 k plus came out in 1984

2295
01:46:57,370 --> 01:47:00,790
and Sinclair, if they weren't working on the 1 2 8 K at

2296
01:47:00,790 --> 01:47:03,150
that point, they must have certainly been thinking about it.

2297
01:47:03,250 --> 01:47:05,350
But by the time 1985 rolled in,

2298
01:47:05,790 --> 01:47:08,910
Sinclair itself was having financial difficulty. The

2299
01:47:09,130 --> 01:47:12,070
QL sales were not as good as they should have been.

2300
01:47:12,130 --> 01:47:15,230
And that frankly was the basis upon which

2301
01:47:15,750 --> 01:47:18,110
Sinclair run into financial difficulties.

2302
01:47:18,210 --> 01:47:20,030
And Robert Maxwell went in

2303
01:47:20,050 --> 01:47:22,870
and all he wanted to do was have the names associated

2304
01:47:22,870 --> 01:47:24,270
with his newspaper. We

2305
01:47:24,270 --> 01:47:27,190
Jolly well heard that Maxwell was interested in buying us

2306
01:47:27,370 --> 01:47:29,470
and everybody ruled their eyes at

2307
01:47:29,470 --> 01:47:31,070
what it would be like to work for him.

2308
01:47:31,850 --> 01:47:35,790
And what caused Clive to break off negotiations

2309
01:47:35,820 --> 01:47:38,750
with Maxwell was that Clive got some sort of deal

2310
01:47:38,750 --> 01:47:42,430
with Dixons, the retail chain, who he had a rather long

2311
01:47:42,570 --> 01:47:44,870
and up and down relationship with.

2312
01:47:45,370 --> 01:47:47,070
But at any rate, Dixon's came in

2313
01:47:47,070 --> 01:47:49,390
and said they would buy large quantities

2314
01:47:49,390 --> 01:47:51,630
of computers from Sinclair

2315
01:47:51,970 --> 01:47:55,710
and they promised a big enough order that it enabled Clive

2316
01:47:55,770 --> 01:47:57,950
to change his mind about Maxwell.

2317
01:47:58,410 --> 01:48:01,990
So they were planning to bring forward the 1 2 8 K.

2318
01:48:02,290 --> 01:48:05,750
And when Dixon's heard that a superior model was coming out

2319
01:48:05,770 --> 01:48:08,510
to the 48 k plus, which they had huge stocks of,

2320
01:48:08,980 --> 01:48:10,510
they understandably weren't that happy.

2321
01:48:10,990 --> 01:48:12,790
I don't remember the exact, uh, sequence

2322
01:48:12,790 --> 01:48:14,150
of events about the 1, 2 8,

2323
01:48:14,170 --> 01:48:17,670
but there was a recognition that, um, the spectrum was,

2324
01:48:17,770 --> 01:48:20,310
was still a success, but it needed more memory.

2325
01:48:20,830 --> 01:48:23,350
Products were competing on the specification

2326
01:48:23,490 --> 01:48:26,190
and that's a good way to, to bring it up to date was to,

2327
01:48:26,290 --> 01:48:28,430
to advertise a spectrum 1, 2, 8.

2328
01:48:28,610 --> 01:48:31,630
So I probably said, look, I can do that. That's no trouble.

2329
01:48:31,770 --> 01:48:33,790
We extended the basic in quite a few ways.

2330
01:48:34,050 --> 01:48:36,710
One of the weaknesses of the spectrum was it didn't have a

2331
01:48:36,720 --> 01:48:38,470
sound chip, it just had a single speaker

2332
01:48:38,500 --> 01:48:39,870
with a single buyer going to it

2333
01:48:39,870 --> 01:48:41,430
and it could make very crude tones

2334
01:48:41,490 --> 01:48:43,310
and it would tie up the microprocessor. So

2335
01:48:43,310 --> 01:48:47,110
This is a ZX spectrum, 128 K effectionately known

2336
01:48:47,110 --> 01:48:49,030
as a toast rack because you've got this kind of

2337
01:48:49,800 --> 01:48:51,670
toast rack style thing on the site.

2338
01:48:52,210 --> 01:48:55,430
Now the benefit of the 1 2 8 k is you got the advanced

2339
01:48:55,430 --> 01:48:57,150
sound chip, the A wire chip. What

2340
01:48:57,150 --> 01:48:59,470
We did was we threw another GI sound chip

2341
01:48:59,580 --> 01:49:02,190
that would generate polyphonic music without the

2342
01:49:02,190 --> 01:49:03,270
processor being involved.

2343
01:49:03,370 --> 01:49:05,990
So you could do more activity in the background.

2344
01:49:06,090 --> 01:49:09,190
And we wanted to tie that chip in with the basics so

2345
01:49:09,190 --> 01:49:10,870
that people could type in commands

2346
01:49:10,870 --> 01:49:11,990
that would control that chip.

2347
01:49:12,090 --> 01:49:13,910
And I wanted them to compose music on it.

2348
01:49:14,150 --> 01:49:15,750
I was kind of interested in the audio again.

2349
01:49:15,750 --> 01:49:19,350
And so synthesizing music was a great appeal to me.

2350
01:49:22,570 --> 01:49:24,550
So the music was infinitely better

2351
01:49:24,550 --> 01:49:25,790
than the original beeper.

2352
01:49:26,020 --> 01:49:28,870
This was great. It kind of competed with the Commodore 64.

2353
01:49:29,330 --> 01:49:31,230
Of course you got an extra 80 k of memory,

2354
01:49:31,410 --> 01:49:32,430
so you could have bigger games,

2355
01:49:32,810 --> 01:49:34,470
you could have music in the games,

2356
01:49:34,650 --> 01:49:35,710
you could have more colors.

2357
01:49:36,370 --> 01:49:39,390
It was just a nice step up before the 16 bit days.

2358
01:49:39,730 --> 01:49:43,710
Having an expansion from the 48 K to the 1 28 K spectrum

2359
01:49:44,060 --> 01:49:45,950
with its greater software capabilities

2360
01:49:46,010 --> 01:49:48,190
and so on was a fairly natural thing to do.

2361
01:49:48,410 --> 01:49:50,470
And it just so happened that along the way

2362
01:49:50,700 --> 01:49:52,910
that we were negotiating with Invest

2363
01:49:53,530 --> 01:49:55,510
to have a Spanish version of it as well,

2364
01:49:55,650 --> 01:49:59,430
The result was that the 1 2 8 K ended up being released in

2365
01:49:59,680 --> 01:50:01,430
Spain Christmas of 1985.

2366
01:50:01,690 --> 01:50:06,550
So the Spanish speaking world got the 1 2 8 K, whereas

2367
01:50:07,350 --> 01:50:09,230
everyone else, certainly in England,

2368
01:50:09,230 --> 01:50:11,310
which was Sinclair's main market, had to wait

2369
01:50:11,310 --> 01:50:12,310
until the following year.

2370
01:50:12,730 --> 01:50:14,790
The fallout from this was, which you could kind

2371
01:50:14,790 --> 01:50:18,430
of see coming, everybody got a 48 k plus of Christmas

2372
01:50:18,430 --> 01:50:21,870
of 1985 when the 1 2 8 K was released in the UK

2373
01:50:22,130 --> 01:50:23,910
in February of 1986.

2374
01:50:24,290 --> 01:50:26,070
All of a sudden we are like, oh mum,

2375
01:50:26,210 --> 01:50:27,430
dad, I'd like this one now.

2376
01:50:27,430 --> 01:50:29,150
And they're like, you've just been given this one,

2377
01:50:29,170 --> 01:50:30,790
you're not getting another one, forget it.

2378
01:50:30,970 --> 01:50:32,230
So as a result, sales

2379
01:50:32,330 --> 01:50:35,990
of the 1 2 8 K spectrum were incredibly poor.

2380
01:50:35,990 --> 01:50:38,670
When the UK in particular, which was a bit of a shame, I

2381
01:50:38,990 --> 01:50:41,790
Realized that things were really over as soon

2382
01:50:41,790 --> 01:50:45,030
as Christmas in 1984 was over

2383
01:50:45,850 --> 01:50:47,830
and the retailers canceled their orders

2384
01:50:47,970 --> 01:50:49,710
and suddenly we were going from selling

2385
01:50:50,330 --> 01:50:54,430
at a very high level, a hundred million a year type turnover

2386
01:50:54,890 --> 01:50:58,270
to suddenly virtually nothing bang like that.

2387
01:50:58,650 --> 01:51:01,070
We had a massive job, we had 18 million

2388
01:51:01,930 --> 01:51:05,070
and the creditors who included Barclays, our bankers

2389
01:51:05,610 --> 01:51:07,350
and our distributors

2390
01:51:07,450 --> 01:51:11,790
and so on, gave us a year to find a,

2391
01:51:11,910 --> 01:51:13,230
a solution for the company

2392
01:51:13,650 --> 01:51:16,270
and to achieve a, a reduction of the debt.

2393
01:51:16,490 --> 01:51:19,430
So Spectrum 1 2 8 was part of that recovery program.

2394
01:51:20,130 --> 01:51:22,350
My job was really focused on Timex.

2395
01:51:22,600 --> 01:51:25,510
Timex had always been our distributor in America.

2396
01:51:25,730 --> 01:51:28,790
And one of the cleverer things we'd done is we hadn't tried

2397
01:51:28,790 --> 01:51:31,030
to sell in America like Acorn did.

2398
01:51:31,130 --> 01:51:33,590
Uh, people tended to lose their shirts setting up

2399
01:51:33,590 --> 01:51:35,030
subsidiaries in America.

2400
01:51:35,410 --> 01:51:39,710
So instead we licensed the spectrum to Timex Corporation.

2401
01:51:41,530 --> 01:51:44,030
If you've been dreaming of a home computer this year,

2402
01:51:44,480 --> 01:51:46,350
Timex has exactly what you need.

2403
01:51:46,710 --> 01:51:49,830
A state-of-the-art 48 k color home computer at a

2404
01:51:49,830 --> 01:51:50,870
very affordable price.

2405
01:51:51,050 --> 01:51:54,350
The thinking was that Timex had their products in

2406
01:51:55,230 --> 01:51:58,630
thousands and thousands of retail outlets,

2407
01:51:59,050 --> 01:52:01,710
not just large chains of stores,

2408
01:52:01,810 --> 01:52:05,470
but they had a relationship with almost everyone

2409
01:52:05,770 --> 01:52:07,870
who retailed anything in the states.

2410
01:52:08,210 --> 01:52:10,590
And when the time came, they wanted to buy us,

2411
01:52:10,940 --> 01:52:13,710
they agreed a deal and Bill, Jeffrey

2412
01:52:13,930 --> 01:52:16,750
and Clive were going to fly over and sign the contract.

2413
01:52:17,130 --> 01:52:20,710
But on the airplane going over there,

2414
01:52:21,560 --> 01:52:22,750
Clive changed his mind

2415
01:52:23,170 --> 01:52:26,350
and apparently what he said to a spitting with rage,

2416
01:52:26,420 --> 01:52:29,710
bill Jeffrey, I'd rather own the whole of a small company

2417
01:52:29,810 --> 01:52:33,030
and start again than known 20% of a large company.

2418
01:52:33,530 --> 01:52:35,950
And they got to Boston and they flew straight back.

2419
01:52:36,340 --> 01:52:38,350
That was on the Thursday,

2420
01:52:39,010 --> 01:52:41,830
we heard about it Thursday evening, senior management team.

2421
01:52:42,570 --> 01:52:43,750
And on Friday,

2422
01:52:44,380 --> 01:52:46,190
because the deal had fallen through,

2423
01:52:46,690 --> 01:52:49,150
the creditors were going to meet round the table

2424
01:52:49,850 --> 01:52:52,470
and we'd probably beginning to put into receivership.

2425
01:52:52,890 --> 01:52:56,590
And then on Monday the staff came to work as usual,

2426
01:52:56,940 --> 01:52:58,270
they were called to the atrium

2427
01:52:58,770 --> 01:53:03,270
and Bill Jeffrey gave us the news and Clive didn't even come

2428
01:53:03,570 --> 01:53:07,430
and tell us himself, which I thought was a poor show.

2429
01:53:07,850 --> 01:53:12,550
And so they told us, I'm afraid this is the end of the line.

2430
01:53:13,450 --> 01:53:14,550
You've all lost your jobs.

2431
01:53:15,170 --> 01:53:17,470
And then did the deal with Amstrad, there

2432
01:53:17,470 --> 01:53:18,870
Are people employed at URA Surge

2433
01:53:19,170 --> 01:53:21,510
who have been involved on the, on the distribution marketing

2434
01:53:22,100 --> 01:53:24,150
side of the company who will no longer be needed.

2435
01:53:25,130 --> 01:53:27,150
Do you feel in any way that you are letting them down?

2436
01:53:27,810 --> 01:53:30,030
Uh, well I always feel sad in this, this situation,

2437
01:53:30,050 --> 01:53:31,110
but change occurs.

2438
01:53:31,640 --> 01:53:35,150
Clive and Alan Sugar could not have been more different,

2439
01:53:35,570 --> 01:53:38,990
and yet Clive seemed to have respect for sugar.

2440
01:53:39,220 --> 01:53:43,910
Whereas although Sugar wasn't technically in Clive's League,

2441
01:53:44,530 --> 01:53:47,150
he did know the electronics business

2442
01:53:47,210 --> 01:53:48,830
and electronic retailing.

2443
01:53:49,250 --> 01:53:51,390
And I think Clive had respect for him.

2444
01:53:51,530 --> 01:53:55,070
It gives us a, uh, a new brand name, uh,

2445
01:53:55,250 --> 01:53:58,110
and a new market, um, for what we class

2446
01:53:58,130 --> 01:54:01,470
as the entertainments of the, uh, home computer business.

2447
01:54:02,170 --> 01:54:04,710
Uh, Sinclair, uh, has always been recognized,

2448
01:54:04,710 --> 01:54:07,870
certainly in my mind as the, uh, European, uh,

2449
01:54:08,370 --> 01:54:09,390
uh, market leader.

2450
01:54:12,570 --> 01:54:14,220
This here is the ZX spectrum plus two,

2451
01:54:14,250 --> 01:54:16,660
this is the first computer added sugar release

2452
01:54:16,790 --> 01:54:18,100
after he bought out Sinclair.

2453
01:54:18,100 --> 01:54:20,620
It's got a proper keyboard, got a builtin tape deck,

2454
01:54:20,840 --> 01:54:23,540
and now you've actually got joystick pulse in the side.

2455
01:54:24,160 --> 01:54:26,380
So it really is a kind of an Allin one kit.

2456
01:54:26,820 --> 01:54:28,260
I mean, when Amstrad got 'em,

2457
01:54:28,260 --> 01:54:31,220
basically any pretense at all that still existed

2458
01:54:31,320 --> 01:54:35,220
of it being an something you could do word documents on

2459
01:54:35,220 --> 01:54:36,340
or anything outside

2460
01:54:36,340 --> 01:54:38,540
of games went completely out of the window.

2461
01:54:38,610 --> 01:54:41,260
It's like games, games, games, that's it.

2462
01:54:41,800 --> 01:54:45,020
So with that, the spectrum ended up having a life

2463
01:54:45,150 --> 01:54:48,700
after 1985, another six, seven years.

2464
01:55:02,500 --> 01:55:04,800
And obviously growing up in the uk you're only aware

2465
01:55:04,800 --> 01:55:06,120
of the computers you have around.

2466
01:55:06,220 --> 01:55:09,080
So we had all obviously officials, Sinclairs, et cetera.

2467
01:55:09,300 --> 01:55:11,520
And it wasn't until years later when I started sort

2468
01:55:11,520 --> 01:55:13,560
of looking into things you discover, oh,

2469
01:55:13,560 --> 01:55:15,440
these Timex machines in America.

2470
01:55:15,540 --> 01:55:16,840
Oh, it turns out there are spectrums.

2471
01:55:16,950 --> 01:55:19,280
Then you hear of the Scorpion, which is, uh,

2472
01:55:19,360 --> 01:55:21,160
I believe Russian machine,

2473
01:55:21,160 --> 01:55:23,320
which is basically a hardware clone of the spectrum.

2474
01:55:23,980 --> 01:55:25,800
And then this other clones

2475
01:55:25,800 --> 01:55:27,760
and I, the more you look into it,

2476
01:55:27,760 --> 01:55:29,080
you could go down this rabbit hole

2477
01:55:29,100 --> 01:55:32,440
of obviously Sinclair had made such a sort

2478
01:55:32,440 --> 01:55:34,080
of tightly put together machine

2479
01:55:34,150 --> 01:55:36,480
that it could be relatively easily cloned

2480
01:55:36,480 --> 01:55:38,600
and suddenly everywhere in the world seemed

2481
01:55:38,600 --> 01:55:40,200
to have its own version of the spectrum.

2482
01:55:40,620 --> 01:55:42,880
And many of them, uh, to put it politely,

2483
01:55:43,060 --> 01:55:45,190
not passing any money back to Sinclair.

2484
01:55:45,430 --> 01:55:47,870
I, I think is the, uh, most careful I can put that

2485
01:55:53,880 --> 01:55:56,390
Everything we have here are computers

2486
01:55:56,390 --> 01:55:57,790
that look like normal spectrums,

2487
01:55:57,790 --> 01:55:59,670
but none of them is a normal spectrum.

2488
01:55:59,770 --> 01:56:01,750
We have the famous clone made

2489
01:56:01,750 --> 01:56:05,590
by invest the Invest Spectrum Plus, which is a clone

2490
01:56:05,590 --> 01:56:10,070
that was inspired on the board from the 128 K spectrum.

2491
01:56:10,530 --> 01:56:13,470
We have Arab spectrums, they were made in Egypt.

2492
01:56:13,530 --> 01:56:16,990
The distributor would install a certain switch to be able

2493
01:56:16,990 --> 01:56:19,350
to switch between English or Arab.

2494
01:56:19,610 --> 01:56:20,990
We have French spectrums,

2495
01:56:21,010 --> 01:56:25,670
we have all the Brazilian clones from Mical,

2496
01:56:26,060 --> 01:56:28,870
from uh, CPC, uh, even the Ring,

2497
01:56:28,920 --> 01:56:31,470
which is a very uncommon ZX 81 clone.

2498
01:56:31,810 --> 01:56:34,710
We have, uh, machines from Italy, the Anglo Tutor,

2499
01:56:34,720 --> 01:56:37,870
which is a system to learn English

2500
01:56:38,340 --> 01:56:41,110
that is based on the ZX spectrum, the famous

2501
01:56:41,970 --> 01:56:43,630
ZX spectrum, NTSC.

2502
01:56:43,690 --> 01:56:45,430
So used in the states.

2503
01:56:45,850 --> 01:56:48,430
We also have something that is very, very uncommon.

2504
01:56:48,610 --> 01:56:51,350
The Indian spectrum, the DBE Spectrum Plus.

2505
01:56:51,810 --> 01:56:53,630
And so this is just an idea.

2506
01:56:59,650 --> 01:57:02,390
So this is a ZX spectrum clone called the Aerobic.

2507
01:57:02,620 --> 01:57:04,430
It's interesting that a lot

2508
01:57:04,430 --> 01:57:06,350
of the Russian machines particularly were sort

2509
01:57:06,350 --> 01:57:08,390
of very basic clones of the hardware.

2510
01:57:08,390 --> 01:57:10,950
But as time went on and people got uh, sort

2511
01:57:10,950 --> 01:57:13,350
of more into using it, you ended up with these

2512
01:57:13,420 --> 01:57:17,230
what are effectively expanded machines, um, with, I mean,

2513
01:57:17,230 --> 01:57:18,870
appalling artwork on the front with

2514
01:57:19,140 --> 01:57:21,190
what I think is possibly the worst mascot

2515
01:57:21,190 --> 01:57:22,310
that has ever been created.

2516
01:57:22,470 --> 01:57:25,270
A sort of crushed purple owl, fantastic.

2517
01:57:26,130 --> 01:57:28,670
But inside the actual machine itself,

2518
01:57:29,060 --> 01:57:30,350
genuinely quite impressive.

2519
01:57:31,370 --> 01:57:33,750
The Keyboard is pretty good.

2520
01:57:34,050 --> 01:57:37,630
So this actually has 64 K of Ram, which obviously wasn't,

2521
01:57:37,730 --> 01:57:39,870
uh, set up for this an actual spectrum.

2522
01:57:40,250 --> 01:57:42,030
Uh, you've got the built-in joystick port.

2523
01:57:42,030 --> 01:57:45,350
You've even got a built-in, uh, monitor output for RGB,

2524
01:57:45,350 --> 01:57:47,510
which again is something the spectrum itself,

2525
01:57:47,730 --> 01:57:49,110
the original ones didn't have at the time.

2526
01:57:52,530 --> 01:57:56,630
So this is the Dak Tick m it's a Russian clone,

2527
01:57:56,720 --> 01:57:59,550
which is quite a similar size to the spectrum,

2528
01:57:59,890 --> 01:58:02,510
but it hasn't got the standard ULA,

2529
01:58:02,540 --> 01:58:06,670
it's got a Russian made ULA and it's also got 64 K of Ram,

2530
01:58:06,870 --> 01:58:08,910
although only 48 K are used.

2531
01:58:09,450 --> 01:58:11,070
But it's a cologne.

2532
01:58:11,070 --> 01:58:14,950
Other than that is a Russian spectrum in any ever sense.

2533
01:58:16,630 --> 01:58:17,630
I quite like it.

2534
01:58:22,460 --> 01:58:24,390
It's interesting how far these

2535
01:58:24,390 --> 01:58:25,470
different progressions made.

2536
01:58:25,610 --> 01:58:26,790
And I mean back at home

2537
01:58:26,920 --> 01:58:29,750
after a certain amount of time we'd moved on to sort

2538
01:58:29,750 --> 01:58:31,550
of a more high specs computers.

2539
01:58:31,930 --> 01:58:33,190
But in places like Russia

2540
01:58:33,200 --> 01:58:35,350
where perhaps they didn't have the disposable income

2541
01:58:35,370 --> 01:58:37,430
to keep buying these new posh things,

2542
01:58:37,430 --> 01:58:39,030
which weren't even released over there.

2543
01:58:39,030 --> 01:58:42,100
Anyway, these end up with a much, much longer lifespan,

2544
01:58:42,100 --> 01:58:44,110
which is why you end up with these clones

2545
01:58:44,110 --> 01:58:45,710
with all the extra internals.

2546
01:58:46,060 --> 01:58:48,670
Many of these clones were developed mid nineties.

2547
01:58:48,900 --> 01:58:50,030
Some of them were before,

2548
01:58:50,090 --> 01:58:53,150
but some were also during the mid nineties, which means

2549
01:58:53,380 --> 01:58:55,630
that the spectrum was alive for many,

2550
01:58:55,660 --> 01:58:57,870
many more years than it was year.

2551
01:59:05,090 --> 01:59:07,030
Brazil is an amazing story.

2552
01:59:07,060 --> 01:59:08,110
What they did first

2553
01:59:08,110 --> 01:59:11,870
because of one thing in 1981 in March

2554
01:59:12,540 --> 01:59:14,390
Cove Syno launched ZX 81

2555
01:59:15,010 --> 01:59:18,110
in October, 1981 in Brazil,

2556
01:59:18,160 --> 01:59:22,670
there were already unofficial clones of ZX 81 being sold.

2557
01:59:23,110 --> 01:59:25,990
I have no concept that those computers are actually copied

2558
01:59:26,610 --> 01:59:30,030
or clones from Harvard that existed elsewhere.

2559
01:59:30,390 --> 01:59:33,270
I saw a computer with a brand on it, TK 85, a micro digital.

2560
01:59:33,470 --> 01:59:35,470
I think that, oh, someone came up with this mic.

2561
01:59:35,470 --> 01:59:37,630
Digital was the biggest producer of,

2562
01:59:37,630 --> 01:59:39,110
of this kind of computers in Brazil.

2563
01:59:39,250 --> 01:59:42,510
In Brazil, there was a law called Reserve of Federal,

2564
01:59:42,640 --> 01:59:45,310
which was a kind of a protection mechanism,

2565
01:59:46,290 --> 01:59:49,710
not allowing people to import computers to Brazil.

2566
01:59:49,970 --> 01:59:52,150
Why? They wanted to incentivize the national

2567
01:59:52,870 --> 01:59:53,990
industry to create them.

2568
01:59:54,410 --> 01:59:57,510
So they use their creativity in the best possible way

2569
01:59:57,530 --> 01:59:59,590
to come up with computers locally made.

2570
01:59:59,850 --> 02:00:02,710
And then the spectrum was launched in Brazil

2571
02:00:02,850 --> 02:00:04,390
as the TK 90 X.

2572
02:00:06,570 --> 02:00:10,670
So the concept that this was copied from another company

2573
02:00:10,700 --> 02:00:12,270
with no royalties being paid

2574
02:00:12,450 --> 02:00:16,790
and no authorization to do so, was nonexistent at all.

2575
02:00:17,110 --> 02:00:19,150
I only started to learn about the other

2576
02:00:19,390 --> 02:00:20,950
computers probably a year into it.

2577
02:00:21,080 --> 02:00:25,630
There were 40 million clones developed in South America,

2578
02:00:26,010 --> 02:00:28,950
in Africa, in Eastern Europe, and so on. But

2579
02:00:29,250 --> 02:00:31,070
Trying to set up, uh,

2580
02:00:31,410 --> 02:00:34,950
own wholly owned subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany,

2581
02:00:35,240 --> 02:00:39,830
Spain, and set up exclusive distributors in dozens

2582
02:00:39,830 --> 02:00:43,030
of other countries, and do it quickly, as quickly

2583
02:00:43,130 --> 02:00:44,630
as we needed it to be done.

2584
02:00:45,090 --> 02:00:48,670
But obviously, most of our sales were still in Britain,

2585
02:00:49,650 --> 02:00:53,310
and we didn't saturate any of those markets

2586
02:00:54,290 --> 02:00:57,470
enough to discourage other people from

2587
02:00:57,470 --> 02:00:58,630
coming in with clones.

2588
02:00:59,010 --> 02:01:03,630
We sold 5 million spectrums worldwide, uh, unbelievable,

2589
02:01:03,810 --> 02:01:05,030
uh, sales volume.

2590
02:01:05,250 --> 02:01:09,190
It, and we had 70% of the UK market, um,

2591
02:01:09,250 --> 02:01:10,310
for quite a long time.

2592
02:01:10,850 --> 02:01:13,150
And we had a turnover of a hundred million

2593
02:01:13,150 --> 02:01:14,670
with only a hundred employees.

2594
02:01:14,970 --> 02:01:17,430
The release of the spectrum was huge, is one

2595
02:01:17,430 --> 02:01:19,750
of the cornerstones of the UK computer industry.

2596
02:01:19,860 --> 02:01:22,590
Without doubt, it made a real difference to people.

2597
02:01:23,020 --> 02:01:27,150
It's lovely that a 40 year old computer still has a legacy.

2598
02:01:27,420 --> 02:01:29,550
There's not many early computers

2599
02:01:29,550 --> 02:01:30,910
that can say the same thing.

2600
02:01:30,940 --> 02:01:32,750
Yeah, so it's, it's a nice thing.

2601
02:01:33,290 --> 02:01:36,390
And the spectrum has developed over the years as well.

2602
02:01:36,390 --> 02:01:38,110
We've obviously had the 1 2 8 K models

2603
02:01:38,210 --> 02:01:39,670
and now we've got the spectrum next.

2604
02:01:46,530 --> 02:01:48,710
So this teenager friend of mine, Victor,

2605
02:01:49,210 --> 02:01:51,230
is into hardware ever since we were kids.

2606
02:01:51,570 --> 02:01:55,310
And his passion is about keeping old hardware alive.

2607
02:01:55,770 --> 02:01:58,630
And, uh, his latest creation was this board

2608
02:01:58,630 --> 02:01:59,750
called it the TB blue.

2609
02:02:00,050 --> 02:02:03,190
So you could just buy this board inserted

2610
02:02:03,190 --> 02:02:06,390
inside your old spectrum, and you have everything there.

2611
02:02:06,690 --> 02:02:09,270
So Victor reached out to me then said, Hey,

2612
02:02:09,420 --> 02:02:10,950
this thing's super popular in Brazil.

2613
02:02:10,950 --> 02:02:13,710
Everybody buys it. Do you know someone in the UK

2614
02:02:13,810 --> 02:02:14,990
who could help me out

2615
02:02:15,170 --> 02:02:17,350
and maybe I can sell in the UK as well?

2616
02:02:17,930 --> 02:02:19,870
And I thought of it during the call with Victor

2617
02:02:19,970 --> 02:02:21,950
and I said, you know, Victor, that this won't work

2618
02:02:21,950 --> 02:02:26,790
because the Zac spectrum is this piece of design, this

2619
02:02:27,400 --> 02:02:29,290
full rounded machine, this one thing

2620
02:02:29,290 --> 02:02:30,730
that you get under your Christmas tree

2621
02:02:30,730 --> 02:02:33,090
and you open, you plug it in and it works.

2622
02:02:33,110 --> 02:02:36,290
And that's the memory that everybody has of it.

2623
02:02:36,990 --> 02:02:39,330
The memories of trying to keep this expansion working

2624
02:02:39,430 --> 02:02:40,770
and putting Blue Tech here

2625
02:02:40,770 --> 02:02:43,050
and there, it said, that's not what people want, right?

2626
02:02:43,120 --> 02:02:45,890
They want that thing that you open and the smell

2627
02:02:45,950 --> 02:02:47,330
and the materials and everything.

2628
02:02:47,430 --> 02:02:49,930
So why don't we actually make a computer out of it?

2629
02:02:49,930 --> 02:02:52,890
And while we added it, why don't we make the computer

2630
02:02:52,920 --> 02:02:54,250
that Sinclair never made?

2631
02:02:54,300 --> 02:02:56,530
Maybe we can get the original team to work with us.

2632
02:02:56,540 --> 02:02:58,410
Maybe we can bring in Rick Dickinson.

2633
02:02:58,430 --> 02:03:00,730
And that's how the ZX spectrum next was born, because

2634
02:03:00,730 --> 02:03:04,250
It was designed by the late Rick Dickinson and Phil, and,

2635
02:03:04,470 --> 02:03:06,570
and it just looks amazing.

2636
02:03:06,790 --> 02:03:09,090
We worked on it together, mainly driven by Rick,

2637
02:03:09,170 --> 02:03:11,850
conceptually, because it's his legacy really.

2638
02:03:12,320 --> 02:03:16,330
Rick was asked to redesign it using new technology,

2639
02:03:16,490 --> 02:03:18,730
a new keyboard, how would it look now?

2640
02:03:18,990 --> 02:03:20,050
And this is the result.

2641
02:03:20,150 --> 02:03:22,090
And the keys are the, the main feature.

2642
02:03:22,200 --> 02:03:23,690
They're extraordinary. I love them.

2643
02:03:24,130 --> 02:03:25,450
I really do like those keys.

2644
02:03:26,070 --> 02:03:28,050
The colored plugs on the side are a nod

2645
02:03:28,050 --> 02:03:29,170
to the original rainbow.

2646
02:03:29,590 --> 02:03:31,770
We could not do that. Could we? Really? It

2647
02:03:31,770 --> 02:03:34,970
Looks as you would expect it to have progressed.

2648
02:03:35,070 --> 02:03:38,850
It. It's got the fail of the Sinclair, the brand itself.

2649
02:03:43,070 --> 02:03:46,650
So the ethos behind the ZX spectrum next was that ability

2650
02:03:46,650 --> 02:03:48,450
to take it off the box and use it.

2651
02:03:48,590 --> 02:03:51,290
So we kept everything from the original spectrum

2652
02:03:52,070 --> 02:03:54,810
inside the spectrum next, even the ability to load from tape

2653
02:03:55,230 --> 02:03:57,330
or use it just the way you use it back then.

2654
02:03:57,830 --> 02:03:59,370
And then started to add the layers

2655
02:03:59,470 --> 02:04:02,530
of extra functionalities on top without interfering

2656
02:04:02,530 --> 02:04:04,050
with the backward compatibility

2657
02:04:04,310 --> 02:04:05,310
On the next. You can do

2658
02:04:05,310 --> 02:04:07,810
everything that you could do on

2659
02:04:07,810 --> 02:04:08,890
the original spectrums.

2660
02:04:09,310 --> 02:04:11,330
You can still have your attribute clash if you want it

2661
02:04:11,330 --> 02:04:14,050
as a specky, but it's making it for the next generation

2662
02:04:14,050 --> 02:04:17,370
of kids can pick up and start programming

2663
02:04:17,470 --> 02:04:18,970
and not be stuck by, oh,

2664
02:04:18,970 --> 02:04:20,650
I can't get something moving around on the screen.

2665
02:04:20,670 --> 02:04:21,690
Oh, I'll put that away.

2666
02:04:21,790 --> 02:04:24,570
And I brought the next, it brought back memories

2667
02:04:24,670 --> 02:04:25,770
of my spectrum.

2668
02:04:26,040 --> 02:04:29,410
Days, many hours, many late nights coding,

2669
02:04:30,030 --> 02:04:32,810
but I think the next is in its own league.

2670
02:04:33,480 --> 02:04:34,690
It's really hard to explain.

2671
02:04:34,880 --> 02:04:37,710
It's, it's like going back in time, that magic

2672
02:04:37,780 --> 02:04:39,470
that you had when you were younger,

2673
02:04:39,470 --> 02:04:41,510
when you were first experiment with assembly,

2674
02:04:41,650 --> 02:04:43,110
and it, it's back again.

2675
02:04:43,210 --> 02:04:46,190
You've, you've got a machine, you can start again doing

2676
02:04:46,190 --> 02:04:48,430
that on and, and get that same buzz.

2677
02:04:48,930 --> 02:04:51,270
Oh my God. The difference in quality

2678
02:04:51,690 --> 02:04:53,030
of the Specker games on the next.

2679
02:04:53,220 --> 02:04:55,350
It's something that we all didn't expect,

2680
02:04:56,010 --> 02:04:57,510
and I know we know it's capable,

2681
02:04:58,170 --> 02:05:00,430
but we didn't expect the quality of the games

2682
02:05:00,500 --> 02:05:02,630
that people have been making, even from basic.

2683
02:05:02,850 --> 02:05:05,590
And it, it's, it's been been brilliant.

2684
02:05:05,660 --> 02:05:07,550
It's the whole story of the next.

2685
02:05:07,700 --> 02:05:09,390
It's, it's like I've loved

2686
02:05:09,390 --> 02:05:11,030
every minute of doing the project. A

2687
02:05:11,030 --> 02:05:13,910
Lot of game designers are trying to replicate

2688
02:05:13,940 --> 02:05:15,710
what they did on their 48 k,

2689
02:05:16,170 --> 02:05:18,350
but the next really is bigger than that.

2690
02:05:18,810 --> 02:05:20,590
You can do a lot more on the next,

2691
02:05:20,890 --> 02:05:23,630
and you've got all this extra memory to use.

2692
02:05:23,940 --> 02:05:26,910
Plus you've got the beauty of built-in wifi.

2693
02:05:27,410 --> 02:05:29,430
The eight bit machine isn't dead.

2694
02:05:29,460 --> 02:05:32,270
It's it, it's living on, but this

2695
02:05:32,270 --> 02:05:35,630
Is truly the Specky community, the regional people,

2696
02:05:36,580 --> 02:05:40,950
players, the creators, the fans who come together

2697
02:05:41,330 --> 02:05:43,030
to add small pieces to this project

2698
02:05:43,090 --> 02:05:45,430
and make it all together in a sense.

2699
02:05:46,110 --> 02:05:50,110
I cannot imagine a more original way

2700
02:05:50,170 --> 02:05:52,550
or a more valid way

2701
02:05:52,970 --> 02:05:56,710
of keeping the spectrum alive than the people who enjoy it,

2702
02:05:57,060 --> 02:05:58,190
keeping it that way.

2703
02:06:05,230 --> 02:06:07,830
I think the spectrums remain so popular today

2704
02:06:08,500 --> 02:06:10,830
because it had a certain innocence.

2705
02:06:11,330 --> 02:06:13,990
And obviously we have a nostalgia for anything

2706
02:06:13,990 --> 02:06:15,470
that we played with as kids.

2707
02:06:15,890 --> 02:06:18,350
And like a lot of people, I spent a lot

2708
02:06:18,350 --> 02:06:19,430
of time playing on the spectrum,

2709
02:06:19,990 --> 02:06:21,310
enjoying the games, hours and hours.

2710
02:06:22,330 --> 02:06:24,150
And I think when you look back at those times,

2711
02:06:24,660 --> 02:06:27,750
they're the times that you, you are very nostalgic about

2712
02:06:28,460 --> 02:06:30,590
because they've got a lot of good memories for you.

2713
02:06:31,010 --> 02:06:34,190
And I think particularly these days, we all need a bit

2714
02:06:34,190 --> 02:06:35,790
of those warm, fuzzy memories sometimes.

2715
02:06:36,670 --> 02:06:38,870
I think part of the success of the spectrum was due

2716
02:06:38,870 --> 02:06:39,990
to the, the price,

2717
02:06:40,010 --> 02:06:41,110
but also the wow factor

2718
02:06:41,130 --> 02:06:43,670
of the unboxing really is just like a unique unboxing.

2719
02:06:43,730 --> 02:06:45,430
It was also such a neat little package

2720
02:06:45,690 --> 02:06:47,510
and people fell in love with its personality

2721
02:06:47,530 --> 02:06:50,350
and its rubber keys, but also that it drove creativity.

2722
02:06:50,530 --> 02:06:52,950
And if you spoke this language, which I never did,

2723
02:06:53,170 --> 02:06:54,990
it must have been so liberating.

2724
02:06:55,050 --> 02:06:58,350
It must have felt like the thrill I got from playing a game

2725
02:06:58,580 --> 02:07:00,590
with, which had a sense of adventure and discovery.

2726
02:07:00,590 --> 02:07:02,990
Imagine if you discovered a whole new language

2727
02:07:02,990 --> 02:07:05,950
that allowed you to control events

2728
02:07:06,130 --> 02:07:07,390
on a screen in front of you.

2729
02:07:07,790 --> 02:07:09,310
I think there's so much love for the spectrum today

2730
02:07:09,310 --> 02:07:13,110
because it's a quintessentially British thing.

2731
02:07:13,590 --> 02:07:15,470
I mean that rainbow stripe on the bottom right, might

2732
02:07:15,470 --> 02:07:16,630
as well be a union jack, right?

2733
02:07:17,580 --> 02:07:22,070
It's so British and so uniquely us.

2734
02:07:22,770 --> 02:07:25,110
And it was made by a bloke from Cambridge

2735
02:07:25,250 --> 02:07:27,230
who was a bit posh, and he was ginger

2736
02:07:27,570 --> 02:07:30,670
and he was knighted by a queen, a knighthood.

2737
02:07:31,130 --> 02:07:32,710
That's the spectrum experience.

2738
02:07:34,060 --> 02:07:36,950
Show me an experience like that from another country. Well,

2739
02:07:36,950 --> 02:07:38,230
There's something very British about it.

2740
02:07:38,230 --> 02:07:41,510
The fact that it was assembled in Dundee, like,

2741
02:07:41,510 --> 02:07:42,710
we like to do things differently.

2742
02:07:42,940 --> 02:07:44,670
This is an entirely different machine.

2743
02:07:45,130 --> 02:07:46,430
The way it looked, the way it

2744
02:07:46,430 --> 02:07:47,670
worked, you know, it was different.

2745
02:07:48,050 --> 02:07:50,830
And I don't think there was so much fanfare about him being

2746
02:07:50,900 --> 02:07:52,670
British as opposed to

2747
02:07:52,670 --> 02:07:55,070
what was happening in North America when it came

2748
02:07:55,070 --> 02:07:57,430
to technology, because lots of people, uh, like to claim

2749
02:07:57,430 --> 02:07:59,150
that the games industry started in America.

2750
02:07:59,370 --> 02:08:00,590
But, uh, we know better.

2751
02:08:02,190 --> 02:08:06,270
I think of him as a boffin who understood

2752
02:08:06,500 --> 02:08:07,910
what was important to people

2753
02:08:08,410 --> 02:08:10,870
and how he could bring the future

2754
02:08:11,740 --> 02:08:14,150
into their lives at a decent price.

2755
02:08:14,650 --> 02:08:18,990
So although he was pilloried a lot for his eccentricity,

2756
02:08:19,290 --> 02:08:21,790
it was exactly that which allowed him

2757
02:08:21,790 --> 02:08:23,670
to have such crazy ambition

2758
02:08:23,670 --> 02:08:27,350
and crazy thoughts that resulted in people like me

2759
02:08:27,370 --> 02:08:29,350
and hundreds of thousands of others

2760
02:08:29,920 --> 02:08:32,430
benefiting from his genius of

2761
02:08:33,270 --> 02:08:35,150
democratizing this amazing technology.

2762
02:08:35,620 --> 02:08:39,710
Rick was very generous with praise where it was warranted,

2763
02:08:40,010 --> 02:08:43,310
and he had nothing but praise for Clive Sinclair.

2764
02:08:43,460 --> 02:08:46,510
From his perspective, he owed his first step up a ladder

2765
02:08:46,730 --> 02:08:48,990
for his career to Clive Sinclair.

2766
02:08:49,130 --> 02:08:51,270
He was very protective of Clive

2767
02:08:51,570 --> 02:08:54,190
and really didn't like the negative press

2768
02:08:54,250 --> 02:08:55,430
he got the mocking.

2769
02:08:55,720 --> 02:08:59,070
Clive was an innovator. You need these people.

2770
02:08:59,070 --> 02:09:02,190
They're the engines of industry people that are prepared

2771
02:09:02,190 --> 02:09:03,630
to take a risk, stick their neck out.

2772
02:09:03,630 --> 02:09:05,630
You don't get new products without risk takers.

2773
02:09:06,250 --> 02:09:09,830
And Clive Sinclair, from Rick's perspective,

2774
02:09:10,610 --> 02:09:13,030
was a risk taker in the best way.