Sean Miller wrote: > On Sat, Jul 18, 2009 at 12:02 PM, LeeGroups<mailgro...@varga.co.uk> wrote: > >> Yes, I can remember playing chess (against the computer!) on a 1K ZX81... >> ...well I say 1K, think the video used some memory, so the program was >> less then 700 bytes and it still played a good game of chess... >> > > They managed to create a half-decent platform game for it. Came out > when the '81 was in its dotage, but it was pretty impressive > considering how little memory they had to play with. > > Do you remember when one company released a game for the Spectrum with > a dongle that added additional memory? It was an adventure game of > sorts... the name will come to be at some stage, I'm sure... but it's > missing at the moment - have a vision of the box in my head, but no > more... something of something or other I think... :-) > > Do you mean the ROM/RAM cartridge by Mikro-Gen?
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/19/mkplus.htm There is an article in the latest Retro Gamer (issue 66) about Mikro-Gen and it mentions the Mikro-Gen addon which supposedly didn't do so well. > Those were heady days. Remember the TV documentary on Imagine, the > software company, that started out as "how a modern software > development company works" and ended up documenting their demise. > Imagine had a similar plan to do a piece of software with a dongle > ("Bandersnatch", I think it was called) but after they folded it never > saw the light of day. > > Yeah that's a good documentary, I have a copy of it somewhere. I gather they spent a lot of their money on Ferrari's and stuff and eventually folded. Didn't the BBC production team nearly loose some of their equipment when the receivers went in? Maybe it was a case of the company doing so well they got a bit too over confident. On the other hand, Codemasters who started on budget titles seem to be doing pretty well and released a couple of interesting hardware devices. > How easy it must be these days for programmers, with so much memory > available. Don't even have to consider that aspect. Just make it as > big as you like and then tell the users they have to upgrade to play > it. > Yep, all these games that need the latest and greatest graphics cards, or maybe even multiple graphics cards. Nowadays I tend to keep gaming to the consoles (or retro stuff via emulators). I wouldn't spend over £50 on a graphics card and I certainly wouldn't spend £300 on one (instead I bought an XBOX 360 Elite which gives me a HD gaming fix, and the Wii and DS I already have give me the Nintendo fix). > Never used to happen on a 32k BBC Micro or a 48k Spectrum. The > programmers MADE it possible. > > Yep, that was the time when gameplay was more important than graphics. I dunno kids these days don't know they're born. Rob -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
