Graham was the first person I knew who had a computer – a ZX Spectrum (I think it was that rather the ZX81). We played a game called Time Gate on it and it seemed amazing. The games were loaded from audio cassette.
Our family’s first computer was a VIC 20. Neil had one and we figured we could swap games. It only had 5kb of memory but you could add an expanded memory. The games were incredibly simple. We had one called Asteroid Mining, where you had to buy resources for a mining colony; excavate ore and then sell it. The game parameters meant that your colony usually failed after a few rounds. Mike and I worked out how to edit the BASIC code to change this and ensure that we set progressively higher records. Initially we just changed it to keep going (always remembering to restore the original code so other people could not duplicate our achievements) and then when we got bored setting it to stupid levels.
Colne High School had just one BBC Microcomputer. I saw it a couple of times, but I did not do computer science so did not get near it.
John Hawkins I did do computer science and the Colne High computer then was a Commodore (a PET variant I think) that had an integral monitor. The BBC units needed a TV to plug into I believe – like most home computers then. I don’t think the BBC micro was out yet when we did CS at school. That would have been around 1982-ish, after we had done our ‘O’ levels.
Richard W wrote quite a sophisticated game on the school computer (all in BASIC) called Wigaski. Concept was a downhill skier trying to avoid objects like trees etc. Pretty playable for a student attempt. It had pseudo-random movement that the player had to counteract to avoid losing. Funnily, the thing I remember best is the message you got when you lost asking if you wanted to play again. Richard had not proof-read his text and it asked: “Do you wang to continue?”. Could have been worse I suppose 🙂
I still have our Spectrum +2 (built-in tape deck, WooHoo!!) and all the games we bought for it. Well over 100 of them, including driving and racing games (some were pretty good to play), “Track and Field” and the various clones of arcade games like Punchy which was a Spectrum clone of Hunchback and even had voice synth of a kind. You really had to concentrate to make out what it was trying to “say” but for a mono-phonic sound system it wasn’t bad. I keep meaning to get it out of its box and set it up so the kids can see what we gaming pioneers had to go through to get them what they have today 😂
St. Catherines had just one computer too – in the basement of one of the old buildings. Dave Carter used it for a bit and he had a more sophisticated version of Time Gate. You had to fight swarms of invading aliens and find the Time Gate to take you back to an earlier period. This process was repeated several times until you could destroy the aliens before they became a menace. Game play was like asteroids, except that you had to periodically dock with a mother ship to refuel. I completed the game around 3am, then never played again.
Apart from that the only game I really ever finished was a world cup football game where you had to beat seven opponents. The first couple of levels were easy and in 90 seconds I could win by 7 or 8 goals. Then the easy scoring cut off and I kept getting stymied. Luckily our hotel in Faliraki in 1995 and one of them (and the price was a measly 100 drachma a go). I completed it by the end of the holiday.
My first home computer was an IBM desktop with 8mb of memory – underpowered at the time. It was a thank you from the College for my work. No internet access. I mainly used it to work at home, so they got even more out of me.
Disc drives have now gone – most people do not even realise they were called floppy discs because the original ones were. They were like the flexi discs given away by record magazines. These were replaced by the smaller rigid discs and then USBs.
Now I have my own laptop. A Surface. An iPad. An iPhone and a Kindle. My TV is connected to the net. I have a watch that has more memory than those early computers. This was not the future than we imagined in 1981. Our cars still stick firmly to the ground. There are no jet packs. No one had been back to the Moon since 1973 and no one has been to Mars. Robots maybe coming, but it seems that massive strides are being made in robot sex toys rather than elsewhere (the internet was the same – it was pornography that was the financial engine for internet expansion)
Kraftwerk are widely acclaimed as the most Avant Garde group of the 1970s. Their music was still sounding contemporary 10 years after it was released when they had their only number one single. The album Autobahn is a magnificent achievement. This is my favourite track from the album.
Kometenmelodie 2
Five Miles Out 