Who remembers typing in games from magazines then? ... New bumper "Coding Again Like It's The 80s" video out over on YouTube, where I try first hand at trying to type-in a listing, namely "FROGGER", from the Oct 1994 edition of C&VG on my trusty #Commodore64 (cont.) ... - ThreadSky

kari.bsky.social • 34 days ago

Who remembers typing in games from magazines then? ... New bumper "Coding Again Like It's The 80s" video out over on YouTube, where I try first hand at trying to type-in a listing, namely "FROGGER", from the Oct 1994 edition of C&VG on my trusty #Commodore64 (cont.) ...

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Comments

gid.cx•33 days ago

Ugh, monumentally tedious even on the Beeb with its decent keyboard. We also had barcode listings that were error-prone due to bad printing and more trouble than just typing it. Same for "Telesoftware" downloads from Teletext (Ceefax page 700!) and "flexidiscs" (a whole other story)

gid.cx•33 days ago

Barcode listings: https://archive.org/details/AcornUser029-Dec84/page/n99/mode/2up
Flexi-discs: https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/jul/07/video-games-on-vinyl-flexi-discs-zx-spectrum
Telesoftware: https://teletext.mb21.co.uk/gallery/ceefax/telesoftware/

I hate to say it, but the content was always weak compared to commercial software. All that hassle just to run a subpar BASIC game was an anticlimax.

kari.bsky.social•33 days ago

Actually did a video on the Flexi Disc and to my/and many others apparently I got it to work lol https://youtu.be/1FePROXUG6E

gid.cx•33 days ago

I forgot that video! Great job.

You should try the barcode listings, though. They were… interesting. Bad printing, shiny paper leading to poor signal, and the most rudimentary barcode reader ever made. Oh, and long thin lines meaning you had to use a ruler and swipe at a very constant speed.

pauliehughes.bsky.social•34 days ago

Love the War Games Tee. Classic!

kari.bsky.social•33 days ago

it's a great movie👍

pauliehughes.bsky.social•33 days ago

John Lennon was supposed to play Professor Falcon in it!

uploadingvirus.bsky.social•33 days ago

/me raises hand

ericsedge.com•33 days ago

Ah, the good old days when we had to type everything in from books or magazines. It also helped with learning how to code.

cowboybanjobiker.bsky.social•33 days ago

Coding in games from a magazine is what caused me to buy my first 1541, after my mom turned off my c64 to save electricity.

yesterzine.bsky.social•34 days ago

I’m guessing 1984, CVG was a very different mag by 94 :)

kari.bsky.social•33 days ago

ha, yep ... didn't notice the typo until someone else pointed it out over on FB, and after I posted it everywhere ... always the way lol

yesterzine.bsky.social•33 days ago

Thankfully I caught it but I once rerendered a forty minute video because of a single character typo in a caption in minute forty.

hfleming.bsky.social•34 days ago

Yeah, typing the same game in over and over again, because the power supply didn’t make good contact, or the RAM-cartridge got unseated by the cat, or the tape-save didn’t work…. Then the game doesn’t work and you are forced to buy the magazine for the next year because of all the errata. 😂🤣😂

littlebigdej.bsky.social•32 days ago

Best T-shirt!! As a teenager I coud never muster the courage to type a full game from a magazine on my Amstrad CPC! Kudos!

paul-g.bsky.social•33 days ago

I also owned something called White Lightning, which was an version of Forth with some game specific extensions. There was a large type-in listing in the manual for a Lunar Lander game. I could never get that to work, and being written in Forth it was impossible to determine why it wasn't working.

paul-g.bsky.social•34 days ago

I once spent hours typing in line after line of hex code for one assembly language game from one particular magazine. The magazine had included checksums with the listing to make errors impossible. But they hadn't tested the loader, and it mangled the data when writing it into memory.

der-kleine-drache.bsky.social•33 days ago

What sticks with me is the feeling after spending hours typing, only for it to not work in the end. Then, more hours checking, and still nothing! Great times. 😂

commanderkrennic.bsky.social•34 days ago

Reminds me of when I did the same on an IBM clone my Dad purchased. Copied a lot of code from magazines. 👌🏼

movievertigo.com•33 days ago

I still have all my physical copies of this from when I was a kid... https://archive.org/details/inputmagazine

kari.bsky.social•33 days ago

bought a full set of these, still in their binders not so long ago ... love them👍

iamhodgy.bsky.social•34 days ago

Yep

10 PRINT “Hello “,
20 GOTO 10

kari.bsky.social•33 days ago

👍

retrowizzard.bsky.social•33 days ago

Oh the endless hours I've spent, only to discover that it wouldn't work.
Until my grandpa told me that I should also buy the next few issues of the magazine. And sure enough the corrections were in one of them. Clever trick by the editors.🙄😅

kari.bsky.social•34 days ago

... check out the video thought the link below ... as not only do I get a type-in listing game running on the C64, but also 4 more from the same magazine, on the TI99/4A, #ZXSpectrum, VIC-20 and #BBCMicro👍
https://youtu.be/tFb89_gN2dE

carnivius.bsky.social•34 days ago

I used to type in some from Amstrad Action, which had a lil program you run first which adds a check code thingy to each line so you know for sure you typed it correctly. :)

brewskii2117.bsky.social•33 days ago

We had a similar magazine, I think it might have been called "Home Computing" that had the same program for multiple computers. I remember the comparable screen shots from a lunar lander type game made me decide on a c64 to replace my TI994a.

normalherbs.bsky.social•34 days ago

Really love what you’re doing, Kari. You’re a magnificent human who brightens up the world.

bpharoah.bsky.social•33 days ago

This brings back a lot of childhood memories. I once typed in a massive long 16K listing for the ZX81, but I didn't have a cassette deck at the time, so I spent as long as I could playing it until it had to be switched off!

kari.bsky.social•30 days ago

great story and oh no! lol

bitnacht.bsky.social•34 days ago

I did type in a few programs, but that was in the 80s. Typing in basic was ok, but the most fun came with hex listings. They usually had checksums and the editor would sound a beep at the end of the line to tell correct lines from mistakes. Typing in had a rhythm: … clacky-clack, clacky-clack, bing!

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