1990

While there would be no further Spectrums in the works, February 1990 finally saw the SAM Coupe released in the UK. The MGT computer, despite being a marked improvement over the Speccy, sadly compared poorly to the now-established Commodore Amiga and Atari ST. Despite some neat tricks and backwards compatibility for Spectrum games, it was destined to flop and MGT would soon be no more as well.

Games-wise, arcade licences, in particular, continued to dominate, but that and proving particularly pleasing. Meanwhile, the shift to pamphlet status did magazine no favours at all as it slipped down to third in the Spectrum magazine popularity chart behind and . would limp on, regardless, but in reality, all three were suffering.