>Back when video game source code could fit on a page of A4 and would be given away in magazines
Soul
 It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
 Shopping Cart Returner Shirt $21.68 |
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
>Back when video game source code could fit on a page of A4 and would be given away in magazines
Ah yes, type-in games from books and magazines Not only the PET and TRS-80, but also the 8 bit Apple ][, VIC-20, Atari-8 bit line.and later on iterations for the Apple Macintosh, ZX Spectrum, C64, ORIC, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, IBM PC, PC jr, PC PS/1, COCO 1, TRS-80 Model III, MSX, and the TI-99/4 as well as its slight upgrade; the TI-99/4a
it was fun optimizing them, making the code more compact, adding your own prompts and stuff (usually with 3x more swearing)
It was the journey. I had a c64 and Byte mag, as a kid, it was good parent bonding time.
I don't know why people romaticise this shit, it sucked ass.
>spend about an hour typing it all in
>whoops, made a typo somewhere
>no idea how to debug so have to carefully go line by line to find where you made the error
>finally get it running
>it's always some baby's first game program shit like Snake, so you don't even learn any cool Basic tricks
They did it because it was cheaper than including a floppy disk with the game on it.
Tapes are also a thing. Some PET, VIC20, ZX Spectrum, occasionally Apple ][, as well as TRS-80 Model 1 and Tandy COCO 1, and TRS-80 Model III games game on a physical cassette.
>nostalging over garbage you never saw let alone played
Soulless
>I don't know why people romaticise this shit
Youtube. Also, zoomers seem obsessed with trying to out-cringe each other. I'd like to think some of them are trolling. But most imagine they're fitting in.
Anon the people who did this as well as coded their own games by reading the tutorials in the magazines went on to get really plush jobs in the early gaming industry and a lot of them are multi-millionaires today.
>They did it because it was cheaper than including a floppy disk with the game on it.
I think you're underestimating how shit some of these games were. I had a whole book with these where a lot of the 'games' were just guess the right number in a couple tries and it would tell you if it was too high or too low.
It was a great way to introduce kids to programming though. Even if the games were shitty you still had fun playing them since you'd made them (typed them in) yourself. And then eventually you'd try making your own changes and adding things or try making your own similar games. My first game I made myself was a terrible choose-your-own adventure type story for example, where you'd just pick actions from a list and then the game would print what happened next. It was mostly just a bunch of goto statements, but I was still proud of it and forced my friends to play it kek.
Programming seems doable by a normal human being, if it were not for needing to memorize the syntax needed to do it.
>older guy at work said he used to get these magazines in the 80s
>spent two hours copying a program so his kid could play it
>here you go son enjoy
>kid is downstairs before he is
>yeah dad it was a really short game
Is there a project gathering all of this stuff?
I know Gaming Alexandria does it for Japanese stuff
Lots of issues on archive.org
I'd love to play a lot of the games I saw in Micom BASIC magazine.
>hours of typing and figuring out where in line 330 that the game crashed because of a typo for some mediocre rubbish
even better was when the listing in the magazine itself had mistakes and you had to wait for next month's issue where they provided corrections
Did this ever happen? I would have thought anyone who couldn't figure out how to fix the error on their own would have died from trying to swallow their elbow within 30 days
lol. no. First, you're describing two totally different sets of people. homosexuals who struggled with typeins, or really used them much at all, were dumb kids in the days of early gaming. Maybe some put in the effort, bettered themselves, and went on to do things lmuch ater, but those will be rare exceptions. They certainly accomplished nothing "in the early gaming industry"
cope
This shit was fun af.
I'm sure morons are going to seethe and shart themselves over it because "waaah typing is hard" but it was so cool to type one of these in and get it working.
Anyone who hated this shit is a low-talent nobody who didn't become a programmer and start their own business.
>Anyone who used this shit is a low-talent nobody who didn't become a programmer and start their own business.
fixed
The little video game columns inserted into home computing magazines always made me horny as frick. Nothing as exciting as flipping to those yellow pages and seeing all the new tips, tricks, cheats, and glitches (plus the typeable programming section at the end).
For an added bit of fun, check out the ages of all the people sending in letters.