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RETRO The Spectrum User Manual

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Summary of Contents for RETRO The Spectrum

  • Page 2 Marketing direction by Simon Turner. Music by YERZMYEY. The Spectrum is a registered trademark of Retro Games Ltd. All other trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective owners. All rights reserved. Head Over Heels © 1987 Atari Interactive, Inc.
  • Page 3 User manual...

  • Page 4: Table Of Contents

    Page 7 An overview of The Spectrum. CHAPTER 2 Setting up The Spectrum. Page 9 Setting up The Spectrum for the first time. CHAPTER 3 The game carousel. Page 13 Navigating the carousel of games and playing games. CHAPTER 4 Saving and loading suspended games.
  • Page 5 How to rewind, forward, stop and start the virtual cassette tape. CHAPTER 10 Classic mode. Page 43 An introduction to using The Spectrum’s Classic Mode. CHAPTER 11 Saving programs and data. Page 49 How to store your programs on a virtual cassette tape.

  • Page 7: Introduction

    48K ZX Spectrum with a fully functional rubber keyboard. Looks can be deceiving however, as The Spectrum is packed with features that were only to be found on later Spectrum models, including additional memory and improved sound, and its HDMI and USB ports make it plug-and-play with today’s technology.

  • Page 9: Setting Up The Spectrum

    Turning The Spectrum on and off Switch the TV source to the appropriate HDMI input and press the power button at the rear of The Spectrum. The rear power indicator will illuminate red, and the TV will show the welcome logo.

  • Page 10: First Time Setup

    First-time setup The first time you turn on The Spectrum you will be asked a few questions about some essential settings needed to get you going with your new The Spectrum.

  • Page 11: Television Settings

    Setting up The Spectrum Television settings To complete the set up, The Spectrum will ask you to choose the video output requirement of your television, either 50 or 60Hz. Move the selector to the required video output mode and select it by pressing M.

  • Page 13: The Game Carousel

    4) Carousel of games This carousel shows the box covers of the games included in The Spectrum, with the current game highlighted.

  • Page 14: Selecting A Game

    Chapter 3 5) Suspended game While a game is suspended, a miniaturised view of the suspended game is shown floating at the top-right of the screen. This suspended game may be resumed or saved into one of four slots per game. Selecting a game Use O and P to scroll through the carousel and select the game you want.

  • Page 15: Playing A Game

    The most popular joystick interface was the Kepmpston, which is the default with The Spectrum, so if you wish to play a carousel game with a game controller, most require you to select Kempston joystick from the in-game options.

  • Page 17: Saving And Loading Suspended Games

    CHAPTER 4 Saving and loading suspended games Pressing A when viewing the carousel will show the Saved game slots for the current game, where you can save a suspended game or resume a previously saved game. Each game has four slots for saved games, represented by four sections of a cassette tape label.
  • Page 18 Chapter 4 Press M to save the game in the chosen slot. This will overwrite any game already in that slot. If a slot has been locked you will not be able to save a game into that slot until you unlock it (see Locking/unlocking a saved game slot). Loading a game If there is a currently suspended game, the miniaturised suspended game will move down and hover above the first available Saved game slot.

  • Page 19: Rewinding Gameplay

    CHAPTER 5 Rewinding gameplay While playing a game, pressing HOME + O will interrupt the game play and bring up the rewind controls on the left hand side of the screen. This allows you to rewind your game play by up to 40 seconds. You can rewind game play at any time, even after resuming a suspended or saved game.
  • Page 20 Chapter 5 When you step back through the gameplay, The Spectrum will replay from that point. The current position in the rewind history is shown in the top left corner of the screen, and reflects the duration by which the gameplay has been rewound.

  • Page 21: Options And Settings

    CHAPTER 6 Options and settings Press SPACE on the game carousel to show the Options menu. These options control the operation of the entire console. Move the selector with Q or A and press M to select a menu option. Press B to close and back out of any menu.

  • Page 22: Display Options

    Enable Enables ULAPlus™ colour support which increases the number extended of colours The Spectrum is able to display. Turning this option on colours activates the alternate colour palettes that have been individually designed for each game on the carousel.
  • Page 23 Options and settings ZX Spectrum border size The ZX Spectrum was renowned for having a colourful border around the gameplay, particularly while loading programs from cassette where the border would flash with stripey coloured lines. Games often set the border colour to match the gameplay and so the border can sometimes play an important part of the gameplay experience, other times the border is just a static colour.
  • Page 24 Chapter 6 Language This menu allows you to change the language The Spectrum uses to display the game descriptions and menus. The choices are English, Deutsch, Français, Italiano, Español and Polski. Changing language does not affect the 48 included games, which are in English.

  • Page 25: Advanced Options

    Browse and play the 48 included games and easily launch the games you own from a USB stick. 2) Classic mode Experience The Spectrum as though it was an original ZX Spectrum, complete with BASIC programming and virtual cassette tape access. See Chapter 10 - Classic mode.

  • Page 26: System Information

    The Spectrum. Switch to classic mode Switch The Spectrum into Classic mode, where it operates as though it is an original ZX Spectrum, complete with BASIC programming and virtual cassette tape access. For full details see Chapter 10 - Classic mode.

  • Page 27: Shutdown Device

    Options and settings Shutdown device This option safely shuts down The Spectrum. This will discard a suspended game that is unsaved and power off the device. Alternatively, you can shutdown the device by pressing and holding the power button for two seconds.

  • Page 29: Loading Your Own Programs

    The Spectrum allows you to load programs you own from a USB stick. When you insert a USB stick into The Spectrum, an additional carousel item will appear titled USB Media Access. Selecting this item and press M to browse and run programs from the USB stick.
  • Page 30 Access carousel title will reflect the Current media filename. Cassette file support The Spectrum supports the three common cassette file formats. Files ending with .tzx and .pzx are a digital facsimile of the original audio cassette tape and reproduce the loading experience of the original cassette, including the...
  • Page 31 ROM files that have the same extension. Snapshot file support The Spectrum supports the .sna snapshot format that was commonly used by third- party ZX Spectrum peripherals such as the Multiface range, which were able to dump the ZX Spectrum memory to external storage.
  • Page 32 Chapter 7 Playlists A playlist makes choosing multi-cassette games a quick single click and avoids issues with mis-selecting files. They are required for games having more than three cassettes, but can be used for games having fewer. A playlist is a text file with an .m3u extension, and it merely lists all the .tap/.tzx/.pzx files for the game, such as: Game A tape 1 of 2.tap Game A tape 2 of 2.tap...
  • Page 33 Loading your own programs Saving or loading a suspended USB stick program For USB stick programs, the procedure for loading a previously Saved game is slightly different to that for games on the carousel. When the USB Media Access carousel item is selected, pressing A from the Game carousel will show the Saved game slots for the program currently selected on the USB stick, as shown in the game description for the USB Media Access title.

  • Page 35: Adjusting The Settings Of A Program

    ZX Spectrum model This option allows you to select the ZX Spectrum model on which you wish to run the selected program. The default is the 48K, though The Spectrum will try and guess by looking at the filename.
  • Page 36 Spectrum model for which the program file is intended. To assist the model selection, The Spectrum provides a Universal model which minimises these compatibility issues by providing a model that is a blend of all the others, and should work in most cases.
  • Page 37 The eleven most common gamepad buttons can be configured to Spectrum joystick or keyboard actions. The HOME or Start button is reserved. The Spectrum allows two player joysticks to be configured, but note that if the second joystick is configured with directions being joystick up, down, left, right and fire then these inputs will only work when the Joystick type is set to Sinclair IF 2, since this is the only ZX Spectrum interface that supported two simultaneous joysticks.
  • Page 38 Chapter 8 To edit the actions assigned to gamepad directions and buttons, press M. Configuring games that use joysticks Assigning joystick actions...
  • Page 39 • To make a selection from a different action group, press D Once an assignment is made, cleared or skipped, The Spectrum will move the blue indicator to the next button, where you repeat the process until all buttons have been assigned, cleared, or skipped.

  • Page 41: Cassette Tape Navigation

    The Spectrum contains a tape navigation user interface which acts like a virtual cassette machine, allowing you to pause and start the playback or forward and rewind to different points in the cassette tape file.
  • Page 42 Chapter 9 The tape position indicator shown on the right hand side of the screen shows the current play position, which has a slightly different meaning depending on the type of cassette tape file being used: 1) TZX and PZX cassette tape files usually have navigate-point markers at the start of each sequence of blocks that make up a complete program.

  • Page 43: Classic Mode

    BASIC programming language. The new The Spectrum has a modern carousel based user interface from which you can easily launch one of the 48 included games and interact with its many features, but it also faithfully recreates the original ZX Spectrum experience with its Classic mode.
  • Page 44 The Spectrum supports both 48K and 128K models of the ZX Spectrum. On entering Classic mode The Spectrum will default to the original 48K model, and this can be changed by selecting Default machine settings from the options menu. See Default...

  • Page 45: Media Access

    Classic mode Classic mode options When in Classic mode The Spectrum options and features are entered by pressing the HOME button. This will temporarily suspend what you are doing and display the classic mode options menu, along with a miniaturised view of the suspended activity shown floating at the top-right of the screen.
  • Page 46 Warning: Auto-launching a program from a tape file will abandon what you are currently doing with The Spectrum and replace it with the program that was selected. Saving programs and data requires a writable cassette tape file and The Spectrum takes some special steps to allow information to be saved while a non-writable cassette tape file is attached.

  • Page 47: Additional Options

    This menu item gives you access to the global display settings, as described in Chapter 6 - Options and settings. Here you can change how The Spectrum display appears, which attractive frame to use, how much of the Spectrum border to show and whether extended colours are available.
  • Page 48 Reset machine This option will end the current The Spectrum classic mode session and start a new one using the ZX Spectrum model set in Default machine settings. In doing so it wipes the ZX Spectrum memory and ends the current cassette tape saving sequence and finishes writing to the current cassette tape file.

  • Page 49: Saving Programs And Data

    USB stick. A virtual cassette tape is maintained as a writable .tap file on a USB stick. The Spectrum will create a .tap file if it doesn’t exist, and automatically create new files as required, depending on what is being saved and in what sequence.
  • Page 50 Media select. For example, attach the file test_WR created above, return to The Spectrum BASIC prompt, and run the following: LOAD “” Once The Spectrum has reset and you have entered the LOAD command, you will see The Spectrum display the following text Program: test and the usual 0 OK, 0:1 completion message at the bottom of the screen.
  • Page 51 If you have an attached tape file that is not writable (in other words it does not have a _WR suffix) then The Spectrum will use that tape filename as a basis for any files it creates during saving if it has first not saved a BASIC program.
  • Page 52 If The Spectrum detects an error which prevents it from saving to the USB stick, for example the USB stick being removed, then it will temporarily set the ZX Spectrum border to red.
  • Page 53 Saving programs and data Start Is a writable Write "file" being virtual cassette SAVEd to the TAP file attached virtual cassette file. attached? Create a virtual Is a BASIC cassette file using the program being name of the BASIC SAVEd? program. Was a Append the "file"...

  • Page 55: Using The Virtual Keyboard

    CHAPTER 12 Using the virtual keyboard While playing a game with a game controller pressing H + M will bring up a virtual keyboard on the right hand side of the screen. This allows you to virtually press any of the standard ZX Spectrum keyboard keys.

  • Page 57: Updating The Firmware

    5) Go to Options Advanced options System information. 6) The Spectrum will check if there is a newer firmware on the USB stick and, if so, give you the options to Update or Cancel. 7) Selecting Update will begin the installation process.
  • Page 58 Chapter 13 While installing, The Spectrum will display a progress bar which will fill up from left to right as the update proceeds. Note: It is important not to remove the USB stick or power from The Spectrum while the update is in process.

  • Page 59: Using Your Own Peripherals

    CHAPTER 14 Using your own peripherals Using third-party controllers While The Spectrum has been designed to work best with its keyboard, it is also compatible with Retro Games’ THEGAMEPAD and THEJOYSTICK as well as some third-party controllers and joysticks. The button designations of most USB controllers follow one of the three conventions established by Microsoft (Xbox), Sony (Playstation) and Nintendo.

  • Page 60: Using A Usb Keyboard

    Chapter 14 However, if you start the game with the keyboard, The Spectrum will assign the controllers to player-1 and player-2 in the order they were detected. Therefore, if you use two controllers and start a game with the keyboard, you may have to try both to find the controller that is player-1.

  • Page 61: Troubleshooting

    Power indicator does not light To turn on The Spectrum, press the power button once. If after a few seconds the power indicator does not light and you see nothing on the TV, check that you are using a suitable 5V/1A (5W) USB power adapter, and that the power adapter is working.
  • Page 62 Chapter 15 1) Plug The Spectrum into a TV that does support the current output mode and then navigate to Options Advanced settings Factory reset (See Factory reset). 3) Force a factory reset. If turned on, turn The Spectrum off by pressing and holding the power button for approximately two seconds (until the power indicator goes out).

  • Page 63: Precautions

    • Anyone who has had a seizure, blackout, loss of awareness or any symptom related to an epileptic condition should consult a doctor before using The Spectrum. • Stop using The Spectrum immediately and consult a doctor if you or anyone using or viewing The Spectrum experiences dizziness, eye or muscle twitches, disorientation, affected vision, involuntary movements, convulsions or seizures.

  • Page 64: Electric Shock

    • Allow plenty of airflow through the grilles on the top and bottom of the case. • Do not allow dust to build up on the grilles. • Do not cover The Spectrum or use it in an enclosed cabinet or other location where heat may build up.

  • Page 65: Handling And Use

    • Make sure all cables are connected only to the correct ports, and make sure to hold plugs straight when inserting. • Keep The Spectrum and all cables and peripherals out of the reach of young children. • Do not position The Spectrum where it or any connected cables might cause someone to trip or stumble.
  • Page 66 Retro Games LTD Unit 166, The Mall Luton, LU1 2TL England...