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Eh, I thought it's actually going to be about working-class protagonists in games. And, believe it or not, there are countless examples of them in the ZX Spectrum's library - from Trashman, through Wally and Miner to Mad Nurse. It probably had to do at least a little bit with Ye Ol' ZX being "people's computer" (129GBP) and the likes of BBC Micro (399GBP) being "posh".

People arguing about colours is always fun to watch ?

I must admit that a small part of why I posted here, is because I knew these kind of replies will be inevitable, and their ridiculousness amuses me to no end. It happens every single time in the advice threads: "well, akshually, there's no need to do things the easy way. It's better to do them the convoluted way, because that's the way I do it! (even though I also use the easy way for nearly everything else)". Now, there's nothing wrong with using shortcuts, writing your own scripts, or generally being a CLI/Notepad++ type user, but some people might prefer not to deal with all this. And that's what the advice threads are all about: showing people options. I'm not sure why is it so hard to comprehend this simple concept. And, to state the obvious, D-Fend Reloaded is a well-respected frontend which does much, much more than just launch DOS games, though having them organised in one place with super easy editing of all the countelss DosBox options is a reason enough to use it.

Hey, you don't need Windows either. You can just install Linux and live in the matrix, like a true 1337 haxxor.

http://dfendreloaded.sourceforge.net/ You can just drag and drop games on it.

Haha, great rationalization, but still a nope - Goldeneye got the most votes because it really is the best. Not only the best Bond game, but one of the best games of all time in general. I'm actually replaying it now, first time in nearly 2 decades, and am amazed at how extremely playable and fun it still is. Btw, I'm a PSX fanboi, who's from Europe (but not a Brit) and was exposed to all kinds of Bond games on microcomputers, including the tape Domark ones. Just sayin, in case there are more convoluted explanations incoming ?

I'd like to say The Sinclairs, but it seems that in this particular case I'll have to concede defeat.

I must say, I've heard quite a few "out there" comparisons in my day, but hearing this - from a presumably ST fan - really wins the day. People who have never seen what TOS/GEM looks like (or better yet, how it behaves) are welcome to have a gander ? @ParanoidLittleMan: for once we agree...

A question for the ages! Seeing as there are only two dumbs and numerous stupids, I suppose the former is supposed to be a more serious charge. The whole thing is rather brilliant, though admittedly I spent way too much time staring at the Armored Car sketch, trying to solve its mystery (the interpretation of Freudian symbolism of Cosmic Conflict and the subsequent review is a little bit easier to understand). Was the author an alien? A person with only imaginary knowledge of the opposite sexes anatomy? I guess we will never know. (bonus question: what is the possesive of "sex"? Sex's? Sexes' ? Try to put it in search engine and, oh, dear.) I do love finding these little blasts from the past in game boxes or manuals, though I do prefer when they are less destructive than this one. Usually they're old receipts, high scores, tape counter positions, game codes - this sort of stuff, but once I had found a heavy metal poster tucked under the box's (oh, not again) cover, and some other oddities too.

NES is a no-brainer. You don't need to know the future: as a videogame nerd you can foresee it based on available data (NES's been out few years already and done rather well for itself, and Atari has been blundering for quite a while too). However, I'd get a ZX Spectrum, or save up a bit and stretch it to C64.

"computer that started it all" Hmmm. Citation needed, I guess.

Look at the stuff in this shop, it's just some seller who doesn't know much about Atari or anything else and sells loads of scattergun ~vintage~ gear at heavily marked up prices (eg Amiga 500 @+250GBP, wtf). I'm not a fan, obviously, but there's not really much to see here, it's just human nature and how it has been since the dawn of commerce. People will try whatever to maximize profits. Now we have this new paradigm with digital marketplaces, where "trying" is nearly effortless, so these people do just that. They put up stuff with stupid prices, then mark it down a little bit later so now it's "-20% off", and maybe some desperado in the meantime would have bought it anyway, and so it goes. And as you can see many of these items have multiple people watching, so if they sells they will contribute to the snowball effect of the watchers then setting the new price as BIN on their stuff, or thinking that's how high they should go in similar auctions. Well, what can you do. Not much, I guess...a) try to oppose the monopolies b) exercise constraint and only buy in auctions and don't get caught in a bidding frenzy. Fat chance with the former, which leaves the latter as the only reasonable option...

Is this the same Tramiels responsible for the best selling microcomputer ever? By the way, Sega has also tried to outsell NES, and failed, and so did NEC. Simply because

With the amount of content, I'm kinda surprised the game can run on PS4 at all with any reasonable frame rate.

I didn't. Thanks for "condensing"

It's neither. The real problem was lack of clear strategy and communication of what this machine can do, who is it for and so on, as well as not enough killer app software at the start. A500/2000 were great next-step models, but at that time 2 crucial years were sort of lost to the ST.

Sam's Journey is a modern game, written with the advantage of nearly 3 decades of experience in squeezing the last bit of ooomph out of C64 and utilizing all its advantages so, yeah, probably mission impossible. But I'm sure porting some of the older games would be a much easier task (though still not that easy of course). The likes of Pirates! or DotC should be possible, the former was on CPC and the latter on Spectrum after all. Though personally I'm that keen on ports and would much rather see some original efforts - even if they might be objectively worse than the ones to be ported.

6 days, deary me....?

Well, that's just not true, because a typical contemporary arcade game would still blow NES out of the water. These weren't exceptions but regularities. And VGA didn't even get a proper horizontal scrolling game till Commander Keen in 1990, and with a few exceptions later on never really mattered in the 2D space. It'd be more realistic to say that with the arrival of PC Engine and Megadrive home market could get really close, but even so the arcades were still the technical top dog for years to come. Also, the fact that they weren't as popular as before the crash and home console spread, doesn't meant they weren't popular at all.

Sorry, but you're off by at least a decade, probably more. I was still going to arcades in the late Nineties to see the likes of Virtua Fighter 3. Games like these were still technically the best, even if consoles & PC were catching up quickly. And NES/VGA weren't even at the races when it comes to advanced 2D gfx compared to arcades at the time, this has only changed with the arrival of NeoGeo (obviously) and Saturn/PSX.

There actually is a bit of info about it on the net - see Wikipedia or Moby - which I guess is relative to its popularity. Gamebase 64 also has all the scans including manual. As for worth, it's really impossible to tell. A complete and uncommon SSI RPG could fetch anything between 30-500 USD, I suppose.

You have some lovely games coming out on the Jag all the time. So why bother being perpetually hang up on the pie-in-the-sky stuff?

If real, this lot is worth hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars, most likely was gone minutes after posting.

SJG? ? Interesting. Do you mean the likes of Interceptor, or the Enemy Unknown series?