Years ago, I got my first Spectrum emulator.  I can't remember the exact name, but it was a cross between war and Sarejevo.  I think it was written between bombing raids in the Yugoslav wars.  It worked quite well, and was a revelation at the time.

Then I moved on to one called Z80, which I thought was the dog's.  It worked fine on my 486 at the time.  I managed to get copies of most of my old games, except an old text adventure called Robocity, which was on a cover cassette of a magazine.

Anyway, I finally managed to get a copy of this game, loaded up my old Z80, but it won't work on my new-fangled computer - it just says that the computer is too fast!

So what is the best emulator going nowadays?  Is there an updated version of Z80 out there?  Or should I give up and go for one of those Nintendo Pii things instead?

I'd like to be able to emulate a Spectrum again.  The past is a friendly country and I enjoy my visits there!

Thanks for the tip.  I'll take a look and report back!

djgarf wrote on Jun 11^th, 2009 at 4:01pm:


With the best will in the world... Warajevo *was* the best Speccy emu at one time, but it was being equalled / surpassed by others a decade ago. SPIN, in my opinion, is the current leader - see Warajevo's list of things To Do, Maybe To Do and Not To Do? It does all those!

There's also BASin, which involves some of the same people and some of the same code - it's a ZX BASIC development studio, so it does everything a Spectrum does in BASIC mode but also has lots of PC-specific tools for making graphics, sound etc.

I use ZX Spin, but the free trial of Spectaculator impressed me!  Not enough to buy it tho