- #CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA ARCHIVE#
- #CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA FULL#
- #CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA BLUETOOTH#
- #CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA PLUS#
- #CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA TV#
While it may not impress much at a technical level, the Vega at least compensates in terms of sheer volume of content. Your best bet, ironically, is to plug it into an old CRT telly, if you still have one. Fuzziness and flickers are common, while the main menu screen - as stark and basic as the device itself - suffers from subtle ghosting when run through a modern flatscreen. Even when attached to a reliable power source, the image quality on a modern flatscreen leaves a lot to be desired.
#CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA TV#
Most TV USB sockets aren't designed as power outlets, so the Vega can struggle to draw enough juice from them, resulting in distorted output. This cost-cutting impacts the performance of the device itself. This wouldn't be too much of a problem if the Vega retailed for around thirty quid, like other plug-and-play TV game devices, but when the asking price is £100 requiring the customer to dig around for spare parts is very cheeky.
The absence of even a simple plug really makes this feel like a bargain basement offering. The idea is that this plugs into the USB socket on your TV - assuming your TV has one - or else you'll need to borrow a phone charger or find some other USB port to draw power from. This is also true of the power, since your only option out of the box is a USB cable. There's no HDMI, and if you even want to run it through SCART, you'll need to supply your own connector. One is a standard AV input which plugs directly into the basic Video In and left/right audio sockets on your TV. Two long and rather ugly wires trail from the Vega. More troubling is how many corners have clearly been cut. The input buttons are stiff, and the odd button placement does it no favours in games that require more than just moving, jumping and shooting. Some sort of predictive text option would have been nice, especially given how many adventure games use the same core parser: GET, LOOK, USE and so on.Īs an actual piece of hardware, the Vega does not impress. It's still fairly laborious though, and entering strings of words for an adventure is still a grind. It's a clever solution, and quite slick once you've got used to it. You flip between these with the d-pad, with letters mapped to the four main input buttons. Instead, the alphabet - and numerals and symbols - are all segmented into chunks. It's not a virtual keyboard in the traditional sense, where you guide a cursor to each key.
#CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA ARCHIVE#
In particular, those who wanted to replay the Speccy's vast archive of text adventures felt the four button system essentially made a huge swathe of the platform's best titles unplayable on the Vega. This option was a late addition to the Vega design, brought about by fans who were disappointed at the use of a console joypad design for a computer which was always either joystick or keyboard based. The first three are used to expand the input options for games with more complex controls, the M button calls up a menu, for use in-game, from where you can save your progress in a snapshot style, and also access the virtual keyboard.
Beneath those buttons are four tiny buttons marked A, B, C and M. The main four buttons are positioned rather strangely, in a 2x2 square pattern rather than the more traditional diamond layout used by most joypad controllers. Another emulator feature that improves the Speccy gaming experience. Games can be saved, snapshot style, and carried on later. F is for FIRE, S is for SELECT, and everything else, confusingly, is basically meaningless in this context. These, too, are modelled after the famous rubber keys, right down to the markings. Modelled to look a bit like the iconic 48k Spectrum, it has directional buttons to the left, and a variety of inputs to the right. It's about the size of a four-finger Kit Kat, should you want a scientific measurement.
#CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA FULL#
The Vega is a small, flat rectangular controller, not a full keyboard. With two "new" Spectrum products competing for attention, it seems many are confused as to which is which - or even if they're the same thing.
#CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA BLUETOOTH#
It's important to note that the Vega is a handheld device, and has nothing to do with the Recreated ZX Spectrum Bluetooth keyboard from Elite Systems, which also launches in a few weeks.
#CREATING THE SINCLAIR ZX SPECTRUM VEGA PLUS#