Computer Chronicles 1984

[Jagasian]

Sorry if you guys have seen this already. It is a documentary on video games from 1984, and it has a guy from Activision demonstrating his 2600 Space Shuttle game. For 2600 fans this is an absolute must see. It is 180MB in size, so be patient.

http://www.slackcircus.com/video/ComputerChronicles1984.mov

[Jess Ragan]

His game... or HERS?

 

JR

[MrRetroGamer]

Actually, most episodes of Computer Chronicles can be freely downloaded here:

 

 

http://www.archive.org/details/computerchronicles

[video game addict]

That was pretty cool! I'll have to check archives.org as well thanks for the links guys!

[Moondoggie1968]

I watched the whole thing, pretty cool!

[Mindfield]

There's tons of gold to mine for on archive.org -- great place for things interesting and esoteric. It's also filled with tons of pure crap (people's home movies, esoteric "movies" made from strung-together clips already available on archive, etc.) but just the same, some real gems there.

[Jagasian]

Do all of the episodes have 2600 games in them, or just some? Can somebody post a list of episodes about or related to the 2600?

[+kisrael]

What version of Pong are they playing in the intro? With the paddles moving around so much? Is it a fakery, or some lesser known later version?

[+kisrael]

Also... wrt Space Shuttle...I thought once in orbit, the Shuttle is generally "upside down" with it's cargo bay facing the earth... is that not modeled acurately in the game? On the screenshot it seems like the earth is "below"

Edited December 24, 2005 by kisrael

[Mindfield]

Do all of the episodes have 2600 games in them, or just some?  Can somebody post a list of episodes about or related to the 2600?

988688[/snapback]

 

Computer Chronicles unfortunately had a tendancy to favour Apple, Commodore and IBM PC, and furthermore often focused on productivity with a little gaming on the side from time to time.

[video game addict]

What version of Pong are they playing in the intro?  With the paddles moving around so much? Is it a fakery, or some lesser known later version?

988712[/snapback]

 

 

That was an original Magnavox Odyssey.

[mos6507]

If you watch the news section you'll see the bias of Computer Chronicles.

 

Despite airing on PBS, Computer Chronicles was a business-centric show for an older, business-centric audience that was just now warming up to computers.

 

The crowd they catered to was the crowd that thought good graphics and sound was "for the kiddies" and embraced the PC and MICROSOFT DOS and threw computing into the stoneage for years.

 

In the early days pre-PC on the show you'd be more likely to hear about CP/M boxes than the more popular 8-bit machines from Apple or Atari because they only cared about machines used in a business context.

 

In 1984 all the 8-bit machines were very popular with the general public, but not with businesses. That's why in the news section you have no mention of goings on in the 8-bit scene at all besides a brief suggestion for terminal software on a couple token 8-bit platforms.

 

But the reality was that the real innovation that went on during that time occured within the 8-bit realm, and then sidestepping the PC through things the Amiga.

 

So you get a really skewed notion of computer history from watching that show, but a good picture of the difference between the two cultures of computers users in that era.

 

It's as if a car show only covered industrial trucks, but put forth the notion that they were covering everything that "mattered" in the auto industry.