[Houdini]

Could it be Atic Atac? 

Er non, Ghouls n ghosts it was, as said, a tad later that BBC et al.  Also had a great affection for a wartime flying game called 1944, I think.  Ace arcadism.  Sure it was home, too.

[Bubba]

Moon Cresta

I used to pwn on Moon Cresta

Clocked it 3 times on 1 10p coin

[Houdini]

No it was called 1942

[SA Chris]

There was a 1941 and a 1942? Similar but not the same.

[tommytwotone]

Was I the only one who used to have an Amstrad CPC?

Mine was the tape-drive version (464), and IIRC I even had a green screen monitor for the first year or so, until one of my mates upgraded to a PC (or mabe an Archimedes) and I got his colour one. Despite this, it had some awesome games like Renegade, Chase HQ, Switchblade and a load of decent movie tie-ins like Robocop and Batman - how come nowadays they can't make a decent movie tie-in game?

Question - in terms of control methods, were you an Q,A,O,P user, or did you favour the Z,X, ; and . buttons?

[Bubba]

Question - in terms of control methods, were you an Q,A,O,P user, or did you favour the Z,X, ; and . buttons?

The latter for me.

[Jim]

and me

[account_inactive]

If you haven't seen this before it brings back some of those old memories

http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/

[dave]

ZX;. all the way.

[Jaspersharpe]

Can download emulators and lots of games here.........

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/

....although I've had a quick go and can't work out how to get em to work. I'm crap with this type of thing though and don't have time to read all the instructions.

[Paz]

FUCK YEAH!

We had a tape drive, then got a disk drive, and even a speccy with hard plastic keys.  We were posh back then before Maggy axed British Coal's science/safety division, see.  Most of the good games have been mentioned, but I liked Turican 2.  And here's a picture of Manic Miner:

http://blog.soapyfrog.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/04/manicminer.gif

Eugene's Lair, man eating toilets, The Alien Kong Beast (first crux) and the second to last one with the lightning (redpoint crux).  Happy Days. 

Actually on the BBC Micro, that I've only just found out is called The Beeb (I thought this was the BBC?) a really awesome game was Head and Tails, which was like a multi character 3D platform/puzzle game, and when Head and Tails met up they kicked ass. 

The only game I ever finished writing was Catch The Eggs (it didn't need a large user manual) for our Graphic Calculators, but I lost it when my battery ran out in the midddle of my A-level maths exam.  Dave or someone might still have a copy. 

[moose]

A friend had a ZX81 with the rubber keyboard, a mighty 15k RAM upgrade, and a printer that seemed to function by setting strips of foil on fire.

My own first computer though was an Acorn Electron.  Attempts to program comprised typing pages of code from the BBC magazine to be greeted with the inevitable "Syntax Error" (or at best a deeply unimpressive demonstration of pixel shuffling).  This invariably pressaged an enraged dash to the shops to splurge £2.99 on the latest Mastertronic effort.  

I then upgraded to the C64: no more text adventures for me.  Instead a veritable graphical wonderland, made all the more hallucinogenic by the 30 min softening-up period sat in front of the flickery, fit inducing loading screen (to this day all former 8bit computer owners are immune to epilepsy. FACT).  Incidentally did anyone else get incredibly angry when the first 10 minutes of loading was revealed to have been spent producing a hideously blocky recreation of the game's cover art?  The patience it took to play on those computers was absolutely bloody awesome.  At least half the time the game failed to load, betrayed only by a freeze in the flickering, and the dawning realisation that you had spent over an hour waiting for a quick game of IK+.  This failure always seemed to be blamed on "overheating".  The 80s was, for me, a decade of frustration permeated by the scent of red-hot Commodore powerpacks slowly turning into pools of molten grey plastic.  Christ, no wonder I am prone to sieging boulder problems with such single minded, obstinate stupidity.  "Playing" on that computer must have given me the steely focus of a zen master and patience of a long-distance tortoise racer.

By the way Z, X, *, ? for me on the old keyboards... I might have to chase up a copy of "Creatures" on one of the eumulators - just to see whether the torture-screen interludes were as sickly funny as I remember.

[Jim]

IK+ was amazing. I wasted a good deal of my life playing that

[GCW]

I had a Spectrum 48k+.
Manic Miner, JetSet Willy, SPyHunter.  Need I continue?

Horace goes skiing, never liked it.  And why was it always the fucking ambulances that ran you down??  Caring professionals my arse.  Touting for roadkill business more like.

[GCW]

Jet.  Set.  Willy.

[dave]

The only game I ever finished writing was Catch The Eggs (it didn't need a large user manual) for our Graphic Calculators, but I lost it when my battery ran out in the midddle of my A-level maths exam.  Dave or someone might still have a copy. 

fuck paz, catch the eggs was amazing.  it opitomised my maths a-level. that, jamiroquai cassettes, and star wars tazos out of quaver packets. If i can find my old casio calulator I will, though i suspect the batteries have gone.

[andy_e]

jamiroquai cassettes, and star wars tazos out of quaver packets

Shit man! that's my childhood!

[Houdini]

SHES BOOBLESS !

[lagerstarfish]

I still have a ZX81 with 16k velcro ram pack - took it for a spin 2 years ago and played the 1k version of chess - i lost.
I also have a BBC 32k - played Elite last year. Both are going to be skipped this weekend as I leave my house-of-many-bad-memories. Free to anyone who wants to pick them up in Sheff. PM me

[dave]

you're in luck paz, i've just found my calculator (CASIO CFX-9850G). the question is wether i can find spare batteries, and even more so is if i had to wipe the memory before the a-level exams to avoid being stung by plaigarism rules.

*****EDIT*****

OK cancel the above, it turns out I'd actually found the wife's A-level calculator (identical to mine superficially), so no Catch The Eggs i'm afraid. What it did have on however was a program I wrote for a Londoner friend of ours at uni, it was called "COCKNEY", and when you run it the screen simply prints the message "FUCK OFF BACK TO LONDON YOU COCKNEY BASTARD TWAT".

[GCW]

wether

Castrated ram?

[dave]

yeah, the CFX-9850G always suffered from a lack of RAM.

[Paz]

Aah crap Dave, tht was probaby why I lost mine too.  Never mind, as a tribute to your cockney program I've recreated it in basic:

PROGRAM "COCKNEY"
10 PRINT "FUCK OFF BACK TO LONDON YOU BASTARD COCKNEY TWAT"
BREAK

[GCW]

I remember spending a few hours programming the Spectrum.

Young boy, meticulously typing out pages and pages of code.
In triumph he completes the task.
5 hours work.

What does he get?  A fucking circle.  And not even a proper circle.  A squared off, pixellated pile of shite.   

[Bubba]

you could have done that with one line

Code: [Select]

CIRCLE 100,100,66