Good call Laird, although I'd trace it back further to K-Tel records of "20 top pop hits (not original artists)"
Yes I'm that old

Remember the good old days when . . . .

... your favourite magazine would make an extra special effort at Christmas by making the Christmas special edition of the magazine both bumper and festive.  Even if it did cost a tiny bit more.

Yes, I'm still holding onto that one.

The inlays and covers for games were all drawn by hand!

Going into Dixons and heading straight for the Spectrum that was on display:

10 PRINT "Dixons are shit!!!!!!"
20 GOTO 10

RUN

Leave the store 

I used to do that all the time, but used to add an ON BREAK CONTINUE at the start, preventing the pressing of the BREAK key (or the ESC key on the CPC)

When begging all year round got you only _one_ game cartridge on Christmas morning--maybe two, tops!--amongst the Legos and underwear.

And pixelated, 8-bit graphics drawn on 4-bit colour palettes were considered "realistic."

When begging all year round got you only _one_ game cartridge on Christmas morning--maybe two, tops!--amongst the Legos and underwear.

And pixelated, 8-bit graphics drawn on 4-bit colour palettes were considered "realistic."

And games  boasted proudly of being: '100% Machine Code'

You only had one fire button!

lol hell yeah... how bout this one:

when you had to do this

lol hell yeah... how bout this one:

when you had to do this

I still kiss my Nintendo games every night before I turn the security system on for them

When not all PC's were compatible . . . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efAAeJWwTiA