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During my demo, I led Hen-House Harry through a number of levels and the gameplay was exactly like I remember it, as was the tactile feel of the rubberized keyboard. Other games can be unlocked via 79p ($1) in-app purchases.

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Elite bundles a free app that launches with a short soundbite of the Spectrum loading sound and offers a number of free games, including exclusive rights to Chuckie Egg, and access to Sinclair BASIC.

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With no embeddable games, the keyboard relies upon existing iOS and Android apps. However, you can also pair it with any Android or Windows tablet and use devices like the Chromecast to throw games like Manic Miner up on your big-screen TV. In my test, I paired it with an iPad Air and then mirrored its screen on an Apple TV.

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PlayingĪs it's essentially a Bluetooth (3.0) keyboard, the Recreated Sinclair Spectrum works on nearly any platform.

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In order to imitate and sell the Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum in the UK, Elite acquired a license to the Sinclair brand and designs from Sky and will pay a royalty for each unit sold (Sky's lawyers also had a say in its name). Elite teamed up with Ceratech, a bespoke keyboard maker known for its work in the medical field, to create the keyboard, although it will actually be made in China. Earlier this year, the company raised £63,000 on Kickstarter to fund the tooling required to manufacture the Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum. It's taken roughly four years for Elite Systems to get to this point. 'On-screen controls can only do so much and we knew we could do better.' 'Many of the original games were designed to fully utilize the ZX's controllers,' says Wilcox. For Elite Systems, it's the culmination of 20 years of experience in the game industry, which have taken it from creating its own games for the ZX Spectrum to porting some of the console's biggest titles from yesteryear over to modern devices like the iPad. Well, for starters, the new model doesn't do any processing - it's simply a Bluetooth keyboard. You might wonder what differences there are between the Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum and the original. Wilcox and his team ended up buying a handful of machines on eBay and 3D scanning them in order to accurately mimic the design. In the transition period, many of the old Spectrum designs were lost, including the original wooden models on which the ZX Spectrum was based. Then, over a decade later, Sky bought Amstrad for £125 million ($253 million at the time), which meant it became the new owner of Sinclair's intellectual property. In 1986, Sinclair sold his loss-making computer business, along with all its rights and inventions, to Sir Alan Sugar's Amstrad for £5 million ($7.4 million today). The Makingĭespite its popularity in the past, recreating the ZX Spectrum hasn't been easy. It features the same rubber keys, fonts and even sports faux air vents on the back to match its predecessor. If you've laid eyes on a ZX Spectrum before, you'd (like me) be hard-pressed to notice a difference between the old model and its newer counterpart. The key word here is 'recreated.' In fact, that's its name: the Recreated Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Instead of attempting to recapture my youth at my parent's house, I'm in London meeting Steve Wilcox, founder of Elite Systems, whose company has recreated Sir Clive Sinclair's 5 million-selling retro personal computer for the tablet age.

Fast-forward to this week and I'm laying eyes on it again, but in a different setting entirely.

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