Nappies

[Pleng]

I missed the Amiga 'happening' because I was still toddling around in nappies.

Since that time the computer has been mass manufactured, monopolized, minimized, closed up, open sourced, built upon... never has it really been born again. I feel right now that I am about to witness the rebirth of all that I missed when I was busy soiling my nappies and crying for ice cream!

And this one has TWO disk drives (sd slots) built in as standard!

 

[ashdjones]

Good point!

Actually, I think this is the birth of something new - after all, was the Amiga designed after a long period of consultation with computer users? I don't think so!

 

[Pleng]

Good point!

Actually, I think this is the birth of something new - after all, was the Amiga designed after a long period of consultation with computer users? I don't think so!

No, but to be fair in that day and age it couldn't have been. It was a few tech buffs getting together and deciding what THEY wanted from a computer. The difference this time round is that due to the internet the developers could quite easily ask the community what they wanted from the device.

And not one of them asked for nappies!

 

[ashdjones]

No, but to be fair in that day and age it couldn't have been. It was a few tech buffs getting together and deciding what THEY wanted from a computer. The difference this time round is that due to the internet the developers could quite easily ask the community what they wanted from the device.

And not one of them asked for nappies!

That's not quite true. There were various computer based networks throughout the eighties, including Usenet which was very popular pre-web.

It's amazing to back to those dark, non-interconnected days where people never got to meet anyone else with the same interest.



Computer convention?

 

[Pleng]

No, but to be fair in that day and age it couldn't have been. It was a few tech buffs getting together and deciding what THEY wanted from a computer. The difference this time round is that due to the internet the developers could quite easily ask the community what they wanted from the device.

And not one of them asked for nappies!

That's not quite true. There were various computer based networks throughout the eighties, including Usenet which was very popular pre-web.



Well I was big on my usenet through the early nineties. But really you weren't going to attract any kind of 'regular consumer' from usenet. There was no linking from blogs or yahoo or google searches. You were only ever going to attract hardcore geeks, and that isn't always a recepie for success!

 

[WarmFluffyUK]

I am one of the people who was there at the birth of video games. We had the latest technology in our family, and that was a PONG type game you plugged into your TV, it was AWESOME! Then came Game and watch and a lot of other stuff, the ZX 81, and I worked for weeks as a checkout girl during school weekends to afford a ZX Spectrum. But the Amiga, now that was the most exciting thing I had seen. Since the Amiga, nothing new really. Commodore went bust which broke my heart, and computers have steadily dragged themselves uphill which is generally dictated by the software, it's weird that it's not the other way around :blink:

The GP32 sparked my brain and then there was the 2X.

But now there is something new: It's the winds of change! The Pandora is truly something born out of us all, it's like a complex mash of all our ideas and wants for a console all in one neat little bundle. Soon, this marvel will be released unto us, and I have the same kind of excitement about it I had when we first got our Pong Game. Who knows what it will be like......

 

[Sphinxter]

Hey what a coincidence, you were young enough to be in nappies for the release of the amiga, few more delays and I'll be old enough to be in nappies for the release of the pandora!

 

[fade]

I am one of the people who was there at the birth of video games. We had the latest technology in our family, and that was a PONG type game you plugged into your TV, it was AWESOME!

It wasnt a Binatone by any chance was it Fluffy? I played that a lot too, I grew up during those times as well, good times. Although i never did own a zx spectrum. I had an MSX, which mostly had speccy ports available for it. Then i moved on to a CPC 464, an then of course the Amiga.

The Amiga was the best machine i had, but i think it was the fact that it had that feelgood spirit about it as well, everyone loved it and everyone had loads of games and PD Demos. Like yourself i never really felt that again until i discovered the GP32 and the community around it. I really hope the pandora opens all that up again.

 

[Babrios]

I recently dug up my good old trusted Amiga 500plus, I was ever so proud of. IT HAS GONE ALL YELLOW!!!!
I knew the plastic, they used, had that tendency, but never thought it would be THAT bad. Oh my, time really does fly.
The Pandora really could be as smashing as the Amiga ones was. It has the potential. I wonder if the devs really get into squeezing everything out of the hardware over time (with assembly code like in the Amiga days). Though it won't ever be exactly like the Amiga, it can't turn YELLOW .

 

[fade]

Haha, i recently bought a 20 year old Amiga off Ebay for a retro gaming party with some friends, an it had turned a bit yellow too. I considered it to be just matured tho, like a fine wine!

 

[Prometheus]

Though it won't ever be exactly like the Amiga, it can't turn YELLOW .

Oh really?


Anyway, I never had an Amiga, I had a C64, so I guess I kind of missed out on those times too (although I know my history ). This is going to be a very interesting time indeed, I think. I can't wait to see how it goes.

 

[Pleng]

I am one of the people who was there at the birth of video games. We had the latest technology in our family, and that was a PONG type game you plugged into your TV, it was AWESOME! Then came Game and watch and a lot of other stuff, the ZX 81, and I worked for weeks as a checkout girl during school weekends to afford a ZX Spectrum. But the Amiga, now that was the most exciting thing I had seen. Since the Amiga, nothing new really. Commodore went bust which broke my heart, and computers have steadily dragged themselves uphill which is generally dictated by the software, it's weird that it's not the other way around :blink:

Yea my gran had one of those Pong machines. The tennis game was awesome! My mate down the road had a ZX Speccy and later a Nintendo NES but the first technology in my family was an 8086 Amstrad PC. My brother eventually got a Game Gear, I got a Master System, then traded it for a C64. Technology flew in and out of the house. I met some guy with a miggy 500, and at some point my brother got a CD32, which later made its way to me. It got kitted out into a real Amiga shortly after.

I shall be kitting Pandy out into an Amiga shortly after it arrives!

 

[Babrios]

Though it won't ever be exactly like the Amiga, it can't turn YELLOW .

Oh really?


Good one! That's a kind of yellow all bees would instantly fall in love with.

 

[ashdjones]

My first proper computer was a BBC Model B when I was ten. It was given to my mum by a friend who was doing software engineering at Essex University. I remember looking through all the disks, and finding strange games that seemed to be half-finished, strange graphics demonstrations and other stuff that seemed very puzzling. I now know of course they were sprite engine tests and fractal routines! The guy was a game programmer! I actually tried to play one of them, but there were no enemies and the map just kept on scrolling and scrolling, eventually becoming empty.

My mum sent me over to visit the guy, he had upgraded to a lovely new computer (Archimedes I think) on which he showed me a lovely sidescrolling shoot-em-up. For all I know, he wrote it! Think the guy's name was Andy, so hello if you're out there!

I used that BBC for years. I learnt to program on it. My mum and I would buy old tape games from the computer shop in town for 20p each, so pretty much every weekend I would have something new to play. We used to love playing the BBC version of Scrabble but it would take 40 minutes to load, so we usually went off and had dinner while it was loading.

My mum's favourite game was (what I now know to be) Moon Cresta, she would stay up till 3am playing that game! We had a bit of trouble when we lent the machine to her friend and he spilt butter from his toast all into the keyboard - we had it fixed at the computer shop for £40 (rip off!) but it never quite worked properly and had one stuck key.

I was still using it, right into the mid nineties. Me and a friend from school used to play Coop Elite, with one in the pilot chair and one on the guns (pressing the fire button). With the BBC on the desk, and the two of us in office chairs we'd pretend it was a real spaceship and we were sitting on the bridge with the viewscreen infront of us playing it in realtime. We'd play that thing for several hours, with one of us 'going to the lower deck' to make lunch or cups of tea - pretty tense when pirates could arrive any minute! We were so english!

:lol:

 

[javaJake]

My brother eventually got a Game Gear, I got a Master System, then traded it for a C64.

I had a Sega Master System from way back when. That is, until a friend decided he could jump the cord, and snapped the wire right out of the plug (leaving the plastic part still inside the console). It got thrown out, since my parents told me it was too old, and they could never get a new controller.

The game I played for months and months on end was Cloud Master. I never really played anything else, and I never got beyond the first level (and if I did, I got slammed in the second). Because of that, when I found the game again only a few months ago, I actually jumped around.

 

[ashdjones]

The game I played for months and months on end was Cloud Master. I never really played anything else, and I never got beyond the first level (and if I did, I got slammed in the second). Because of that, when I found the game again only a few months ago, I actually jumped around.



My parents were cruel. I wasn't allowed any new Master System games until I completed the ones I had - it would have been alright had they not been the hardest games ever made...

...did anyone else replay the same games every weekend, getting that little bit further each time? Only game I completed was Action Fighter because I had the cheat code!

 

[Pleng]

My parents were cruel. I wasn't allowed any new Master System games until I completed the ones I had - it would have been alright had they not been the hardest games ever made...

Yup I've just been playing Alex Kidd in Shinobi World, and Alex Kidd in Miracle World. Very difficult games indeed. Especially seeing as you only have a limited supply of lives and continues (unless you use save states of course, which isn't really practical with my downstairs computer until I get around to getting a USB keyboard!)

 

[fade]

I had a Sega Master System from way back when. That is, until a friend decided he could jump the cord, and snapped the wire right out of the plug (leaving the plastic part still inside the console). It got thrown out, since my parents told me it was too old, and they could never get a new controller.

Man, thats a pity, bit of a weak excuse to chuck out your games console too. I hope your friend apologised!

@ashdjones - The BBC was a great machine. I played many a great game on it, anyone remember 'Frak!' ? Also, wasnt Elite actually originally developed on the BBC?

 

[ashdjones]

I had a Sega Master System from way back when. That is, until a friend decided he could jump the cord, and snapped the wire right out of the plug (leaving the plastic part still inside the console). It got thrown out, since my parents told me it was too old, and they could never get a new controller.

Man, thats a pity, bit of a weak excuse to chuck out your games console too. I hope your friend apologised!

@ashdjones - The BBC was a great machine. I played many a great game on it, anyone remember 'Frak!' ? Also, wasnt Elite actually originally developed on the BBC?


Yeah I had Frak and I seem to remember it had really catchy music. Elite was originally on the BBC, yes.

 

[Bosbeetle]

We had an msx I played for hours and hours on it. It was so much fun recently I decided to play some hyper rally and knightmare once more. I hope the pandora will get a msx emulator. A portable msx all I could have hoped for (and more) After the msx we got a 486 33MHz but I still regretted selling the old msx to a friend who decided to to resell it (with about 40 disks of games) to somebody else. Its still one of the stupidest things in my life.

Hope pandora can turn round some of my bad desicion making