Do Not Sell My Personal Information Jump to content


Retro Computing And Gaming!


Tyger
 Share

Recommended Posts

I am not sure if I am allowed to bulk quote like below so apologies if I am not, but I thought this great topic deserved focus of it's own....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ColinBarber

Forget apple vs PC, lets start a Sinclair Spectrum vs C.64 war!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aido

C64 wins

The Sinclair had that nasty rubber keyboard was it and the joysticks were rubbish compared to the Competition Pro's that you could get for the Commodore (actually I guess you could probably get them for both!)

But the C64 had better graphics too!

And the glorious SID music!

I mean look at Impossible Mission - an awesome old school Epyx game - spot the difference:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tyger

I went from a ZX80 via a Vic 20 to a BBC B to a BBC Master to an Amiga 1200 to an Amiga 4000 (souped up maxed out and still working great) to a PowerBook G3 to a PowerBook G4 to an iMac G5 to a Mac Pro.

Never suffered with a PC.

C64? Great sound. Impossible Mission! yay!

Spectrum? Gotta love the Ultimate: Play The Game! titles like, Knight Lore and Sabre Wulf and Alien 8!! Sound was crap. Even the later keyboards on the QL? Yuck.

It was the BBC and its great BASIC language and the daddy of games at that time, Elite, that did it for me! Still got one in the shed somewhere! Right on Commander!

I remember paying £800 for a dual-double-sided Cumana 800k 5 1/4" floppy drive for my Beeb!

The Amiga was just awesome in every respect and any Amiga OS fan who is now on Windows should be ashamed! Mac OS X was a natural progression for any Amiga fan.

My fave machine is my A4000. Maxed out with RAM and dual processors and an Opalvision gfx card. It is SO capable and Amiga OS still shines today.

Amiga OS 4.1 is out and fighting!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aido

I nearly actually bought an A4000 on eBay about a week ago!

It was the Atari 400 I started with before the C64 - very nearly went from the C64 to the Archimedes as we were brought up on the BBC Model B at school although I saw sense and went with the Amiga

I do miss the Amiga days as they were great!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tyger

Archimedes was great! Ran Acorn and PC stuff. Awesome RISC OS running on ARM chips. Very nice too! Shame how the best tech seems to fade away.

Had a great version of Elite on it!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aido

Elite was crap compared to Frontier

I wasted months playing that!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tyger

I could never control Frontier! Kept flying off into the distance!!!

This should bring a smile to a few faces....

http://oolite.org/gallery.shtml

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DJ Wozza

it was Chuck Rock for me on the Amiga, awesome when he stood up on top of his club

EDIT *** it could have been Chuck Rock II Son of Chuck

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

aido

That was programmed by Core in Derby who went on to do Tomb Raider!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Paradroid

C64 vs Spectrum: The C64 whupped the Spectrum in every single way except CPU speed so if you wanted to play wireframe game like Elite then the Speccy was maybe slightly better. Apart from that it was pants!

Amiga: not sure the Mac is a logical progression from the Amiga. I can see your point, with the Mac being a proper hardware/OS platform like the Amiga, but remember this: The Amiga was better than the Mac, yet the Mac is still going, and true Amiga fans HATE that! Don't go on an Amiga forum and start talking about Macs, you won't get very far!

Archimedes was an amazing combination of a great piece of hardware and a brilliant OS. To be honest it had the Amiga pipped hardware-wise. Not in quite the same way, it had different strengths. I can see why you bought an Amiga instead Aido, the Archimedes was a bit geeky really compared to the Amiga will all those great games.

Dammit I'm missing my A1200 with HDD and all the games installed on the HD. Might have to get it down from the loft, but got no space in this crappy house.

Link to comment
Share on other sites


Paradroid: Absolutely right about the Amiga / Mac thing! Amiga fans are much more hardcore. I would defend the Amiga more than the Mac myself in fact! But at the time of the Amiga's demise, the PC hardware software combo was severely lacking compared to the Mac. But it was when OS X came along that I saw a proper multitasking alternative/progression from the dying Amiga WorkBench 3.1. For me it was the only viable Amiga-like alternative out there and I am SO glad I went that route.

I have about 200-300 Amiga Floppy disks and just about all the CU Amiga mags ever printed hidden away somewhere! Remember those!?

I was very impressed with the Archimedes, but despite it following on from the BBC it just was never going to be mainstream despite its brilliance. I believe there are many sites alive and well dedicated to these beasts...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes

Link to comment
Share on other sites

you have far much time on your hands :P

i used to have the amiga 1200 and then the 4000 but was to young to understand computers properly to realise there full potential,me and my brother spent hours upon days playing championship manager and monkey island and various games which i can barely remember now.

before that had the spectrum and can remember having to change tapes over or restart the bloody thing when it crashed nearly every time and also had the c64.

then moving on to other gaming machines like the sega mastersystem,megadrive,nintendo nes,super nintendo,game boy,game gear,n64,ps1,ps1 and now the xbox 360.

not really one for full on computers to be honest as i dont really have to use them much so all the stuff about operating software goes right over my head

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I was at school when the BBC Micro originally came out, and I got on quite well with the computer teacher. He let me take hom a BBC Micro over the school holidays, and I remember pretty much playing Scramble and Defender non-stop ! (before Elite had come out, I think)

Ah, the days of typing in whole progams listed in computer mags, and loading games off cassette tape ! :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just thinking back no-end of people used to buy double tape decks just to copy games back in those days and music too I guess!

Then there was DCopy2 on the Amiga - awesome kit - read from one disk and write to three external disks at the same time :D

Piracy is so much easier nowadays :lol:

Link to comment
Share on other sites


I nearly went that way - remember the ST being great for Midi stuff.

Was down at my uncles place a week or two ago and he's still got the Atari ST with the lightgun as he's into his clay pigeon games and he still likes playing on that one!

From what I remember the ST did have a better looking design than the Amiga, but hardware wise the Amiga seemed to win out in terms of everything but Midi support which the ST had by default didn't it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No mention of the Atari ST, anybody have that?

I grew up with ZX81 > Spectrum > QL > Atari ST > Amiga > Various PCs and Macs.

I started off with the ZX81 too. From there I went onto the Amstrad CPC464, which I still have with colour monitor and twin disk drives. Along side the 464 in the loft I also still have my Amiga500, C64 and Vic20. Jetset Willy is still my fave game and after having it for somewhere around 25 years, I have still not completed the game. How many games can you say that about these days. A week or two of solid gaming and you have finished. I also have a spectrum emulator on the laptop with manic Minor, Jetset willy, spindizzy and codename mat on it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

From what I remember the ST did have a better looking design than the Amiga, but hardware wise the Amiga seemed to win out in terms of everything but Midi support which the ST had by default didn't it?

Yes midi built in. They were also cheaper than the Amiga but graphics weren't quite as good nor was the sound.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

i had c64... we used to get the c64 magazine too where it would have about 20 pages of code, you would program a small game by adding weeks worth of data, then execute it and get 2 seconds worth of the game before it would give an error.. all that work for nothing.

i loved raid over moscow and beach head.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I always seemed to support the underdog.

Had Intellivision when everyone else had Atari.

Had BBC B when everyone else had ZX81

Had Amstrad 464 when everyone else had spectrum/C64's.

Had a creaky ibm 286 when everyone else had amigas.

Didn't seem to hurt me though got my first job designing levels in 1995 and have been a game designer ever since. (reckon I've done games on every major platform since then).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

What were your stand-out moments from retro computing and gaming?

I think mine were both on the Amiga:

- The first time I saw someone pull the workbench screen down to reveal another program running behind it I was speechless. The thing was you could even do this when the programs were running at different resolutions and colour depths. How?!?!?

- seeing Dragons Lair for the first time. OK it was rubbish playability-wise but was incredible to watch!

Link to comment
Share on other sites


I can heartily recommend RetroGamer magazine to you lot based on this thread.

RETROGAMER

A few retrogame moments :

1) managing to get past level 5 of Manic Miner

2) managing to dock without a computer in Elite

3) building a course in Kikstart 2 that was actually playable!

4) playing DOOM on a 486DX PC and having the whole department gather round and watching the 3D graphics in amazement.

5) completing the 1500m in Daley Thompsons decathlon and having to explain to your mum why you were red and sweaty and your wrist hurt !!! :whistling:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I had a couple of PETS and an Acorn (we did some of the education oriented development work with the BBC), but my first serious PC was an Apricot. It was small enough to carry around (with the monitor in a separate bag) but it was never used for gaming. It ran programs such as WordPerfect and a spreadsheet that preceded Lotus 123.

I can't remember how much RAM but it had two 3.5 inch floppies and a 10 Mb hard drive (wow!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We had the ZX81, Spectrum 48k, then the Amiga then didnt bother for a few years untill we got a Time machine, which was like going back in time with all the issues we had with it going back to the shop ;) Still have my 1st laptop in the loft which has the monochrome folding screen, was still working but now wont boot for some reason and used to run windows 95 :)

Still have my Atari 2600 and intellivision games consoles which i get out now and again :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The Amiga days were my favourite out of all of them for the community that was around back then - used to love getting hold of the latest LSD Grapevines :)

Quite liked our Amiga and such an improvement at the time compared to the Spectum, was never really into the compter scene at the time and was more into the Atari and Intellivision consoles :D

I always wanted one of the Atari game tables that used to be in some of the pubs round here, could sit there for hours playing on them with a nice cold pint :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The best things with games then mate was that you couldn't mask the fact a game was crap just by making it look pretty for screenshots!

I haven't played a PC game for years now - Indiana Jones was the last one must be five years ago now, then before that I spent all my time in Doom and Doom 2 making WAD files and uploading them to the local BBS :lol:

MAME is the boy though - it's the only disk I've played inthe XBox for about 3 years now!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

MAME is the boy though - it's the only disk I've played inthe XBox for about 3 years now!

That is true retro! I have MAME installed on the Mac and it's a good version, works well. Only trouble is lots of my ROM files are out of date and won't play any more :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

 Share



×
×
  • Create New...