Retro Video Gamer

. . . . . you could walk into your local newsagents and buy a game for a couple quid and choose it on the strength of the inlay art looking "cool" 

[align=center:3gl0upsi](http://i.imgur.com/DFrimMa.jpg?1%5Dhttp://i.imgur.com/DFrimMa.jpg?1)[/align:3gl0upsi]

Please add your own!

That is pretty much my childhood gaming experience in a nutshell. Actually I very rarely saved up for a full price game, preferring to wait until they appeared on compilations (which I tended to buy with Christmas money) or rereleased on budget.

All my pocket money used to go on tapes from the newsagent round the corner. Mastertronic owned me financially, to all intents and purposes, then later on Codemasters, LOL.

I took my £1 pocket money and bought a weekly yes weekly games magazine (Games-X) and still have enough change for a sherbet dibdab and fruit polos!

Quote from: "AmigaJay"I took my £1 pocket money and bought a weekly yes weekly games magazine (Games-X) and still have enough change for a sherbet dibdab and fruit polos!

Games-X was awesome!!!! 

Quote from: "The Laird"Games-X was awesome!!!! 

Yeah i loved it too! I remember seeing screenshots in it even now, they got news out fast too, obviously being weekly and no internet back then, most people had to wait a month for news, imagine that nowadays!

You can read some of the pages on the magazine archive;
http://amr.abime.net/issues_29 (//http)

Quote from: "AmigaJay"enough change for a sherbet dibdab and fruit polos!

lol thats me to a tee..

I used to think i was the only one who did this.. its amazing how many of us got games down the newsagent. I was a paperboy at my shop and used to get some of the damaged ones free. A perk i guess but they were usually the rubbish games lol.

... when Rare/Ultimate didn't suck!

Wispas were proper and Sparkster was affordable on MD!

The first you saw of a new game was on the pages of a magazine and drooled over the pages with your friends at school.

...WH Smiths would load up a spectrum or commodore game so you could test it before you buy.

When you could walk into a branch of Boots in 1987 to witness a live comedy show.

AKA seeing a NES in action!

Or watch the sales rep make a ballox of a sale with a new customer who's as thick as he was..time to intervene, it was always funny, these guys never had a clue what they where selling to the public at the time.. And nor did they care, simpler times without a doubt .

.... you could walk into an old independent computer hardware/software store and test out games on the PC like Prince Of Persia etc? I remember walking into SRS Microsystems when I was a youngen with my dad, he would buy commodore stuff in there and I remember seeing all sorts of awesome stuff in there, stuff like Mega CD movie discs, new/sealed Jaguar games, mega drives, mega cds, pcs and all manner of games for such old systems as Spectrum etc.

Those really were the good old days! I remember seeing the intro to Sonic CD playing on a screen in there and thinking it was the greatest thing I'd EVER seen!

Great days

.....you would borrow all your friends best games and then sit for hours tape to tape recording them to a 90minute cassette. Pirating was never so good

You rushed home to play a game only to find it didn't actually work and you had to take it back 

(http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z280/mrkizza/Tape.jpg)

Quote from: "The Laird"(http://i193.photobucket.com/albums/z280/mrkizza/Tape.jpg)

LOL, how very true! 

Classic fella..

I was only telling my lad about this the other day.. guess what lol.

I looked at my as if i was mad..lmfao

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 

Do you need a pencil for this as well? 

[align=center:1yxqxfvo](http://encrypted-tbn3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSLWPLETpGkGGRehHUcRlOWnUlraWJIGOwjFOa-UAYWVdTP9m2GDA)[/align:1yxqxfvo]

You could get a new game just by typing in 3,457 lines of code on a rubbery keyboard, then spending a scant 3 days finding and fixing errors in the typing or original listing. Instant gratification in less than a week all for free. 

Type ins were legendary.

My first experience of those were Apple II game listing in early editions of C&VG...


Got Jet Set Willy for the 464 for 1.99 in the supermarket. Great times.

Quote from: "The Laird"The first you saw of a new game was on the pages of a magazine and drooled over the pages with your friends at school.

I do miss that excitement that built from seeing the game to the next month when it was for sale. There were no trailers to watch online or review sites to read, Zzap!64 told me all I would ever (need to) know prior to buying.

Oh and ...you could spend the entire day in your local games shop playing games with the owner who you knew by name and loved gaming as much as you.

Quote from: "Tachi"Oh and ...you could spend the entire day in your local games shop playing games with the owner who you knew by name and loved gaming as much as you.

Another great one! So true!

I still remember Chris from Software Plus and John from Software Cellar!

I was probably as young as 8 I reckon.. And once per month, on a Saturday I would be up at the crack of dawn, whatever the weather. And on my bike down to the shops (probably a mile round trip) to pick up my monthly subs of computing with the Amstrad CPC and C+VG. He'll, I even used to make the trip even in full knowledge that they wouldn't be in yet lol.

I'd then pedal home and furiously type in the latest pokes, try out the newest cheats etc etc. If I wanted games that was more tricky as they generally didn't do them in our village. I used to have to hope for a cover tape. Eventually, I used to get them free  courtesy of John Menzies when I got to the age I could travel to Solihull on my own.

Nowadays my nipper would be lucky to get a 100 yards from me at the age of 15, such is the state of the country we live in.

Going down to the local arcade with a pocket full of change.
Good luck finding an arcade these days 

. . . . . printer paper had holes in it to line it up!

I miss those old game CDs that had names like '100 GREAT GAMES!!!' or what have you. Basically, you'd have some company slap whatever games they could gather up from a shareware site and put them all on one CD. You got a name, sometimes a paragraph worth of information if you were lucky, and that was pretty much it. Sometimes, you got something cool, like a Snake clone that took place in full 3D, and sometimes...

(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSsowtz3ZKm_Q18srUNIJ5GTQ0TR2inLeMxe-r1BJ0qmJZk3hLR)

Sometimes, you got stuff like this.

90's kid. Deal with it.

Quote from: "Bobinator"I miss those old game CDs that had names like '100 GREAT GAMES!!!' or what have you. Basically, you'd have some company slap whatever games they could gather up from a shareware site and put them all on one CD. You got a name, sometimes a paragraph worth of information if you were lucky, and that was pretty much it. Sometimes, you got something cool, like a Snake clone that took place in full 3D, and sometimes...

(http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSsowtz3ZKm_Q18srUNIJ5GTQ0TR2inLeMxe-r1BJ0qmJZk3hLR)

Sometimes, you got stuff like this.

90's kid. Deal with it.

I had several of those cd's, I just never learnt. Even now if I go into a PC shop and browse the cheapy racks I have to stop myself, if it looks too good to be true (100 greatest arcade games, 70 classic games for your PC etc.) then it probably is too good to be true.

It all started with this!
(http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2542/4103959960_ca2a2fc3e1_o.png)

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!

(http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/zx-spectrum-games/241-1.jpg) (http://i.haymarket.net.au/Galleries/20120712025811_skateboard-joust.jpg)

Quote from: "The Laird"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."

Quote from: "DZ-Jay"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!

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/33/Atari-2600-Joystick.jpg)

lol hell yeah... how bout this one:

when you had to do this

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zOhPhVM9vjg/UJKWAIueYdI/AAAAAAAAEoA/W0rJDjY9eF0/s1600/blow.jpg)

Quote from: "dcultrapro"lol hell yeah... how bout this one:

when you had to do this

(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zOhPhVM9vjg/UJKWAIueYdI/AAAAAAAAEoA/W0rJDjY9eF0/s1600/blow.jpg)

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