Actually, I'm going to go a bit further back in time, to the eighties. What brought this on, I hear you mumbling. Well, last night I watched this BBC programme from 1985 in which they talked about personal computers (or "micros", as they appear to have been calling them at one point in time) and mobile technology. First of all, the mobile phone they were talking about was the brand new cellular technology (ring any bells? LOL!) that had just arrived from the US. New York already had 10,000 subscribers to the network after only six months of availability. The UK was planning on making the network available to 90% of the UK mainland. :D And the phone they were showing was "without a cord, honest!" and really handy (in a suitcase kind of way). I nearly fell off my chair laughing. But the funniest part was when they talked about the BBS (bulletin board system, anyone familiar with computers from the seventies and eighties know what these were, the rest should watch Wargames, which is a brilliant contemporary film about computers - I never tire of it); BBC had its own BBS which had had so many visitors during the previous month that it had collapsed, but now they'd installed "a brand new 15 megabyte harddrive system" and everything should work like a dream.

Anyway, the computers they were talking about (and showing (off)) were one of the Spectrum (Speccy) machines (that year's bestseller), the Commodore 64 (C64) (that year's runner-up), the BBC Micro B and one of the Atari machines (the 800, I presume). I've been fiddling around with emulators ever since I realised they existed back in 199x, simply because I love all that older technology. Also, there are programs and games for these old systems that you can't find anywhere else anymore. One of my all-time favourite games is one for the C64 and is a pinball game (Magic Pinball). Due to the fact that the C64 only had a 320x200 maximum graphical mode, there was a very limited number of sprites (graphical icon or figure, basically) allowed on screen at any time. That also meant that the ball could only follow certain patterns every time, and after a short while of practice you would know exactly where to hit the ball in order for it to go where you wanted it to.

I am, however, looking for a game for the Commodore 16/Plus 4. It was a text adventure game and the only thing I remember about it was that there was a rope featured at the very beginning. I played this when I went to a summer course in England in '89 and have never seen it since (especially since I never owned one of those machines; I went straight to the Amiga 500). Doesn't really matter that much, I just find myself remembering it now and then. We stayed at a school which was closed for the summer, and they had a computer lab there with about...ooh, I'd say roughly three and a half machines. ;-) Three of us sneaked around to the other rooms and gathered power supplies (I remember scaring one of the maids that way once, as I was hiding behind a door, clutching the power supply and pretending not to be doing anything wrong) before firing up one of the Commodore 16's they had there. We didn't actually do anything with the computers, because they had very few games and we didn't really know enough English to play around with the programs (thankfully).

Another game I've played a lot is Tracksuit Manager, on the C64. It's possibly the coolest sports management sim ever, and believe me, I love the (first four, full) Championship Manager games! It's just very simple and easy to learn and it's basically about winning. I know CM has got so much more to offer in way of micromanagement, that's why I love it, but still, TM is lots of fun.

Oops, just remembered I have to watch the last two episodes of Himalaya (eith Michael Palin) tonight, before lending it to my parents over Christmas. Guess that means I've got to go.

Current track: Nothing.

Labels: computers, history, holiday, michael palin, technology, TV