Blog

During April this blog will focus on the legal environment for computer games of the 1980s. This post explains why many early computer games are “orphan works”. (An orphan work is a work which is protected by copyright, but whose rights-owner, or owners, cannot be identified and/or located.) Orphan works ... Continue Reading »

We Want Your High Scores What was your high score? How did you share it with the world? Showcasing  gaming achievement was important for many game fans. Home computer fans had no public leader boards like those enjoyed in the arcades but  magazines once more came to the rescue of Australian micro ... Continue Reading »

Help columns were a regular feature of computer magazine in the 1980s. As Adventure games were perhaps the most challenging games to play frequently leaving players stuck and unable to progress the Adventure help guru was a must for most game publications. The popularity of “The Hobbit” and ... Continue Reading »

Forgotten what amused your 12 year old self? Rediscover the pleasure of school boy gags and code with this lost game of the 1980s. Matthew Hall's Microbee adventure game the “Jewels of Sancara Island” had survived the last thirty or so years as a Turbo Pascal listing ... Continue Reading »

In the last year of a Bachelor’s degree in Science at Melbourne University in 1981, Phil and I were hired by Fred Milgrom as part-time programmers to write “the best adventure game ever”. Based on the game’s commercial success and feedback from fandom still rolling in ... Continue Reading »

Over the next few weeks, our theme focus is on game fans and fan communities. Fans have had a significant role to play in taking the initiative to document and preserve videogames – the software, the hardware they were played on, and the memories and experiences of first playing them. ... Continue Reading »

This is an edited transcript of Matthew Hall's presentation on "The Australian Story" panel at the Game Masters Forum, Friday 29th June 2012. Matthew runs the one man design company Klicktock. I’m a one man band developer.  I pretty much do everything myself.  And I do it from a ... Continue Reading »

In Part 3 Carl tells us about designing his games  from making his own Smurf platformer based on a screenshot of a Colecovision Smurf game he saw published in a magazine to experimenting in sound for “Toccato”. It was a time for experimentation in what could be achieved on a micro and looking at screenshots in ... Continue Reading »

In Part 2 Carl tells us about finally getting his own computer, joining the local computer club and in how his interest in games design inspired him to learn Assembly language and dissemble games studying the works of UK designer Jeff (Yak) Minter. VIC-20 During the final term the school bought a newfangled Commodore VIC-20. This ... Continue Reading »

 In Part 1 Carl tells us about where he first encountered computers as a child in Fiji and how he created his first games (and made his first sale) typing listings onto the display machines at his New Zealand home town’s computer shop. These are some of ... Continue Reading »

I’ve been making games for a while and what got me into games as a kid was a visit to the Lismore Show. I grew up in rural NSW and a trip to the Lismore Show was a big event - it was basically lots of cows and horses and ... Continue Reading »

The pleasures of the text Frustrated gamers playing text adventures would inevitably find themselves at some time typing a string of expletives into the hapless interface only to be rewarded by a snide comment or just more stonewalling from the game. Infuriating and often very punitive on the player the punishing ... Continue Reading »

How does game development back in the early 80’s compare to game development today? For starters, the computers of that era were far less powerful  and didn’t have anywhere near the graphics and audio capabilities of today’s power houses. My TRS-80 was monochrome and offered a graphic resolution of only 128 ... Continue Reading »

The Poly could well have been the first microcomputer specifically designed for educational use in the world, and it came from New Zealand. The Poly was designed by Neil Scott and Paul Bryant at Wellington Polytechnic (hence its name) in 1980 as ... Continue Reading »

I was never in the "gaming scene" or "gaming culture" as such. I was never a member of a software-swapping "club" nor did I spend many night and weekends gaming with my peers. Unlike many retro-gaming enthusiasts, who remember the games of their school and teenage years, by the time I ... Continue Reading »

I purchased my first computer back in the Christmas of 1980. A Tandy/Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 1. This computer came with 16K of RAM, which I upgraded internally to 32K. It used an 8 bit Z-80 processor running at 1.78Mhz and had a monochrome graphics capability of 128 x 48 ... Continue Reading »

IBM released its personal computer in 1981.  Whilst this would be the system that would lead to ‘PC’ becoming a synonym for a computer sitting on a desktop, it was quite expensive.  Prices started at $1,565 (presumably USD) for a configuration without disk drives (Wikipedia).  Apples -- destined for the ... Continue Reading »

Local role playing games conventions such as Melbourne’s Arcanacon and Canberra’s Cancon were important in the 1980s in bringing together people who were interested in the emerging genre of home computer games. Steve Fawkner, author of the “Warlords” series and “Puzzlequest” games, recalls taking the first ... Continue Reading »

The Microbee was an Australian computer designed, built, and marketed by Applied Technology, in Gosford, N.S.W.  Originally released in February 1982, it was intended for the schools market but also had a wide and deep following amongst home users.  A considerable amount of software was published locally for the Microbee, ... Continue Reading »

In the long 1980s decade, some hardly souls in both New Zealand and Australia built their own computers. New Zealand Microcomputer Club legend, Selwyn Arrow, recalls building his first computer (or part thereof): It was either Christmas 77 or 78, more likely 1978…A copy of Byte magazine arrived…I read it ... Continue Reading »