Conversation

Notices

1. Embed this notice
   Justin To #НетВойне (justinto@mas.to)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 05:26:25 JST Justin To #НетВойне

   in reply to

   • atomicpoet

   @atomicpoet seeing RealSound and remembering how expensive soundcards were

   • Embed this notice
     atomicpoet (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 05:26:25 JST atomicpoet

     in reply to

     @justinto Yeah, that is something worth remembering! The intro was stunning. It had an actual real voice that sounded almost like a human. An NES or a C64 couldn’t do that.

   • Embed this notice
     atomicpoet (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 05:26:26 JST atomicpoet

     In 1988, Echelon came out for DOS – it looked like the future!

     I thought, “Wow! This is in actual 3D!”

     And from my kid perspective living in the 80s, it was true. It had wireframe graphics and ultra-smooth scrolling. When I piloted the ship, it felt like I was completely in control.

     We may snicker now at the EGA graphics but you got to understand that an NES couldn’t do this. Echelon really showed off what PCs at the time were capable of doing. It was revelatory.

     Returning to it now, it’s amazing how far we’ve come in the past 36 years. However, playing this game is still fun – if only to stare at those wireframes!

   • Embed this notice
     atomicpoet (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 06:12:54 JST atomicpoet

     • goatsarah

     @goatsarah @justinto I realize that Amiga was fairly popular in Europe, but where I live (Canada), it simply never took off. For this reason, my closest reference point is NES and C64.

     Well, there was Apple ][ and Mac, but Apple ][ was mostly in schools and Mac was stuck with black and white graphics.

     Had I been aware of Amiga and Atari ST, I probably would have really liked the games on those platforms.

   • Embed this notice
     atomicpoet (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 06:53:45 JST atomicpoet

     in reply to

     • goatsarah
     • ajlanes

     @ajlanes @justinto @goatsarah Yeah, so this will sound surprising coming from me, a PC gamer. For most of the 80s, DOS gaming sucked. This probably doesn’t surprise you but believe me, when you lived in the moment, it was rough.

     I didn’t get DOS games because I liked them. I got them because I didn’t have an NES. Don’t get me wrong, when it specifically came to adventure gaming and RPGs, DOS was very good – I loved King’s Quest and Ultima – but if you wanted to play something like Contra or Super Mario Bros., DOS was brutal.

     My mom was against an NES because she didn’t want video games to monopolize the living room. So I convinced her to buy a C64 that someone was selling at a garage sale – I told her it would help me with homework. Really, I just wanted a better gaming machine than our 286.

   • Embed this notice
     ajlanes (ajlanes@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 06:53:46 JST ajlanes

     • atomicpoet
     • goatsarah
     @goatsarah @atomicpoet @justinto Don’t remember the Arc being much of a thing at the time but ST and Amiga definitely.
   • Embed this notice
     emmatonkin (emmatonkin@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 06:57:17 JST emmatonkin

     in reply to

     • atomicpoet
     • goatsarah
     • ajlanes

     @ajlanes @goatsarah @atomicpoet @justinto
     I think the Archimedes was a Thing People Maybe Had In School, whereas ST and Amiga were things people would more likely have at home. PC, on the other hand, would generally only show up if someone had one for work stuff, at which point possibly family might get to use it on the weekends.

     My father bought and installed some kind of 8086 board thingy in his Atari ST (PC-Speed?) which made for an interesting frankenexperience. Iirc it ran pretty hot.

   • Embed this notice
     atomicpoet (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 07:25:03 JST atomicpoet

     • goatsarah
     • ajlanes
     • emmatonkin

     @goatsarah @justinto @emmatonkin @ajlanes I just think it’s wild that the Amiga and ST were made by American companies, but were not popular in North America.

     And in a weird way, Arc is still with us through ARM.

     It’s the British platform that somehow survived.

   • Embed this notice
     atomicpoet (atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 07:34:45 JST atomicpoet

     • goatsarah
     • ajlanes
     • emmatonkin

     @goatsarah @justinto @emmatonkin @ajlanes And you know what? I think the Fediverse can learn lessons from that. 😉

   • Embed this notice
     emmatonkin (emmatonkin@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 07:48:29 JST emmatonkin

     • atomicpoet
     • goatsarah
     • ajlanes

     @goatsarah @ajlanes @atomicpoet @justinto
     Hm. Probably wasn't a very Radio 4 area, so maybe that's why I didn't see Archimedes in the wild, but I don't think there was a lot of software for them tbh despite their potential as a platform - people seemed pretty unsure what they were for in school, even. So I'd have thought they wouldn't be widely appealing beyond particular professional and educational use cases for that reason.

   • Embed this notice
     emmatonkin (emmatonkin@mstdn.social)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 10:07:00 JST emmatonkin

     in reply to

     • goatsarah
     • Piers Cawley

     @pdcawley @goatsarah
     Tbh I only learned that Elite was a thing fairly recently (thanks to Steam's People Who Like Stace Games Also Like function). We were more into straight up arcade types of games - Llamatron, Lemmings, Lotus...

   • Embed this notice
     Piers Cawley (pdcawley@mendeddrum.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 10:07:01 JST Piers Cawley

     • atomicpoet
     • goatsarah
     • ajlanes
     • emmatonkin

     @goatsarah @emmatonkin @ajlanes @justinto @atomicpoet the Arc was reputed to have the best version of Elite until Elite:Dangerous launched.

   • Embed this notice
     ajlanes (ajlanes@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Tuesday, 16-Apr-2024 19:38:39 JST ajlanes

     • atomicpoet
     • goatsarah
     • emmatonkin
     @goatsarah @emmatonkin @justinto @atomicpoet Similar to what happened with the Beeb vs the Soectrum or C64 of course