Rupert Goodwins' Diary

Tuesday 4/12/2001

News that Amstrad is actively seeking to buy the rights of Spectrum games brings joy to my heart. I'm of the generation where an evening hunched over the rubber keys and weedy beep of a warm ZX was an evening thoroughly enjoyed. I programmed, played games on, even built little hardware treats for my much-loved Speccy. It's very heartening to see it live on -- rumours have it that Amstrad are going to have the games available for paid download to either an e-m@iler or a mobile phone with a Spectrum emulator in it.

There's more, though. As the development platform of choice way back when, lots of people -- myself included -- learned lots of useful stuff by prodding our Spectrums through ever more unlikely hoops. Those development tools are still available, still easy to use and still capable of immediate results. If Amstrad has any sense, it'll make the non-Spectrum bits of whatever platform they're planning available via Spectrum BASIC and machine code, thus fostering a whole new generation of developers.

Just think: FOR F=1 TO 10:PRINT "RUPERT WOZ ERE":NEXT F may be the key to embedded system design for the next ten years.