We got any former Spectrum, C64, Dragon, Amstrad CPC, Amiga, Atari ST owners ?
 

Don't know about you, but some of my favourite all time memories are of the days I first got my Spectrum in the early 80's

Since that moment, may machines including a Commodore 64, BBC Model B, Amiga 1000, found their way into our house!

Who can forget such GEMS as Manic Miner, Jet Set Willy, Repton, Turrican, The Last Ninja, International Karate, Way of the Exploding Fist, etc...

Anyway to cut a long story short, I discovered a magazine - purely by chance the other day which admittedly I'd seen on the shelves of my newsagent for the last couple of months, but I never looked at it. So, with a spare couple of hours to kill, I bought it and discovered something FANTASTIC. The mag brought a lump to my throat covering all the old games I used to play including articles written with the same passion I shared for these classics. I can't believe I've missed the previous seven issues!

Anyway, go get it - its called RETRO GAMER and its by Live Publishing. If you can't find it, the webiste for subscriptions is www.retrogamer.net

Just stick in your favourite machine name in google along with the word emulator.

Relive all those memories and find out that most of the games really aren't as good as you remembered ;)

You can also get a couple of thousand proper arcade machines emulated too :)

I've got most of the Amiga catalogue on some CDs somewhere in the loft ;)

Google "MAME32" for arcade machines (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator)

We have a dedicated Mame machine sitting in an old Street Fighter vs XMen cabinet in our office :D

Nowt wrong with Chuckie Egg :D My bruv has it on his mobile to play now.

If u get the basic formula right of playability they are timeless.

I had/have a spectrum 48k but the load button don't work as I punched the keyboard after getting mad with it lol!

I know all about the emulation scene, including MAME, etc...

Its the magazine ARTICLES that make it worth getting. History of how the hardware came about, interviews with the designers, programmers - a really good read!

Had a spectrum 48k, 128k+, Amiga A500 (upgraded it to a whopping 2MB of RAM, plus had Action Replay for it)

Classic games?

Spectrum:
Mainc Miner, JSW, Cybernoid, Dan Dare, Elite, Daley Thompsons Decathalon.

Amiga:
Turrican, Xenon II Megablast, Exile, Elite, Carrier Command, Driller, Dark Side, Stunt Car Driver.


Sounds like a good mag, might need to check it out. Now where is my speccy emulator? I wanna play Dan Dare.

I keep having long spells of playing Spectrum games on an emulator.


I also still have quite a few Amiga's....A1200's, A4000, CD32. I...er...broke the A500 :(

SIAL for Computer Related:

Anyone remember 8 bit machines? ;) :D

Yep retrogamer is a great mag. as said if only for the articles, this month has got alod of graftgold goodies including paradroid and uridium (2 of all my time c64 faves) and interviews with coding gods such as matthew smith (manic miner and JSW) and archer maclean (dropzone, jimmy white snooker etc.)

If you're a sad retro fan like me then its great! All this state of the art equipment and here we are playing blocky rough sounding games....that play awesomely!

Gary

ive got all those ones for the xbox :D got an emulator disk with 9 of those old consoles on ;) and 14000 games its really funny to see some of the games that people thought were great graphics

Speccy 48k & +3
 

Anyone know where a tape image of Jetpack can be found. Activision have banned distribution of all their games, places like world of spectrum no longer have it.

Activision haven't, Rare have, Rare used to be called Ultimate, who made Jetpac et al. Note the Elite games are also denied distribution, but not all manufacturers have denied giving them out.

I own a complete set of boxed Ultimate titles, Cookie and Atic Atac are still sealed :) But you can't have copies, because then I'd be breaking the law!

Nothing stops you googling for it though :)

Zx80 n 81 is where its at. 16k expansion pack!

But Yodes of Nesod, Alien8, head over heels, batman, ant attack! Lotus Challenge :) plus the other classics on the spectrum rocked. I had 48 n the 128 wiv tapdeck n microdrives. I've still got it somewhere.

I had amiga a500 n 1200 to, wiv all the addons :) Remember payin £400 for a 20gig harddrive once :O

20gig? :)

I once paid £250 for a 60 Megabyte drive

I have a World of Spectrum double disc cd that I bought about five years ago. It includes thousands of games, emulators and everything related to the Spectrum. Don't know if it is still available though.

LOL I paid 462 pounds for the contoured one that plugged on the side of the A500. It was a 52MB hard disk, but had an extra 2MB of ram built in as well.

Bargain :o

oh wait yeh yer right it was also a plugin side job for A500 it was a 40mb one :o

My first hard drive was for my Atari ST - 720 quid for 20MB and that was with a 5% discount because I joined their developers scheme. I bought my first 1GB HD when prices dropped below a grand! And now you can get 1GB solid state memory for 50 quid.

It's a mad world, I still can't get over how quickly prices are dropping or equipment levels go up.

My first FLOPPY was a 5.25" CUMANA for my BBC model B!
My first monitor was a CUB for my BBC model B!

Anyone got a Retro Gamer Issue 1 I can buy off them ?

Yep thats still available http://www.v-direct.org.uk/parts.asp?s=CD&sub=EM lots of great stuff on there too. Ive got the c64 classix one and also bought WinUAE the amiga emulator.

Cheers

Gary

Only place you can get a copy of issue 1 from is ebay. I actually looked at issue 1 when it was in the shops but for some reason didn't buy it. Started buying Retro gamer at Issue 3 and at that time Issue 1 was going on ebay for around £70. Managed to buy a few copies of issue 2 on back order a few months ago and have just sold them on ebay for £16 and £18.

Prices of retro gamer 1 and 2 seem to have fallen recently and it is entirely possible to buy an issue 1 for around £30. Still a lot of money for a magazine but a lot less than people were willing to pay for them a few months ago.

I used to have a C64 which my parents bought for me in 1983 and which I stupidly sold for £80 (with hundreds of original games) when I got my Amiga A500. Sold that again when I got my first PC although I now own 2 C64's (1 breadbin, 1 redesigned) and an Amiga 500. Although the emulators are good there is nothing like playing 2 player Wizball on a real C64!

Biggest mistake I have made is lending someone my boxed Jap Import SNES with about 10 boxed Japanese games and then losing touch with them. Worth a bit of money nowdays (I was always very sad in keeping the boxes and every scrap of documentation)

Used to be heavily into the demo scene when I had my Amiga and couldn't believe it when I managed to find most of the old demo's on the internet. Watching Scoopex Virtual Hangover and listening to The Crusaders Bacteria certainly brings back memories!

Lets be honest now though, 99% of the games you remember with fond memories were complete rubbish! I remembered FA18 Interceptor as being absolutely amazing and actually bought the A500 just to play this game. Erm... I didn't remember the framerate being about 5 frames per second!

Ah,

I used to write games for the C64. I worked for a company in N.Ireland called Choice Software many many moons ago. We used to do a lot of work for US Gold & Ocean Software.

Mainly arcade conversions to Amstrad, Spectrum, C64, Amiga & Atari ST on behalf of the above mentioned names.

Brings back many memories - good and some er not so good.

Those were the days - a whole 64K of ram to play with, and feck all else.


Shaun

I've still got my Dragon 32 :D

Oh dear, now I'm gonna start to feel old.

I had a:

Atari 800Xl (anyone else remember frogger and Manic Miner)
Spectrum +2
Amiga A500 (with 512k expansion)

A Mate had a C64.

Loved em all.

I now have an Xbox. how things have moved on in a relatively short space of time. It's the DBs! :-)

Best

Jd,

Yep good point about the nostalgia, there is the argument you shouldnt go back and play them because the promise is normally greater than the reality once you do re-visit them and your memory is then tarnished!

Gary

If you do buy one of these CDs don't get one from ebay or from the link above, they are selling other peoples' effort for their own gain.

The Sinclair CDs are "officially" available (minus denied titles, which you can google for anyway) from The TZX Vault, all proceeds go towards "preserving" more software, buying anything missing from the catalogue from eBay or wherever and converting it to .tzx format for putting on the CD.

I had a Atari 400 (with 48K upgrade :D), 800XL, 130XE then an Amiga. Fond memories of learning electronics by building Len Golding's (IIRC) circuits out of Atari User and controlling my Lego motors :eek:

LOL at FA18 Interceptor, it did seem amazing, my friend had an Amiga long before I got one and put some FA18 on a VHS tape. It looked good and smooth played on picture search/fast forward cos it was all smooth then, although monochrome.

yeah had a spectrum....

ZX80 1k
ZX81 1k + 16k rampack connected by blu-tak & cellotape ;)
ZX48 rubber keys :D
ZX128 with built-in diskdrive

who destroyed their joystick playing Daley Thompsons Decathalon :D ripped mine out of its socket jerking it too much ;):D

Gary, WinUAE is free with this months Retro Gamer along with Speccy, Amstrad, Atari emulators and games from Graftgold!