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I still remember the first game machine I played when I was five or six years old back in the 80s.  It wasn't even necessarily a games machine.  It was a cheap home computer my Mum got to do her word processing on.  But it played games as well!  The Amiga 500.

I loved the Amiga and over the years our family collected a fair amount of games.  Pinball Dreams, Pinball Fantasy, Speedball 2, Civilization, Settlers, Cannon Fodder, The Chaos Engine, Gauntlet 2, Mortal Kombat 2, Elite, Flashback - to name but a few classics.

Still, I always felt I had the poor-man's choice (coming from a poor family) and lamented not having a Master System or NES.  Only in recent years did I discover that the Amiga 500 was the more powerful than both those consoles successors!

The first games machine that owned myself would be a Playstation and I got it second hand not long after the release of the PS2.  I had a few good games, Tekken 3, Final Fantasy 7 to 9 and one of the Wipeout games.

Are we talking consoles only?  The reason I ask is because the first games machine I ever had was one of those handheld versions of space invaders, with the lit up screen.  Then I graduated to Game&Watch LCD stuff, which was considered so cutting edge!

My reactions may have dulled over time, but I can still clock Octopus!

It wasn't until I was about 13 that I got a computer - my lovely Acorn Electron!  Man, I loved it - programnming, games, art packages, and even dabbling in music.  I locked myself in my bedroom and spent hours on it!

Mine was the original Atari 2100 (I think) console! I remember spending many an hour in the early eighties on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark...the hardest game ever!
Following that it was many years on C16, C64 and 386 / 486 PC's before getting a Playstation 1, then a PS2 and currently an Xbox 360 and a Wii. Still do most of my gaming on PC these days though with the consoles being predominantly for the kids.

Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 15 November, 2013, 10:10:56 AM
Are we talking consoles only?  The reason I ask is because the first games machine I ever had was one of those handheld versions of space invaders, with the lit up screen.  Then I graduated to Game&Watch LCD stuff, which was considered so cutting edge!

My reactions may have dulled over time, but I can still clock Octopus!

It wasn't until I was about 13 that I got a computer - my lovely Acorn Electron!  Man, I loved it - programnming, games, art packages, and even dabbling in music.  I locked myself in my bedroom and spent hours on it!

Ahh game and watch I loved Donkey Kong Jr. You may want to take a little look at this to bring back all those memories. I have spent hours here since I discovered it!!

http://www.pica-pic.com/

Not only games consoles.  Just game machine - whichever you consider most apt to be your first.

One of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSX

We had one game.

We had a barely working system which only had 'tennis' on it, then graduated through the ZX80 up to the ZX Spectrum 48k...always wanted the Coleco system though, but could not afford it - had a near-perfect Donkey Kong (and I think Mr Do!) on it...neighbour had one...lucky git.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coleco)

I remembered what the first system was...http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1035 (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1035)
(http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/binatone_TV-master-mk-4_2s.jpg)

First ever:

(http://www.gamez-gear.com/store/img/cms/GAME%20CONSOLE%20PICS/GAME%20WATCH/Parachute.jpg)

Although that might have been my mum's and she just gave it to me. First one 'under the telly':

(http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/Atari_400_System_s1.jpg)

I never owned an 8-bit console - the very idea of me owning a NES was so far beyond reality (we were very poor when I was young) that I never even entertained the notion. I wasn't even jealous - it was just something other kids had, not for the likes of me.

My friend Andy had a BBC Micro, and we used to spend many happy hours on that playing Repton, Elixir, Citadel and the like (this would have been long after the Micro's heyday).

I didn't really have any proper experience of videogames until my Dad got a better job and bought an Amstrad PC, first an EGA, then later a VGA. So that was my formative gaming experience.

First off we had the Sierra adventure games like the King's Quest series, though I don't think we ever managed to get too far in them even with the aid of a guidebook as they were so insanely hard and unfair. My dad also bought me the Leisure Suit Larry boxset (he thought it was funny so let me play it even though I was very young, rightly assuming a lot of the humour would go over my head). I used to love the Apogee Shareware games that used to come on the covermounted PC Format demo disks - Secret Agent, Crystal Caverns... and also those wonderful Lucasarts adventures - Monkey Island, Loom, Day of the Tentacle and onwards (though we only ever got them to run on Andy's PC as my dad had some weird memory expansion software on ours that meant it refused to run most games.

I lived in Germany at the time and actually bought a Lucasarts box set of Zak McKraken, Maniac Mansion and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade and attempted to play through them in German language - and with insane perseverance I actually got quite far! Ah, great days. And then later, Wolfenstein 3d, which had a huge impact on me. I pined after Doom when it was released but didn't have access to a machine capable of running it until many years after it came out.

The arcades were also a big deal - the one game I remember always hoping to see at an arcade was Capcom's Final Fight. I adored that game.

I remember desperately wanting a Game Boy, but them being out of stock everywhere on my birthday and having to settle for a Game Gear instead, which promptly broke after a couple of weeks of use. Come to think of it, I think that experience might go some way to explain my lifelong distaste for all things Sega (have always considered them vastly overrated and nowhere near as good as Nintendo) :lol:!

Then one Christmas my dad, out of the blue, bought us a SNES and Super Mario World. Best Christmas Ever. After that I had a Playstation and N64 (N64 would probably be my all time favourite console), then jumped ship to the original Xbox (mainly for Halo), and by the next generation was able to afford all three of the main consoles, though I obviously I don't have much time to actually play any of them.

Before my father relented ( hated the very notion of computers) and bought me my Acorn Electron, I used to copy games from my friends and go play them on the display machines in Boots of a Saturday afternoon.  It was weeks before the staff clocked me.

Where there's a will, there's a way!   :lol:

Anyone remember this?

(http://www.retrogamer.net/users/413/thm1024/grannysgardenwitch.gif)

Quote from: WoD on 15 November, 2013, 11:01:34 AM
I remembered what the first system was...http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1035 (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1035)
(http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/binatone_TV-master-mk-4_2s.jpg)

we had a cheaper knock off of Pong in the late 70s - it had tennis (singles/doubles) squash and even 'football' (three synchronised paddles per end). It was entirely in black and white and I thought it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen.

Quote from: radiator on 15 November, 2013, 12:31:38 PM
Anyone remember this?

(http://www.retrogamer.net/users/413/thm1024/grannysgardenwitch.gif)

Granny's Garden?

Growing up in Great Yarmouth the first games I played would have been in the arcades. I have vivid memories of games like Pac Man and Mr Do!

I remember having one of those TV games which was a hand me down from our cousin when he got an Atari. It didn't have a mains power input and took loads of batteries (which were much more expensive back then) so I can only remember playing it once before it ran out of power and was put in the cupboard.

When I was around 5 or 6 my brother got a 16k Spectrum for his birthday which we both played a lot. It was later upgraded via Ram pack to 48k. I think Attik Attak was the first 48k game we had - before that I spent most of the time on 16k classics Gobble a Ghost and Scuba Dive.

Later on I had a Commodore 64 then a NES, Megadrive, Snes and various other systems at one time or another - mostly as a result of trading in or swapping with friends. I still have my original NES though. It's in almost mint condition, is boxed and is the rare Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles set.

Other games I had were Grandstand Pocket Scramble (still have that boxed too), Thundering Turbos Tomytronic 3D and Octopus (bought for 10p at a jumble sale)!

Looking back I was pretty fortunate. We weren't well off financially but I managed to get some great stuff. It helped that my Birthday is on December 17th so I often got a combined present. Lots of stuff was bought second hand or at the end of a generation too.

fantastic stuff. I inherited one of these (octopus game and watch)
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Nintendo/Octopus.htm

Then we had a ZX spectrum.

First console I bought was a Sega Megadrive, Sonic the hedgehog.

Dragon 32 for me. I think my parents got it cheap when the machine was on the decline to stop us clamouring for a computer. Remember struggling to get games for it anywhere other than from the magazines. I did manage to score a copy of Chuckie Egg on it which I spent many months mastering. First console was the lovely Master System. The original black and burgundy one. I got it second hand with a pile of games. It was like an arcade system in my house. Good times.

Man I just found this site you can play all the game and watch games, fantastic:

http://www.pica-pic.com/#
http://www.pica-pic.com/#/octopus/

Quote from: pictsy on 15 November, 2013, 09:23:39 AM
Still, I always felt I had the poor-man's choice (coming from a poor family) and lamented not having a Master System or NES.  Only in recent years did I discover that the Amiga 500 was the more powerful than both those consoles successors!

Ha, its funny when you see some of the different generations posting on here what is considered good.  The amiga was a fantastic machine - my mate had one and I was well jealous.  Those machines were frickin ace and miles better than a Master System or NES.

For me, my first console was an atari 2600 with a lovely but of wood-panelling  :lol:.  This was mid 80s and it wasn't bad for the time.  I remember a game called Tutankhamun that I was quite fond of.  A few years later I got the C64 Light Fantastic pack for xmas (best xmas ever).  I played sh*tloads on that little beauty and had it for ages.  In fact, I still have it - that baby is going nowhere!

Since then there has been a Megadrive, Game Gear, PS1, PC, GBA, PS2, DS and PS3.  But, like someone else has mentioned - when I was a kid I had loads of time but could afford bugger all whereas nowadays I can buy what I want but hardly have any time to play.  >:( 

The first console our family got was a wonderful Sega Mega Drive in the early nineties. Loved that thing. GOLDENAXE!!!

My dad was always a sci-fi buff so knew that home computing was going to be a big thing and bought me and my brother a ZX Spectrum to learn to code on, which we did quite quickly as even a monkey could do machine code on a Speccy, and then we informed him what we needed to learn further (a more expensive computer).  We were shit poor so that didn't happen and we used it for gaming instead - quite a revelation to see all these worlds thought up by dudes in their bedrooms, with some computing mags like Sinclair User giving away dozens of games with each issue.  Even now some of what was achieved in files smaller than the average .txt document is pretty amazing and a testament to what you can do with a bit of imagination and focus.
Playing the likes of Knightlore, Starquake, Colony, Dizzy and Rex was probably why it was years before I even thought of getting a console and by then they were going for buttons so I'd got the Mega Drive and SNES more or less at the same time and couldn't really tell them apart - if anyone asked which I preferred I said Mega Drive only because I wasn't sure if SNES was pronounced "snezz" or "ess enn ee ess."  I think I've played more SNES and Mega Drive games via emulation or through compilation bundles than I ever did on the actual consoles themselves, though.

First game was a Donkey Kong game & watch, then a ZX81. My step-sisters then got an Atari 2600 (which I used to monopolise during holidays at my Dads' house :D ), then I got a Speccy 128k, then an Amiga 500, then a 1200, then a 486 PC. Once I started work, I then got all the consoles (well, most of them  - still missing a Coleco, Intellivision and Jaguar...)

Quote from: WoD on 15 November, 2013, 11:01:34 AM
I remembered what the first system was...http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1035 (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1035)
(http://www.old-computers.com/museum/photos/binatone_TV-master-mk-4_2s.jpg)

That looks remarkably like our first console, the Grandstand. It's forever associated with memories of Saturday afternoons and CHiPS.

(http://i892.photobucket.com/albums/ac127/whipmawopmagate/grandstand_zps483eb26c.jpg)

QuoteI wasn't sure if SNES was pronounced "snezz" or "ess enn ee ess."

Former in Europe, latter in US. Just so you know.

My earliest memory of a game was Toe Jam and Earl. My dad was playing it and i was three running pass in the hall look at the flashing lights not looking where i was going when I did look I knocked myself out on the door frame and split my head open.

I once got so pissed off with M. Bison beating me with his chessy moves in Streetfighter 2 that I kicked the glass-fronted unit that housed the VCR, then recoiled in horror as it shattered into a million pieces before my eyes. I got in trouble for that.

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/41/ToeJam_%26_Earl_2.jpg)

Oh my god yes. I loved that game it's pure class.

Also I only JUST heard an American say "es-en-ee-es" instead of Snes and WAS APPALLED.

weird

My first home system was also a Grandstand TV game that I'm pretty sure was the same model as Neds.

I then progressed on to a ZX Spectrum before moving to an Atari ST and then an Amiga. After that it was PC's all the way.

A Binatone was my first console followed by the good old Atari VCS!

Next stop the Spectrum 48K.  :)

Quote from: Professor Bear on 15 November, 2013, 05:56:23 PM
Playing the likes of Knightlore, Starquake, Colony, Dizzy and Rex was probably why it was years before I even thought of getting a console...

Same here. In fact, writing completely rubbish games and supposedly homework-assisting utilities for the Acorn Electron kept me busy and away from girls for simply years, and when the muse failed me I copied the bloody things either from the text listings in the magazines or via the hallowed Double Tape Recorder (only ever owned by a friend's older sibling, a choke point on the supply chain), to the point that I became a terrible anti-console snob (in fact, and on-topic, the first and only console I ever bought myself was an old X-Box, which I still divert myself with quite happily). What was the point of a machine if you couldn't mess about under the hood?

For me the great thing about the Home Computer market in the early-mid-80s was the diversity: within my peer group at one point we had access to an Electron and a BBC Micro, an Oric, two flavours of Spectrum, a Vic20 (terrible, terrible machine), a Commodore 64 and a lowly ZX81 (actually great fun to program), with one lonely and probably quote aged Apple IIe in school that boasted the only known printer in existence.  I can still hear the disk drive warming up.   So however limited the opportunities on any one machine, between us we had worlds of novelty.

With reference to the supposed investment our struggling parents made in our technological eductaion, of that little group of owner-operators one is now a bigwig in Sun Microsystems, one was in at the start of Iona Technologies and then went on to run his own operation, and one is a mover and shaker in mobile telecoms networks in the middle east.  Mind you one became a lecturer in Classics,  and then there's me, the runt of the litter, who became a parasite on the buttocks of society.

I blame the Electron.

First console owned was a Sega Master System. I can still, all these years later, remember playing Aztec Adventure on Christmas morning. In fact, 20 something years on I can even still hum you the music from the first level.

I must have played that game to death. I miss the good old days when all you needed was a d-pad and 2 buttons. None of this kinnect crap or online requirements. Plus them cartridges were built to last. I never had one that couldn't be fixed with a bit of a blow.

Quote from: GrinningChimera on 16 November, 2013, 01:42:09 PM
First console owned was a Sega Master System. I can still, all these years later, remember playing Aztec Adventure on Christmas morning. In fact, 20 something years on I can even still hum you the music from the first level.

I must have played that game to death. I miss the good old days when all you needed was a d-pad and 2 buttons. None of this kinnect crap or online requirements. Plus them cartridges were built to last. I never had one that couldn't be fixed with a bit of a blow.

Sega Master system was my first games machine also. I remember playing Psycho Fox to absolute death, finding all the secret warps and all that jazz.

I agree about the cartridges. They bounced off walls pretty well and still remained playable. And the instruction books that dedicated a whole page to "how not to treat games cartridge" - do not submerse in water, do not hit with hammer; etc.

Cheers

Because I was sick and away from school a lot during the year of 1982. My grandparents got me a Atari 2600 as a present.....

(http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcT_R56skbjU8SkpEeFE3bMYtt915XmF67dQyLq0ydjf1CRxDN_O)

It came with two joysticks.....

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSeoEQ1uSTcC-aK2tpKTvNbJzBmjxJW8VJOFP7HGXmrpd3O0GZ_)

Two paddles.....

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSuFtx1VLDYAJ3XLbDTgF5E0BsoSVS_rUdVxi_WvoVPpy-mjrtRBw)

and a  Combat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIHqyfewiCg) game. It is a series of skirmish's where you and the other player each had  tank and you had to manoeuvre it around obstacles to get a clear shot at the other player's tank.

(http://dojoretro.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Combat.png)(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQkC4s5gSOz2Knm47qIMikgZnKPuBx142gmlFx53VqiCQO2Mtc1Rw)

There was also similar game with warplanes as well.

Later that year and in the following months and other years my parents and my grandparents brought me other games......

Superman (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7U2TFIayos).....

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSWnPZuje-a8MayNxz2b5Pacbn5q0aF7PQUuUcWURvbKsctsZce)(http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQNek6qcegKbU9c2qWXwBE4Y_dcHapjG8baG8eiZZkog2kWT7Qe)

Which I completed on numerous occasions.

Breakout (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRAPnuwnpRs) and Super-Breakout (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk2TaZPwnps) to both be played with the paddles.....

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRfXKlA00-qU6_13WIQXNUuS2V4xdJTt970LyHv-DgOgvCy7AxT)(https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRVklev91HuHi2fEeHzbhipUrk9M9gEmx4grMuM9hJOPI4ZsaoMMA)(http://t1.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRjT6vMCSbgtcMeHzAYiCfAA3yItVpQ2leS4W-KjP41Lt46LIn3Gg)

I came pretty close to beating this one.

And very reviled  E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-mRCjP78Mk).....

(http://www.bubblews.com/assets/images/news/783305909_1373233488.jpg)(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRE8hdOqbKswRGVL-CPwoy58zvJzdDCBVZqO4SzILl3PiAuV_Ox)

Which I also completed on numerous occasions and really enjoyed.

I was given some other games like  China-Syndrome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fo21Q7fslMw) based on the movie, but nothing like it really.....

(http://1morecastle.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/China-Syndrome-Box.jpg)(http://www.hardcoregaming101.net/chinasyndrome/chinasyndrome-2.png)

Challenge of Nexar (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9E3CsPxe5mY) you had to shoot at other space-ships before as they flew or floated towards you and you could move the shooting cross-hairs all around the screen and then when you shot them all you would warp to the next level screen.....

(https://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSW9NSM7O8RQCs7q1KjkEd9us0FQlaJFFSCZa5x3Gsv0Vutn-Irfw)(https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTU8UI8fF6V9g-DsEZ6wxCAn4APmJD6_Fbmki-SgrH0ipxG0ezh)

I never quite made it to  Legion of the Chosen (http://atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=72) in that Game.

These are the classic Atari games I missed out on.....

(https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSbUT51FhAVAdPDJgcTchKWLioRnkPmfCuHFED3C_082HDML18hkg)(http://pics.mobygames.com/images/covers/large/1050624952-00.jpg)(http://www.videogameobsession.com/videogame/atari2600/2600-StarRaiders-vgo.jpg)

Star-Raiders is supposedly the legendary fore-runner to Elite.

I still have the Atari 2600 console to this day in box somewhere wrapped safely in bubble plastic bag with out the joysticks because I ruined them on the C64. It still has the paddles. Sadly I don't think the machine would work with the television sets of today and the games are now no longer anywhere to be found.

Quote from: TordelBack on 16 November, 2013, 10:00:49 AM

In fact, writing completely rubbish games and supposedly homework-assisting utilities for the Acorn Electron kept me busy and away from girls for simply years, and when the muse failed me I copied the bloody things either from the text listings in the magazines.....

I once copied a program from a supplement fill with program for little games written by some well know game writers. It was for the C64 and it was from well known gaming magazine called Computer + Video Games.

Rox-Deluxe (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVqo70gbW4Q) written by Lamasofts (http://minotaurproject.co.uk/frontpage.php) Jeff "Yak" Minter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Minter) and it was in the B.A.S.I.C. language. I think it took me nearly a week to copy and I practically wiped from the computer's memory by accident before saving it to a floppy after nearly finishing it before starting all over again.

It worked as well, eventually.

Unlike the small game written by Tony Crowther (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Crowther) which in Machine Code and never worked.

It was supposed to be game like Defender.

Which Reminds me I missed out on getting that Atari game as well.

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQYX432ea4GO3oZMwYCQNwF9QEJvwyHxsQvyOfToUPHOSZvS8kk)

The Atari 2600 was our first. I remember myself, my Dad and my brother taking shifts and having an all day game of Missile Command.  :)

After that I had a ZX Spectrum that got upgraded to a Spectrum+, then a Sega Mega Drive, a Playstation 1, Playstation 2 and then the Wii.

Now I mostly play games on the iPad and occasionally play on the Wii when the grandsons come round. The Wii is used more for Netflix at the moment.

Some great art on those old Atari games. Quite imaginative when you look at the actual graphics!

I recall buying games based on their amazing cover artwork alone and thinking it probably took longer to make the artwork than it did the game.  Odd that as games have progressed in visual complexity to finally catch up with the old game covers, actual game covers have become so uninspired and lacking in character.
Although they sell by the buckets now, so maybe people prefer cgi pictures of some bloke holding a gun.

This forum never ceases to amaze me.  Where are the kids and their XBox 360s, Wiis and Playstation 3s????

Quote from: TordelBack on 16 November, 2013, 10:00:49 AM

I blame the Electron.

Solidarity Brother.  My story is almost identical - all my mates had different machines too, BBC Micro, Speccy etc, and they're all doing really well.

I loved my Electron though. Loved it to ferkin bits.  I was programming on it all the time. Over about two years I built up a massive collection of manuals and magazines that taught me everything, which I used as reference constantly. I wanted to be a programmer when I grew up, focussing on computer graphics, which I really had a knack for.

Then, as punishment for not tidying my bedroom when told, my dad threw out the lot. I was incredulous. I sneaked them out of the bin, but my dad found them really quickly, gave me another bollocking, and three them out again.

I was destroyed. I had poured my heart and soul into that machine. I wish I'd been stoic about it, and just started again, but I just felt so shattered I didn't have the heart to spend another two years building it back up.  My dreams of following that path were shattered. 

Bah.

Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 17 November, 2013, 01:47:46 PM
I was destroyed. I had poured my heart and soul into that machine. I wish I'd been stoic about it, and just started again, but I just felt so shattered I didn't have the heart to spend another two years building it back up.  My dreams of following that path were shattered. 

Ouch, that's pretty damn awful. I have no such excuse, I'm just too damn slow when it comes to anything like proper programming -  I did a study of commuting patterns by writing unbelievably long macros for a pre-GIS pre-WYSIWYG thing called GIMMS for my final year dissertation in college, and while it eventually worked really well, it genuinely took me the entire year, and was only worth (I think) 15% of of my overall marks.  I remember handing it the day before my final exams and realising that though I had sweated blood all year I hadn't done a tap of work on anything else. That was when I decided programming wasn't for me, even though the department subsequently offered to take me on to do a PhD to expand the project. If it took me a whole a year to do what I did as part of BA dissertation, how long would a doctorate take me!  I had a life to live, man!  Fool that I was.

Must say it was the graphics stuff on the Electron that really had me hooked - my particular sisyphean boulder was writing a game where you operated one of the gunner stations on the Millennium Falcon, blasting away at TIE Fighters which zoomed ever closer.  I could never get it to work properly, probably because I had to keep the redrawing the vectors for quadlaser and the targeting reticules as they moved, as well as changing the line art TIEs constantly as they got larger - no Sprites for me! - and calculate all their relative positions for hits etc., so I imagine the poorly nested code was just grinding the memory down and down with every subsequent loop.  Looking back it was a hell of a thing to try, since Cylon Attack was probably the closest example on the platform (this was before I got hold of Elite!), and it was nothing like as complicated.  But boy did I love animating vector art!

A friend of mine and I worked on exactly the same kind of thing! A targeting reticule and a Tie Fighter!  We struggled with the issue of how to move both the reticule and the Tie, until we were seized with a genius idea - the reticule didn't have to move!  Instead we kept it fixed firmly in the middle of the screen and wrote an adjustment to the Tie's movements, so it was dragged closer to the reticule dependent in the movement key you pressed, as well as allowing it the pre-programmed flight path.  This gave the illusion of a reticule homing in on it, which also saved us a headache of coding and memory usage.

It reminds me of the issue programmers had creating a 'Pole Position' style racing game.  The Electron just didn't have the power or memory to redraw the whole frame at every curve of the track.  Instead, they eventually had the genius idea of only redrawing the edges touching the outside of the track itself. Saving so much memory meant we finally got a decent racing game - I think it was called Crazy Biker or something?

I loved the fact you had to think incredibly concisely to get your vision across with such limitations on graphics, processing power and memory. It meant some incredibly inventive thought!

Quote from: pictsy on 17 November, 2013, 01:21:16 PM
This forum never ceases to amaze me.  Where are the kids and their XBox 360s, Wiis and Playstation 3s????

Of course, I have two out three of those right now.

I have every Playstation console except the latest and the handheld one. I think it's called the Vista. I have also kept all the games for them. Funny thing about the Playstation One is that I brought it not long before Playstation Three came out. I think, I'm not sure. This was way back in 2001 and not long afterwards I brought the Playstation Two on a whim. This would have been within a few months of buying the first one and I since I now have the computer PC and the Playstation Three which I had brought early last year. I have kept these first two consoles along with the Atari 2600 in storage for sentimental reasons. Actually, the Playstation Two has not been put back in it's box yet and is still on the table in my room. Anyway, when I had brought both those early Playstations when I had been living on my own in small rural town on the N.S.W. and Victorian border called Deniliquinn and had worked for seven out of eight months as a labourer in a Abattoir until I could hack it no more and moved to the city of Sydney to look for more work. Cleaner work. This was where I spent the next three years living out of my Ford Ultitlity, in a caravan and then on the streets without work until I started casual window cleaning cars, vans, utes, trucks, campervans, bus's in traffic for spare change while I kept all my gear in a storage room. That was the best job I ever had and also the most lucrative. As I was soon making $70-$80-$100.00 AUD a day while the more window cleaners would be actually making about $250.00 AUD a day.

Then I had to return home and I brought all my gear with me.

Did I mention I sold my Ford Ultility for about $600.00 before I left the caravan park.

Sorry to go off subject, but it's a story I love telling.

Quote from: Shaolin Monkey

Quote from: TordelbackI blame the Electron.

Solidarity Brother.  My story is almost identical - all my mates had different machines too, BBC Micro, Speccy etc, and they're all doing really well.

I loved my Electron though. Loved it to ferkin bits.  I was programming on it all the time. Over about two years I built up a massive collection of manuals and magazines that taught me everything, which I used as reference constantly. I wanted to be a programmer when I grew up, focussing on computer graphics, which I really had a knack for.

Then, as punishment for not tidying my bedroom when told, my dad threw out the lot. I was incredulous. I sneaked them out of the bin, but my dad found them really quickly, gave me another bollocking, and three them out again.

I was destroyed. I had poured my heart and soul into that machine. I wish I'd been stoic about it, and just started again, but I just felt so shattered I didn't have the heart to spend another two years building it back up.  My dreams of following that path were shattered. 

Bah.

My dad has been at me to get rid of a lot of now out of date computing magazines (And Girly Magazines) from under the a huge desk in my room. They are all behind this old Television V.C.R. (That's where I keep all my old C64 games.) cabinet on wheels which sits under my desk also. They are all quite dear to me, but dad had told me that keeping stuff piled under my desk like that is too tempting for vermin like rats and cockroaches. So, they all have to go and soon. Because I'll have to justify getting a new computer by cleaning up that corner of the room and my dad and mum were never really happy about me buying and keeping so many porno mags.

So, is anybody interested in piles of computer magazines, and other types of magazines? I will find the shipping costs and send them over to the person who will take good care of them. As I would hate to see them thrown out. I must get rid of them.

Don't worry, they are for free. I just want go see them go to good home, but not too good a home (Porno Mags, remember) and please be patient as I have got around to removing and cataloguing them yet.

As for learning how to program, I was once determined to learn everything I could about B.A.S.I.C. and then perhaps Machine Code, but I was never a student of advanced maths or even any kind of advanced computer programming.

Now languages and everything is in C++ and different now.

Did you know that the game memory that went the original Elite was about the size of what could be fitted inside a small e-mail today?

Speaking of which I had recently won all this from Ebay.....



And this.....



About the acquisition of the original Elite game. Well, all that I can find of the my original copy of the game I had saved up for and purchased back in 1986 was the old almost tattered The Dark Wheel novella. I had found the box cover some time last year in the downstairs shed inside a cupboard in a box of old stuff and fail to remember where I put it afterwards when I brought it upstairs. As for the rest of it, perhaps it's all with the rest of the old C64 games in the cabinet under my desk. Along with disk floppy copy I made of the game. I seemed to have lost the original game disk as well.

Yes, I had a terrible habit of not looking after my things when I was younger and I'm paying for now.

That most recent acquisition of the boxed Elite game with the manual, and other physical media including the Leroy-Help-Guide and this cost me nearly $200.00 AUD after the price went up higher in a bidding duel. $200.00 was my maximum bid.

Funny thing is that as I had shown my winnings on Frontier Forums and the other person who bidded against me recognised the picture of the game with it's Leroy-Help-Guide as the most distinguishing piece of the collection.

So, he contacted me through the forum and told me he was after that game with all it's stuff, as he was collecting Elite memorabilia as reference material for a coffee table book he has been given permission by Frontier Developments (David Braben's new company working on Elite -Dangerous) to produce. He didn't seem cross at me for winning and I wasn't mad at him (Okay, I was alittle) for pushing the price up to nearly $200.00 AUD. He just wanted scans of the game box cover, front and back, a scan of the front of the floppy disk, and a complete scan of the entire Leroy-Help-Guide including the front and back cover. He actually told me he only wants a few pages of the help guide and not the whole book. Though, he has never seen or read this guide and doesn't know which few pages he wants. So, I am scanning the whole book for him. Although, I was a bit reluctant about this at first and told him so. He only has permission from Frontier Development to make this coffee table book and not the author of that help guide. I don't really want to steal or assume credit but, he has offered to give me a mention in the book, if I do this for him. Though, that sounds too good to pass up, I will check first with my older brother as he is a successful lawyer. He should know about these things.

Anyway, I showed this treasure to my father this morning. Telling him this was the original game we had problems with, but eventually succeeded in copying onto another blank floppy disk along long time ago. No, we weren't pirating it. We just wanted a extra copy of the game for frequent usage and worried that the original would be eventually ruined if I kept playing it everyday like I was. So, we eventually managed to copy it with some software called Disk-Dissector Unfortunately, as I had mentioned earlier I had apparently lost the original disk somehow and now only have the copy along with the save disk where all my saved games are kept or it may be in some forgotten plastic floppy disk container somewhere. I do know I put it somewhere for safe keeping after making a copy.

Anyway, as I said, I was showing this new treasure to my father this morning. So he can copy the help guide on his copier. Which only he knows how to use. He takes the box off of me (This was a bad move on my part) and opens it and shoves his fingers and thumbs inside. Getting at the Ship I.D. Chart which was sitting folded on top. My father did some damage to it in his ignorant clumsiness. The philistine oaf. He had left a mark where he had stuck his thumb and bent it in order to lift it out of the game box in order to find the guide. It's okay to bend things as long as they don't get folded over and creased in the process like he had done. I didn't yell at him and I haven't had a argument with dad in years and didn't want to start one now. I just quietly took the box from his grasp and carefully removed the folded chart as I had done twice before by gently tipping out the contents into my other hand. Getting the desired help guide for him to copy. Watching my father like a hawk, to see he wasn't blatantly folding the guide in half. He was bending it a little, but I didn't raise my voice.

Well, the Ship I.D. chart has gone from Very Good to Good in a matter of seconds.

My dad just doesn't understand the concept of Mint, Near Mint, Very Fine, Fine, Very Good, Good and Ruined. I actually go to great lengths he never handles any of my good comics or books.

I should have known better.

As I recall showing my dad a couple of the official souvenir photo guide books regarding the The Hobbit : The Unexpected Journey books late last year. I have been collecting them all as well as the official calendars and I had handed a few of the books to him as he proceeded to thumb and finger through the pages like he was counting dollar bills. He had left noticeable crease marks on the few pages he had thumbed through. He also picked up my official calendar from a table one day and did the exact same thing.

He's got no idea about how fragile paper and photo-paper really is.

I had got my older brother a large bumper book on the Australian Cricket Team nearly two years ago as Christmas present. As he loves the game and used to be cricket captain in his younger days himself. Dad once had a look through the book before I gave it to my brother and at the time he had been handling and eating a orange and put sticky finger marks all over some of the photo pages.

Despite this, I do respect him and won't yell back.

Anyway, I'm watching my dad handle the help-guide right now. He is copying it. Damn he is bending the cover a little while handling it.

:o Philistine  :'(

:-\  He should perhaps have credit for scanning the book  ::)

P.S. The poster, the Space-Ship I.D. chart was already slightly damaged when I got it. Not my fault. The photo side of the paper where the Transporter ship is picture is badly chipped away. I have now noticed from further examination of the photo (Shown above) that the original owner had provided. He had carefully hidden this defect by placing the game box cover over/in front of it.

The sneaky devil  :(

No I was wrong, on closer inspection of that photo, the defect was not hidden at all. It is quite clearly shown just in front of where the box cover is standing.

That was my bad.

Quote from: shaolin_monkey on 17 November, 2013, 01:47:46 PM

Quote from: TordelBack on 16 November, 2013, 10:00:49 AM
I blame the Electron.

Solidarity Brother.  My story is almost identical - all my mates had different machines too, BBC Micro, Speccy etc, and they're all doing really well.

Another Electron owner whose progressive but less than wealthy parents bought into the educational hype. I had mine from the age of around eleven to 17 or 18 when people finally stopped writing games for it but, as mentioned elsewhere, only after wringing astounding levels performance and sophistication from its miniscule interior.

My dad and I also spent many long hours attempting to grasp the rudiments of programming. My lack of any artistic ability meant graphics were never something I invested much time in, so hats off. Overly complex D&D character generators? Now that's a different story entirely. Not sure how much help any of that was, but my day job now does involve a modicum of programming.

Despite being a keen games fan, I didn't personally own any console until the PS2, relying instead on friends and flatmates for my Amiga, Megadrive and PS1 thrills.

Beautiful artefacts those, TS - who knows where my own old versions are?  And don't be too hard on your Dad: books, toys and such things exist to be used, with all the wear that entails, not safely locked away from smudgey fingers.

Quote from: The Cosh on 18 November, 2013, 07:59:44 AM
Overly complex D&D character generators? Now that's a different story entirely.

Yeah - I wrote Character generators and Treasure generators for D&D. I got the WHOLE of the players manual (every table and chart and stat and shopping list and guided you through the whole character generation) into the feeble 48K on offer on the Spectrum. I even added a user defined pause at the start just to ensure that the random numbers were genuinely random.

Growing up, the family had an ATARI 2600 (I think) and used to rent games for it from the local video shop. Loved the Empire Strikes Back one and an Indiana Jones one (which I tried to recreate on the Spectrum).

Naturally I also wrote my own version of Space Invaders (but with Tie Fighters and X-Wing), a Death Star Trench run thing (where I simply used the FLASH command to simulate the trench whizzing by) and a version of a fantastic arcade game I once played where you were a pig firing arrows at foxes who were trying to fly up a cliff in balloons so they could drop a boulder on your head.

I then went on to do Computer Science at University (and for years was in software development). Interesting to see that Tiny Tips covered a lot of our first year syllabus while he was in Primary 7.

But the first CONSOLE I owned and bought outright was a NINTENDO 64.  This had SUPER MARIO 64 (genius), PILOT WINGS 64 (genius) and SHADOWS OF THE EMPIRE (more like SHITE OF THE EMPIRE but the Hoth levels were fun). Along with an import cart of Goldeneye so the whole set up cost me around £700 - which 20 years ago was some amount of beans.

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 19 November, 2013, 12:33:25 PM

Quote from: The Cosh on 18 November, 2013, 07:59:44 AM
Overly complex D&D character generators? Now that's a different story entirely.

Yeah - I wrote Character generators and Treasure generators for D&D. I got the WHOLE of the players manual (every table and chart and stat and shopping list and guided you through the whole character generation) into the feeble 48K on offer on the Spectrum. I even added a user defined pause at the start just to ensure that the random numbers were genuinely random.

My mate got his computer science O level largely by creating a D&D random gem generator for the Spectrum. He also some good money helping a local games developer - when I say good money I mean a  couple of hundred, but when you're 15 and it's 1984, that made him the richest kid in class!

Quote from: Tiplodocus on 19 November, 2013, 12:33:25 PM
Yeah - I wrote Character generators and Treasure generators for D&D. I got the WHOLE of the players manual (every table and chart and stat and shopping list and guided you through the whole character generation) into the feeble 48K on offer on the Spectrum. I even added a user defined pause at the start just to ensure that the random numbers were genuinely random.
...
Naturally I also wrote my own version of Space Invaders (but with Tie Fighters and X-Wing), a Death Star Trench run thing (where I simply used the FLASH command to simulate the trench whizzing by) and a version of a fantastic arcade game I once played where you were a pig firing arrows at foxes who were trying to fly up a cliff in balloons so they could drop a boulder on your head.

Having re-read this, i do wonder why on earth I seem to be filling out spreadsheets for a living. I used to be quite creative...

Quote from: Dandontdare on 19 November, 2013, 03:21:34 PM
My mate got his computer science O level largely by creating a D&D random gem generator for the Spectrum. He also some good money helping a local games developer...

I could have used his help and all.  My own D&D character-and-treasure generators* were a bloody disaster.  The Electron's RND function was (in the way of these things) not random at all, but reset to the same sequence of numbers every time you switched it on.  There was a way of looking up the internal clock to start the sequence at different times and thus 'randomise' it, but I'd almost given up on the whole thing by the time I discovered it.



*I was 18 before I did it with a lady person.

My father bought a pong machine from Tandy. Circa 1978/79
Black and white but damn it was awesome!!!

Led me upon my trail of constant gaming as soon as I could afford such things myself.

mmm, I'm pretty sure it was one of those Multi Pong type machines first, you know Football, Tennis, shooting Gallery all in built.  Then we got a Atari VCS, wood grain 6 switch version for xmas in 82, ah I loved that thing and I don't care what anybody says ET was a good game, it must have been I finished it several times.
My first computer was a TRS80 Color Computer 1 (CoCo1) (note the US spelling, it was an import machine similar to your Dragons but had wonky colour on our TV system (PAL) but still worked) , It was a modded up beast of a machine, 64K upgraded from 4k, extended MS Basic we had a Disk Drive (which cost my dad a fortune and had to be imported from the US and converted to our power system to work) and buckets of games (though most were rip offs, like Gantlet(Gauntlet), Scrumble(Scramble) though it did have a really good official version of Zaxxon).  I also typed in a hell of a lot of listings from Rainbow (US Tandy CoCo Mag) and even started to learn basic but found programing to be just too much effort. 
My first machine I brought myself was a second hand Master System with about 15 games, I delivered junk mail to save for that and then I brought A MegaDrive on release. 
I love old game systems (I collect now, all the systems I wanted but couldn't get when i was younger and generally anything I can find at a good price) and sitting in the cabinet next to me right now I have Atari 2600, Master Syetm 2, 2 x Megadrive (an original and a Megadrive 2 which is for my Mega CD 2), Sega Saturn, Sega Dreamcast, 2 x NES (Grey Box original and a Dog Bone type), Super NES, N64, Game Cube, Wii, Original Game Boy, Game Boy Pocket, Game Boy Advance, Game Boy Advance SP, DS, Amstrad CPC464 (green monitor damn it)de and joy a Vectrex.  All these systems work and most have lots of games but a few (Mega CD) I'm always on the look out for more.

CU Radbacker