Unlocking the Sinclair code
First appeared in ZXF issues 10 (Spring 2005)
There's just something about the Sinclair brand. I love it. The vivid, often action-packed inlay designs have something of a Boys' Own quality about them and could hardly contrast more with the stark, basic, often BASIC contents held by the C15 within; yet I never feel betrayed by Sinclair Research packaging. It's almost as though the assumption is implicit that the onus is on me - the player - to turn chunky, spartan graphics or a very minimalist description of a desert island/alien planet into something much more exciting. System requirements: imagination. Perhaps it's just me, but it feels like there's something very British about all that.
Before the Spectrum came along the Sinclair Research software brand was already well established, of course, with plenty of titles for the ZX81 (requiring pressumably even more imagination). The codes used on the spines of cassette inlays comprised a single letter to denote the genre of the software - G for games, E for education, L for languages and B for business - followed by a number. G1 was Super Programs 1, E1 was English Literature 1 and so on. For Spectrum software the same coding system was used initially, the addition of an S (for Spectrum) suffixed to distinguish these from ZX81 titles. So G1/S was Games 1 and E1/S was History 1. The Spectrum titles weren't completey distinct from those in the ZX81 range, however; quite a few titles appeared in both ranges (Chess, Backgammon, Space Raiders, etc) and in some cases it was clear very little had been done to the code in its conversion to take advantage of the Spectrum's additional capabilities (perhaps most apparent for Adventures A to D, which I'm willing to wager would look identical running on a ZX81 and Spectrum side by side). Many of the ZX81 inlay designs were also re-used in the early days of the Spectrum range.
Of course the purpose of the Sinclair Research range was to provide a wide selection of games and utilities to entice the potential Spectrum buyer in the days before a mass market existed for Sir Clive's little machine. As we know now, it didn't take too long for that market to become established, but it's a fair bet that at the time the certainty of this outcome was an unknown variable and Sinclair didn't want would-be Spectrum owners turning away due to a lack of software available for the machine. As the market got on its feet Sinclair continued to support its machine though new releases, but the range was eventually brought to an end late 1984/early 1985; possibly the financial difficulties Sinclair was in by this stage played a role in this or perhaps it was just felt that the range no longer served a purpose. The Software and Peripherals Catalogue shipped with every Spectrum+ 128 in 1986 did not contain a single piece of software from the Sinclair Research range.
In 1984 Sinclair made a change to its brand design, introducing the silver label inlay style now achieving a fame of sorts through the trading of these titles on ebay. From the serious collector's point of view these are amongst the more hard-to-find titles within the range and they rarely sell for less than a fiver. The first of the games range to carry this design was Bubble Buster (G32/S) if we go by chrono-logical release, although if we were to go by spine code alone it would appear to be Jet Pac.
Jet Pac, Pssst, Tranz Am and Cookie were, of course, the four games by Ultimate to be released under the Sinclair label as ROM cartridges for the ill-fated Sinclair Interface 2, alongside Psion titles Space Raiders, Chess, Planetoids, Hungry Horace, Backgammon and Horace & the Spiders. Each one of these ten titles had been released previously in cassette version (perhaps the fatal flaw in Sinclair's marketing of this device), but the four Ultimate titles had never been released as Sinclair cassettes. To distinguish the Psion cartridge titles from their existing (identical) cassette versions the R (for ROM) suffix was adopted in spine codes, making the Chess cartridge, for example, G10/R as opposed to G10/S. But for the Ultimate titles there were no existing numbers to add an R to so they were just given the next four numbers available in the Spectrum sequence at that time - G27 to G30. For a while, therefore, the games sequence went from G26/S (Flippit) to G27/R (Jet Pac) through to G30/R (Cookie) and then to G31/S (Chequered Flag) - ie, from cassette to ROM cartridge and back to cassette again. But then, some time later, the four Ultimate titles were also added in - retrospectively - to the cassette range as G27/S to G30/S (although in fact the Sinclair cassette version of Jet Pac was incorrectly coded G27/R). By this time the silver label design had been introduced and so this was the style used for these titles too.
So Jet Pac, Psst, Tranz Am and Cookie ended up being released on cassette by Ultimate, on ROM cartridge by Sinclair in the 'old' Sinclair design, and then by Sinclair on cassette again - this time in the silver label design. Extremely confusing. And it gets worse. We're not actually sure that all four titles were released as silver labels. Jet Pac, Pssst and Cookie are all known to exist for certain as silver labels - these titles are in fact considered to be the gems of the Sinclair range on ebay, fetching much higher prices than other silver label Sinclair software - fetching much higher prices than pretty much any other Spectrum software. But what about Tranz Am? We can infer its silver label existence from the silver label existence of the other three Ultimate-formerly-ROM-cartridge titles and their cassette spine codes, but no-one appears to have ever actually seen this product. Does it even exist? If it does and a copy ever manages to find its way onto ebay it's been speculated it could well fetch three figures. If it doesn't exist... why doesn't it exist?!
But we're not done yet with the silver label mysteries - an even bigger one lurks just around the corner. At some point during 1984 Sinclair decided to change the spine code format; all of a sudden, four digit codes - each starting with a 4 - appeared in the place of the old codes. G36/S was the last game to use the old code system (Zipper Flipper); instead of G37/S the next game to be released (Match Point) came with the code 4036. For the educational programs E24/S (Alphabet Games) was the last title to use the old code system; instead of E25/S the next program came with the code 4324. The only other range affected was the Business range: 4607 was the number for Tasword Two where the expected code would have been B8/S.
Why the change of codes and why, specifically, were these particular numbers used with which to introduce it? It turns out, in fact, that these codes were actually being used at least a year earlier, alongside the old coding system. The series of 'Sinclair Special' four page advertising supplements, tucked into a monthly magazine (I can't seem to work out which magazine - possibly Sinclair User) reveal this on their order forms, where products are listed using both sets of codes; Chess Tutor 1, for example, is listed with the code E9/S to the left of the title and 4308 to the right.
Further anlysis of these order forms (WoS currently hosts Sinclair Specials numbers 1, 3, 4, 5 and 6) reveals that these order codes were in fact used for all Sinclair products - not just Spectrum software. Spectrum hardware items were given codes starting with 3000, ZX81 hardware items were given codes starting with 1000 (including the ZX Printer) and ZX81 software got codes starting with 2000. Even postage and packing costs got their own codes under this system (0028 for orders under £90 and 0029 for orders over £90). Returning to Spectrum software in particular, Games had the range 4000 to 4200, Education had the range 4300 to 4399, Languages had the range 4400 to 4499, Personal had the range 4500 to 4599 (although only one title was ever produced in this range) and Business had the range 4600 upwards. ROM cartridges were coded 5300 to 5309.
And the 'even bigger mystery'? Study the complete list on the opposite page and you'll discover a gap between 4036 (Match Point) and 4038 (Panama Joe). No known title is known to exist with the code 4037. This could be just an error of the same type that saw the Silver label Jetpac incorrectly coded G27/R. Or perhaps a release was scheduled for this number but got delayed or pulled out for some reason. But maybe - just maybe - there's a mystery title out there that we don't yet know about. It's only a little mystery, but it's a mystery nonetheless and I'm delighted by it. After all, what is a community without its little mysteries?
