16 Reasons Why The Spectrum Is Best And
Anyone Who Says Different Fancies Their Mum…
1. The C64 was squeezed from between the lumpen
buttocks of a faceless American corporation, but the Spectrum
was INVENTED – by a maverick, classically eccentric, great
British boffin (Clive Sinclair). That he went on to fail spectacularly
with another crazy invention – the C5 – only reinforces
his flighty fallibility and makes us love him even more.
2. While the Spectrum is named after the natural
wonder that is a nice rainbow, the Commodore 64 is named after
a fey soul combo that Lionel Richie used to be in, and who had
a song called ‘Three Times A Lady’ (not a concept
normally familiar to Commodore C64 owners).
Spectrum.
Now, THAT is a sensation.
C64.
Who’s your daddy?
3. Mr. Conventional Wisdom, he say – the
C64 had better games. This is wrong. While the C64 pioneered the
dull, soulless games ‘industry’ of today with endless
arcade ports and licences, the Speccy regularly played host to
genuinely ground-breaking titles (3D Ant Attack, Deathchase, Chaos,
Rebelstar, Lunar Jetman, All Or Nothing, Deus Ex Machina, Knight
Lore, Fat Worm Blows A Sparky, Atic Atac, The Train Game, Mined
Out, Hijack, Wheelie, Dark Star…). The list is – well,
this particular one ends here, but there are so many more games
that could go on it, as predominantly British Speccy developers
repeatedly demonstrated the lateral originality that so often
characterises them – and is missing from their lunkheaded
US counterparts.
4. C64 Gals nag on about how shite the Spectrum
keyboard is, but as any proper gamer knows, playing games on keyboard
is underrated – there’s more of an intimate connection
to the game and it’s harder to blame yer tools for poor
performance. Because Spectrum owners played a lot of their games
this way, their overall dexterity and skillageness was enhanced
and they became much better overall gamers than the sorry C64
saps, who were stuck with their joystick/one button set-up (and
the kind of games that were friendly to it, regardless of quality).
5. Compare the clean, crisp artistry of the
Spectrum’s graphics (reaching a pinnacle with the bold minimalism
of the awesome Cruising On Broadway) to the blobby vomit-lumps
of most C64 titles. That the C64 COULD (almost) recreate the Speccy's
sharpness in titles like Manic Miner but preferred games that
looked like they'd been drawn with a toddler's chewed-up Lego,
speaks volumes for the babyish unsophistication of its audience.
C64 bores blether on about their ‘extra’ colours.
Sadly, these colours are all just varying shades of rubbish pastellyness
– fittingly, the kind of scheme normally favoured in homes
for the mentally enfeebled.
6. Those early C64 twenty-minutes-plus loading
times – and the terrifyingly expensive cartridge games or
disc drives you had to fork out for in order to get round them.
Spectrum
3D Ant Attack – otherworldly, groundbreaking…
C64
Paradroid – fiddly shite.
7. The Speccy's ultra-accessible BASIC, that
gently led so many of today's coders by the hand into the forbidding
world of programming, where the Commodore Business Machines C64's
sent them reeling in terror - the difference between dumb consumption
and the life-giving spark of creation.
8. Darren Warburton, who had a really big house
and a pet snake for Christ’s sake, had a C64. He always
had new stuff before anyone else and he thought it made everyone
like him and want to be him. In fact, everyone hated him. He also
had a really cunty walk, where he sort of looked like he was trying
to glide.
9. Terry Hudgill, who had lots of ace imported
Electro and once somehow got hold of the full-length Two Tribes
video (Betamax) and was a really top bloke who would always lend
you stuff without making it feel like he was doing you a favour…
He had a 48k Spectrum.
10. Let’s talk about sex.
Spectrum.
Phwoooooooooarrr!!! Eh? EEEEEEH!?!
C64
”Hello. I am cosy Girl-Next Door. My non-threatening androgyny
will appeal to your essential C64 gayness”.
11. The expression ‘INKEY$’.
12. Ace, wonderfully weird stuff like this:
http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/000053.html
And this:
http://www.hermitgames.com/mariopac.php
13. SID. So what? The kind of people who buy
games for the music are the same kind of people who buy albums
in Woolworth’s because they like the covers. And as for
the vibrant SID ‘scene’… If you are listening
to (or recreating) game music for leisure, then you need to get
up off your arse and seek out some proper music – or at
least loan your ears out to a deaf person who might appreciate
them.
14. Ultimate: Play The Game. All of their early,
Spectrum-exclusive games were technically terrific, ground-breaking
classics that worked through the Spectrum’s limitations
and really made it sing. They also inspired the likes of Bubble
Bus’s Steve Crow to take things even further with Starquake/Firelord,
etc. Tellingly, the Spectrum-to-C64 conversions were mediocre
afterthoughts, and their C64-exclusive games (Imhotep, Staff Of
Karnath) were shite. See also – Gargoyle Games. Tir Na Nog
made it over to the C64, but their later (and better stuff) –
Dun Darach, Marsport, Heavy On The Magick… were all Spectrum
exclusives. So, the Spectrum was clearly the choice of the 8-bit
era’s most consistently brilliant and influential game designers.
15. Documentation. Compare…
Spectrum.
Ooh, lovely. Clean, swish design. Dreamy floating
metropolis thing. Confident, understated colours.
Message – “Welcome to the future…”.
C64
Rubbish design. Boring ‘business’ feel. Drawn on
graph paper, for fuck’s sake. Message – “Here
is a
dull computer for dull people”.
16. But most of all, the reason the Speccy
was (and remains) better that the C64
is this - the C64 was just so God-damned all-to-Hell ugly. A hideous,
bloated, 1960's-looking design atrocity… Those grossly-wrong
proportions - too wide, too shallow, too tall. Those awful, awful
keys, with the much-too-deep indentations and sharp, raised edges
and huge crevasses in between, that made your fingers hurt and
were the chief reason the C64 had so many dull arcade-type games
compared to the Speccy's full and broad range (because anything
you couldn't play with a joystick and single fire button was an
agonising, skin-shredding trial). And the less said about the
colour scheme (beige and brown! Mmm!) and the embarrassing Fisher-Price
typeface the better. Christ, the Dragon 32 was prettier than the
C64.
Compare and contrast the Speccy, however. The
original model is nothing short of a timeless design classic.
Thrillingly compact, jet black, supermodel-thin. Soft, gently
yielding keys covered in iconic, mysterious symbols in a pin-sharp,
futuristic-yet-understated font, and that modest, stylish brushstroke
of rainbow colours at the bottom-right corner…
Putting the original Speccy beside the C64 is
like lining up an iPod against an old Dansette record player.
Even the Plus/128 models, with their ill-advised plastic keyboards,
are a joy visually, as if the old Speccy has turned itself into
a shiny black Robocop. The C64, by comparison, is like a fatter,
older version of Neil from The Young Ones crossed with Roy Wood
of Wizzard.
C64. Spectrum.
 
If the 8-bit generation had been in 1977…
In fact, the C64 versus the Speccy is really
prog. rock versus punk rock (an analogy backed up by the way C64
apologists prefer the stale ‘musicianship’ of the
bleedin’ SID chip to the anyone-can-do-it punk energy and
function-over-form ideals represented by the Speccy). We’ll
take Sid Vicious over the SID chip – the greyhound-lean
195 seconds of Pretty Vacant over a 25-minute Yes keyboard solo
– any day from now unto eternity. Shove your C64s up your
pallid, flabby arses. Your games are ugly and shit, and we're
so pretty, oh so pretty. And we don't care.
Thanks to Fuseball for the tasteful comment
about deafness.
SICKBOY
and Rev. Stuart Campbell,
April 2004.
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