When did the Spectrum scene hit rock bottom?

[Bolton80]

Lately I've been compiling year by year folders of games to use on on DIVMMC. The commercial years 1982-1992 are obviously PACKED with releases, which trailed off quickly afterwards. By the time I got to 1997 I was struggling to find 10 English language games worthy of even downloading. 90% of what's listed on ZXDB around this time is demos, which might appeal to some people, but doesn't interest me in the slightest. The games I could find were often lazy homebrews of things like Tetris. I found trawling through this period quite depressing to be honest.

At some point in the 2000s the quality and quantity of releases clearly picked up and we now have a solid stream of quality releases again. I haven't dived into the 2000-2009 period yet, so can't pinpoint when the resurgence started.

What do you consider the darkest period for the Scectrum and why?

[stupidget]

The miserable days of WoS

[HEXdidnt]

Oh, that's easy: for me, personally, it was when the last of the Spectrum-specific magazines ceased publication, when the multiformat mags stopped covering Spectrum games and, finally, when the last of the publishers stopped supporting the Spectrum.

The decline started when the 8-bit Sega and Nintendo consoles took off, and deepened when 16-bit formats emerged.

[Vampyre]

It's a difficult one to say really - and I have a feeling a lot of members will be similar to mine. I never really felt it hit rock bottom as I simply moved onto the 16-bits and left the Speccy behind. Got an ST in late 88 and other than Chase HQ in late 1989 I never really used the Speccy again until I started emulating in the mid-90s.

I suppose one rock bottom would be when Crash became a pamphlet. It was heart-breaking to see a once-great magazine reduced to that.

I feel you're talking about games rather than the "Spectrum scene" as a whole, but the start of the WOS Infoseek update debacle and what that snowballed into is the darkest period of the scene for me. The only good things to come from it all was ZXDB and this very site. But it created two factions essentially, although many of us on here bridge the two. Some people showed their true colours in this period.

[Wall_Axe]

I liked mountains of ket on the pamphlets front cover at least and did enjoy having loadsa games on the tape.
But that's when I knew it was time to move on , and start buying C+VG.
I was probably using my older brother's st around then as well.

[Quazar]

Oh, that's easy: for me, personally, it was when the last of the Spectrum-specific magazines ceased publication, when the multiformat mags stopped covering Spectrum games and, finally, when the last of the publishers stopped supporting the Spectrum.

It was a dark day when I saw the last issue of Your Sinclair, at double the price with no cover cassette, sitting on the shelf in John Menzies in 1993.

[Ralf]

The worst time in UK was probably around 1993-2003. It was the time when commercial era already ended and homebrew era hasn't started yet.

However you must remember that at the same time Spectrum clones flourished in Russia and it was its prime time there, with many interesting stuff released (although the language may be certainly a barrier).

I would say the second life of Zx Spectrum in UK, Spain and many countries began when people got internet connection at home and could read and browse forums and inspire each other. It happened around 2000-2005 as I said. Getting good tools for game development was also a thing which didn't happen immediately, but just in the 2000s.

[TMD2003]

I've been meaning to write a Rich Pelley-esque deep dive into The Ages Of The Spectrum, comparing it with the fortunes of Red Dwarf and Iron Maiden, because they all have much the same phases. I'd put it this way:

1980-81: The era of the Spectrum's predecessors, the ZX80 and ZX81. I won't mention the watches or the calculators, or the MK14.
BOUNDARY: 23 April 1982, the release of the Spectrum.
1982-85: The 48K years - should be self-explanatory, right? Covers the period from the Issue 1 Spectrum to the Spectrum+.
BOUNDARY: 1985 in Spain, 1986 in Britain, i.e. the release of the 128K Spectrum.
1986-93: The 128K and Amstrad years - note that these could be further divided from 1986-89 and 1990-93 with the second half being where the number of releases tailed off.
BOUNDARY: the final commercial game release in Britain and the final issue of Your Sinclair.
1994-2002: The Wilderness Years, where the Spectrum shuffled off to a quiet retirement in Russia and other Eastern European countries; they will see this period very differently. The majority of significant Crash Smash-worthy releases will be from Russia; some will be translated into English. Anything coming from the English-speaking world is near-inevitably a hack of Manic Miner or JSW, or a CSSCGC entry.
BOUNDARY: Late 2002, the foundation of Cronosoft.
2003-2008: The Reawakening Years - where homebrew games started emerging from Britain and Spain again, in small numbers, via Cronosoft, Computer Emuzone and the like
BOUNDARY: ...badly defined, but there's a significant difference in the number of releases in 2008 and 2009, as I found out when I was trying to make a compilation of "modern" (post-1993) games in 2017...
2009-2018: The Homebrew Era, where there was a sudden explosion in new Spectrum releases that never slowed down, possibly due to some of those who'd been away from the scene to bring up kids had seen them off to university (or down t' pit or in t' factory, but leaving "home" nonetheless) and who now had some spare time to dedicate to their favourite hobby from 30 years previously.
BOUNDARY: the emergence of Spectrum programmers on itch.io...
2019 to the present: The New Commercial Era - with the prevalence of new Spectrum releases being sold on itch.io and people being willing to part with their hard-earned pennies once again for digital downloads; paid-for software such as that of Cronosoft was the exception rather than the rule in the previous two eras, and the cost was mainly because it came on a real tape.

Some time ago I looked through the WOS archives - while they were still languishing at "last updated February 2013" - to see which year had the least amount of actual games made that year, not counting CSSCGC entries. Quite a few of them in The Wilderness Years were magazine-type-in quality, written in BASIC - such as anything from XFAWORLD Software. Quite a few more were the product of Lazslo Nyitrai and are written in Hungarian, a language damn near impenetrable for anyone outside Hungary.

And I found the year that I am putting as the nadir for the Spectrum, at least from a UK-centric point of view.

Some planes hit some towers in New York, and 'MURICA has been ripping itself apart ever since as to who did it. (Yes, they're still arguing.) Britain (not Northern Ireland) gained a new car registration plate system. And News Mommy was born. (Yes, she really is that young. Mrs Cooper was still heavily pregnant when the first event in this paragraph happened.) Arthur C. Clarke had something to say about this year as well.

[Mpk]

the darkest period for the Spectrum

The darkest period so far

[SteveSmith]

Like many others magazine memories posted here, I remember walking into WH Smiths and seeing SU for sale around 1992. Since I'd upgraded to an Amiga about a year before, I was surprised that it was still going, and a pale shadow of it's former self. Like other mags, it was heartbreaking to see what they were like now compared to when the Spectrum was at its height in the golden age of mid-80's, and the end of an era.

Back on topic though, let's not forget that comp.sys.sinclair was relatively popular in the mid-late 90's, so although there was no commercial activity, the Spectrum was still being talked about and emulators being created. I remember when I first ran MM on an emulator on my PC, I was delighted it was still possible to play the games.

[bluespikey]

The darkest period so far

Ooof. Probably true. One day I'll be boring my grandchildren about my Spectrum in the same way my grandparents bored me about the joys of sticks and hoops. And they'll be looking at me, in the same way I looked at my grandparents, thinking 'Wow, you were just as crap as children as you are old people'. But I'll still love it.

[ionut76]

In Romania, Spectrum's golden age was between 1990 and 1995. Before 1990, during the communist regime, very few people had access to such a computer. The electronics industry produced a few hundred computers a year starting (I think) in 1985, but they were intended for research institutes, universities, etc. After 1990, several magazines such as hobBIT and RamTOP appeared, a lot of utility programs and games, but most of them are in Romanian, some in English. In Romania we had the clones HC 85, 90, 91 and 2000, CIP 01, 02 and 03, JET, TimS, Cobra. These computers are pictured here: https://retroit.ro/product-category/cal ... romanesti/. Personally, although I actively participated in software production and regularly went to meetings at a dedicated club, I did not have an original computer, but HC, CIP and JET clones. Currently there are a few passionate and nostalgic users, but the Spectrum phenomenon has almost completely died out.
Not really related to the topic, but it is interesting:
About making computers in Romania: first one was assembled in 1957: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIFA_(computer), other in 1961 in Timisoara: https://www.rciusa.info/post/romania-s- ... one-object ,

[PQR]

The miserable days of WoS

This. The moment when my favourite forum became a neglected mess dominated by a clan of self-absorbed, ban hammer wielding jerks.
I didn't follow the Speccy scene for years afterwards until I discovered this place.

[blucey]

The Vega era.

[Pegaz]

This. The moment when my favourite forum became a neglected mess dominated by a clan of self-absorbed, ban hammer wielding jerks.
I didn't follow the Speccy scene for years afterwards until I discovered this place.

Actually you didn't miss too much.
The culmination of all those events at wos happened sometime during November 2017, after which the first group of us moved here.
Spectrum Computing forum was still a deserted place then, but I was quite sure that it would work, because the true spirit of the old wos forum from Martjin's time continued to live here.
I'm glad to say, that I have the same feeling, almost six years later...

[equinox]

... What do you consider the darkest period for the Scectrum and why?

This is a pretty brave question, 'cause you don't come on the ZX forum and say "your machine was dead by 1993", but it was, really. I personally remember seeing the last high-street magazines some time in 1992 (the one with Playdays on the cover, an educational game! -- sticks with me).

Could the darkest time have been early days? Before we had commercial setup? No, surely not, that was exciting and alive, everybody wanted to make something. We have to look to the end.

Anyway, in those mid-90s I swapped magazines and floppy disks with a lot of Euro nerds, and saw lots of cool stuff (particularly from Poland and Czech Republic). So the scene was alive, and people still loved the machine, and there were lots of interesting (and interested) zines. That's not a dark period either. And after that: emulators improved, and people slowly realised that they missed their 8-bits (do you remember the Guardian newspaper's Connected subsection -- mostly about the Internet -- having a Speccy piece? -- I remember).

Speccy dying commercially wasn't the end, and wasn't the worst. I'm going to be controversial and say that the "darkest period" was like 1986. Everyone will say "WHAT?? THIS WAS THE BEST TIME" -- Yeah some of the best stuff appeared. But it wasn't a new machine any more and we were mostly getting boring copies of coin-ops, etc., and cute original ideas (Automata) couldn't afford to publish any more. And it was even less boring than the post-commercial era (1993+) where we saw interesting and cool games from ex-USSR, etc.

The dark period was 1986. Fight me.

[equinox]

marry me btw

I've been meaning to write a Rich Pelley-esque deep dive into The Ages Of The Spectrum, comparing it with the fortunes of Red Dwarf and Iron Maiden, because they all have much the same phases. I'd put it this way: [ . . . 50 paragraphs of joy . . . ]

[equinox]

Ooof. Probably true. One day I'll be boring my grandchildren about my Spectrum in the same way my grandparents bored me about the joys of sticks and hoops. And they'll be looking at me, in the same way I looked at my grandparents, thinking 'Wow, you were just as crap as children as you are old people'. But I'll still love it.

"Grand-daddy, is it true that your great-grand-daddy was a human? Like made out of meat??"
"As an AI language model I cannot...

[catmeows]

One day, one of us, will realize he is the last member of this forum still being alive.

[Ralf]

One day, one of us, will realize he is the last member of this forum still being alive.

He may not realize it, being in advanced dementia and believing he's living in the 80s again

[catmeows]

[catmeows]

Thought I suspect, few of you would need quite spacious crypt, if all your sinclairs should buried with your body

Back to topic - rock bottom is the time between end of Spectrum as primary home computer and start of emulation scene. So perhaps 1993 to very late 90s (RealSpectrum was released in 2000, I think).

[TMD2003]

marry me btw

If you can get hold of the Red Dwarf DNA transmogrification machine and morph into a near-unbelievable hybrid of Rose Leslie, Emilia Clarke and Sarah-n-Tuned...

...no, I still couldn't do it. I require solitude 90+% of the time to function, and married couples do not work that way, even those who have been manacled together for 50 years and just growl at each other and hope their hearing aids aren't turned on...

One day, one of us, will realize he is the last member of this forum still being alive.

We have two, at least, born in the 21st Century. Barring a major catastrophe, the forum will die first.

Serious point, though: my grandad cancelled his membership to Essex County Cricket Club in his late 70s because most of his friends had died and he'd usually be there on his own, or at least with a bunch of strangers - and even in the early 1990s, County Championship matches weren't well attended, being held on work days for the under-65s, so having a critical mass of similarly-interested, and preferably similarly-aged friends was essential.

We may (mostly) be a generation that could reasonably expect to live beyond 80, rather than conk out at just beyond retirement age (or get blown to bits in a war...) but it will happen to us, eventually.

What a delightful note to finish on. Enough misery. High Score Challenge, anyone? I'll set a time for finishing Blood & Guts and you can all try and beat it.

[flatduckrecords]

Thought I suspect, few of you would need quite spacious crypt, if all your sinclairs should buried with your body

One that’s about the width of an Amstrad CPC464 should do it!

[equinox]

He may not realize it, being in advanced dementia and believing he's living in the 80s again

I would pay for this