The spectrum uses character based colouring, so each 8x8 pixel area can have a paper and an ink colour, no more than 2 colours per character block - not without some fancy interrupt routine to switch colours. There are other computers that used the same character based graphics, but most had better video capabilities and colour palettes (like the C64). The attribute or colour 'clash' is kinda what made the speccy unique, developers had to work around that limitation and often that led to inventive ways to render the screen. A lot of British and european developers cut their teeth on the speccy, I think it's fair to say that we have a respect and fondness for it, even to this day.
I love the speccy, in fact I made 2 games for it (Dead Flesh Boy, and Super 48k Box)... the later was actually mentioned in Retro Gamer a few months ago, in the homebrew section, and Dead Flesh Boy has had a few youtube reviews, people seem to like it, although Super 48k Box is a far better game really.
The code is dark and full of errors
