Sinclair ZX Spectrum A Visual Compendiu

A great looking book, the pages are vibrant and I really enjoyed reading about all these old games.

Really nice quality book and bright colorful content.

Just an amazing book for anyone, like me, that's a ZX Spectrum fanboy/girl!!

Pure Nostalgia

This is a rare beast - a veritable time machine. Writing a historical record that can transport those of us who were there back to the time in question is a great art. The witness statements ring true. I heard they had to use special inks to get the colour to look just right. A time of primary colours. There's even four different coloured bookmarks. The world revealed by these machines in the early 80's was small but perfectly formed, and we will do injustice to future generations if we forget what that spark looked like.

This book is absolutely gorgeous. Bitmap books is becoming well known for producing great-quality highly enjoyable retro gaming books. With their current kickstarter campaign for the C64, they're steadily creating a line of wonderful coffee-table books. Now, I'm hoping they'll make some retro-themed coffee tables for me to put them on :)Every page is eye-poppingly vibrant. No stolid loading-screens or banks and banks of stodgy text. The imagery is interspersed wonderfully with the text, and the text is both enjoyable to read, and nostalgia-inducing to the max.The market is getting quite saturated of ZX Spectrum game books, but I'm very glad I got this one. I just wish it covered more of the games I used to love!

As books go, this is not a bad book as such, but depending on your expectations it can disappoint. Being a Sinclair ZX Spectrum owner who started out with the 16Kb version, upgraded the memory to 48Kb myself and lateron 'transplanted' the keyboard with the newer 'hard' version and the reset switch, I had expected a chapter devoted to the hardware, the schematics and these DIY projects of the time, or info on the microdrives, the various joystick interfaces and also on what programming languages where available, like Lightning FORTH, at the time. Instead it contained lots of big colourful pages. LOTS OF COLOURFUL PAGES. Big fields of red, or blue, or yellow and then a huge screenshot and then some texts somewhere on that colourful backdrop. This put me immediately off. Yes, I liked the games too, I was and still am addicted to The Lords of Midnight and Doomdark's Revenge, but where is Breakout ? And was Psion Chess in there as well ? I was so shocked, that I can't remember exactly, because I returned this book. And all that, for the most part, because of the "too much in your face" lay-out of the book and the shocking lack of background information. This is not a reference book on all things Sinclair ZX Spectrum and I feel it should have been. Is this too harsh ? I don't know, maybe, but I am too old to just want colourful artsy paper on my bookshelve that I will never look at again. Three stars is just being nice and means: middle of the road.

A pesar que titularse "A visual compendium" tiene bastante más texto de lo que podría pensarse a un tipo de letra quizá un poco pequeña para que la lectura se cómoda (y yo no uso gafas). Los textos están bien pero tienen un punto de nostalgia más enfocado al público británico.La calidad de la edición es excelente, con una reproducción de colores extremadamente fiel. El papel es brillante y de alto gramaje. Hay que tener cuidado de no tocar el libro si no es con las manos absolutamente limpias de grasilla, porque se quedan marcas con facilidad.La cubierta exterior también es de calidad, pero en mi caso venía un poco sobada.En definitiva, el libro está bien, pero con la edición de tapa blanda es más que de sobra.