Not wanting to take the Steve Wright thread off topic but talk of computer games got me thinking about the games forum members were playing in the 1980s.
Though the Atari had been around a little earlier, the mid-80s was boom time for games on the ZX, ZX-Spectrum, Commodore 64/128 and small home computers that had started to arrive. I can even remember some for the Amstrad PCW8256.
The first games I remember were The Hobbit and Pac Man on a friend’s ZX80 or 81. That was a struggle working on the rubber keyboard!
Once the joystick appeared there seemed to be some very interesting simulation games. Given the limited memory it’s remarkable how good they were.
Nick
The Dizzy games! Okay some of the best Dizzy games came out in the early 90s but it was that crossover point from 8-bit home computers to 16-bit consoles. Dizzy Panic was one of my favourites along with Fast Food Dizzy.
Oh yeah, I made this around a 60 in 1 arcade board from Aliexpress:
I do need to make a small cabinet for the whole thing to go in, but like all projects it needs time.
Just been having a quick bash at "Skramble" for the unexpanded VIC-20. All this in just 5K!
This image is bigger!
My first taste of actually using a computer was a ZX81 belonging to a friend's dad. He worked for ICL who did some of the Sinclair branded software for the machine and also had an ICL PC running CP/M with a 5 or 10Mb hard drive (but therein lies another set of stories).
I quickly nagged my parents into buying me a ZX81 and later a Spectrum. Some of the earliest games were the JK Greye 1K Gamestape for the ZX81, but then far better 16K efforts. Favourites were 3D Monster Maze and Mazogs, Perilous Swamp (from the Fantasy Games tape), Galaxian (Artic Software) and pretty much anything Quicksilva put out.
On the Speccy, obviously Manic Miner, Penetrator, Jet Set Willy, Booty, Way Of The Exploding Fist and the Daley Thompson games....when I got my 128K "toastrack" model I loved Starglider. Before drifting into the 16-bit world.
I still have a ZX81 set up in the living room with modern ZXPand 32K RAM pack and SD card adapter. I have a 48K rubber spectrum and a 128K Toastrack, with an ethernet adapter...though currently I am going round in circles truing to get that working with my Virgin Hub 3.
I'm doing a C64 series on my YouTube this weekend (it's going to run into 3 weeks worth). I had one that threw me in circles recently .... I did a ZX81 last year and a VIC-20. Got a rake of commodore stuff to go through... an SX64, a plus 4, and a C128, a couple of 1541 disc drives and a daisy wheel.
Isn't it so typical that back in the day, if you were at school in the 80s, the playground was full of Commodore Vs Sinclair chat....and now many people enjoy both.
I obtained a Commodore 64 some time back and got it out a couple of Christmases ago. A friend, who has a 30 year career in programming, and I team-programmed a simple routine to drop a box from the top of the screen to the bottom and bounce it with something like accurate physics. Took us half a day, when on the Speccy I could have done it in an hour. But, it reminded my friend of the past need to be economical with code. It's had a positive effect on his professional coding for A Very Large Company.
The C64 game of choice was always Uridium. And who could ever forget Revs on the BBC Micro?
