butterburp

Is there an ignore function on this board? I've no tolerance for assholes like this, who think they can just make life unpleasant for everyone, and everyone just has to take it. F that. And you.

Yeah, this is really boring.

I totally remember Computer Shopper, except I was too cheap to buy them. So I went for the free tabloid versions, Computer Currents and Microtimes. Always looked forward to the Hi-Tech USA ad, which had this huge matrix of PC prices by CPU and peripheral combinations. Every issue I would study up on it, drooling.

Missed it by a year, but here's a pretty good re-creation of "Arcade 84": There is one glaring mistake, namely the iron claw machines (which didn't appear until the 90's), but otherwise well done. Of course, the real thing was more filled with various unkempt youth in bad need of showers, most of them emitting cuss words, etc. I also don't remember seeing many well-lit arcades. Most were fairly dark, perhaps to prevent glare or something like that. I remember the little etiquette thing of putting a quarter in the marquee slot, meaning "I got next game." Specific to that time period, you were getting more of the cartoony-type games - Kangaroo, Popeye, Qbert, etc. as well as the out-and-out cartoon games like Dragon's Lair and Cliff Hanger. I am trying to remember if the classics (Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pacman) were still around but my memory fails me. Dang, I can still smell the pizza of the old time Chuck E Cheese joints. The cheese was some kind of smoked mozzarella, I think, that is absent from the current CEC offering, and every other offering as far as I can tell. It wasn't the best pizza, but it had a unique taste that I haven't had in many, many moons. Miss it almost as much as the arcade.

Very nice, thank you! I also have been curious about this for decades, having read about the promise of a "wonderful rainbow explosion" for shooting a 10-point invader last, in Tom Hirschfeld's "How to Master the Video Games." Classic book that I still browse through occasionally for old times' sake.

I had Windows 3.0 before 3.1, and that came with Reversi instead of Minesweeper. It was definitely addictive, mostly because I could not beat the computer on even the easiest level for the longest time. It took me a while to recognize the importance of seizing the corners (in most situations). Even now it's not an automatic win for me. I didn't play the 2600 version until much later but I do like it, and find it much easier than the Windows version. Since I'm weird, I generally attempt an illegal move deliberately at least once each game, just to hear that lovely "BUZZZZ!" sound.

Not sure if arcade games had volume settings back in the day, but I distinctly remember two games generally being super loud. One was Venture by Exidy. Somehow the "bass" (or at least lower) notes from the music really rang in my ears. The game was also frustrating as heck (the monsters run away from your shots) so even though I really wanted to like the game, the noise and butt-hard difficulty prevented that. Second game was Elevator Action. I could always hear the noise when the guy goes into a red door and returns with the file folder, even if I was playing a different game clear across the room. Oh, and the missing word in the Dragon's Lair script is "odyssey."

Thanks for posting these. Being a bit looney, every year or two I play a little game just to remind myself of the value of a dollar, and keep myself from getting too spoiled. Basically, I pretend I'm starting all over with gaming (I'll let myself have the 2600 itself plus Combat - OH WHAT FUN for one player), stash my other games in the closet, then make myself work to "buy" those games back, at their original prices. So I figure out how much weekly take-home pay I'd rake in, back in that day, and budget some percentage of that for games. Then I let myself have a game only when I've "saved" enough to buy it. A Bowling or Circus Atari caliber title might take a week, Space Invaders a week and a half, and Backgammon two weeks (ouch). It's slow going but it's also fun to watch my collection "grow," and it forces me to really earn things, appreciate what I have, and enjoy discovering new goodies in whatever title I'm playing. Of course, a few months later I cave in and go back to having the whole collection, but it's fun while it lasts. Come to think of it, it's been a couple of years so I'm about due to try this again. Yeah, I'm crazy.

I started with a 286/12 with 1MB RAM and a VGA monochrome monitor. In college I managed to score a 386/40, 4MB and a used VGA color monitor (interlaced, but 1024x768 really wasn't bad) for just north of $300. Kept my old 40MB MFM ("Made From Mold") hard drive, so I barely had room for anything. But the piece de resistance was my first ever sound card. I'll steal the story from an older thread: "1994...the year I took 3 buses in San Francisco to get a (mono) Sound Blaster 2.0 card. Found the "shop" operating out of a tiny public storage unit in an alley, paid cash, and made it back alive. Thus began my addiction to Sam & Max Hit the Road, Microsoft Arcade, CANYON.MID and Dr. Sbaitso."

Good news, and I notice Keatah is in on this also: the NON-"authentic" (i.e., no scanlines/dithering) full screen option has returned to AppleWin. My eyes are much happier! https://github.com/AppleWin/AppleWin/issues/357

This. I confess I am not piracy-free (COME GET ME FEDS!) but if a game is available on GOG or Steam, I will absolutely not attempt to get it via illegal torrent. I want to reward those companies for providing such a valuable service, and I do. I am sure there are many more people with that same philosophy. Assuming there are sufficient emulators across every platform (I'm guessing many Nintendo fans don't even know what a PC is), I really like the Youtuber's solution. It's about the only way Nintendo would get me to buy games from them, since I do not buy modern consoles, period.

I missed the golden 300/1200 days and started with the standard (i.e., generic) 2400 modem. Can't remember if it had that nice shiny 9600 fax capability or not. Oddly, something tells me I may have actually sent a fax or two, but more likely my aging memory is just misremembering. Anyway, it was perfect for email, playing text games on IRC and downloading smaller 256-color GIF's. Mostly though, I was using my roommate's computer, as he had an Ethernet card and the dorms had just gotten wired. Multiplayer Rise of the Triad, here we come. Once I was on my own, we had a shared T1 at work (and I darn near screwed up my boss's computer trying to tweak it after hours - I thought I was fired for sure, but managed to restore everything somehow). At home I started playing the incremental game, going to 9600, then 14.4 which lasted me quite a while. Skipped 28.8, went to 33.6 and then 56 V90. And yes, I got sucked into buying V92, because I was hooked on an online Pictionary game, and every bit of upload speed counted. No match for broadband but it sure was fun trying. Eventually got 1.5/256 DSL which leveled the playing field just a bit...and increased my downloading habits exponentially. In this day of fiber optics and what-not, I'm surviving on 12Gbps and refuse to upgrade. I'm addicted to the Internet enough as it is.

In a sense, practically every computer I've gotten has been a retro buy, because I enjoy being 2-3 years behind the curve and saving tons of money along the way. With a little creativity, there's infinite fun to be had. I started with a C64 a tad past its heyday, and marveled at how the graphics and sound were infinitely better than my friend's zillion dollar IBM. Going to an old 286 with a black & white monitor was practically a downgrade, but even there I never ran out of games to play. Loved hitting all the bargain bins at the software stores for cheap games every week. Even now, I'm typing on a used Cyberpower FX-4300 from Ebay and it's working like a champ. There are so many sub-$10 games available on GOG that it's simply not possible for me to get bored with it. In contrast, I finally bought a "real" PC this year with an i5-8400, M.2 SSD and GTX 1070...and it was a complete waste of money. Does Shadow of the Tomb Raider look great at 1080p ultra? Sure. But most of the time I don't even notice the graphics, because there's too much darn action. Worse still, I don't even like the game. Ended up donating the machine to charity and am not the least bit sad about it.

Oh man. For all my storied arcade-loving history, my answer to this question would have to be no. I vaguely remember my first ever arcade experience around 1980, somewhere in the San Francisco area. It was a crowded madhouse filled with smelly teenagers. I was a little kid and remember getting absolutely freaked out at the fiery crashes in Atari's F-1 (the projector game) and cowboys dying and turning into tombstones in Boot Hill. I also remember being mesmerized by the flashiness of the vector game Warrior, though to date I don't think I've ever played it. So none of those were favorites. I do remember the first game I kind of "joined the bandwagon" on, and that was Pac-Man. It was everywhere. You couldn't even go to a store without seeing some Pac-Man themed item. Everyone loved it, and I would play it just like everyone else...but secretly I disliked it, because I sucked at it. If I had to guess what my first genuine favorite was, it was probably Fire Truck or Tempest, but I don't recall for sure.

Nicely done! If you want more ideas on this, 8-bit Guy has a pretty good video: