Be Excellent To Each Other

I was thinking right, in the old days before the early '90s there were a lot of computer and gaming machines weren't there? It was complicated enough with the trinity of Speccy, C64 and Amstrad CPC, but all kinds of miscellaneous formats like Commodore 16, Oric, Tatung Einstein, MSX, to many to name really. That can't have been easy for software developers or consumers.

I don't suppose that any BEEXers ever found themselves lumbered (or blessed?) with some minor computer format at some point in their history?

Someone here has a macintosh.

A mate of mine had a Tatung Einstein, although technically it was his dad's (which he may have used for work?) and he had a spectrum, so I'm not sure that counts. I can't remember anything about it though.
CD32 is probably the most useless format I've managed to lumber myself with/be lumbered with and that wasn't that bad.

Does the Vic 20 count? What about the Commodore Plus 4?

I had something with a black on white screen, which the computer gubbins was built into, and a funny little keyboard that had four coloured keys - red, blue, green and yellow. It had a little daisy wheel printer as well. I have no idea what it was. I still have it and it works fine, but it is tucked away somewhere I can't get to it without ladders and the like.

Yes, on both counts. Can't have been easy to get software for either. Perhaps 'obscure' in the subject title is slightly the wrong word.

XP x64.

I think the only computer I've got/had that could be considered even vaguely obscure would be an MSX.

Schools seemed to get a wide range of stuff though. I remember my primary school having a Camputers Lynx and a ZX81, while at high school, it was BBCs followed by Archimedes'.

I had a C64 GS, still got it somewhere.

One of these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64_Games_System

Klax was the best on the four-game cartridge it came with. Never quite got to grips with Fiendish Freddy's Big Top O'Fun, I remember it as being extremely twitchy and frustrating.

I've never owned any kind of obscure computing hardware whatsoever. No sir, not me.

*glares*

Are we related? I was lumbered with both of these as a kid. To load games on the atari, you held down Start and Option. Ah, the memories!

maybe you got my old ones. You're welcome to 'em! I was a speccy man briefly until i badgered dad to get us an amiga.

I had the original Oric-1 as my first computer. My ever-gullible dad got conned into buying one instead of a Speccy by a sales assistant. My dad didn't get the hint when he had to keep sending back the Orics to manufacturers. Only the fourth computer actually worked, and there was no software to buy for it.

I quite like original Atari 800. Absolute tank of a machine, built like a heavy typewriter crossbred with a cash register. Two cartridge ports and more internal space, four joystick ports - cost something ridiculous like £600 in 1979.

I've got a Colecovision, which is obscure in itself but was also the console brother to the horrendously obscure/shit (delete as appropriate) ADAM computer.

That aside, I don't own anything horrendously obscure but I did have a Pentium Pro 180 (with Matrox Mystique!) and I had a friend who had an Odyssey2 and another friend who had an Intellivision.

I had a Colecovision too. Sewer Sam ftw.

I do still own my Atari 65XE as well. Had an external tape deck, and a cartridge slot I never used. It still works, as far as I know.

No one had a Sharp MZ-80B then?

Didn't have that one, Dimmers. My collection is listed in the link in my sig (ensure you read the notes, I spent hours on them) but towards the end of its life I missed out on a lot of titles. I remember going to an electronics repair place who had a huge Colecovision poster up from just before the 1984 crash, and it detailed LOADS of games that I'd never heard of, and that ridiculously huge Super Action Controller.

My dad bought one of these. It was bollocks, essentially, but fun for a while.

I had an Atari 800xl with an external disc drive. It was ace!

I had tons of games with it and loved most of them, my favourite being a wrestling game called Bop ('and'-Ed) wrestle. It had 4 joystick ports and it was a massive hulk which ran red hot whenever it was on!

I loved it!

I had a bbc model B for a while

at home? Weirdo!

I had a cousin with an MSX. There were some fantastic games on it, the tunes of which I still find myself whistling merrily today, over fifteen years later.

obscure was asked for!! IMO bbc basic was great

We had one of those too, but I didn't think it was obscure enough to count.

Also had a Dragon 32 for a while, and a ZX81.

I had a Colour Genie. I am yet to meet anyone else who did.

I'm the same with Goonies. A mate had it years ago and as well as it being a very good platformer, the music was extremely catchy too.

My mother somehow managed to find me Vic-20 software back in 1985 (I was too young to go and buy my own), including cartridges of Gorf and Donkey Kong.

Now, she's scared to even touch a PC in case it breaks.

Odd.

My first exposure to gaming was with an Intellivision.

My first job involved a motor insurance database, which was produced for IBM PC (we had a Amstrad PC1512 and PC1640*), Amstrad PCW and every month the data disks were sent away to a company called GreyMatter, who would send them back for a Tatung Einstein. Nice keyboard on the Einstein.


*Which had a 3 1/2" drive which would boot into either 360K or 720K depending on the boot disk used. Shortly before we left, we got a Compaq 386DX which we instantly fell in love with, because the database build went from three hours to 10 minutes. We had never seen such magick.

I have two!

The Atari Lynx, although by far the best handheld console, was a fucker to get games for.

Likewise the CD32 and GX4000.

But I guess you mean things like the Oric or Jupiter Ace.

A friend over the road from me had a Vectrex when we were kids. That was the only one I ever came across. It was a lot of fun though.

You're just being silly now.

Feex-ed.

You kinda needed a disk drive for the Atari, seeing that the cassette loader was the slowest on Earth.

I had a computer games console when I was really young (so mid-80s) that nobody has ever been able to identify.

It was black, apparently came from the CO-OP, and loaded games on using a massive cartridge that slotted in the side. Each cartridge held about 40 games, but with most of them being a variation on a theme eg. "tanks" and "planes" being the exact same games, but with slightly different character pixels.

That' sort of what a screenshot would look like.

Any ideas anyone?

In terms of obscurity, that's a winnar there. I don't think there even was any software other than a couple of demos pulled together by Chris Cannon of Bug-Byte.


Atari Lynx and GX4000 count as much as the Oric or the Forth-equipped Jupiter Ace. Minority formats with little support. I had a Lynx for Christmas one year BTW, which was actually pretty horrifying as I was the only gamesplaying kid in my class who didn't have a Game Boy. I ended up smashing the console in the back garden with a housebrick.

A company in my hometown sold them, there were a fair few games. A version of Donkey Kong, "Blasteroids", Scramble ... We had a stack of text adventures for it too. And a pair of joysticks that didn't work on anything except the software they came with ... Ah! Happy days ...

If it had 4 joystick ports then it was an 800 not an 800xl (which only had 2) :-)

My console history was :

A pong machine that you had little ball bearings to move on the top of the machine to keep score (no fancy digital scores for you !)

An Acetronic MPU1000 when all my friends got Atari 2600's - i had about 10 carts for it the best being a space invaders variant , after a while my brother and i also found if you got the cartridge about 3/4's of the way in and got the game to start weird things would happen like your barriers being further up the screen or double ships or other strangeness

A Colecovision that we badgered my mum and dad for after we saw it at a friends house - it was amazing and at the time when Donkey Kong ruled the arcades this was it in your own house.

Then nothing until a Jaguar (yeah it was a mistake but we did have AVP) then nothing till a Snes when I saw SF2 running on it - console wise it was then a PSX / PS2 / N64 / Dreamcast / Neogeo pocket / GBA / GBASP / Xbox / DS / Wii / DSlite / PSP / GP32 / PS3 / GP2x / Xbox360

At the same time going back we had a ZX81 (with wobbly rampack)
Then an Atari 800XL (with Tape - remembering 15 minute load times for games) , followed by a disk drive for it
Then a C64c (with tape then disk).

Then an Amiga 500 (with a 2nd floppy then a 20 MB hard disk - oh the space !)

Then onto PC's

However I originally thought the thread was going to just be about strange machines since at college I used a Prime , in my first job i did my programming on a VAX and have also used OS2

Anything like this :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1292_Advan ... deo_System

(which was my first console)

There was another variant of it which was totally black :

http://consoledatabase.com/consoleinfo/ ... index.html

I'm struggling to find any screenshots of games - but if it was one of those seeing the joystick should remind you (it also had keyboard overlays - so each button could do a different thing - i remember for the footie game each one controlled one player)

If not then my next guess would be a phillips videopac (also called a Magnavox Oddssey)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey%C2%B2

Where's the hourglass? I can't see the hourglass?

I've never had anything obscure. I do like lists, though, so here's what I own/have owned (in chronological order):

Amiga 500 (originally 512K, but upgraded to 1MB RAM)
Amiga 1200
NES
Sega Megadrive II
[big gap where I turned to the dark side - PC gaming)]
Xbox
GBA SP
DS
Gamecube
DS Lite
Xbox 360
N64

My plan is to pick up a PS2 next year along with the best PS2/1 games. After that, probably a Dreamcast.

Ooh I won't come out well here.

Spectrum +2
Amiga 500 (1MB)
Master System
Mega Drive
Gameboy
SNES
PSX
Gamboy Color
N64
Dreamcast
Saturn
Xbox
Gamecube
PS2
GBA SP
DS
PSP
360
Wii
PS3

And somewhere in there I also bought a Jaguar, a Lynx, a CD32, got given an A500Plus, a GX4000, a CPC, A Quickshot Supervision (ask your grandkids), a Superking, a GameGear, a Nomad, many more Master Systems, Atari 2600, several old pong like things, a C64...er.... oh fuck yeah, a NES!

some kid near me had a Vectrex thing.

I only played it once. A game called Spike, of which all I can remember is some speech that went 'Spike! Oh no... Molly!' or something. It didn't seem very good but I bet it had a decent port of Asteroids on it.

lets see:

Commodore +4
Atari 800XL
Spectrum 128K
Spectrum +2
Amiga 500 (with the big 512k upgrade!)
Amiga 500+ (Later upgraded to 2MB)
P100 Packard Bell PC
[numerous upgrades]
[bought an a1200 from ebay for nostalgia purposes and still have it]
Current Boggo spec PC
Xbox (still used for emulation and a few classic XBOX1 games I can't bare to part with)
PSP (now sold)
360

As you can see, my first console was the XBox, and technically that belonged to Mrs Davpaz