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Not many people were buying Apple II games, and Amiga is a little after when I first started buying games (82/83). If you were into games in the UK, the chances are that you had a Speccy.

Check out the Crash software catalogue http://www.crashonline.org.uk/cat01/index.htm from 1983. Vast majority of prices in the £5-£6 range. There's a few up to around £7 and The Hobbit at £14.95, but that included the book.

£6 in 1983 is (according to the BoE inflation calculator) equivalent to £15 in today's money, far cheaper than the £30-£40 that most of top sellers go for today.

Again, I understand why this is the case, but the point remains that it is the case, - most popular commercial games were a lot cheaper when I first started buying them than they are today, at least in the UK.

In August 1986 Crash magazine published a parody of their rival Sinclair User which accused them of reviewing games pretty much on the amount of advertising they got. They had to apologise later... but given this was 20 years ago I don't think the concept is all that new.

In August 1986 Crash magazine published a parody of their rival Sinclair User which accused them of reviewing games pretty much on the amount of advertising they got. They had to apologise later... but given this was 20 years ago I don't think the concept is all that new.

In August 1986 Crash magazine published a parody of their rival Sinclair User which accused them of reviewing games pretty much on the amount of advertising they got. They had to apologise later... but given this was 20 years ago I don't think the concept is all that new.

The ZX Spectrum had two games Skool Daze and a sequel Back to Skool which more or less encapsulate the same ideas found in Bully - disrupting school, punching people, stealing stuff, using a catapault, detention etc. If a certain litigious asshole wants to launch lawsuits, I suggest he start flinging them at the various Spectrum sites that host these "columbine simulators" since Bully is clearly just the spiritual successor to those early pioneers.

The ZX Spectrum had two games Skool Daze and a sequel Back to Skool which more or less encapsulate the same ideas found in Bully - disrupting school, punching people, stealing stuff, using a catapault, detention etc. If a certain litigious asshole wants to launch lawsuits, I suggest he start flinging them at the various Spectrum sites that host these "columbine simulators" since Bully is clearly just the spiritual successor to those early pioneers.

DRM is bad and we don't need it. Amazing how much it reminds me of what was said about the MSX computer in 1983. It was seen as trying to impose an unwanted limitation on the public (ie: mostly sprite based games). Just like DRM today trying to impose other limitations that are also unwanted. Here's an interview with Design Design from Crash magazine. See the MSX section - how similar the arguments are!

http://crashonline.org.uk/08/rebirth.htm

I know it is a bit different today, what with legal stuff and all, but still.

It's not much of an article! OK, so it covers the very beginning, and is only a short column, but there's an awful lot it misses out. Sure, it mentions C&VG, and indeed, the whole industry read it at the time, here in the UK. But Sinclair User came along shortly afterwards and garnered a sizeable following. There's also no mention of the Newsfield publications. Crash and Zzap!64 really were the defining magazines of the 1980s computer gaming scene.

The two top mags were Crash and Your Sinclair, both of which are pretty much completely available online.

This copy protection I encountered some years back was truly the triumph of marketing over common sense.

White Lightning, a programming/games design package for the Commodore 64, used a great idea to stop people from pirating the software. They printed the manual on red paper.

Imagine trying to read small black text printed on red paper - particularly when you're reading about a relatively complicated subject. It made it very difficult to photocopy but also pretty nasty to read for anything more than a short while - even if you had very good lighting.

Amazing to see full shaded 3d produced on the humble spectrum (and look around some of its billions of individual window views!)

Crash magazine gave it 97% the highest rating ever, and it really pushed the boat out.

(I only just remembered about this talking about HL in a previous discussion)

He calls GTA3 the first "sandbox" game? Really? How about SimCity?

I quite agree. Dun Darach gave you a living city to play in back in '85 and I'm sure it wasn't the first.

As I recall theiving and gambling were options, but whoring not sadly ;)

Agreed, I was never into music so I forgot that one. My brother had an Amiga and it was great for games, although I had Dungeon Master on the Atari ST and that was enough for me ;-) One of the few games I've literally spent weeks and weeks on. Others were Elite, Lords of Midnight and shadowfire on the ZX Spectrum.

Agreed, I was never into music so I forgot that one. My brother had an Amiga and it was great for games, although I had Dungeon Master on the Atari ST and that was enough for me ;-) One of the few games I've literally spent weeks and weeks on. Others were Elite, Lords of Midnight and shadowfire on the ZX Spectrum.

Agreed, I was never into music so I forgot that one. My brother had an Amiga and it was great for games, although I had Dungeon Master on the Atari ST and that was enough for me ;-) One of the few games I've literally spent weeks and weeks on. Others were Elite, Lords of Midnight and shadowfire on the ZX Spectrum.

I'm certain it was Oliver Frey or Phray, or such -- he did the covers for Crash! and Zzap! magazines:

Oli Frey

Those were some good covers :)

Anyone remember the plastic lens that the Spectrum version of Elite used? Its described in Crash, but I can't find a picture of it.

Co-incidentally, just today I was commenting to my wife about games from the 80's - when I was a school boy - today.

I was just investigating some old computer magazines for the most popular gaming platforms back then.

These mags make good reading. The reviews praise games which took only a few weeks or months for a one/two person development team to write.

Games then had what I call "playability" - more substance than style. Graphics capabilities were not good, memory was very tight (32K on some machines) and typical processors were clocked at less than 1Mhz.

In these days of fast processors, graphics GPUs, realms of memory etc, it seems (IMHO) that all that games are all about style with little substance.

You mean like the Loki super Spectrum?