2020 for Spectrum fans was, above all, the year of the Next. After the delivery of the "bare" motherboards, which already took place at the end of 2017, the machines sponsored by the Kickstarter campaign three years earlier were delivered to their patrons, who were thus able to put their hands upon what is first and foremost the outcome of a common passion.

The Next project was born as an evolution of TBBlue, a motherboard based on the TK95 Brazilian clone of the Spectrum, designed by Victor Trucco and Fabio Belavenuto. Together with Henrique Olifiers, also Brazilian but living in the United Kingdom, they - initially almost as a joke - planned to turn the TBBlue into a whole remake of the Spectrum. For this reason, they contacted Rick Dickinson, the great designer responsible for the unmistakable physical appearance of all Sinclair-branded computers from the ZX80 to the Spectrum 128 and the QL. At the beginning of 2016, the design stage of the new home computer began.

The fundraising campaign started in April 2017 with an initial goal of £250,000, which was reached after about 36 hours. Eventually £723,390 would be raised from 3,113 supporters.

The enthusiastic reception of the Next prompted the developers - who unfortunately lost Dickinson; sadly, he passed away in April 2018 - to organise a second campaign on Kickstarter, which was even more successful than the first, accumulating the astounding sum of 1,847,106 pounds given by 5,236 backers.

In this article I will not dwell, if not briefly, on the most technical details. Rather, I intend to give an account of my initial experience with the Next and the impressions I got from it.

The Next takes up the lines and proportions of the 128, the last of the Spectrum series designed by Dickinson, so that it places itself along an ideal continuity line, already from this point of view. The plastic casing is assembled with care: the keyboard layout fully retains the appearance of the Plus and 128, with keywords and symbols engraved in white at the top of each key. It is more comfortable to the touch than the original, both in typing and in gaming, since the keys offer less resistance to pressure and are almost flat, rather than concave, without the sharp edges of the old ones. You can always use a PS/2 keyboard, or a USB one equipped with an adapter, thanks to the connector on the back. A mouse may also be connected to it, for use within programs compatible with the Kempston mouse.

The undeniable elegance of the whole is further revealed in the group of four coloured plastic arches, placed on the right side, echoing the red-yellow-green-blue four-colour stripe, associated with the Spectrum since its first appearance, almost forty years ago. An apparently decorative element, its function is precisely to emphasise the lineage from the original series. It is worth remembering that during the prototype construction phase, the red arch had to be ordered from the manufacturer twice, because the first one came out of a colour nuance more similar to orange, too different from that of the previous Spectrums. This gives an idea of the care taken by its creators in transposing the Next from an abstract drawing to a real object, even in the smallest details. Worth noting is also the rounded "Sinclair" logo; I would have left it as it was before, but so be it.

The rear of the machine shows a series of connectors; besides the already mentioned PS/2 input, there are the VGA/RGB and HDMI video outputs, the stereo audio output, the combined EAR/MIC port to hook the Next to a tape recorder (for both loading and saving), two USB Mini-A ports and the multi-purpose bus, protected by a cover.

The Next, although beautiful to look at, is not an ornament or a piece of furniture: it is a machine made to be used. What happens when you connect it to a monitor? Video outputs are RGB, VGA and HDMI at 50 and 60 Hz.

The best image quality can be achieved with HDMI: pixels appear clearly distinct from each other, colours are bright and without "smudging", and elements on the screen move smoothly. However, this setting has the drawback of not displaying the multicolour correctly, that is, the effect obtained with the Bifrost and Nirvana graphic routines and others. The problem, as explained by the developers of the Next, is due to the peculiarities of the HDMI architecture, which is more complex than VGA, and is not easy to solve. It is not a critical flaw - after all, multicolour only appears in a small number of games and demos - but if you want to run on the Next some software where these routines are implemented, you have to "fall back" on VGA output. The image quality in this case is not in the same league of HDMI, although it is superior to that of RGB/SCART.

VGA modes are numbered from 0 to 6 and can, like HDMI, be run at 50 or 60Hz. For a faithful recreation of the Spectrum, however, VGA 0 at 50Hz is the best option, as the others result in an increase in the internal clock frequency, which shows itself in a very noticeable way as the upward shift of audio frequencies. In other words, sounds are transposed up by a semitone at each change of mode. In any case, you need to arm yourself with a certain amount of patience and check which mode ensures the greatest degree of compatibility with the monitor, especially when it has an aspect ratio different from the 4:3 of the traditional Spectrum video image. If you don't like the picture looking "squashed" on a 16:9 or similar screen, you will have to tinker with the monitor settings until you get the desired image. Besides, the VGA connector, unlike HDMI, does not carry the audio signal, so to in order to hear the sounds produced by the computer you will need a 3.5 stereo jack cable to connect the Audio Out port of the Next to an external speaker (the same should be done if your monitor does not come with in-built speakers).

Unlike historical Spectrums, the Next allows you to manipulate the screen through four layers numbered from 0 to 3. Each of them has different characteristics: level 0 has the same characteristics of the standard resolution of the Spectrum, while the others, through various combinations, allow to reach a maximum resolution of 640x256. Up to 256 colours can be displayed simultaneously on the screen, from a total of 512 available. Another new feature is the presence of a dedicated memory area for sprites. These have a size of 16x16, and up to a maximum of 64 of them can be displayed on the screen simultaneously. Everything would already be manageable from BASIC, but it is a very complex architecture, so much so that the user manual dedicates three chapters to it. Unfortunately, the description, at least to the writer, appears too often convoluted and unclear. A "for dummies" guide on this subject would be welcome. In any case, some games released for the platform (see below) give an idea of the great capabilities of this system.

The Next can take on different "personalities" thanks to the internal architecture based on FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). It is, in very simple terms, a set of circuits that can be arranged and connected to each other in real time, in order to faithfully reproduce the operation of multiple platforms. In this case, they are the historical Spectrum models, including the 128 Investronica, and others such as the Microdigital Brazilian clones (not surprising, given the developers' origins), or alternative ROMs for the 48K such as the GOSH Wonderful. There is also a setting that enables the timing of the clones manufactured in the old USSR. Therefore, it is not a mere emulation. For those who, like myself, are almost totally ignorant of electronic engineering, this possibility of "impersonating" different machines is, to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, little less than magic.

Beyond the remarkable charm of being able to handle an "exotic" machine without resorting to emulation on the PC, for a developer there is the undisputed advantage of being able to test the compatibility of their software even with these platforms, which although less common still maintain their own user base.

The Next operating system is stored on an SD card supplied with the computer. The card is also necessary for updating the firmware and hosting the software you wish to run on it. In practice, everything you want to "feed" to the machine goes through this SD card, or another containing the system files essential for booting. Only once the Next has been started you can employ the 3.5 jack connector for loading from tape (and also for saving, since it combines the functionality of EAR and MIC), for an even more "retro" experience. Among the "personalities", there is the 128 with a DivMMC, which makes it possible to copy the ESXDOS operating system to the SD card. This feature is particularly useful if you own a DivMMC interface and want to run games, demos, applications, etc., already arranged for use with that device, on the Next.

The "accelerated" Next includes an additional card with a graphics coprocessor, a Wi-Fi module and a real-time clock, designed to be implemented as part of its main personality. At the moment, however, these additional parts do not seem to have been used that much. Let's wait and see.

The graphics and sound capabilities of the Next have already been put to the test by a series of games of various kinds. They are mostly arcade titles, but there is no shortage of other genres. Most of the ones I had the opportunity to try so far are good enough, but not very original. For example: Montana Mike, a platform-and-ladders game clearly inspired by Rick Dangerous; Bubblegum Bros, a platformer very reminiscent of Bubble Bobble; Dungeonette, a clone of Atic Atac; Warhawk, a vertically scrolling shooter; Angry Bloaters, a kind of Bomberman; Dweebs Drop, a hybrid between Tetris and Candy Crush.

Exceptions are the Next versions of two games released on the Spectrum as well and reviewed in this Annual: the excellent Infocom-style text adventure Tristam Island, and Delta's Shadow, which on the Next is as engaging and thrilling as on its "little brother", while the technical execution fully shows what the new machine is capable of, from the full-colour graphics, to the smoothness of sprite movements, resulting from a skilful use of dedicated hardware, up to the sound making excellent use of the nine AY channels available. It can be said that Delta's Shadow is the first "real" game conceived with the Next in mind.

Among the titles currently under development, Cuadragon Next looks promising: a dynamic adventure with touches of roleplaying, programmed in ZX Basic.

In light of what we have seen so far, when faced with the question: "but then, was it worth it to invest in the 'physical' Next, and to wait so long for it?", my answer is a loud and clear "yes". The Next is aesthetically magnificent, has a number of hardware features of enormous potential and has opened a new chapter in the history of retro-computing.

It is the Spectrum that, perhaps, we could have seen in our homes as early as the final years of the 1980s, if Uncle Clive hadn't got carried away by that sustainable mobility affair (a good idea in itself, and well in advance on the times, but turned into reality with an inadequate technology and too much hurry, alas). Be that as it may, the Next is here and is beginning to show what it is able to do. May it inspire a new generation of enthusiasts and retro programmers!

Processor:
Z80 at 3,5 MHz with “turbo” modes at 7, 14 and 28 MHz

Memory:
1 Mb RAM (internally expandable to 2 Mb)

Video:
256 e 512 colors modes, resolutions 256x192 and 640x256

Video output:
RGB, VGA, HDMI, 50 and 60 Hz

Auxiliary hardware:
Hardware sprites, DMA, Copper, enhanced ULA, Tilemap, Layer2

Storage:
SD card slot, compatible with the DivMMC protocol

Audio:
9 channels through 3 AY-3-8912 stereo chips, plus 2 8-bit DAC

Joystick:
2 ports, compatible with Cursor, Kempston and Interface 2

PS/2:
Mouse with Kempston emulation, or external keyboard

Features:
Multiface functionality for memory access, saves, cheats etc.

Tape support:
Combined MIC/EAR input/output for tape loading and saving

Expansion:
Original external bus port and expansion port for internal accelerator

Accelerator (optional):
Graphic processor/CPU at 1 GHz with 512 Mb RAM

Network:
Wi-Fi module

Extra:
Real-time clock

Operating system:
NextZXOS and NextBasic with expanded command set