ZX Spectrum | Ghetto Graphics & Colour Clash

Today we're focusing on the distinctive graphical style the ZX Spectrum had, including the famous colour clash, why it looked like this, and how game designers overcame the limitations.

Where's the repair!? - In part 1 we had a broken ZX Spectrum which we took a tour of and I talked of repairing it. As it turns out, all it needed was to be re-capped with new capacitors and it came to life. I thought that wouldn't make a very interesting video, so we're going to explore what made the machine unique over the rest of the series. Once complete I'll release the full series and re-edit episode one a little to give better continuity.

If I should come across a broken Speccy in future it will get the T2T treatment.

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● Music
Aurora Borealis - Bird Creek
Move That Azz - MK2
Shaken - Riot

[infinitecanadian]

'...to its death'? The Sinclair Spectrum will NEVER die!

[robintst]

As an American who had zero exposure to the Spectrum back then... everything about it is endearing as hell. The cheap construction and budget components just lend to it's charm, especially when you actually see what programmers were eventually able to make it do. My favorite kind of gaming platforms are the ones that bring out peoples' creative ingenuity when faced with limited resources and the Spectrum is a fine example of that for all of it's oddities.

[cratercritter]

Oh my goodness, what's this? A level-headed, clear, well filmed and narrated video that actually imparts knowledge? Fantastic! I'm off to dig my Speccy out :)

[teppic]

The limitation also had some advantages - it avoided the very blocky appearance of other computers which had serious pixel limitations when using extra colours. That meant while Spectrum games often had colour problems, they were usually higher resolution.

[ColinLittley]

damn nostalgia is welcome back to my childhood of 40 years ago manic miner and jetpac damn those were the days.

[johneygd]

Absolutely mind blowing, just mind blowing how game developers achieved the impossible thing on the ZxX spectrum, wow!!!

[TheFusedplug]

Even back in the day I overlooked the whole colour clash thing. I owned the Spectrum 128 +2 after the Vic 20 and at some point owned a C-64 I still own the 128+2(grey) which is now graced with a SCART lead and 2 replacement joystick adaptors for the non standard Sugar ports. I found that certain games were more impressive on the Spectrum and playable, Look at Cobra on the Speccy and Target Renegade or indeed the original Renegade and the level of detail on the racing games like Outrun and Turbo Outrun. These examples kept me favoring the Spectrum over the C64 and the AY 3 channel sound chip helped Spectrum owners get somewhere close to SID chip quality music and sound. Tim Follin etc were also pushing beeper music to whole new levels one game that springs to mind is Chronos from Mastertronic, sometimes a machines limitations are it's beauty.

[slsl]

The ''rainbow color'' 8x1 & 8x2 hacks have two major drawbacks: 1) CPU use is high, leaving less cycles for you. 2) The code is timing-critical, it uses completely unrolled loops which take up a huge amount of RAM leaving much less for your own code. There's also hacks to create graphics in the border area, I've even seen one which draws scrolling text in there!
The fact any of this is even possible is completely mind blowing. Modern Spectrum games are looking even better since these hacks were discovered & libraries written to control them.

[electronash]

Superb explanation. ;)

Colour / attribute clash is often quoted as a main reason why the Speccy "seemed" inferior to other 8-bit machines of the time.
(like the C64, but that was around four times the cost, so it's an apples to oranges comparison. No apple pun intended. lol)

I admit that I was never a huge fan of the colour clash at the time, but the Speccy had TONS of charm in it's many unique games, and could handle higher resolution graphics than some of it's closest rivals.

This was a time when RAM really did come at a premium, so it was quite a clever move, which bought the price of the Speccy down to a point to which the British masses could finally afford.

The other great trick (as I think you mentioned in the previous vid?), was the use of the "faulty" DRAM chips, which obviously also kept the costs down considerably.

Nowadays, I really appreciate both the look / style of the Speccy graphics, and the limitations of machines of the era, which is where most of the technical and artistic creativity stemmed from.

Oh, and not forgetting the long and dark British autumns and winters, obviously. lol

The Speccy was instrumental in spawing the so-called "bedroom coder" scene in the UK and Europe.
Many of those same people are still working in the industry, or heading the companies responsible for many of today's big games.

[Ucceah]

it shows time and time again, that evolving machines is the easy part, while our utilization lags far behind.
a salute to all you full time coders out there! ...please dont ever get mad!

[MrDaveP]

The clearest explanation of the Speccy's graphical capabilities and limitations I have ever seen. Thank you.

[wimwiddershins]

As a C64 snob I used to sneer at the speccy screenshots on game boxes, preferring to sacrifice resolution for chunky gfx with more colours. Now, I'm just impressed with how much could be done with so few computing resources back in the 8bit era.

[spurty]

Well look at that! In one YouTube video, you took "a question I asked the Computer Teacher back in 1983", and answered it very completely. My computer teacher however, gave me a zero for asking silly questions. :-/

[ZombieATAT]

Thanks. I remember badgering my parents for an Acorn Electron like crazy. They didn't get the appeal of Elite and Combat Lynx but instead bought me a 128k zx to learn programming. I'm still near enough clueless about coding but an avid gamer nonetheless and have based my career within the electronics industry.
The graphics really didn't matter to any speccy owner, much to the dismay of Commodore owners :)

[Liofa]

I loved chuckie egg, barely took any time to load and had great gameplay, as well as simple menus.

[arrandodge]

Born-1976, Child Of-The 80s. Finally found out why my Spectrum behaved like it did-2019. Thank you Retro Man Cave from the bottom of my heart! I had always wondered why the colours were like that. Top show Sir.

[shauncrambie]

School rivalry led to the spectrum being renamed "rectum" & Commodore 64 renamed "Commode 64" by opposing fans, circa '82-'83 fond memories ✌️

[reggiep]

The colour clash was one of the many issues of the Spectrum's ghetto technology but the one thing the Spectrum had in it's favour was retaining square pixels rather needing to use 2:1 rectangular pixels to accommodate various limitations and anomalies that came about from the memory, palette and resolutions of other 8-bit computers.

The large colour palette rectangular pixels are everywhere on 8-bit home computers from the BBC Micro, Commodore, Atari, Dragon 32 and many more but the Spectrum's square pixels were easier on the eyes at times.

Another great vid!

[bvideoz]

There were some state-of-the art games back then that seemed to defy colour clashing: Exolon, Zynaps, Saboteur, Myth, Robin of the wood.

[Sneakysneaky]

I can only imagine the kind of debugging hell that those generations of coders had to go through, but the fruits of their labour have a special place in my heart.