If it wasn’t for eager retailers getting excited about the consoles and games they were supposed to be keeping quiet about, we’d never have leaks to report on. I get it; I think I’d be over-excited too if I was getting items that I really wanted to play, though I think in all honesty it’s probably down to someone just clicking the wrong button at the wrong time. They were probably too engrossed in the latest Retro Dodo news articles to realise what they were actually doing…
If you’ve been checking out our website for a while, then you’ll already know about Retro Games LTD. They’re the brains behind the C64 Mini and the A500 Mini that we’ve spoken about both on the site and in our socials. Now, they’re bringing out a full-size version of the ZX Spectrum called ‘The Spectrum’, and it’s been revealed ahead of its scheduled announcement date, much to the joy of retro gamers (and writers) everywhere!
I first spotted the news of the leak over on The Retro Asylum’s X page and did some digging. Apparently, the console was supposed to be announced on Tuesday (that’s August 27th for anyone reading from the future), though it’s now available to pre-order on Amazon with a price guarantee of £89.99. For those ZX Spectrum fans out there, The Spectrum retro console gives players the chance to have a modern version of an important console in video game history with 48 games ready to play. That should be enough to entice fans in, but there’s always scope to add more games to it via a flash drive. And, with a full-size keyboard that plays games from both the 48 and 128 variants of the ZX Spectrum and over 3,500 games available, you should stay busy for a while!
And if you’re new to the ZX Spectrum, then check out the team’s top picks to find some games to start with!
The full list of games can be found on the back of the box (pictured above), with my favourite ZX Spectrum title ‘The Hobbit’ being one of the included 48 games. Players can tap into The Great Escape, Saboteur! Remastered, Football Manager 2, and Trash Man as well as a whole host of classics. The set also comes with a 32-page publication called ‘Crash Magazine’ which features information about games from past and present as well as a heap of information on the ZX Spectrum.
Consoles will ship November 22nd, 2024, so if you know a retro gamer who’s hard to buy for, then this could be the perfect Christmas present (it’s never too early to start thinking about Santa Day!).
This isn’t the only cool news that I’ve covered on the ZX Spectrum of late either. Back in May, I reported on a Slovenian Radio Station broadcasting a sound that, if recorded correctly on a tape, could be slotted into a ZX Spectrum to play Kontrabant 2. The event marked 40 years since the creation of Kontrabant 2 in what was then Yugoslavia, and the fact that a sound played from a radio tower could be turned into a computer game still blows my mind!
