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Space Spinner 2000AD

Started by Steve Green, 19 April, 2017, 09:18:18 AM

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Pyroxian

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 20 March, 2018, 12:51:30 PM
The MF was £19.99 according to page 132 of the 1982 Winter Argos Catalog (https://issuu.com/retromash/docs/argos-no18-1982-autumnwinter)

Wow cool - I could happily spend hours looking through that catelogue! Anyway RRP of £29.95 so I've gone for middle ground!
[/quote]

Ah yes - there's a "Suggested Retail" price as well. So Argos used to be cheap once upon a time...

Also £34.95 for the AT-AT - I guess my parents really did love me :) - Especially as they bought it at Hamley's, which would've been even more expensive :D

FoxIsntARobot

Quote from: WhizzBang on 19 March, 2018, 08:05:46 PM
Fox was spot on about computer games in the UK. The early 80's were a boom time for gaming with the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 being the leading machines in the early years. Very few people in the UK had heard of the 'Great Video Game Crash' at the time it happened.

There was an awful lot of terrible but cheap games around but it was all new and exciting at the time. There was a lot of originality too but also a huge amount of arcade clones. Games were generally put together by just one or two people and the better games programmers actually had a following (Matthew Smith, Mike Singleton, John Ritman, the Stamper Brothers, the Darling Brothers) amongst games fans such was the quality of their output.

Even I know the Stamper Brothers. Possibly the two most influential people in my early life (thanks to Rare!). Mind you, they made their name by doing ports and the acclaimed Sabre Wulf and Knight Lore, among others!

Just for additional information when I talked about "A game about an egg" I meant Dizzy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_(series)

Seems like it played a huge role in British friend's lives.

Just for added context, computer games came to the US in the much later 80s and gained a larger base in the early 90s and then on. We missed the early programming days by nearly a decade :)

Steve Green

Yeah it was pretty big, I think a big part of it was a push in schools by Acorn and the BBC with the BBC Micro and Atom, under the guise of education.

The other thing was delivery was feasible for the amateur since it was mostly cassette based rather than cartridges for consoles.

There was this weird niche following for composers like Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway etc, with people ripping music from games and coding graphics demos to push the hardware on the C64 and Amiga in particular.

The Amiga had a huge advantage over PCs of the time for creative content which were pretty limited graphically, but it squandered that.

I guess once the PCs got out of the VGA/EVGA limitations - with Wing Commander, Lucasarts etc *think MCGA expanded the palette* the PC could start to compete with the Amiga, even if it lacked the custom hardware.

Then it was voodoo cards for 3D and so on, and the PC/Console wars started...

Colin YNWA

Quote from: FoxIsntARobot on 21 March, 2018, 12:15:43 PM
Just for additional information when I talked about "A game about an egg" I meant Dizzy!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dizzy_(series)


Oh interesting I just assumed you meant Chuckie Egg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckie_Egg

Surely Chuckie Egg had is the computer game involving eggs that had the biggest impact. I mean it was almost as big as Manic Miner wasn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Miner

FoxIsntARobot

Quote from: Steve Green on 21 March, 2018, 12:44:22 PM
I guess once the PCs got out of the VGA/EVGA limitations - with Wing Commander, Lucasarts etc *think MCGA expanded the palette* the PC could start to compete with the Amiga, even if it lacked the custom hardware.

WING COMMANDER HNNNNNNGGGG

Quote from: Colin YNWA on 21 March, 2018, 12:54:35 PM
Oh interesting I just assumed you meant Chuckie Egg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuckie_Egg

Surely Chuckie Egg had is the computer game involving eggs that had the biggest impact. I mean it was almost as big as Manic Miner wasn't it?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manic_Miner

I had never heard of Chuckie egg until this very moment and had to check it out. Kind of neat, and great control on jumps from the looks.

For reference, this is one of the oldest games I played when it came to personal computers: Treasure Mountain!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HAxdTacsgQ

Steve Green

Yay PC Palettes!

Here's one of the games I worked on before I got went back to college to get some training...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWlGpPD6eao

FoxIsntARobot

#516
Quote from: Steve Green on 21 March, 2018, 01:45:26 PM
Yay PC Palettes!

Here's one of the games I worked on before I got went back to college to get some training...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWlGpPD6eao

Pitfalling, Side Scrolling AND isometric? Not bad at all! Also, oh damn, I know ISS. A friend of mine used to play the incredible shrinking sphere on the Amiga Commodore 64 his dad owned!

shaolin_monkey

Ah Chuckie Egg - I used to clock that over and over.  *sigh* Happy days.

Steve Green

Quote from: FoxIsntARobot on 21 March, 2018, 02:50:56 PM
Quote from: Steve Green on 21 March, 2018, 01:45:26 PM
Yay PC Palettes!

Here's one of the games I worked on before I got went back to college to get some training...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWlGpPD6eao

Pitfalling, Side Scrolling AND isometric? Not bad at all! Also, oh damn, I know ISS. A friend of mine used to play the incredible shrinking sphere on the Amiga Commodore 64 his dad owned!

Hah!

Yeah the C64 version played better - seem to recall the Amiga play area was cut down in size so it was easier to port to the Atari ST, also did one called Brat, which was basically dropping control icons in front of Baby Herman to stop him wandering off the safe path.

Annoyingly we got an edict from the publisher to make him cooler, and it was literally baseball cap and shades, proper Poochy level stuff.

SpaceSpinner2000



I'm up late so here we go!

In our thrilling ninetieth episode Fox and Conrad continue their journey through the Galaxy's Greatest Comic with Progs 293-296 of 2000AD, covering December of 1982. Join us as Judge Dredd catches the Executioner, Robo-Hunter sings a song, and we start our first Time Twister stories! I'm sure you'll enjoy our new time-based air horn!

Also, it looks like our oldest episodes are disappearing from the feeds, but they can still be found on the website. I'm taking steps to fix this!

Direct Download
iTunes
Google
Stitcher
Or on your favorite podcast app!

Please let me know what you think of the episode!
2000 AD recap podcast, from the beginning!
Check out the show here! Or on iTunes, Google Play, or your preferred podcast app!

Colin YNWA

Well just making my way through this weeks episode and while I've not finished it yet I can pop in a little cultural reference for you.

Snork as referenced in the Dredd refers to Stork Margarine a butter sub from back in the day 9may well still make it who knows. Anyway here's an ad that has that makes use of a reference I've whittered about before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zUq6ZWhT8U

Mind it would have been great if it had been used to refer to the other Snork that's sniffing its way into a prog near you soon...

Steve Green

"And your phone number" eesh.

Dandontdare

#522
Another fun episode, but I don't know where you're doing your research on conkers - they're not hazelnuts, but Horse Chestnuts, (not the edible kind) - do those grow in the US? Big five-fingered leaves, spiky seed cases and big brown nuts? Every autumn you'd see kids hurling sticks up into the conker trees trying to knock them down, caring little for nearby pedestrians, cars or windows. It'snot as popular as it was  - Nowadays, the ground is littered with good conkers, but back in the day these would've been scavenged instantly, and most schools now ban the game on safety grounds, or insist on protective goggles (booo!). Smashing someone else's conker added to your conker's score - IIRC my record was a thirty-sixer. Cheats would bake them in the oven or soak them in vinegar. These school games were seasonal - autumn was conker season, whilst spring was marble season.

Stork's ad campaign for many years centred around not being able to tell the difference between Stork and butter. That ad for the Orbital puzzle also brought back memories - I've still got one of those dating back to Christmas '82!

Glad you're enjoying Robohunter, but I hated this story (in fact, I pretty much gave up on this strip after the world cup story, the gags just got more laboured and unfunny, apart from the occasional Hoagy/Stogie gem) I'm not a big fan of musicals in the movies, and I hate it when they do it in comics - it doesn't read well unless you actually sing along and that's not what I want from a comic!

Dandontdare


Steve Green

I think I'm enjoying the space spinner sing-a-long version more than when I read it originally.

Phil Oakey, lead singer of the Human League was a reader (or at least wore a t-shirt), but I love the idea of Don't you want me being used...