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chairface posted:Yeah this, he's not a ripoff; he's another character in the same continuity who never made it as big. IIRC Usagi even had an action figure in the TMNT line, same as Rat King or a host of other minor characters. Huh, strange that I never heard of him. I used to read the original TMNT comics in the mid-80s as a kid before they were on TV (the TV show was heresy to the comic fans at the time, though in retrospect the comics were just as much if not more aggressively stupid) and never remembered seeing him. Then again, I stopped reading shortly after the Back to New York arc so there's a lot that I must have missed. Some of those comics were pretty messed up though for a preteen, like the one where Michaelangelo got torn in half and his heart ripped out (though IIRC it was just a fever dream or something)
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May 8, 2014 21:27
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chairface posted:Yeah this, he's not a ripoff; he's another character in the same continuity who never made it as big. IIRC Usagi even had an action figure in the TMNT line, same as Rat King or a host of other minor characters. Incorrect. Usagi Yojimbo is another indie comics thing. He just got a guest appearance in the first TMNT cartoon probably as a friendship thing. The comics are by Stan Sakai and are about a feudal Japan populated by animal people. It started in the 80s before all that furry shite got going. ( furries are like the first Rule 34 group if you will. After the Trek slash fangirls. ) It's a really good series of mostly standalone comic series. Probably too violent for kids as a ronin with a katana does what he does to ninjas n poo poo. Cartoony style but dudes getting their heads cut off are still dudes losing their heads. I've only read a couple collections of it but it's good stuff. Turtles back then did lots of crossovers and shout outs to other Indy comics. But I might have a lot more content soon and not just talking about my recent Atari 8 bit pickups. I hope. If a Craigslist seller with the original Atari 800 in all it's massive 70s styled glory. With its massive metal RF framework and double goddamned cartridge ports and 4 controller ports. I'm also trying to find a good Ultima 1-5 styled game to play but the Ultima Dragons haven't been too helpful so far. They keep saying Avernum and I just don't like Jeff Vogel games much. Avadon 2 is..ok but it is no Ultima styled title.
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May 8, 2014 21:30
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Captain Rufus posted:I'm also trying to find a good Ultima 1-5 styled game to play but the Ultima Dragons haven't been too helpful so far. They keep saying Avernum and I just don't like Jeff Vogel games much. Avadon 2 is..ok but it is no Ultima styled title. Deathlord.  Also holy poo poo, the Ultima Dragons are still around?
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May 8, 2014 21:33
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Genpei Turtle posted:Also holy poo poo, the Ultima Dragons are still around? DUDE I know. Seriously. I felt like I set a personal record never to be equalled when I discovered they were still around last year and that they had changed things so little since the mid-1990s that my 17-year-old login and password on their main page still worked. I am absolutely sure I will never go 17 years between using the same login again. HAY GUYZ VIKING DRAGON CHECKING IN An Ultima 1-5-style game that is not made by Jeff Vogel? The Eschalon games are sort of early-Ultima-y. Plus I think the third one just came out, and I never even made it through 1, so they would last you a while. You could always play the U5 or U6 remakes in the Dungeon Siege engine but I doubt that is what you are looking for. Did you ever play Legacy of the Ancients? That is probably my favorite Ultima knockoff ever, with Questron II a reasonably close second. Phantasie III is amazing too but I am pretty sure you were talking about that earlier in the thread.
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May 8, 2014 22:19
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Ultima-likes eh? Slim pickings...though I "think" this upcoming game from the deep and shadowy fringes might(Ultima 7 is cited as a reference as opposed to 1-5) at least sort of fit the bill? Madman http://www.machgryphon.com/
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May 9, 2014 01:17
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ExiledTinkerer posted:Ultima-likes eh? Slim pickings...though I "think" this upcoming game from the deep and shadowy fringes might(Ultima 7 is cited as a reference as opposed to 1-5) at least sort of fit the bill? Madman That is the opposite of what I want. I want something close to Ultima 5. I am not even finding it within my own collection at the moment. Even the Ultima Dragons haven't been of much help https://www.facebook.com/groups/UltimaDragons/ in fact in some cases they are offering up things not even remotely similar to a classic Ultima. (In others it is a bunch of stuff I have already played. Or keep getting outbid on like the Atari 8 bit Phantasie and Questron games. And Vice is being a bad emulator which even puts off playing a lot of C64 classics. Or at least the superiorish versions of 80s classics because Atari ST and Amiga emulation is the most obnoxious goddamned thing ever.) Right now I am just installing Doom 3 BFG edition, and waffling on either Might & Magic 2 Genesis flavor (more BTale and Wizardry style), Magic Candle 1 because it is close and I really should learn how to play it in spite of it not allowing you to actually roll your own party, and.. I dunno. Stalking ebay for Deathlord or Questron 1-2 or Legacy of the Ancients or Wrath of Denethenor. But I honestly have so many games my spending limit is 25 bucks including shipping TOPS. And I don't want Real Time, MMO, Roguelike, JRPG, or EARLY ACCESS kinda stuff. There are a lot of Ultima clones but most of them aren't well known or just aren't any good or are so rare as to be impossible to acquire for a sane price. I have a couple bids or watches up now so at least next week once I see how my finances and that Atari 800 original system is I can maybe grab a game then. This week itll just have to be portable/tablet gaming or pick up n play I guess. 
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May 9, 2014 06:13
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Captain Rufus posted:Incorrect. Usagi Yojimbo is another indie comics thing. He just got a guest appearance in the first TMNT cartoon probably as a friendship thing. What exactly is incorrect? Here's the TMNT action figure:  He may not have started out in the same continuity but they sure as poo poo added him to it, and he's definitely not a TMNT ripoff, what with being an official TMNT product eventually and all. chairface fucked around with this message at 06:20 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 06:18
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chairface posted:What exactly is incorrect? Here's the TMNT action figure: The action figure is from the TV show which is not what we were discussing, we were talking about the comics continuity, which Usagi Yojimbo never showed up in. I don't know much of the history behind Usagi Yojimbo but he could possibly be a TMNT ripoff, considering it sounds like both came out years before the show. The TV show was so radically different from the original comics continuity that the presence of the four turtles is almost the only thing the two have in common. Virtually every other character is either unique to the TV show or changed so much that they're basically unrecognizable. (April is a computer programmer turned curio shop proprietor, not a reporter, and the Shredder was killed in the very first issue when he fell off a rooftop after getting impaled through the chest by Leonardo, along with a live grenade which blew him to smithereens, and the turtles move out of the sewers in the third issue) There was a lot of animosity toward the show from the comics fans back in the day. (which is kind of funny since the comic was dumb as poo poo too) Anyhow, to steer back to Ultima-like RPG chat, I haven't seen 2400 AD mentioned yet--I thought that was decent. There's also Knights of Legend, which has some amazing tactical combat. However for that, you have to be careful which version you get because all three versions are super buggy. The C64 version is complete garbage. It has broken mechanics and a broken spell system. The Apple version is better--it has working mechanics and a broken spell system. The DOS version has broken mechanics and a working spell system. Personally I'd go with the DOS version since the broken mechanics is less of an issue than the broken magic system, but if you don't want to make any caster characters (reasonable, as magic isn't that great in KOL) go with the Apple version. ed: There are a couple of listings for Deathlord on eBay right now, BTW, both the C64 and the Apple version. I'd try to get the Apple version if you value your sanity--the C64 version looks only slightly nicer, but it doesn't work with a Fastloader and it accesses the disk so often to prevent savescumming that you will spend most of your playtime with it waiting for things to load/save. Genpei Turtle fucked around with this message at 14:59 on May 9, 2014 |
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May 9, 2014 14:32
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Every time I play that game I'm going to pretend it's taking place in the good TMNT universe (the cartoon)
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May 9, 2014 14:53
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Man, Legacy of the Ancients was the poo poo. I was always annoyed that we could never find a copy of Legend of Blacksilver's Apple II port, because we had so much fun with the first game. Knights of Legend was... interesting. I spent ages trying to get into it, but it was just so dense and wonky-- and I got the impression that you couldn't get certain degrees of training in certain weapons because the designer assumed the 'region disk' expansions were a sure deal and he wanted players to have an excuse to buy and adventure in them.
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May 9, 2014 14:55
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Bieeardo posted:Man, Legacy of the Ancients was the poo poo. I was always annoyed that we could never find a copy of Legend of Blacksilver's Apple II port, because we had so much fun with the first game. Yeah, that's absolutely the case. I ended up having all my dudes training in Scimitar or something since that's one of the only weapons that you can train really high. But since random encounters scale to your level it's not that huge of a deal to stay at low levels. I think the quest enemies didn't scale though so if you did level your guys high you could wreak havoc with them. The save system in Knights of Legend was REALLY bad though. Some of those quests could literally take hours to finish. As a kid I had the free time to do them but there's no chance I could find the time to do that now without an emulator and save states or something. (Or just leaving my computer on all the time)
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May 9, 2014 15:04
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Both TMNT and Usagi Yojimbo came out in 1984.
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May 9, 2014 17:51
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Knights of Legend was basically purpose-built, accidentally in most ways, to be a legend(!)arily hard game to actually ever get into, let alone beat. Yet of course for that very reason I always stare wistfully at my game box when I am looking at my Closet Full Of MS-DOS Games, and consider myself fortunate that I still have the willpower to resist re-installing it. For now. I wish I had more pictures of my ... hey wait, maybe I do! This is the closest I can get to posting my retro gaming setup since currently it is in my car's trunk across the country: Hey, speaking of, check out what is in the upper-left quadrant!  Might as well list the games in the pictures in case someone for some reason wants to Control-F to find this post: Buck Rogers: Matrix Cubed maybe?, Megatraveller 2, Knights of Legend, Tangled Tales, I think that is Stunt Driver, not that it matters, Wizardry VI, Keys to Maramon, Keef the Thief, Sword of Aragon, still fun today, Don't Go Alone, Ultima VII: Forge of Virtue, Might & Magic II, uh lemme see Ultima VII, Warlords II?, North and South, Megaman ahaha, Tunnels & Trolls, Phantasie III, Questron II, Drakkhen, Trilogy, Rendezvous With Rama, King's Bounty, Lightspeed, Space 1889, Oh I see Hyperspeed there, and that is Escape From Hell under Trilogy. Even when they came out, I knew those "just a cheap piece of cardboard with no real internal support" games were going to preserve horribly.  Hardball III, Skate or Die, King's Quest IV, SimCity, Wing Commander?, Bard's Tale II, Covert Action, and uhhh I can just barely make out the words BUCK ROGERS on that system requirements tag so that must be Countdown to Doomsday. And a lot of these are not all that retro, but you know, any time I have an excuse to post a picture of Wasteland, I have to take it.  Oh and this was apparently when I re-stacked everything since I see duplicates. What are the highlights I can recognize here ... Prophecy I: The Fall of Trinadon, SimLife, Spy vs. Spy III, Elvira II: The Jaws of Cerberus, Worlds of Ultima: Savage Empire ... Ooh Ultima VI down at the bottom! Is that a Muppet Babies comic book on the side? Wow, I think I threw basically everything in this photo out other than the games when I did this cleaning, haha. Hey, the Sword of the Samurai game map in the bottom-left! I am sure someone will be horrified at the fact that I ever stacked my games like that, but beyond the fact that I have never had any intention of selling any of them is the fact that I did try to go from bulkiest to fragilest!
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May 9, 2014 22:51
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A church right down the street was having a flea market day, I headed over not really expecting to find anything. Instead: (click to big)     All for $20 from one guy. I know the 5150 isn't the most exciting machine in the world games-wise(correct me if I'm wrong?) and I'll probably end up selling it, but the magazines are so rad to look through from a historical perspective, and they cover a really interesting period of computing history (~1990-1995). Several of those boxes of 5 1/4 floppy disks are brand new, which is very useful for my Apple and C64 stuff. My favorite thing is the Hercules card, even though I have absolutely no use for it. The thing is brand new. I've only just gotten home with all this, haven't even busted open the 5150 yet. Are there direct adapters to use the 9-pin MDA monitor connections with SVGA monitors or is there extra hardware needed? EDIT: Whoops, just opened the 5150 and the Hercules was actually inside of it, the card in the Hercules box was the original MDA card. Aside from the drive controller there was also a Microsoft branded card with a battery that vomited all over it: 
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May 10, 2014 13:13
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You...you're going to use OS/2 as firestarting material, right?
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May 10, 2014 13:39
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kirbysuperstar posted:You...you're going to use OS/2 as firestarting material, right? That sounds fun but toxic, I will probably just sell it on eBay 
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May 10, 2014 14:23
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Gonna get that 1980s Microsoft logo tattooed on my face. Also the 5150 was not exactly the most obvious gaming computer, but speaking as someone who gamed exclusively on it for about 2 years, I can tell you that it does, in fact, work. Lots of games back then had Hercules support, too; things like Wasteland or Might & Magic II might honestly look a bit better on your new 5150 than they did on mine, haha.
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May 10, 2014 18:29
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Quarex posted:Gonna get that 1980s Microsoft logo tattooed on my face. Man I've been messing with it and it boots perfectly and seems to boot from the DOS disks it came with, dying to play with it but I'm having a hell of a time trying to figure out what I need to get this working with a VGA monitor. Some say it's as simple as an adapter, while others say it needs conversion hardware for more modern monitors. The Hercules manual says it has a vsync of 50hz and a hsync of 18.4khz. Why is there so little information about this out there  EDIT: I just realized this doesn't even read like a response to what you posted, I was just angry about video cards and slammed on that quote button. Regarding the games, that's actually really cool that there were games that specifically used the Hercules and makes me want to get this thing running even more. d0s fucked around with this message at 20:40 on May 10, 2014 |
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May 10, 2014 19:01
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From some reading around, I think your best option might be to get an ISA form VGA card and install that. MDA/CGA/EGA/Herc outputs appear to use a different video format (not just connector wise, but internally) that many VGA monitors can't recognize, so a connection conversion alone may not work.
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May 10, 2014 21:17
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I'm about halfway through reading the OP but I just had to quickly comment to say that I owned a TRS-80 in the late eighties and the loving cassette drive was the most frustrating and worthless piece of tech I've ever owned. This is the process I went through every time I wanted to play a game: 1. Find the exact part of the cassette that holds the beginning of the program 2. Pray for the next ten to fifteen minutes 3. LOADING ERROR 4. GOTO 1 And after going through that loop a few times, it would finally load properly. I'm surprised I never dropkicked that thing in frustration.
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May 12, 2014 00:31
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...! posted:I'm about halfway through reading the OP but I just had to quickly comment to say that I owned a TRS-80 in the late eighties and the loving cassette drive was the most frustrating and worthless piece of tech I've ever owned. This is the process I went through every time I wanted to play a game: Looking forward to experiencing this with my C64, just ordered my fist ever cassette game (Alleykat, one of the few euro tape releases that can be switched to NTSC). I've made sure my tape drive works by saving and loading BASIC programs, but am wondering just how well it's going to deal with a (relatively) gigantic game. At least Alleykat has a progress bar, from what I can tell most games just left you hanging with no indicator whatsoever (but awesome loader tunes, which get cut in NTSC releases )
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May 12, 2014 01:01
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...! posted:I'm about halfway through reading the OP but I just had to quickly comment to say that I owned a TRS-80 in the late eighties and the loving cassette drive was the most frustrating and worthless piece of tech I've ever owned. This is the process I went through every time I wanted to play a game:
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May 12, 2014 01:12
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Well from the actual Usagi Yojimbo website here: http://www.usagiyojimbo.com/ He never was published by Mirage Studios as far as I can tell. Some good comics though. Also for 75 dollars and a 30 minutes drive I got a nice Craigslist find:  WHAT'S IN THE BOX MAN? WHAAAT'S INN THEEEE BOOOOOOXXX?  A lot of mostly pirated disks and a bajillion Ultima 4 player disks made. A couple original programs but not much. Gobs of disks and 3 disk cases would cost around 75 total shipped from ebay so a good deal alone.  Dunno if they work but a 1050 Atari floppy drive, a Trash 80 modem bit, some cables, PSUs, and a 410 tape drive. I need time to test em out.  And under here? A 48k uncased RAM expanded Atari 800 in very good condition! Reinforced with a layer of steel! And yet another layer.... OF STEEL People in #retrochat were hearing me talk about this glorious 1979 designed beast Tuesday evening. I figured out the issue as to why it wasn't powering up when it did at first. You have to keep the cartridge port cover LOCKED. Atari's engineers made it so your dumb rear end couldn't rip a cartridge out from one of its TWO PORTS with the power on which would possibly damage your 999 US 1979 dollar home computer. That looks like a late 60s typewriter. And has really good feeling keys. (Though the space bar is a bit uneven and the Start key sometimes needs a bit of a repeat press. This thing has seen some poo poo man. Its been in the trenches. It's been loved.) It does make it kinda nice that I can undo the lid and shut it off if I just want to swap cartridges. Glorious top loading cartridges instead of the annoying 130xe's rear port that is finicky. Its only real drawback is its large, heavy, and the RF cable is hardwired in even if you use a composite cable like I am. Still get some of those lines on screen even with the monitor so I putzed around a bit with it using the Svideo out I have and on the 32" HDTV in 4:3 mode. Lines aren't as extreme as say the 130xe was. There ARE fixes for it, but it involves opening it up. And the 800 is a giant sexy beast designed to not let you enjoy this: http://www.pcworld.com/article/181421/inside_atari_800.html 4 joystick ports too! By and large this will probably become my main Atari 8 bitter and the 130 will be relegated to a storage tub since my game collection has long since outgrown my smaller blue tub. The command keys are easier to reach and color coded unlike the 130's and it honestly runs more games. Like Gorf.  This is not a smart way to play computer games. But it IS funny. Also Gorf is in the composite artifacted monitor mode thingie that is less crisp and has some bleed but no lines or anything.  LET US GORF. Not as good as the Colecovision Gorf, but pretty damned good! Also better than the 5200 version unless you like playing a classical SHMUP Invader game with analog controls with actual analog analoginess.  Dual cart ports! BIG AND METAL! The bits of black fuzz are from the dead glue sticky foam that the lid's top metal RF shield had keeping it up. It has failed. That is how much loving mineral action is in this sumbitch. Metal RF shielding all over the place. Once we reached Reagan's era the Ataris got cheaper, lighter, and way less metal. ITS ALL RONNIE'S FAULT.  48K of RAM and the system's ROM all open to the elements. See the open air and all the venting is all one really needed to keep stuff cool back then. Originally the RAM AND ROM were in little sealed packs. But they overheated. Thus later versions came open to be cooler.  I am not good at Q Bert. Let us consider this Part 1 of MY ATARI 800: SOMETIMES 70s ARE BETTAH!
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May 16, 2014 03:37
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I've posted this picture in the other retro gaming thread but it is relevant: I really need to get an Atari 800 and recreate this photo.
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May 16, 2014 06:13
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Where even the tablecloth is a giant punchcard.
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May 16, 2014 07:53
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In the meantime, my sister found me this at a yard sale: It came with another box full of things too.  I dunno why the c64 was in the other box and the c64 box has the vic 20 but I'm not complaining!  Everything still had the little leatherette casings and all the cables are there, all for $50. Bonus  :
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May 16, 2014 19:53
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The ZX spectrum was my very first computer. I had a 16k model that was upgraded to 48k (yeah, I don't know either) and it was super awesome. I say this because I didn't really have any experience with anything else at the time. I never got a nes/atari/commodore or anything and my gaming experience was zx spectrum ->pc's -> consoles starting at ps2. Games that are fairly noteworthy on the zx spectrum: Adventure: -Magic knight games: These have a dropdown menu and are sidescrolling 'platformers'. A predecessor to the sierra quest /lucasarts games, these involved talking to people, getting items, solving puzzles. -Dizzy games: also adventure games, about a magic egg. -the hobbit: a text adventure. The way through the misty mountains: e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e,e Arcade: -Spy hunter -Renegade/Target:renegade. a beat em up, with weapons that some enemies drop! -M.A.S.K: some guy in a space suit that gets limited amounts of powers that do various things -gauntlet: popular but not my thing -Way Of The Exploding Fist (like street fighter but old!), -R-type -horace goes skiing: run across the road after parking at the ski resort (frogger rip-off) then ski down the mountain going in between posts and avoiding trees! My dad's favorite. -rainbow islands: great sequel to bubble bobble -midnight resistance: a really cool game, similar to contra I suppose -contra Other: -the bard's tale, which I was too young to appreciate -Elite, which I loving loved -THE SENTINEL!!!!! AWESOME GAME! This is like a puzzle/tactical game in which you have a teleporting robot. at the top of each level (it's isometric 3d) is the sentinel, which rotates slowly and absorbs everything right in front of it, which happens in real-time as opposed to in turns or something. you need to teleport onto higher and higher squares, absorb enough energy yourself in order to teleport each time (you can only teleport, say, 10 feet up at a a time and the sentinel is about 50 feet above you), and it was the first game of it's kind. time contraint, the 'slowly but unstoppable terminator' feeling, all kinds of cool stuff in this game. I spent hours and hours and hours on the loving spectrum. it was great. I feel spoiled now with the awesome power of the vita/ps3/pc. It's amazing what people could chuck onto 48k. Things I don't miss: the tape loading, the tape errors, the time it took to load anything, the 'put the tape in some more to load level 2' then when you die 'put the tape in some more to load level 1 again' (looking at you, r-type). for the 128k model, there was like 1-2 games ever that were 128k only, but lots of games with multi-load levels allowed you to just play the whole tape and load all the levels up at the same time.
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May 16, 2014 20:30
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Awesomonster posted:In the meantime, my sister found me this at a yard sale: This is the sort of find I thought was becoming impossible, your sister got an incredible deal. If you want to sell one of those C64 shaped leather cases, let me know.
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May 17, 2014 00:59
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d0s posted:This is the sort of find I thought was becoming impossible, your sister got an incredible deal.
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May 17, 2014 02:48
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minidracula posted:Also, speaking of which, d0s, if you haven't gotten rid of that 5150 yet, let me know, I'd be interested. I still want to get it up and running first, and play around with it to see if I like it. If I do end up selling it I'll hit you up first, but it may be a while. Here's some recent acquisitions:  Two great C64 games, Speed Buggy/Buggy Boy and Kikstart 2, and Worms for the Amiga. Speed Buggy is one of the best conversions of a Japanese arcade game to the C64 I've ever seen. Kikstart 2 is by Shaun Southern which means it's fun and incredibly frustrating in equal amounts. Worms has uh... interesting DRM:  it is seven pages long I've also committed a partition on my DOS machine to something interesting from a historical perspective:  NeXTSTEP is a really amazing OS to use while keeping it's age in mind. It feels truly modern and the links to OSX are very obvious. EDIT: Speed Buggy is also featured in this kinda unintentionally funny BBC video, along with Last Ninja 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FLlxq5LSlo d0s fucked around with this message at 09:14 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 09:03
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d0s posted:Worms has uh... interesting DRM: It gave you three tries, so a quick XCopy and manually copying out a couple of pages was enough to probably get you in. It's me, I killed the Amiga
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May 17, 2014 09:48
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I've been messing with my TRS-80 Model 100, an early laptop that was actually made in Japan by Kyocera. This thing is notable for containing the last code Bill Gates ever wrote commercially, I believe he's responsible for the OS and the BASIC. It's a really nice machine to use and must have seemed insanely futuristic in 1983. I've been keying in BASIC programs for it by hand, which stay in memory as long as the four AA batteries last. Sadly I don't have any of the accessories that would make this thing a lot more fun, I really want the 3.5 inch disk drive for saving programs to disk. Here's a video I made showing what it's like to play a game on the thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Lka7Tsmkk d0s fucked around with this message at 12:58 on May 17, 2014 |
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May 17, 2014 12:41
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d0s posted:I've been messing with my TRS-80 Model 100, an early laptop that was actually made in Japan by Kyocera. This thing is notable for containing the last code Bill Gates ever wrote commercially, I believe he's responsible for the OS and the BASIC. It's a really nice machine to use and must have seemed insanely futuristic in 1983. Not saying they weren't interesting, but it was more like, I dunno, the Apple Newton. Like it was kinda cool in a fuckaround-with-it kind of way, but at the same time it was one of those devices where you're constantly thinking of ways it could be better when you're using it. If that makes sense.
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May 17, 2014 13:04
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SubG posted:Eh. I never thought the TRS-80 portables were as cool as the HP-75. Or the HP-41 series, if it counts. There were actually several different computers built around the same Kyocera chassis as the Model 100, as well as a bunch of other similar machines that all started coming out around the same time. It was also right around that time that luggables were showing up, which were a gently caress of a lot less portable but were essentially exactly as capable as a contemporary desktop. I think all of that kinda diluted the `holy poo poo it's the future' aspect of it. Yeah it's mostly coming from playing around with contemporary machines like the C64 and the Apple II, I just think it must have been cool to have been used to stuff like that and then here's a machine that's not only battery powered and portable, but lets you save BASIC programs right to it's memory and gives you a nice list of stuff stored on it at startup. It also includes a word processor and address book, and those documents show up too. It really is very PDA-like in use, which is pretty cool for something from 1983.
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May 17, 2014 14:00
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So glad that I didn't grow up with those. I would be dropping  to recover a lost childhood. Too bad I have other addictions. I am the worst Retro PC person in this thread. I still haven't located a 5.25 motherboard in this town for sale. I'm about to say "gently caress it" and build a tower with the latest gadgets and still support 5.25 floppies.
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May 17, 2014 22:20
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d0s posted:Yeah it's mostly coming from playing around with contemporary machines like the C64 and the Apple II, I just think it must have been cool to have been used to stuff like that and then here's a machine that's not only battery powered and portable, but lets you save BASIC programs right to it's memory and gives you a nice list of stuff stored on it at startup. It also includes a word processor and address book, and those documents show up too. It really is very PDA-like in use, which is pretty cool for something from 1983. Like right around 2000 I had a Palm Vx with an external wireless modem thing called an OmniSky. Looking back now you can see that it does a lot of things that smartphones would be doing a few years later, and you have a tendency to think holy poo poo it must've been cool to have wireless internet access in your pocket back then before everyone else did. But it was really such a kludgy mess that about the third time you spent ten minutes waiting for a web page to load (and then render incomprehensibly on the limited display) the novelty wore off. I'm really not trying to poo poo on the technology. And certainly not on the retro-cool factor---I love somewhat archaic computing hardware (and I've got the closet full of functionally worthless stuff to prove it). Just trying to give a sense of what the view from 1983 looked like.
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May 18, 2014 02:05
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SubG posted:I get what you mean. I'm just trying to give my perspective as someone who was around and into computing at the time. And I'm not sure I can articulate it particularly well. But I feel kinda like it's cooler now because we see the antecedents of PDA-like things, and eventually what became smartphone-like things, in that class of portable computers. But at the time they had this sort of neither-fish-nor-fowl problem---they were solving problems that nobody was really looking to solve at the time, and they did it in kinda a clunky way. So from a practical perspective having a programmable calculator (like the various HP handhelds at the time) or a pocket computer (like the HP 75 or the TRS-80 Pocket Computer) were more interesting (or however you want to say it) because you could actually use them for real-world poo poo on a daily basis. If that makes sense. Yeah I feel you. From what I understand the Model 100 (and variants) were huge at news organizations because they could type out stories on them and use the internal modem with an acoustic coupler to send them to the office from anywhere in the world. Most of the reports I've been reading about how it was used in those days are by newspaper people. I was actually born in 1983 so I totally missed out on those days so yeah it's hard to really understand how the general public reacted to stuff like this. EDIT: RadicalR posted:So glad that I didn't grow up with those. I would be dropping I grew up with a 286 but I'm still pretty about Apple II and C64 stuff. I can chalk some of the Apple stuff up to nostalgia because I used them heavily in school, but the C64 is something I first used in 1999 when I found one at a flea market. I'm into it for the same reason I'm into any great game console I didn't grow up with, to play all the good games I missed out on. I think nostalgia/reliving your childhood is only a small part of this hobby, but it's definitely a factor with some stuff for me. Playing Car Builder for the first time since 1990 or so was a total trip, same goes for messing around with Print Shop and a lot of the other Broderbund/MECC stuff that was used heavily on Apple IIs in schools. I think discovering stuff you didn't play is more fun though, because you come into it for the first time and can form opinions about it without nostalgia kind of coloring that.
d0s fucked around with this message at 04:01 on May 18, 2014 |
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May 18, 2014 03:29
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d0s posted:Two great C64 games, Speed Buggy/Buggy Boy and Kikstart 2, and Worms for the Amiga. Speed Buggy is one of the best conversions of a Japanese arcade game to the C64 I've ever seen. Kikstart 2 is by Shaun Southern which means it's fun and incredibly frustrating in equal amounts. Worms has uh... interesting DRM: Buggy Boy is one of the classic C64 arcade racers, that's one I'll still fire up every now and then. Possibly only matched by Powerdrift in that genre. Kikstart 2 was also fantastic. Much better than the first game, and the addition of the course designer made it a true classic. Anyone who enjoys Trials owes it to themselves to take a look.
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May 19, 2014 14:28
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Captain Rufus posted:I'm also trying to find a good Ultima 1-5 styled game to play but the Ultima Dragons haven't been too helpful so far. They keep saying Avernum and I just don't like Jeff Vogel games much. Avadon 2 is..ok but it is no Ultima styled title. Are you looking for modern games similar or any time frame? Questron, Questron II, Legacy of the Ancients, and Legend of Blacksilver, in that chronological order, filled the gap for me nicely. Legacy is probably the best of the bunch, but Questron had for its time the best ending of any game I had played, and it was a tense experience too. These were all C64 titles, so no idea if your cup of tea, but I'm a huge fan of them all. Ha, I was so eager to reply I should have kept going and read further. Still, I'm hard pressed to come up with anything else similar. Elwood P Dowd fucked around with this message at 00:46 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 00:44
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Bob Loblaw posted:Are you looking for modern games similar or any time frame? Questron, Questron II, Legacy of the Ancients, and Legend of Blacksilver, in that chronological order, filled the gap for me nicely. Legacy is probably the best of the bunch, but Questron had for its time the best ending of any game I had played, and it was a tense experience too. These were all C64 titles, so no idea if your cup of tea, but I'm a huge fan of them all. Just a followup, and this may be totally off...I know you said you weren't interested in Spiderweb Software titles, but have you considered the original Exile games? Not Avadon, but the series that spawned it in the mid-90s. I've been playing it recently on my old G3 and it really is as close as you can get to Ultima 5 without being Ultima 5. It's top down, tile based, with an overworld containing towns/dungeons/etc. It has NPC interaction being keyword-based, with hints dropped you have to seek out people in other towns, etc. to find. It's got a separate combat screen when you get attacked on the overworld, with same party goes/enemies go mechanics (only difference is everyone gets more than one move instead of just one). And it's got a highly-customizable party you can make yourself while focusing on different stats and skills. It really feels like a love letter to the classic Ultima games, and substantially different than the isometric Spiderweb Software games.
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May 21, 2014 01:40
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