Ruthless: The Story of Amstrad and Alan Sugar in the 80's and 90's - Kim Justice
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- Опубліковано 20 бер 2016
- #amstrad #retrogaming #documentary
People say that I've ignored Amstrad a lot in the past...well, complain no more - here's a whole video on them! Which means lots of Alan Sugar, obviously. Various highlights of Lord Sir Sugar's career follows - the Amstrad CPC, buying up the ZX Spectrum, the Mega PC...um, the GX4000, running Tottenham Hotspur, the E-m@iler...there's lots here! Aren't Amstrad brilliant? Seriously, you forget just how much Alan Sugar did and all the Amstrad products that were around before the days of the Apprentice...
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I appreciate the amount of research and polish going into these. As a 23-year-old American I've had zero exposure to microcomputers, so hearing about them from someone who was there is a real treat.
It's refreshing to see your comment it's good to know that young people are open minded enough to take an interest in the humble beginnings of microcomputers. I feel blessed that I lived through these times it's a generational thing we all go through I guess. I say this because I am 44 and sometimes I've wished I was born earlier so I could have lived through the swinging sixties.
We all take everything for granted in a way and we should embrace and enjoy every minute we are on this Earth and make the best of all opportunities that come our way otherwise you will look back with regret (I advise NEVER to regret anything even if you are justified to do so because all the time we are alive there is still time to make good )
@@TheFusedplug I'm 50 and I'm glad to have enjoyed the era of the microcomputers. Back then my father bought me a CPC-464 with color monitor. Those were the days...
I'm from France and the CPC was the microcomputer we needed at the time. C64 was unheard of, Thomsons were in the schools (but not really comparable to what the CPC had to offer) and all the DOS/Apple II stuff was crazy talk.
Brilliant as always. 10/10
Love all the old adverts you manage to dig up.
Cameos by Brian Clough, Alan Partridge and the Mega Powers, it's why I love your videos more than anyone else's on youtube.
Middlesbrough are shite. Stop boring us.
@@tigereye1208 It is not he who is the bore here Sir.
The Amstrad CPC was released the same year as Sinclair QL, Commodore C16, Commodore plus 4, Enterprise, Sinclair ZX Spectrum+ and Spectravideo 728. The one with success was the Amstrad CPC. The magazines were very impressed with the build quality of the Amstrad CPC. The return rate because of faulty equipment was much lower than the competition including the ZX Spectrums and Commodore C64.
+Ivar Fiske I think Kim is being far too harsh on the CPC in his videos. The CPC is actually well made on the whole and has a large database of great games and also serious software, with some of the games being technically good; infact many of them were beyond what the Commodore 64 was capable of with graphic resolution and colour, or wire frame 3D or racing games etc. I owned a rubber key Spectrum 48K and had to return it under guarantee about four times, before I received one that worked and lasted without going faulty. However my CPC never needed returning and was used for thousands of hours without once going wrong. I think the CPC was a very well rounded computer, which could cover many areas competently; something you could not say about the C64 or others.
In 1987 we got our first Amstrad. The Amstrad PC1512, quite a popular MS-DOS (with Gem Desktop) PC. The magazine "PC PLUS" was actually originally called "PC PLUS Amstrad". There was quite a high uptake of that machine and I remember playing lots of games on it such as Arkanoid, Wizball, Bruce Lee etc
Wow wizball I had totally forget that one, what a weird game
When it comes to the build quality of the Amstrad CPC range, I'd say they were top quality. I had all sorts of problems with the Spectrum and C64, including overheating, cassette issues etc.. But my Amstrad never had problems - and I know it was the same for my friends and other Amstrad users. From what I've heard/read, you can buy an Amstrad and it will still work fine. But I don't know if the monitors still work, but probably not. Anyway, you can buy an RGB scart cable these days. Also, as much as the Amstrad had lots of Spectrum ports, games that were specially made for the machine were often very colourful and impressive.
+kingstonlj The monitors tend to still work very well today.
I really liked my Amstrad colour monitor, so it's nice to know that some of them are still working well.
My CPC-464 and its colour monitor are both work working flawlessly after all these years...
Once again your docs style is detailed comprehensive and gripping. You have nailed it well done!
i have realy enjoyed your series,i think the UK and euro game scenes are completly forgotton,and there very important,just imagine no ARM chips for a start,thanks so much
Surely the PCW deserved a mention. Average piece of CP/M kit, but Locoscript was an excellent word processor. .
Just noticed that the QL advert mis-spells Macintosh. That would stand out a mile these days, but I guess at the time most people wouldn't have noticed or cared as it wasn't really a household name.
That _might_ have been deliberate to avoid being sued or for copyright reasons.
But it probably was more likely an oversight.
It was only ever shown at the launch event. Never shown on TV. Never shown at cinemas as planned. So hardly anyone saw it until the modern era when it became ubiquitous thanks to micro men.
I don't know why you basically skipped the three most successful Amstrad lines. The Amstrad PCW sold 8 million computers with monitor and printer. A huge success and big money maker. The total sale of Sinclair ZX Spectrum including Amstrad sales of the Spectrum, was only 6 millions. Amstrad dominated the PC market in Europe for several years from 1986 to around 1990 with 12 million machines sold. The Sky decoders sold really well too. A small number of was tried sold in the USA through their Spanish importer Indescomp, it failed badly. But it gave us and the French the Amstrad CPC 6128. The Amstrad CPC 6128 was the best selling Amstrad CPC in France. A disc based machine with 128 kB memory. One of the reasons for its success was that France had its own TV standard. As the Amstrad CPC came with its own monitor included, that was not a problem.
The CPC464 was my first computer when I was a kid. I remember trying my hand at BASIC, typing what seemed like 100's of lines of code just to get a blue and yellow flashing circle - that's if I was lucky and didn't get a lad of syntax error messages. Also, waiting for donkeys trying to load a game on a tape with that whirly noise, then watching it crash and having to start again. We must have had a load of patience back then!
God, that fucking BBC micro. A suspicious looking teacher with a dodgy mustache tried to get us to use those in the "technology" class when I was 12. Was sure he had put me off computers for life. I hated that damn BBC. Had no clue what I was doing.
Now I'm a game developer... shrug!
Great video. I love these documentary style videos.
Excellent! Informative! Funny!! You definatly have an amazing talent for the infomentarys!! I love watching them. Keep up the good work!!
You Sir are on a roll. Best channel on the UA-cams by far, keep em coming.
Another great documentary Kim, I think you've really hit your mark when it comes making videos. I just hope more people get to see them because with quality of your releases, you deserve to be having a 100k subs and more :)
Thank you for this top quality production! Thank you.
I'm from the rubber key era. I actually started with a zx81 which had a membrane keyboard! Then a speccy 48k, then an AMstrad CPC 464 with colour monitor, I actually quite liked the machine.
Excellent vids btw. Cheers.
Another fantastic documentary, Kim! Absolutely loving these. :D
Very well put together, great job. You are the definitive source for all things retro micro computers and deserve more followers
I loved my Amstrad CPC 6128 when I was a kid. I learned to code BASIC and Z80 assembly on it, which gave me my love of programming (which is my job these days). Mind you, a part of it was that it was a present from my granddad for Christmas 1990, not long before he died in 1991 - so I have a personal reason for my fondness of the CPC.
Magic, Kim! Frikken TV-documentary quality stuff.
...in the good way.
Thank you for yet another excellent docubioretroadvert as a 30+ year documentary junkie I must say you put together a top notch show on every topic I've seen
I really do enjoy these types of documentaries you put out. I'm not really informed on the old Micro computers, but I've been really finding them interesting and your stuff is really informative to a newbie like me, especially when its mostly about the British market. Anyway love your work, keep it up :)
Great stuff Kim, enjoyable as always - your output gets better and better. Recently subscribed and binged most of your content - awesome work!
The CPC was my first computer - my Dad bought it for me and my siblings around 1989. Although I thought it was okay at the time, I never loved it as much as I loved my future gaming machines such as the Nes and Snes. My favourite game on the system was probably Contra, although there were a couple of other "okay" games such as Dan Dare and Impossible Mission.
Very insightful and interesting as always.... keep'em coming!
I would like to add another point of view. Here in Germany in the mid 80ies the CPC and the C64 were the main popular computers, at least among my friends. The keyboard of the CPC 6128 was a great business type keyboard. The programming language basic (Locomotive basic) was good. Shipped with the cpc also was CPM, which helped me switch to DOS and linux later on. In my opinion the CPC was a great jumpboard for later programmers and IT-guys into the world of modern PCs. The programming handbook (basic) of the german Schneider CPC was one of the best guides I have read in my whole life as a programmer. Regarding gaming there were better machines, yes.
Your great documentary did miss one thing. The CPC's death was the rare 3 inch floppy drive. In his biography I read, that they got hands on a cheap stock of lots of these drives, and so they built them into the CPCs (and their textprocessing computer Joyce). The floppy disks were robust and cool, double sided, but expensive. I bought my cpc6128 with green monitor for 799 Deutsche Mark in 1987. 10 floppy Disks (3 inch) did cost addional 100 DM. Too expensive compared to the cheap 5,25 floppies of the c64 or the upcoming 3,5 floppies of the Amiga and the PCs.
I had an Amstrad. Cheers for the doc.
What can I say another master piece, you should honestly consider making video gaming documentaries full time, I couldn't stop the movie out if sheer joy, keep up the amazing work my queen of documentaries.
Oh yes. Looking forward to this. The Amstrad 464+ was my computer as a kid, so can't wait to watch this video when I get home from work. Keep up the great work Kim.
+purplezebrahoover I hope you could see past Kim's negative opinions on the CPC. Apart from that it was a very good video.
Brilliantly put together as always!
The Amstrad CPC, which is also remembered as "Schneider" as it was distributed by them (Belgium, Germany, etc), did have its personality gaming-wise. It had a mascot, Roland. Many Roland games, some of which were rebranded ports (like, Fred became Roland on the Ropes). And it's apparently this Alan Sugar guy who's behind that character & game range, so it looks like he did care.
Roland is named after the designer. Roland Perry. The prototype cpc was called arnold, an anagram of Roland.
Thanks, I've enjoyed your video, but, like many others have commented here also, I'm rather surprised you did not mentioned the great cheap amstrad PC compatible series Pc1512 and PC1640, they were very popular here in Portugal. With the Intel's 8086 at 8mhz rather than the stock Intel 8088 used in xt's.
I grew up with the spectrum and had a PC1512, both very popular and cheap here. Thanks again for the videos.
Oh god the Amstrad PCW. My mother, of all people, had one of those and worked from home. It used 3 inch (not 3 1/2 inch) floppies that NOTHING ELSE seemed to use, and she had the 9512 which looked like it had emerged from a car crusher.
I will say that the Locomotive BASIC that came with the CPC was easily one of the best versions BASIC that came with any of the 80s home computers. Certainly leagues ahead of that awful Commodore BASIC. It really got me into programming.
Kim, you're on fire with these videos! The research, the editing, the topics, the wealth of information; and they grip you, they're fascinating! Thank you so much for making them for us all. I hope big things come your way, you deserve it. it's so good seeing the history of videogames and computers from the British perspective, a viewpoint which has seemingly been neglected or pushed aside on youtube and 'games media' due to the passion our American cousins have for Atari and Nintendo. Please keep up the good work, it's great to listen to someone so intelligent, knowledgeable and passionate about this stuff : )
I've put this one off as I loved my Amstrad growing up; it's hard to reconsile personal affection for the machine with the nature of Alan Sugar's strategy of maximum profit for minimum input and bugger the quality. It feels like unrequited love! Still the Amstrad all in one idea was a goody, even if the tech wasn't.
Great video, though: thank you once again for taking the time to make.
The CPC machine was good, but I have always despised Alan Sugar. I agree with you, he does only care about money.
These documentary style bio vids have become my favorite of all the guys who do this kind of thing within the gaming genre. I've watched a ton of them, from many different people, and these are the best blend of information, humor, and personality. The gaming historian could maybe learn a thing or 2 :) Both great, but I think you grab the lead buddy :) Thanks for the great content!
Wow Alan Sugar made Jack Tramiel look like sweet heart.
not really, Trameil would sue to death people who quit his company and then started another company that would or could compete with him and he also literally fucked all the people that worked for him that did not belong to his inner circle(his sons and his sycophants)
No mention of the Sorcery game, nor Nonterraqueous, nor of the excellent and quite performant Locomotive BASIC, nor the brilliant concept of copy cursors and the Copy key? And how about underestimating the utility of a RGB monitor I used for over 12 years, first with the CPC464, then with my Atari ST and a quickly soldered 6-pin RGB adapter, and also as a PAL TV monitor for my VHS VCR? That CPC464 (distributed by Schneider in Germany) was such a great first computer to use and study, easily better than the C64 or Speccy. I still have mine in working condition. Anyway, thumbs up from me. Cheers!
You would love my dad, he was IBM for 30 years, I was lucky growing up with computers, I still can remember dos codes.
Very Interesting. Thanks for that.
A CPC6128 was my 2nd computer, after a Vic.
I always saw it as better than the spectrum, because mainly I hated the awful keyboard on the speccy.
Too me the Spectrum always seemed like it had been cobbled together (especially the early ones).
The Amstrad CPC just worked. There was no drama with it, it was built well enough, the software was good enough etc...
The Monitor was OK too.
I do think you spent too much time on the CPC464 though, the PCW range was hugely successful, and I know people in business today that STILL use them.
Thanks.
another brilliant video. never really liked amstrad either myself, but can definitely see why people would have fond memories of the CPC.
Really enjoying some of your documentaries :)
Your content, unbelievably, improves every video. I was the 464 owner, and games like Oh Mummy shaped me into the degenerate mess I am today
+mattyfox666 Agreed, love these vids. History about computing is incredible. Kim, you ought to visit the computer museum in Cambridge.. you would have an incredible time there as they have every, and I mean *every* old computer and console which you can play with.
I never really had any experience of the Amstrad, but this was still a really interesting video to watch. :-)
Thanks. Would have liked to have seen more on Amstrad's PC compatibles -
and an honourable mention should go out to their gloriously awful CP/M
business machines of the early 1990s - remember them? They weren't PC
compatible, but they looked like PCs. They came with a printer, monitor,
Wordstar and LocoScript - or something.
My mum used to have an Amstrad 464 Plus, she bought it back in 1989 or so when she decided to go to college once me and my brother were in school and my sister was close to starting school at the time. Played quite a few games on it, I think she's still got the old thing in the attic with all of the games that were bought for it.
Feeling old now after watching a few of your videos.
Great work, very interesting. The speccy wasn't particularly popular here in Australia, but the CPC systems sold well enough. I didn't have one, but I knew a few who did. I remember seeing the MegaPC thing for sale alongside Amiga 600s, Amiga 1200s and crap Commodore PCs and little black and white compact Macs. I got an A1200, despite Commodore having just gone under when I got it - it still seemed like the best option unless I just wanted to play games - and we had a Sega Master system 2 for that...
These videos are great thanks Kim
Nice video ;) I recall one of the major selling point of the 464 was the included Easy Amsword wordprocessor. Today we dont think much about getting a wordprocessor, but back then getting one for free & along with a good keyboard computer really was something. When i had to step up from my belowed ZX81 back then it was a tough choice, however the colourfull amstrad screenshots in mags won me over. I think i recall Sugar saying that to him the 464 was just a big calculator & it was never really supposed to be a gaming machine, something that is quite apparent when you read thru early amstrad mags & get one gray page after another with spreadsheets & databases & pcw blue pages.
Better be careful Kim. This guy could be your next Prime Minister. Similar thing seems to have happened to us here in the USA.
Nah. Alan Sugar made money on his own without daddy’s help-definitely not a parallel to Trump.
Plus, most people in the UK hate Alan Sugar. And they’re leaning Labour now and lost their shit (in a good way) when Corbin won the early general election this year.
So yeah. Sugar as PM? Not likely.
EDIT: ...oops.
@@rabidrabbitshuggers this comment aged well...
handymchandface I know fuck all about UK politics and my previous comment proves it.
Really excellent work.
haha great video. lol@the cheering fan falling through the roof and the Ashens reference :) Good work.
loved my cpc 664 still play the games on my PC now. stock market and classic racing my fav games and a few others. still funny playing football manager. loved my vic20 and c64 before my amstrad
My CPC-464 is still working like new. Great machine.
Very interesting! Loved this!
So enjoyable, I love being taken back to my childhood in this way. Like many of us I had friends with Spectrums, CPC's, Commodore +4's and I had to make do with an old and arthritic VIC20. I had the last laugh in 1991 when my parents bought me an A500+ just in time for all of my friends to ditch the Amiga and buy mega drives. I guess I was forever destined to be behind the times but I wouldn't have it any other way. Keep up the top work Kim!
I don't think I'd be doing what I do as a tech support engineer if it wasn't for my Amiga.
Really interesting, well made and insightful video. Surprised you have relatively few subs so far, I can see huge potential in your channel if you keep this kind of quality up!
Crazy to think Amstrad started out as a real life Trotter's Independent Traders.
The unsung hero is the PCW which sold more than the CPC and speccy combined, or the Amiga and ST combined. Probably the most popular 8bit PC outside the c64.
That's not Ted Rogers...that's that bird from the abattoir who looks like Ted Rogers!
I've got about 5 of those fucking Amstrad Em@ilers (been intending to do a video on them for years), Thought they didn't work but it turns out any machine that wasn't registered by the time the servers went down are essentially bricked.
Also, typical scummy Sugar practices, yup you could play spectrum games on them, but you could only RENT them for 70p a day (of £3.50 for a week) also the entire catalog was Ocean games strangely.
Annddd they didn't have a built in answer machine, every day it would automatically call in to a premium rate number to retrieve calls and emails, if you wanted it to or not, loads of complaints from OAP's who had run up an extra £70 a month phone bills from simply having it plugged in.
+Larry Bundy Jr What a truly astonishing product. I would call it the best electronic product ever made - no discussion required.
+Larry Bundy Jr That is incredible lol. Screw everyone over as a business plan doesn't really work any more.
Kim Justice
It was an absolute bomb, Tesco bought all the remaining stock and were flogging them off for £7.99 each according to an old Hotukdeals page I found when searching for info.
As savvy as Sugar was in the 80s, he turned into a complete moron from the 90s onwards, just like him pushing those YouView boxes now that no one wants.
Wow really? fuck sake
can this emailer be modded to work on a LAN or local phone network? it would be fun to find other uses for them and rewrite roms
“I don’t like Alan Sugar.”
Rarely does the very first line of a video take the words right out of my goddamn mouth.
great as always
Great stuff Kim thanks. If you haven't seen it yet you may enjoy - Cassetteboy vs The Bloody Apprentice.
I love that you used monty on the run theme in this!
hat's off to you, I been watching your videos for 1/2 a day, and wow YOU ARE pretty nerdy.. i can't even come close. but i am also nerdy. Keep up the good work man!
Great video! However if you're doing a story of Amstrad in the 80's-90's then you've missed out a huge chunk here - specifically their PC's from the mid 80's onwards - they were hugely successful and market leader for a good number of years. It's kind of ironic that most articles or documentaries about Amstrad - much to my annoyance - they always focus entirely on their PC range and only have a small footnote mention of the CPC, here it's the opposite! lol
We had one of them double decker Amstrad video players, my dad was a media teacher so would borrow it on a weekend to copy the films we rented
Had an Amstrad PC1512 with 8 MB hard card!!!
Yes, it's years after the fact, but GODDAMN you make some great docos, mate! :D
great video kim
While I appreciate the research that's obviously gone into this, you've missed several important points: 1. the CPC isn't as technically unnoteworthy as you made out, as the computing magazines of the time attested; and 2. the experts in the field at the time were not saying Amstrad were coming in too late - in fact, the CPC was widely praised prior to its launch, with many experts considering it the best machine coming to market.
No, Amstrad didn't produce a machine that beat all comers but that was clearly not its purpose. It did change things though, as the all-in-one systems we all have these days clearly shows. In many ways, the CPC is a victim of timing; and if it had been quicker to market, the fanboy legions would be singing a different tune to the one we are all so tired of hearing now.
I imagine many mainland Europeans will say a different thing too about the CPC. If nothing else, I think Lord Sugar's push into that untapped market was the big thing he should be remembered for. Not trying to pig-headedly tap into an American market that was essentially on lock-down between the C64 and, later on, IBM compatibles. The idea that anything from Sinclair would succeed here is laughable, and even the BBC wasn't going to break the hold IBM had.
Interestingly, the IBM PC was also an all-in-one piece of kit, as were many PC compatibles. Lord Sugar was clearly onto something. Something "good enough" with all the bits and bobs you need from the getgo, will always win the day.
+Jesus Zamora Amstrad didn't try to enter USA with the Amstrad CPC 6128. It was the Spanish distributor that had a go at the US market. If Kim Justice is saying that Amstrad was having a go at the US market, he hasn't researched that part good enough
+dartsma464 she.
dartsma464 She also made the point that Amstrad made no effort for the US, which was part of why Amstrad were so successful. They saw how Sinclair (with the Timex Sinclair models) and Acorn (with the BBC Micro) failed, and decided not to jump into the meatgrinder. I can tell you as an American who grew up post-crash, any attempt would have been just as disastrous as Sinclair and Acorn. Hell, I hadn't even KNOWN Sinclair and Acorn tried to break America until I started watching these videos. When I grew up, you had "computers" (IBMs) and Apples. That's how consolidated the market was after the gaming crash and the microcomputer price war.
In his biography, Sugar says he made one or two attempts into the American market, with no avail.
The Amstrad Ematailer was a thing of wonder 😁
I was not yet a glint in the milkman's eye in 1983, but had I been about I probably would have eschewed the Speccy of the time for its dead flesh keyboard alone.
Nice vid. I remember the ggreen and red keyed computer, and the GSX4000, I thought Robocop looked good, but it disappeared from the pages of Mean Machines fairly quickly. I had a Nes. And the Amstrad didn't have the games to support it.
These long assed docu videos you are making are fucking brilliant.
These videos should be made into a DVDs
He is "doomed to wander the Earth in search of his next apprentice."
There is a slight inaccuracy. Many people believe the 128k was solely produced in Spain. This is false. My 126k (toast rack) was built in the UK. These existed before the buyout of Amstrad.
Another nice look at british computer history, like those vids very much
Baron Lord General Admiral Sir Emperor Sugar. LOL
I had totally forgot about that pc that could play megadrive games. And Viole! :D
The monitor (which used an RGB connection) meant that the picture was so much better than anything else around at the time. I later mangled the connection with so I could use it on my imported Sega Megadrive and once again, my picture was so good compared to the bloody awful TV connected efforts from Sinclair etc. Amstrad did sell a TV modulator for their CPCs and I used one once. No way you would be in mode 2 and reading text with one of those!
I purchased one of the email phones when they came out purely so I could play some of my old Spectrum games.
I once borrowed one of this from a friend, oddly I ended up a massive migraine and was laid up for a week or so.
Vectrex here in America was of a similar concept; except it had a monitor with wireframe graphics and it used cartridges instead of disks or tapes. And Vectrex was more of a video game system, and not a computer (hope I am saying this right). This was back in the early 80s (I am guessing around 1982-1983).
Hey Kim, love the vid. You may be interested to know that Steve Coogan's commentary on the Alan Partridge DVD actually mentions the Amstrad Emailer being used as a prop and why they chose it for Alan's character. It's not much more detail but you may want to check it out.
fantastic these are some of the best videos in my subs
Interesting vid Kim, the amstrad CPC (green monitor!) was my first computer and so, in a way, nothing can compete with that nostalgia. As you point out in the vid, he was a business man very much of the 'pile it high, sell it cheap' philosophy.
When we got our first Sky plus box it was Amstrad and it was a buggy POS, we replaced it with a PACE model a couple of years later and it was a totally different experience. I think he could never hope to belong to a world of high quality manufacturing and modern electronics.
From what I read most of his wealth now comes from property. He is an entertaining character but certainly no business genius.
your vids are class mate:-)
Yep. .. Amstrad was big in France back then, many people had one
I told him off a few years ago, at work. He didn't seem too bothered.
In the late '80s when I got my first computer the choice I had was either the Amiga or the Atari, I got the Amiga 500 and initially had it hooked up to the TV. The IBM compatible PC or the Apple was just too expensive at the time. I later ended up getting a 1084s monitor and sold my 500 for an Amiga 2000. When I started University in 1991 I was using the Amiga with a PC emulator for schoolwork, was it slow, especially for compiling programs which took about 30 minutes to compile. This didn't last for long and I ended up doing the work at school which at the time from memory was on a 486. Being in Australia at the time I didn't even know an English computer scene existed.