Sunday 21 August 2011

Retro gaming


Recently I've been revisiting a few old computer games that I played when I was between the ages of 5 and 10 at primary school.

'Snake' is the type of game that you find on a mobile phone these days, but back in the 80s it was cutting edge, and I would play for hours, until the body was coiled all around the screen.


You only have three lives, and it seems there is no 'end' to the game. Eventually there is not enough room left on the screen to move and at that point it is game over (if you haven't died before!)

These days I have trouble getting into games that require a lot of time investment - I still prefer the old and simple classics.

I'll blog about some of the old games as I complete them.

I consider that I have completed Snake... the snake became so long that the program could not keep all the previous information about the body in memory and the snake actually split into two pieces.

6 comments:

  1. Well done - but are you sure it's not a worm - reproducing itself?

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  2. I remember that game. I used to play it on my cellphone, it was fun!

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  3. Ah great fun! I did have a BBC emulator installed (much easier than getting the real thing out of the loft) and there is nothing better than a quick game of Dare Devil Dennis.

    You might also be interested in the Antique Code Show articles from The Register.

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  4. Is the beeb in the loft one you've had since childhood? or a more recent acquisition?

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  5. I played Jet Set Willie (I think it was called) once and Space Invaders. You mean there are other games?

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  6. No unfortunately the beeb in the loft isn't the original one that I had. That got given away when I was in my mid teens. The one in the loft actually belonged to Rob (my best man at the wedding) and when he helped his mother move house he thought I'd appreciate it more than he did so it got donated. It has a slight flaw in that the TV out seems to only do black-and-white. I probably need to dig into the manual and figure out which resistor or capacitor needs replacing -- not something you could do with a modern PC!

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