View Full Version : Remember when you had to work for a new game???
Goblin
10-24-2002, 10:18 PM
I was digging through some stuff and found a few old Compute magazines. Remember back when getting a new game to play, meant you needed to type the multi page basic program in yourself. While I do enjoy the speed of modern PCs, there was a sense of satisfaction back then. When you started playing you felt like you earned it. Everything you did was breaking new ground.
Also in the pile I relocated about 5 years worth of newsletters from a local Atari User Group we belonged to back in the day, cool to go back and read.
theaveng
10-24-2002, 10:51 PM
I remember spending days typing in a word processing program from RUN, and then the stupid thing didn't work on my C=64! I ended up buying the disk, and never bothered with typing programs again. I decided there and then to pay someone else to do the drudge work.
scooterb23
10-24-2002, 11:13 PM
I would love to have all those old programs from Family Computing Magazine, Ahoy!, Compute, whatever so I can relearn Basic...I loved typing in programs...
briskbc
10-25-2002, 02:23 AM
My god it sucked (IMO). I was 12 and a poor typer. Too many Syntax errors.
moycon
10-25-2002, 03:18 AM
I still have a thick softbound book with nothing but C-64 programs and games. One that stood out was a text adventure where you were a wolf in charge of cubs and had to get through the winter!!
My friends and I would make our own text adventures, with graphics made from the built in C-64 graphics keys and even sound effects we got out of the magazines..."footsteps, gunshots, helicopter"
Titles I remember we made.... Attack Force, Dragons Lair, GI Joe, and I had even started one based on the Friday The 13th Movies. I'll bet I still have some of those disk somewhere.
le geek
10-25-2002, 12:03 PM
Hell,
You can download my crappy BASIC C64 game right here!
http://www.abscape.org/legeek/f_c64.htm
Features include:
-Stolen code!
-Keyboard Graphics!
-Space Shuttle theme!
-Multiple loads!
-No scoring whatsoever!
LMAO,
le geek
moycon- not to be a jerk, but that would be wolf PUPS, not cubs.
Goblin- were you in JACS (Jersey Atari Computer Society)?
chazbeenhad
10-25-2002, 04:27 PM
I just typed in a program from a book 2 nights ago for my TRS-80 MC-10. It was fun. AND the program I typed in gave me a good idea on some logic i'm going to use in a program i'm writing myself.
Charlie
Nature Boy
10-25-2002, 04:40 PM
I loved typing those things in too. But I never really remember liking the games themselves. I just liked looking at code or typing or something.
Oddly enough I'm a programmer now... :wink:
kainemaxwell
10-25-2002, 04:52 PM
Ahh, those were the simplier times. I have a couple disks in my closet somewhere of games a friend prgrammed from Computes and Contact magazines actually.
Goblin
10-25-2002, 10:53 PM
@ RJ:
I (or my father really) were members of JACG, which met in Murray Hill at Bell Labs. If I'm not mistaken, JACS was in the southern area of the state closer to Philly.
moycon
10-25-2002, 11:42 PM
@ RJ: Yer a jerk.
scooterb23
10-25-2002, 11:55 PM
I wish I had some sources for C64 stuff around here...very frustrating to have a C64, and none of my old magazines / disks/ resources... :(
moycon
10-26-2002, 12:42 AM
PM sent scooterb23....If yer interested drop me a line.
@moycon: hey, just trying to help- now you know if it ever comes up again! :)
Anyone have an Atari computer & go NUTS typing in control characters, typing in 5+ pp of machine language (nothin' but numbers) &/or doing it w/out TYPO II? How 'bout saving/loading a long program on cassette?
Those were the days & I didn't know any better...
Nature Boy
10-28-2002, 05:14 PM
@RJ: Guilty as charged. I can't believe I used to wait 5-10 minutes for a cassette game. And then there were the times that something would go wrong so you'd have to start all over again. Disk drives didn't come soon enough...
Dobie
10-28-2002, 07:14 PM
I remember getting a magazine titled "3,2,1 Contact!" based on the old PBS educational show. They used to have crappy little programs you could type in to a C=64, and later, into an IBM. I used to spend hours on those things. One used to "translate" typed messages into "Martian" and back.
kainemaxwell
10-28-2002, 07:54 PM
I have some those 3-2-1 Contact programs on a disk somewhere.
scooterb23
10-28-2002, 11:35 PM
Wasn't that section of 3,2,1 Contact Magazine called the Slipped Disk Show or something like that? I tried like CRAZY to get one of my programs printed in there...never happened :(
spoon
10-29-2002, 01:49 AM
HA HA
I though you meant "remember when you had to work(IE. yard work and such when you were younger) for a video game!
lol, man this was before my time, sorry guys, but I do remember when I had to do chores and such to buy new NES games. :D
consoledatabase
10-29-2002, 09:21 AM
I could never get those programs to work after I spent so long typing them out on my TRS-80 COCO. There'd always be some kind of error when I ran the program!