Old Spectrum Mags – Your Spectrum Issue 21 – December 1985

For the past year or two, I’ve been slowly going through all the old issues of the Your Spectrum magazine in the run up to the launch of the ZX Spectrum Next. Funnily enough, in my first article about the Your Spectrum magazine, I mentioned that the Spectrum Next was going to be launched in a couple of months, but sadly it’s launch has been delayed by around two years due to various hiccups along the way. But I’ve been very slow in going through these magazines anyway so as it happens I have just reached the final issue right as the Spectrum Next has been finally making its way to backers! I don’t have mine just yet but it should be coming in the next week or two.

I have to say that I have thoroughly enjoyed my trip down archive lane and reading all these old Your Spectrum magazines. I am a massive fan of it’s successor, Your Sinclair, but I never really had much knowledge about the magazine that came before it. In many ways you can see the blueprint for what became Your Sinclair, and it’s great to see some of the writers on staff that I recognise from Your Sinclair. I’m going to carry on reviewing Your Sinclair in the coming months and I’m sure I’ll recognise some elements that began in Your Spectrum, such as game maps and type-in programs. But one thing that I was very aware of while reading Your Spectrum was how technical it was. Some of the articles were incredible detailed and in-depth on subjects such as 3D programming or technicalities of light pens etc. It really was a great magazine and it was fascinating to get to know this predecessor to my favourite mag.

Below are the highlights from the final issue of Your Spectrum from December 1985. All images are taken from the ever-awesome Internet Archive. Here is the full magazine if you want to take a closer look. https://archive.org/details/your-spectrum-magazine-21

Great to see a big 80s movie icon on the cover of a Speccy mag.

That blue Competition Pro style joystick looks pretty sweet.

Interesting ad for Back to Skool.

Proof above that people actually did win the prize in that helicopter competition they advertised a few issues back!

A typical computer art ad where the person in the ad is creating some amazing piece of art that we could never, ever possibly hope of replicating.

Interesting piece above about the rumoured 128k machine, which had appeared in Spain, and also a very small, indiscrete, article how about Your Spectrum is going to be no more!

Great article here about the new Spectrum 128k that had appeared in Spain. Interesting how the launch of this machine all seemed to be very under the radar.

Bruce Lee at no.1! Very well deserved. One of my classic Speccy games.

“Learn Machine Code the Easy Way… with Peker?”

Another great Your Spectrum article above about how to write a computer game.

Impossible Mission was such a good game. I always remember how fluid the running animation was in it.

Now they’re making some noise about the imminent launch of Your Sinclair! Great stuff. Very exciting. I only got into Your Sinclair back in the day around Issue 8 or something, so I’m looking forward to going back to read through the first issues.