Retro Gamer 238

[Ninja Doctor]

Subs copies out and about, some cheap speccy clone on the cover. 

[Rex Grossman]

The only good 8-bit computer ever made. Lovely cover.

[Rex Grossman]

4 minutes ago, DualSense said:

let the 8 bit wars commence!

They are over. The C64 won on a brown battlefield.

[Rex Grossman]

1 minute ago, DualSense said:

It’s not over until the Amstrad is recognised as king.

I thought they only had those in Barnado’s homes.

[Ninja Doctor]

And my work here is done.

 

(msx ftw!)

[Clipper]

Nothing garnered more laughs in the playground 8bit micro bickering than when an owner of a non-speccy/c64 tried to enter the argument

 

However the sheer number of micros in the early to mid 80s was amazing. msot of the people I knew had a speccy(yuk) or c64(yay) but I had a friend with an Atari 800 another with an Oric Atmos another with an Acorn Electron and another with a BBC B and that was just in my circle of friends at secondary school. An amazingly fertile period in microcomputing and spawned a whole generation of coders. I helped out my Atari 800 owning chum with his computer science project that he was coding on his 800* and it was such nerdy fun trying to work in different variants of BASIC across the machines.

 

* Our computer science project could be coded on any computer we liked and we had to hand in the project as a printed listing if we used our own micros whereas if you used school BBC Bs you didn't have to (they printed them in school). With all those variants of BASIC I am guessing that the checking of these projects for marking was very rudimentary

 

[smac]

2 hours ago, Clipper said:

However the sheer number of micros in the early to mid 80s was amazing.

 

Dragon 32, Oric, Jupiter Ace, MSX, TI99/4A, Apple II, TRS-80, ZX81, Vic-20...

[Clipper]

6 minutes ago, smac said:

 

Dragon 32, Oric, Jupiter Ace, MSX, TI99/4A, Apple II, TRS-80, ZX81, Vic-20...

I had the Vic20 first before the c64 and loved it...

 

we can keep this list going and going though - from memory others that I didn't know anyone who owned are...

 

dragon 64, elan enterprise, Oric 1 and oric atmos, Newbrain, Commodore PET, zx80, commodore 16, Commodore Plus 4, Acorn Atom, The Lynx, Atari 400, 65XE (and others I forget the notations for!)

 

So many without even mentioning that Alan Sugar johnny-come-lately pile of cynical microchips(a couple of years was an ice age in 8bit microcomputer terms)

 

[smac]

Yeah - it was the Heroic phase of home micros. I can't believe how little I actually do with my home computers now they are so much more powerful.

 

[Yasawas]

Nobody ever mentions poor Sam 

 

[Rex Grossman]

1 hour ago, Yasawas said:

Nobody ever mentions poor Sam 

 

 

Just a Spectrum for families with a small bingo cash win.

[carleton]

On 27/09/2022 at 21:36, Rex Grossman said:

They are over. The C64 won on a brown battlefield.

I never got this joke. Here’s a little picture I made for Twitter with the C64 games I’ve coded over 30-odd years. Not especially brown. One explanation I have heard is that the VICE emulator palette is quite wrong and makes everybody think colours were muted.

 

 

[Rex Grossman]

Spitting Image had its share of brown!

 

I loved my C64. It was the best of the 8-bits but we know brown was overused in many games. I think it seemed browner because the Spectrum's colour use was so very different.

 

 

 

[Clipper]

I had that precise discussion on here ages ago where they said the speccy was more colourful (or amstrad I cant remember which kind of wrong they were). I gave screenshots showing blue skies etc and they said yeah but that isn't a bright blue its a slightly dull blue. So the argument is that palette choice on the c64 is more muted than other micros.

 

pfft

 

 

 

[Clipper]

6 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

 

I loved my C64. It was the best of the 8-bits but we know brown was overused in many games. I think it seemed browner because the Spectrum's colour use was so very different.

 

 

 

yes different as in terrible

 

[Rex Grossman]

9 minutes ago, Clipper said:

yes different as in terrible

 

 

I certainly didn't say better!

 

The thing is that when the screenshots from games were put together in magazine ads the C64 would always look more muted in comparison. That's just how eyes work.

 

I think C64 Green Beret looks better. But also more muted.

 

[carleton]

42 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

Spitting Image had its share of brown!

 

I loved my C64. It was the best of the 8-bits but we know brown was overused in many games. I think it seemed browner because the Spectrum's colour use was so very different.

 

 

 

Touché. In our defence that is a desert level set in the Middle East. I always thought the criticism of blocky graphics was much more valid.

[Clipper]

2 hours ago, Yasawas said:

Nobody ever mentions poor Sam 

 

Sam was 1989 and a curious old beast released at the height of Amiga vs ST no idea what market they were aiming at.  I suppose it was £170 instead of the £300 for amiga but even so...

 

I was sort of referring to heydey of micros 80-82 when it seems everyone release a micro (at least til it all settled down in 83-4 ish). But now realise I mentioned Elan Enterprise which was 85 as it was delayed so cant even stick to my own criteria pfft.

 

 

 

[Clipper]

6 minutes ago, carleton said:

Touché. In our defence that is a desert level set in the Middle East. I always thought the criticism of blocky graphics was much more valid.

Should've gone for a mustard yellow wash over it and had black outline characters

 

 

 

Forbidden Forest also  looks fantastic with red dragons and colourful red and yellow splodges on trees etc but the tree trunks are brown so booo Speccy would have done all the details in black outline hires and then washed the whole thing with a  searing Cyan BLue for the top and green for the bottom

 

[Yasawas]

1 hour ago, Rex Grossman said:

Just a Spectrum for families with a small bingo cash win.

 

Did anyone ever have/even see one? I just remember it from the end of the Speccy era when promoting it seemed to become an increasing percentage of the magazines. Fantastic wee mascot though.

[Clipper]

Not working in action no. In the mid to late 90s I saw one at a computer fair (remember those!) and it wasn't setup or anything just a unit sitting in an open box (not a new unit) with a price tag - at the time I remember thinking "I read about those in New COmputer express" then I moved on.

[carleton]

2 hours ago, Clipper said:

Should've gone for a mustard yellow wash over it and had black outline characters

 

 

 

Forbidden Forest also  looks fantastic with red dragons and colourful red and yellow splodges on trees etc but the tree trunks are brown so booo Speccy would have done all the details in black outline hires and then washed the whole thing with a  searing Cyan BLue for the top and green for the bottom

 

Same guy did both, kind of. To be honest most of our graphics were drawn on an Amstrad and then converted down by the junior artist.

[Stoppy2000]

3 hours ago, carleton said:

Touché. In our defence that is a desert level set in the Middle East. I always thought the criticism of blocky graphics was much more valid.

Now the Queen and Gorby are gone that's the entire Spitting Image videogame roster dead. Makes you think. 

[carleton]

33 minutes ago, Stoppy2000 said:

Now the Queen and Gorby are gone that's the entire Spitting Image videogame roster dead. Makes you think. 

I Tweeted similar when Gorby went. The only other person in the game is Sylvester Stallone.

 

Edit: Misread previous post.

[Stoppy2000]

14 minutes ago, carleton said:

I Tweeted similar when Gorby went. The only other person in the game is Sylvester Stallone.

 

Edit: Misread previous post.

Stallone is in the Spitting Image game? Whereabouts?

[carleton]

16 minutes ago, Stoppy2000 said:

Stallone is in the Spitting Image game? Whereabouts?

Spoilers if you haven’t completed it yet 😉

 

 

[Rex Grossman]

50 minutes ago, carleton said:

Spoilers if you haven’t completed it yet 😉

 

 

I didn’t complete it because it was unplayable and you know it!

 

Millie and Molly on the other hand…

[carleton]

8 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

I didn’t complete it because it was unplayable and you know it!

 

Millie and Molly on the other hand…

Yeah, it was utter dog shit. I didn’t code such a fancy ending for M&M though.

[MattyP]

Picked this up yesterday - first phyical magazine I've bought for a bit! (actually went full retro and picked up a Judge Dread Megazine - straight back to my youth!).

 

Enjoyed the piece on the C64 so many memories and love the little pieces from the C64 "celebs" of the day. Great machine and miss the times of physical meetups where we all used to pull all our kit over and have an evening of gaming etc chatter. It was a lovely era to be gaming to be honest everything was fresh and new and the things that developers used to do to make the machines do things never expected was a thing of joy. 

 

Its really strange these days sometimes when I see hardware on PCs updated every year and the old kit hardly gets time to be exploited before everyone is onto the "next big thing". So guess little time is given to optimising things - well I guess its all about scalable engines these days.

 

Its an odd day for me as I'm parting with my PS5 today. Simply because I realise that it is making me hate gaming - well in that there is nothing that appeals to me on its AAA lineup anymore. So accepting that perhaps new games on the new machines just don't appeal to me anymore. I've tried to keep up with it but it seems to be diminishing returns for me especially at the price point of the AAA games.

 

So going forward its the PC with my sizable Steam collection full of retro goodness and all sorts of other varied content and for a modern-ish console (one of the last real consoles IMHO) a Xbox 360 E. 

 

[Yasawas]

On 02/10/2022 at 09:12, MattyP said:

 (actually went full retro and picked up a Judge Dread Megazine - straight back to my youth!).

 

Holy drokk, that still exists?! I still cringe when I recall the look on the face of the pretty lassie in my wee local newsagent when I reluctantly asked for it in the early 90s. Powerful.