lucyjoyce wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:... I played on a Commodore 64 until I upgraded to an Amiga 500.  Good times.

I just swooned after I read that

I was a unrepentant Amiga fan (500, 2000HD) who took all the abuse and shame being a co-dependent of Commodore entailed.

All while loading my workbench 1.3.

Zach

I grew up mainly with the Apple II but my cousin had an Amiga for some time.  I remember playing Defender of the Crown for half a day or so one summer when my parents visited his for the weekend.  Never could get the hang of jousting.  My grandfather had at least two or three Commodore VIC-20 and 64 models when I was in high school.  He absolutely loved them.  Most of the games I remember playing were from the cassettes he received from his Compute's Gazette magazine subscription.  I recall a few fantasy style games but one that I played a lot was a Star Trek themed hunt and kill grid based game.  It was pretty difficult and I ended up self-destructing more often than not.  

Besides the run of the mill VIC-20 and Commodore 64's he also had one of these:  OLD-COMPUTERS.COM musem ~ Commodore                                          SX/DX 64 - Executive computer

I wasn't sure how a suitcase sized, heavy as hell, portable computer with a 5 inch screen was of use but he managed his locksmithing business for years with it.

Infocom's Zork was great.  I would get frustrated often with the text commands and end up typing some sort of vulgarity only to have the game spit something out such as "Do you kiss your mother with that mouth", or "I'd sooner kiss a grue".  I tried out a few other Infocom classics like Enchanter, Starcross, and Planetfall.  But Zork was still my favorite.

I've spent some hours on the following site checking out a lot of the games I played as a kid and perusing the games I always wanted or never heard of.

Computer Game Museum - Adams Wing

I grew up with the C-64 and Amiga 500 combo too.  I wanted an Amiga 1200 with the AGA chipset but it was never to be.

We bought all the UK magazines we could get: Zzap!, Amiga Format, and a couple others I can't remember.  They seemed so much more exciting than the North American magazines and came with games, demos, etc.  In the early days of the internet 92/93, I spent days downloading Euro demos from ftp.wustl.archive.edu then transferring to the Amiga at 1200 baud (or 300 baud on the C-64).

I did some programming with PEEKs and POKEs and Sprites ... now I teach students proper programming and tell them that if they learned on their own they probably have a lot of bad habits

cdenham wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:
Me too!  I parted ways with the Vic20 years ago but I think I may still have the old Adventureland cartridge laying around.  That is where I did my first programming as well.  I wrote my first dungeon module using a Basic program where you would hit a button based upon a computer generated map and it gave you the room description.  Later on I tried to create an arcade style game called "Wizard's Tower". It was fairly mundane with all the graphics being ASCII characters but I had fun playing it. The final level consisted of a way too fast wizard running around the top of the screen shooting * at you for fireballs.  

The good ol' days.

Yeah, I wrote a text adventure that was basically a megadungeon - 1 program for each level, saved stats at the end of the level to be imported at the start of the next level.  I think I made it to 13 levels before I got too busy with sports, girls, and video games.  

~throwi

faro wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:Livingstone and Jackson on the front page of the BBC News website yet again, again, without even an anniversary context. Getting rather monotonous, this. ^^
(Usual "roleplaying" usage, too )

Link?

Bracton wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:BBC News - The retro cult around Fighting Fantasy gamebooks

Thank you.

I played Pool of Radiance back in the day on floppy. Also spent a lot of time playing Ikari Warriors on C64 way back then.

HermitFromPluto wrote in Random Thoughts or OT Chit-Chat Thread:We have just started our children in a new school in our current location, and they have an after school programme. Incredibly, one of the choices is D&D. My elder sons eagerly signed up. No guarantee they will get in, as it may be too popular and participation will be determined by lottery. Fancy that!  :king:

That is awesome!  Glad to see that there are places that offer it as an after school activity!

~throwi

Indeed, they are running as it "improves English, leadership and collaboration skills." I'm impressed.