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So let's say you were stuck in a time loop and had to experience the timeline of ONE machine only over and over then what machine would it be?

For me I wish I could constantly relive my Commodore 64 years which for me were the most fun for pure gaming (as opposed to programming and arty type things I did on 520ST and Amiga 1000). And there is nothing like the wonder of those early days where colour graphics of any kind and more than simple beeps and farty noises were considered advanced features to detail on the box! haha

How about everyone else?

[Shadow of the Beast 1 Amiga.]

It bugged the hell out of me when reviewers moaned about the simplistic gameplay of Shadow of the Beast on Amiga OCS (runs in 512k). So in honour of that I thought this might be a thread worth posting.

Shadow of the Beast 1 Amiga. The whole point of this game was to push the Amiga to its limits and produce an arcade game of mid 80s arcade quality. Shadow of The Beast was first and foremost a product of a team of talented individuals wanting to prove arcade quality is very possible on Amiga 500/1000/2000 and this game really should have been compared to Rastan Saga and not collect em ups or platformers from home consoles I think. If you expect no more than an arcade game like Rastan then you will not be disappointed I think. If you wan't something more cerebral then SotB 3 is the one for you I think Mr Reviewers. SotB 1 however was not broken IMO

Lotus Turbo Challenge II Amiga. Again many people moaned that it had no handling, and yet at the same time Out Run in the arcade is the yardstick for 2.5D racing. The truth is Lotus II did have handling, once you have played it enough you will be able to hang the tail out on the bends and overtake other cars/navigate obstacles with aplomb just by knowing when to turn and when to accelerate. The handling is not Gran Turismo but it is very similar to Ridge Racer once you understand it. In the right hands and with a Zipstick it is every bit as fun to play as Ridge Racer 1 on PS1 I think. Again reviewers wanted more I think without even getting the whole point of the game, perhaps they have never driven RWD cars....who knows

So what games on which systems do you think are unfairly scored down and why?

I was going through a stash of AY and YM tunes and had always been told that they will sound the same (save for differences in electrical circuitry affecting audio timbre a la Amiga A500 vs Amiga 1200) or that simply the games were not developed at the same time for ST and CPC/ZX 8 bit runs.

So when I loaded up one of my fav tunes on this style of Yamaha soundchip on both the CPC and the ST and to my surprise Xenon 1 doesn't sound quite the same, only similar.

You can see it here....



Your thoughts? Are they meant to sound this different or is it just down to the quality of the motherboard on each?

(both tunes are being played on a Windows PC with a standard YM/AY player so they would sound the same if they were meant to I presume)

I was wondering if anyone had a list of all the 10 cassette games/utilities originally bundled free with every CPC computer in the UK. I can make out 9/10 as I have found a pic of an ebay listing but one is missing the cover and I can't remember what the title is. Tried googling and even Wikipedia doesn't list them all (surprise lol)

I had spent a lot of time working out exactly when the original 1982 Bull nose C64 landed in shops in the UK and horror of horrors postimage.org has deleted my uploaded proof of exactly when this happened. Why is this so important you may indeed ask, well it IS important because with £1000s of pounds Retro Gamer magazine never bothered to find out and nor did very popular people in the C64 scene.

So I thought it is important to preserve and so I will put it here also.

In the November 25th 1982 issue of Popular Computing Weekly Magazine, page 5, it clearly states

"The first batch of the new Commodore 64 micro computers should have been dispatched to dealers on November 19th"

I searched all the weekly and monthly mags up to February (so sold in January for monthly mags and February for weekly mags) and there was no mention of any problems or delays in dispatch.

So the C64 was on sale in computer shops by November 20th 1982. I did this research years ago but the postimage upload linked to in various places has been deleted and is no longer valid I have noticed.

I was wondering if anybody else here had one of these truly ground breaking computers back around the mid-late eighties like me.

It was my first creative computer and the first computer I owned that I used in the same way as you would a regular Windows PC today.

I used to digitize Boris Vallejo artwork with Digi-View and make my own music by sampling instruments with my CD player attached or digitize huge animation sequences and use them as animated brushes in Dpaint III.

I also used to do programming on my machine. 

But what I remember most of all was compared to the schools Nimbus 80186 PC it was better built, quieter, faster, nicer to type on, nice to use. It was just such a special machine and it is the retro machine that defines the Ground Hog style days I would choose to repeat forever because for the first time it was more than just for playing games on like my C64 and it really could do everything I wanted.

Such a lovely machine.