At the end of April the ZX Spectrum Next arrived on Kickstarter with a required goal of £250,000 and within a mere forty-eight hours this wanted total was blown out of the water! Now with fourteen days still to go and the project being marked by Kickstarter as a “Project We Love” the total currently just sits over £450,000. So to entice even more people over, the Kickstarter team have released a video showing the power of the machine when it comes to playing some classic games…
Turning on the ZX Spectrum Next’s 7MHz mode, which beefs up the speed of the machine, some truly classic games from the back-catalogue of the ZX Spectrum’s history are presented in the video below including: Myth, Chase H.Q., Alter Ego 2: Dreamwalker, Elite and the recently remastered version of Crystal Kingdom Dizzy. The 7MHz mode takes a classic game and turns into a classic game with real power behind it!
The ZX Spectrum Next is a natural evolution in the ZX Spectrum series, with a team including Henrique Olifiers – check out our interview with him here – Victor Trucco, Fabio Belavenuto, Jim Bagley and the original ZX Spectrum designer Rick Dickinson who we also recently interviewed here at Flickering Myth.
The Spectrum Next is fully implemented with FPGA technology, ensuring it can be upgraded and enhanced while remaining truly compatible with the original hardware by using special memory chips and clever design. Here’s what under the hood of the machine:
- Processor: Z80 3.5Mhz and 7Mhz modes
- Memory: 512Kb RAM (expandable to 1.5Mb internally and 2.5Mb externally)
- Video: Hardware sprites, 256 colours mode, Timex 8×1 mode etc.
- Video Output: RGB, VGA, HDMI
- Storage: SD Card slot, with DivMMC-compatible protocol
- Audio: 3x AY-3-8912 audio chips with stereo output + FM sound
- Joystick: DB9 compatible with Cursor, Kempston and Interface 2 protocols (selectable)
- PS/2 port: Mouse with Kempston mode emulation and an external keyboard
- Special: Multiface functionality for memory access, savegames, cheats etc.
- Tape support: Mic and Ear ports for tape loading and saving
- Expansion: Original external bus expansion port and accelerator expansion port
- Accelerator board (optional): GPU / 1Ghz CPU / 512Mb RAM
- Network (optional): Wi Fi module
- Extras: Real Time Clock (optional), internal speaker (optional)
If you want to be part of the ZX Spectrum Next development and perhaps have one on your desk come release then go here.
Originally published May 8, 2017. Updated April 15, 2018.
