Speccyal Emulator Review - ZX Planet

Speccyal another great Win32 based Spectrum emulator, its user friendly and very easy to use so if you don't like the MS-DOS based emulators then give this one a try.

Speccyal emulates:

48k Model

As Speccyal currently only emulates the 48k Sinclar ZX Spectrum model (rubber keys!) then you may want to try other emulators too. The requirements for this emulator are:

P266 MMX ,16MB RAM, Latest Version Of DirectX

Installation	Requires WinZIP to decrunch.
Ease Of Use	This emulator is very easy to use, simply click File then Open and select your game to run it!. There are many advanced features in this emulator also, for example the overclocking of the emulated Z80.
Compatibility	Speccyal can read (SNA/TAP/Z80) data formats and has been tested with around 95% of the 48K games currently available, they all work fine.
Graphics	Graphics are of course of a high standard and the emulator does not try to enhance the display at full screen or higher resolutions. In the games we tested we didn't notice any serious graphical errors, scan line emulation is enabled by default but the effects are not that dramatic.
Sound	The sound is very shaky in the release we used to review the emulator as it would often have a clicking noise in the background - probably caused by DirectX calls. However the sound does maintain an accurate pitch and sounds pretty much like the real thing - only with clicks every now and again.
Speed	The only down side of the emulator is the speed, it can often be slow when compared to other Spectrum emulators. To test this I fired up a real 128K Spectrum with Popeye and the 128K machine was running faster. Incidentally the machine I tested the emulator with is a 500Mhz K6-2 with 128MB RAM and Windows 98. UPDATE: As Stephane pointed out, the emulator is much faster when forced into full-screen mode, the windowed emulation isn't quite up to speed yet! - In full screen it's perfect.
Registration	The beauty of emulation is that most authors create these superb programs in their free time and therefore expect nothing in return. Speccyal has no registration fee and is 100% free.
Download	Get it here