long post alert. Here goes ...
I spend a lot of time watching videos on YouTube and also enjoy reading the comments. In the last couple of months, I've noticed a certain French CPC user who leaves a lot of comments on Speccy-related videos. He appears to be quite annoyed at the fact that the CPC often is overlooked/not even considered in comparisons, as for example when a video compares ZX and C64 versions of games. On multiple occasions, he expressed how he is baffled at how people in the UK worship the "graphically challenged" Spectrum and why they didn't abandon it in favour of the later British-made success, the CPC, once that appeared on the market.
Of course, there is no shortage of other people who will make all kinds of negative comments towards the Speccy or its games, but this guy is special as you will find his comments under dozens of Speccy videos. But still, he asks valid questions. Let's see if we find some answers.
Have some quotes, I'll put them in spoilers:
Spoiler
Okay, the C64 was expensive and the Speccy might have been a decent choice until about 1984. That's when the Amstrad CPC was released and Britain could finally pride itself on an 8-bit micro playing in the same league as the Commodore (each with different strengths and weaknesses)
The Amstrad was commercially successful too : it sold a healthy 3 million units in 6 years vs the Spectrum's 5 million in 10 years.
So it's really beyond me why modern retrogaming coverage from the UK is so disproportionately skewed towards the Spectrum when its conversions are always the worst of the three to look at, by far, and the 48K doesn't even have proper music !
Spoiler
Where I grew up you either got a 464, or a colour 6128 if your parents were rich. One kid had a C64 and showed me Arkanoid. I was impressed at the music and the fact it kept going while loading, but this guy was the odd one out and wished he had a CPC.
I carry no beef from the 80s against the Speccy simply because it just wasn't in the picture.
Only in the Internet era did I come to appreciate its cult status in Britain and wanted to find out what the fuss was all about. I went to YouTube with an open mind, and as it turned out: the C64, yeah sure, definitely ! The Spectrum ? A whole lot of nothing. Hype and superlatives for an embarrassingly inferior older sibling to the CPC.
Spoiler
I'll summarise the 53 minutes. Each match is either :
- Both versions just as fast, play just as well, but CPC graphics wipe the floor with the Spectrum : IT'S A DRAW, people (because "good job given Spectrum limitations") !
- CPC version has the TINIEST hint of being slower (no matter how much better it looks or sounds), or has the misfortune of being a Speccy port : SPECTRUM WINS !
I mean the leniency is almost comically one-sided ! It's almost as if graphics have no weight at all.
With the same reasoning you could claim the Atari ST is the same or better as the Amiga (its 68K is clocked slightly higher and some games are ports), but thankfully no Brit in their right mind would say that. So why do you guys never seem to be able to take off the nostalgia goggles when it comes to the ZX Spectrum ? It's a mystery to me, and it makes me want to send you Specsavers vouchers.
Particularly egregious examples : Arkanoid (Spectrum looks like an Atari 2600 era breakout, Amstrad like a proper arcade conversion), Operation Wolf (same gameplay/speed, but Spectrum is monochrome, Amstrad almost looks like a 16-bit port), Rainbow Islands (same gameplay/speed, but Spectrum has MONOCHROME RAINBOWS FFS ! )
So yeah, I don't know, are you worried to tell it like it is to Spectrum viewers ? I just don't get it !
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So ... why did we all not buy a CPC once it was released then (otherwise most of us wouldn't be on this forum)? I mean, we all must have been blind not to see it's better graphical capabilities, it should have been a no-brainer, right? Why play this colour clashing trash at 256x192 with 15 colours on a 32x24 attribute grid, when you could have 640x200 (2 colours), 320x200 (4 colours) or 160x200 (16 colours), and even higher resolutions with overscan, and also more colours on-screen than the 2/4/16 listed by means of palette changes during the frame, all with no colour clash and from a palette of 27 colours? Plus hardware scrolling. And you UK peeps should have been proud to buy another domestic machine too. So why? Why did this big jump to the superior platform not occur in the UK?
(To be honest, I can imagine one reason why he is asking this. I'd imagine if most people had switched to the CPC pretty pronto, say in 1984/1985, the CPC would have been spared a lot of the Speccy ports, as it probably would have become the lead platform for new games. I guess this would have resulted in less overall jerky low-framerate games on the CPC, which the Speccy ports certainly very often were, especially if the Speccy original that was ported from wasn't very smooth to begin with.)
Your personal views will be very interesting to read. I had considered making this a poll, but wasn't sure what options I should offer ...