What is the real market for a new ZX Spectrum Next magazine?

With the Sinclair-branded ZX Spectrum Next being a highly capable and enhanced 8-bit micro computer, is there really a market for printed matter publications covering it exclusively?

One of my favourite magazines from the 1980s, despite being mostly a Commodore C64 user and fanboy, was Your Sinclair (YS), clearly an highly intellectual and serious magazine aimed at the brainy kids. Of course, I couldn't count myself in the latter category, but the carefully designed and well thought out content still somehow appealed to me. From 2002, the 20th year of the C64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum, I became a freelance writer, and I think then in 2004 (from Tuesday, May 4th as I recall), I was briefly a staffer at Retro Gamer. To my delight, I was lucky enough to work on the YS tribute issue, the famous issue 94 which, despite some minor grumblings, seemed to hit the spot with its design and obviously verbose and articulate content.

Of course, since 2004 a lot has changed in the Speccy scene, and nothing more notable in my opinion than the Speccy Next computer. Although it feels unfinished to me in many regards, it is clearly a clever piece of kit that does a lot more than just what a Spectrum did (kind of like any computer running a good emulator, but, you know, different). Ironically, I suspect that many of these 'ere new snazzy features are largely unused, and most people are either using their Next machines as a modern days and reliable ZX Spectrum that can use new television sets, or purely as an investment. After all, there aren't more than 10,000 units produced, and I suspect around half as many owners. This excludes other Next solutions and emulation, which although I've not looked into too greatly, I'm sure exist.

And with the launch of The Spectrum, from Retro Games Ltd, I suspect many people have reboxed their expensive Next machines to use The Spectrum instead, which is mass produced and cheaper to replace, and has that lovely rubber feel. Ohh... Rubber... Anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Err... sorry about that.

So, although I'm not a maths surgeon, let's try to work out how successful or not a dedicated Speccy Next magazine might be, should one launch, with some estimates based on what we know about just the Next by itself and not any other clones or emulators. The original KickStarter had 3,113 backers, plus some units were sold through the official site, so let's say that number is 4,000. The second kickstarter had 5,236 backers, but again some units, as far as I can tell, also sold through the official site, so let's say that there are around 5,500 of the V2 units about (some apparently a brilliant white), we're not far off my 10,000 estimate above, but we'll use that figure for the easiness of the calculations.

With anything in life, there is usually between 10 - 20% of people who seem to be somewhat evangelical about this thing or that, and some Next owners I've come across have this unwavering love for the Next, and any modest criticism of it isn't welcome to their ears or eyes. So, if we assume that there are ~10,000 Next owners, which there aren't - as many people backed both Kickstarter campaigns - that would mean a market for any magazine of around 2,000 readers if we assume that 20% of those 10,000 are real fanboys. That's a pretty good number to be selling a printed magazine for such a niché product in 2025 in my opinion. However, the true number will be fewer than half of that.

As I mentioned, many people backed both KickStarter campaigns, so the likely number of Next owners is more likely to be closer to 5,000 (remembering that we are of course excluding here other solutions through FPGA and such). Still, ~1,000 sales can't be bad if we assume 20% of users subscribing or otherwise regularly procuring such printed matter. But I still think this is a little high as an estimate. Whatever my conjecture is, this is a very generous upper end of how many magazines might sell into this market on an issue by issue basis. The true number is likely to be fewer than 500, because most users are likely using the Next as nothing more than a Speccy, and are probably much more interested in actual real ZX Spectrum content over the niceties that the Next offers. Plus, other than making Speccy games look better, the Next isn't opening up a whole world of other possibilities for most users. And there are only so far 62 exclusive pieces of software available for it, according to the official site as of 2025-01-31. How much content one is able to generate out of only 62 pieces of software is therefore somewhat questionable, or at least it is to me. Kind of like when Future Publishing kept publishing Commodore Format (CF), but had nothing new to write about, so many of the issues at that time covered Mayhem in Monsterland again, and again. Sure, it was a fine game, and thankfully the magazine was saved when Psytronik Software and other upstarts like Electric Boys Entertainment Software and Visualize Software released and promised new games. But at least that CF was still selling in the thousands back then. Something that no dedicated Speccy Next magazine could ever do. Not in printed form anyway.

Bring back the personal computer

Or is it back already?

I've now been exposed to video games and computering technologies for almost as long as I've been alive, which is nearly five decades at the time of writing, so won't be any fewer decades by the time you, my dear reader, are scrutinising yet another of my blog posts. As you can guess, I've seen lots of different technologies, from the Binatone Pong styled games, to the Texas TI99/4a (a robots game that I don't remember the name of) to the most modern days whatever it is that my favourite daughter plays on these ere games consoles.

Mentioning games consoles, I was never a fan. Whilst I saw some use of pocket or portable systems, the Atari Lynx, for instance, has allowed me many hours of escapism over the years. But dedicated consoles? Where was the keyboard? And why make such obviously powerful and useful technologies difficult to program? Okay, so I get the point that because home computers like the Sinclair and Commodore offerings could be programmed by anyone meant that whilst there was an abundance of software, that didn't mean you got quality releases. The big N, with its zealous control over releases for it's so-called Entertainment Systems might not boast nearly as many games as the working class ZX Spectrum, or the slightly more upmarket Commodore C64 - and even the "flash in the pan" VIC-20 managed nearly as many releases - at least each release was of a certain quality, right? I also found it rather puzzling that the company that rhymes with Tintendo (or that's how someone from t'north of England might pronounce it, well almost) had to have "official" magazines too, but as a scholar of Professor Marshall McLuhan, I know what he meant with his "The Medium is the Message" theory. Put a seal of quality on your game boxes, and then publish glossy literature to say how quality those quality releases are. Clever.

For me, the computer was always King, until the market stopped producing personal computers and started making the same thing in a different box, allowing monopolisation to take over so that ultimately corporations could benefit from the fact that the office computer was now also essentially the home computer (and also the dangers of that being the case too). But before I blame IBM or whoever for monopolisation, this happened early on in the UK market too, one might argue. Britain produced many computer systems in the early 1980s; offerings from Tangerine with its Oric, Memotech, Dragon Data, Acorn and Sinclair were just some of the companies slugging it out, and one might conclude that Sinclair won the first round, but was then absorbed into Amstrad. At least some plurality survived through the 1980s and into the early 1990s though. And Apple are still a thing today. At least it was there at the start thanks to the technical genius of Steve Wozniak. But Apple has mainly pioneered the high consumer price point, finding a niche that the standard PC could not compete in. The same could have been for the Amiga and Atari ST but for some dubious decisions at Commodore and Atari Corp. The Amiga was way ahead of the market when it came to graphics, and shouldn't have let that one slip, but somehow it did.

Anyway, I started this post thinking I'd write about one thing, and through some mental meandering I end up in a completely different place. I guess this happens sometimes. Like many of you, I miss the days when computers were more joyful and personal, and different machines had different strengths or weaknesses. The Amstrad CPC range for instance had... well I'm unable to think of any strengths for that particular system. But I found an entertaining 10 line BASIC game for the ZX81, which was a simple memory game. Of course, because it was BASIC, I had to do my refactoring to reduce the number of BASIC bytes it was using, then I made it so that the screen cleared between each level without adding a new line number, because that for me is what I love about computers. Or at least the computers from the 1980s. I'd say "bring back the personal computer", but in many cases some people already have; the MEGA 65, Ultimate64 Elite, Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next, Omni 128/128HD and the various offerings from Retro Games Ltd, such as THE400 Mini and THEA500 Mini (although neither have a working keyboard as standard, something I grumbled about above with games consoles, a USB keyboard is easy enough to add).

Want some more Culture in your Gaming life?

So full of content, you'll hear people say "I never knew there was so much in it!"

A promising development in the world of printed matter, especially for those with a pre-disposition for video gaming, is the announcement and campaign launch of Gaming Culture (GC), a magazine that promises to be for gamers and by gamers. Our hobby, the escapism and brain flexing offered by this form of personal entertainment is after all pretty important; it defines one's character and has for many of us been a life changer. And whilst I was always a programmer first, programming is itself a game; trying to create something to hold the attention of another human, to present someone else with a challenge in the form of a puzzle to solve, or (in my case) a short "arcadey" type reaction game of some ilk. Sadly, many of my efforts in the 1980s were written in BASIC, but one has to say that even with this being the case, I still managed some level of playability. With my slowly diminishing memories, I may try to recreate some of those games I made as a child at some point. I can still recall some of them which were recorded onto cassette tapes that I had nicked from my father, much to his distain when he found out.

GC will be a 96 page affair, brimming with excellent gaming content being from the creative mind of That Retro Video Gamer, the redoubtable Chris Thacker. Rather than regurgitate the full KickStarter campaign here, below is all of the information that you need, in a lovely iframe. Just click below to be taken to the campaign, and please consider backing it if you are able to.

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Finally, we are nearing kick-off

Gaming culture will get a boost from Gaming Culture

It has been in the works for a while now, and eluded to and hinted about on social media such as the BookFace, and on the Your Sinclair Magazine website. But what am I talking about here?

Soon, on the crowd-funding KickStarter (KS) portal, a new campaign for a printed-matter publication about gaming culture, called Gaming Culture, will launch. And, unlike some other modern days magazines, it'll do exactly what it says on the cover.

From the official announcement over on the KS site, it promises a kick in the joystick! Yikes! Chris Thacker, known as "That Retro Video Gamer" is the man with the plan; he is bringing together a collection of talent from Popular Retro, and a once popular Amiga-related publication that isn't Amiga Addict. In short, it'll be a gaming magazine with more byte.

It seems like it's time for me to un-retire from writing and focus on articles for a magazine again. At least for a couple of issues, and depending on editorial demand for my work of course (as Andrew Merman once quipped, "it's a little more complicated than that"). That's if the campaign gets funded by you lovely people. But please note that my involvement or interest in this project does not mean it's going to focus on retro gaming. As far as I can tell, Chris has no interest in competing with Retro Gamer for that market. From some of the early content that I've seen, it'll be all formats and all eras, no matter how niché. In short, if its happening, it'll get some coverage.

If you are keen to hear more about this, you may follow Chris on the Twitter, and some updates may also appear here too. Stay tuned for more.

What the Internet thinks about the classic Monty on the Run, for the Commodore C64

As an experiment, I asked an AI to write me a review of the game Monty on the Run, for the Commodore C64. Here is the results of that. I'm now pondering if this is the future of blogging? I think not.

Game Review: Monty on the Run (Commodore C64/128)

In the pantheon of classic gaming on the Commodore 64, few titles shine as brightly as Monty on the Run. Released in 1985 by Gremlin Graphics, this platformer caught the attention of gamers with its charming characters, engaging gameplay, and a whimsical story that seamlessly combined adventure with arcade-style action.

Story and Characters

At the heart of Monty on the Run, players take the role of Monty Mole — an adorable, cheeky character who is trying to escape the clutches of an oppressive warden. The game begins with a comical premise: Monty has stolen some treasures and needs to make his getaway while evading various obstacles in the form of guards, traps, and other hazards. This straightforward narrative effectively gives players a purpose—helping Monty secure his freedom, while also navigating the colorful environments that Teal - the game's designer, created with much love.

The charm of Monty, coupled with the humorous storyline, immerses players in a whimsical world where every level provides a fresh challenge and an opportunity to explore. The game does particularly well in developing Monty’s character, as players find themselves rooting for his success.

Gameplay and Mechanics

Monty on the Run is a delightfully challenging platformer that introduces players to different environments, with each level filled with hazards and enemies to avoid. The gameplay is fluid, with Monty capable of running, jumping, and climbing. Players will need to acquire various items to progress through the levels, including keys, which serve to unlock different sections of the game.

The controls are responsive, allowing for precise movements, which is crucial as players navigate tricky platforms and leap over hazards. The game rewards exploration, as finding hidden items can lead to powerful upgrades and unlockables. The levels are designed thoughtfully, with varying degrees of difficulty that cater to both novices and seasoned gamers alike.

One of the game’s standout features is its design. With imaginative level layouts and a diverse range of obstacles — from conveyor belts to swinging hammers — the game keeps players on their toes. Each stage presents new mechanics and foes, adding to the challenges that players must master.

Graphics and Sound

Visually, Monty on the Run is stunning for an 8-bit title. The colorful graphics showcase charming sprites that bring the quaintly absurd world of Monty to life. The backgrounds are vibrantly colored, enhancing the platforming experience. The level designs are packed with personality, providing an array of environments — from bustling mines to watery caves — that not only serve as the backdrop but also play a role in the gameplay.

The sound design complements the visuals beautifully. The catchy chiptune soundtrack sets a playful tone, evoking a sense of adventure every time Monty sets out to conquer new levels. Although simplistic, the sound effects are satisfying, perfectly accentuating actions like jumping, collecting items, and defeating enemies.

Challenges and Replayability

While Monty on the Run can be forgiving at times, it does require a level of skill and patience, particularly in later levels where the challenge ramps up significantly. Players will need to learn from their mistakes and refine their strategies, which adds a layer of engagement to the experience.

Moreover, the game features continues that allow players to retry levels — while this is a handy feature, it’s the exploration of the various adaptabilities of Monty that keeps players engaged. There is a sense of accomplishment in discovering all the hidden treasures and secrets, making the game highly replayable.

Final Thoughts

Overall, Monty on the Run for the Commodore 64 is a stand-out title that remains beloved by retro gamers. Its combination of engaging gameplay, charming graphics, and an endearing story make it a wonderful platformer that leaves a lasting impression. With a rating of 8.5/10, it is certainly a game worthy of revisiting, providing endless hours of nostalgic fun for both seasoned and new players alike. Monty's quirky adventure continues to resonate, proving that even in the realm of vintage gaming, this title stands the test of time.

Overall rating: 8.5/10

It's serious stuff.

One thing that Your Sinclair magazine was known for, some say renowned for, was it's utter seriousness. It was an Adultish magazine, for sensible, serious people. Wasn't it?

Recently, on the BookFace, someone borrowed an excerpt that I nicked from Archive.org. It was a small piece entitled "True Spectrum Facts", written by the redoubtable and talented author Dan Whitehead, who is certainly one of the best wordsmiths I've worked with, as I've adumbrated elsewhere in this blog.

For convenience, here are those true Spectrum facts, as published with Retro Gamer issue number nine, which went on sale on a no doubt sunny Tuesday of October 26th 2004. Well, the mag probably brightened up someone's day at least.

True Spectrum Facts

1. Army Moves was originally based on TV sitcom Duty Free, before Keith Barron refused to co-operate. The main sprite was redesigned as a jeep and the rest, as they say, is history.
2. The idea for the famous rubber keys came about when Sir Clive was absent-mindedly working on his keyboard and accidentally started typing on his dog's eyes.
3. TV "I don't believe it" funnyman Richard Wilson designed the mole sprite in Nodes of Yesod.
4. If all the Spectrums in the world were piled on top of each other, it would fall down.
5. The ZX in ZX Spectrum stands for Zoological Xodus, the name of Sir Clive's thrash metal band.
6. The Speccy was banned in Austria where the word "Spectrum" literally means "Haddock arse confusion"
7. In a bid to capitalise on playground slang, a Speccy with four eyes was developed. But then they flushed it down the bog and nicked it's lunch.
8. The "K" in 48K does not actually stand for "Kilobyte" - it's a reference to the number of times Manuel uttered his hilarious catchphrase in Fawlty Towers.
9. From issue 11 through to 23, Your Sinclair (YS) was printed on human skin in accordance with the Necronomicon.
10. We don't know if hunky movie star Colin Farrell is a Speccy fan. "Feck off, yer eejits!" the shag-happy actor shouted, as he sped off on his golden swan.
11. The special effects for the 1985 BBC series Chocky's Children were mostly done on a Spectrum. Mostly.
12. The fourth Horace game, entitled Horace Goes Dogging, was banned by Mary Whitehouse.
13. If cuddly Animal Magic presenter Johnny Morris had done a voice for the Spectrum, it would have been a highpitched squeaky voice, not unlike perpetual irritant Joe Pasquale.
14. In Friday the 13th Part IV The Final Chapter, Jason Voorhees kills a topless girl by shoving a DK'Tronics lightpen in each ear.
15. Because of union rules, the part of Benjamin Sisko in Deep Space Nine was played by the wizard from Atic Atac.
16. Geese have no concept of Spectrums, though they are excellent at Daley Thompson's Decathlon. Because of the fast beaks, you see.
17. Benny from ABBA is still stuck on the Sherlock text adventure after twenty years. The daft Swede.

Now, whether this small piece of silliness is funny or not is entirely up to you, my dear reader. But one of the BookFace comments was that this is all just childish. You know who you are. Let's examine that for a moment. Childish? Surely it's not childish? (You forgot to insert the "...and don't call me Shirley" joke here - Ed).

To provide some context, we need to remember the world of the 1980s, when the famous and very serious YS was at its height. Great Britain and her allies were in the grips of the Cold War against the Soviet Union (and back then, political leaders actually tried to stop an alliance between Russia and China, not ensure that one happens as today's happless and incompetent politicians have). Germany was not yet a singular and united sovereign state, and the battle axe Margaret Thatcher was overseeing the demise of, or (depending on your political point of view) the improvements of, the United Kingdom, by allowing Capitalists to busily export good manufacturing jobs to be replaced with insecure and low paid service sector jobs. These were very different times when there was still a significant number of black and white television sets in use. Some of you may even remember that a black and white television licence was cheaper than a colour television licence? Blimey, it's an age ago, isn't it?

If this is making you feel old, then my apologies. But as I like to say, at least we got here. What of YS in the midst of all of this? Well, this epic publication wasn't wasting any time on any childish stuff, you see. Whilst the comedic periodical known as Sinclair User was busy doing actual game reviews, and updating with related gaming and computering news and articles, YS was organising interviews with British Foreign Secretary of the day Geoffrey Howe. And the YS cover tapes, if played in reverse, would give you a synopsis of important monthly events, such as reports from the Labour Party Conference, or new white papers published by the Conservative Government, for instance. There was even a time when YS was trying to bag an interview with the Prime Minister herself. And the pinnacle of this seriousness happened when it published the very boring everyday adult stuff of mowing a lawn: the seminal Advanced Lawnmower Simulator. Yes, YS was about as much fun as watching Sunday Breakfast Television with the sound off. It's because Phil "Snouty" South was actually just the pen name of English political journalist and television and radio broadcaster, the late Sir Robin Day, you see.

Childish? YS was not. None of that juvenile stuff either about waggling joysticks, and not even a hint of a fart joke in sight. So somehow the aforementioned YS tribute issue (also known as Issue 94) published with RG issue nine missed the mark. Not just by a little, but by a lot. And this is why I love Social Media so much, as I can believe everything that I read on the Internet, as the 18th Century Philosopher Immanuel Kant once said.

Computer Games Programming

Some years ago, I was studying Computer Games Programming at the University of Derby. But did I learn anything from it?

It was around 2008 when I had all but accepted my fate that a future as a writer wouldn't work out for me. The pay is poor, especially for the amount of research I was putting in. By this time, I had been published in the award winning video games magazine gamesTM, and for the four weeks or so mulling over old magazines to research a four or six page article was a good indication that it wasn't paying any of the main bills. Of course, for the time researching, I could have written many more pages, but even at the page rate, it still wasn't fantastic pay. So I feel for many writers out there. If you have a full time job and you can write on the side then this is ideal. If you can get a full time job as a staffer, then this is probably the next best thing, and of course then, do well and you have the prospect of career progression. But being freelance only is tough. I know. I did it for 12 years of my life.

So, I needed a change in career, as the two things that I liked doing, writing and being a support worker for vulnerable adults, are poorly paid, although in different ways could be highly rewarding. What else could I do? Well, I have written and reviewed video games, albeit not the modern days entertainment software. But I think I got fairly good at opining at least. I was also a keen programmer in the 1980s and some of the 1990s. So that was it, I would venture into a Computer Science course of some description with an eye on making computer games happen inside of television screens.

I actually started out on a course run by Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU), and the language of choice was something called Java, a perfectly reasonable, if clunky, language. But this was the time of the ill-fated ConDem Government, which oddly decided upon some Trotskyite policies without even knowing it. Anyway, for those of us old enough to remember, there was an entirely unnecessary "emergency budget" which cut around £6bn from public expenditure, and a significant sum from Higher Education. You know, because the best way out of a recession is not to educate people to fulfil their potential, isn't it?

These cuts affected the course that I was on, because I wasn't attending a prestigious Red Brick University, I suppose. Firstly, the number of places for the second year was cut, which meant that some people who managed to pass the first year did not have a place on the second year. Luckily, I wasn't one of them somehow. But I can only imagine trying to get a job with only one year at University whilst trying to explain that I didn't just drop out. Further to these "efficiency savings" was that the third year was no longer available to us, so that meant we had to leave with 2/3rds of a Degree. But there was hope in that we could apply to other Universities in the hope that they would accept us. So, what could I do?

The degree programme at MMU was basically Computer Science focussed, but with business studies covering half of the course. And whilst I did very well at the Business aspects, I still favoured the programming side of things. I didn't want to be a manager in some soulless IT enterprise, I wanted to make some softwares. I therefore applied to the third year of the Games Programming Degree Programme at the University of Derby. But going from one institution to another isn't really how Universities work, as I found out.

After some negotiations with the head of the course at the University of Derby, I was offered a place on the 2nd year, and this meant that my planned three years of study was actually going to be five, as the course has one year in placement before the final year, and everyone has to complete the year in placement. As you can imagine, after budgeting to be a student again for three years, this was going to be extra tough, and I was going to miss yet more years of my favourite daughter's life for this, who was a toddler when I started at Derby.

Well, the 2nd year was pretty intense. Obviously, I was new, everyone else knew each other. The timetable was confusing at first. And my mathematics wasn't very good either. I mean, not bad, but just not 3D programming good. There were some aspects of the course I really did enjoy. The MIPs assembly was actually pretty easy, to my surprise, but then we were only making pixels happen in MIPs. I made a fairly basic but good enough 2D drawing API. Everything else I struggled with until I happened upon C programming for the Sony PSP. At last, there's a high level language that I could understand! It just seemed to make sense.

Sadly, it was my lack of trigonometry that let me down in the end, aside from the external pressures of family life and such like. So just before the final exams of the 2nd year I had to drop out for real. Luckily, I had learnt a lot about programming in the meantime, much more than the entire two years at MMU. Games programmers, it seemed to me, were the sort of people that obsess over making something interactive, intuitive and fun for another human. I mean, you wouldn't play any games that aren't any of those things, would you?

So, although I was not successful, I did manage to make some games type stuff happen, and with the beautiful language of C, I had a way into the industry. I found an internship at a local Birmingham start up called MetApps, and a year after, I landed my first development job. And whilst I still love programming, today I am working on fairly necessary but stale service driven applications. What I want to do is to take my programming knowledge and apply it to something outside of my usual day job. My friend Andrew Owen suggests that I write the first game specifically for the Chloe 280SE. I guess I could dust off the Z80 Tutorials that have proven popular on this blog and see how far that gets me. The good news is that I could use C wrappers around Z80 if I wanted to, like I did with some of my ZX80 and ZX81 games.

I'm sure a tutorial about actually making a game would be an interesting read to many, at least my statistics for this blog are strongly suggesting this. Those people of my age or older may remember the excellent Input magazines, which taught programming for all platforms. I'd love to recreate something similar to that but more focussed on making a game.