Plaion and Retro Games launching The Spectrum this November with 48 licensed games

Fresh from showing off the rubber-keyed wonder behind closed doors at this year’s gamescom, Plaion and Retro Games Ltd has announced the November launch of The Spectrum, a near-as-damnit recreation of the original Sinclair home computer from 1982 that arguably did more than any other piece of hardware to kickstart the UK games industry.

In common with other Retro Games machines, The Spectrum will function as a range of models (though not the recent Next) and will ship with a bunch of licensed games ready to play. These will include stone cold classics such as Manic Miner, The Hobbit, Horace Goes Skiing, Skool Daze, Lords of Midnight, Match Day and Saboteur, as well as celebrated homebrew games like Alien Girl and Shovel Adventure. A couple of Rare titles would’ve been welcome, but you’ll get the Stamper-esque Head Over Heels and Starquake – probably the best games that Ultimate never made.

Of course, if you don’t like any of the 48 games that come with The Spectrum, thousands of unlicensed titles can be crammed into one of the four USB slots, alongside your controller of choice.

Unlike other RGL machines (with the exception of The C64), the Spectrum’s iconic “dead flesh” keyboard will be fully functional, even down to the multi-function keys that many thousands of would-be gamers had to master in order to type in terrible games from magazines. 

The Spectrum will be available from November 22nd, at around the time of the 1000th issue of MCV. Maybe we should feature a couple of game listings, for old time’s sake?

No. That would be a terrible idea.