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1986: COMPUTER GAMES - More Than Just SHOOT-EM-UPs? | Micro Live | Retro Gaming | BBC Archive
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- Опубліковано 14 сер 2024
- "Sports games, to me, are perhaps the most appalling use of computers."
Micro Live's Ian McNaught Davis and Fred Harris take a look at computer games software. What games would they recommend to people looking for a more cerebral alternative to the arcade-style shoot-em-ups that dominate the market?
Fred looks at adventure games, like Magnetic Scrolls' The Pawn for the Atari ST, Amiga and Commodore 64. There are also computer versions of classic board games like chess, Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit. Finally he looks at the "creative arcade games" - Pinball Construction Set on the Commodore 64, and Marble Madness for the Amiga.
Originally broadcast 24 October, 1986.
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As a boy I used to spend hours in the pc shop reading and drooling over the game cassettes until my dad rewarded my dedication with my very own Commodore 64 which I still have today.
You're a great son.
You must be from the south of England! Not working class and either grafting 6 days a week in the cotton mills or down pits for you. Not jealous but I hope your butler made sure he got you a serviette so you didn’t spill your caviar on the new hand stitched velvet 3 piece suit
I love how they keep referring to people who play games as "addicts".
Don't forget "freaks"
I wouldn't say 'they' specifically, could just have been this specific presenter. I can't imagine the majority calling gamers 'addicts' or 'freaks', even then 😛
Man, even being raised in the 90s, there was a negative social stigma attached to gaming.
I wasn't even the 'dorky' type, but was a gamer and so was teased for it at school.
Well the term addict wasn't being used in the literal sense of a drug addict, it was just a light hearted way of describing someone keen on their hobby. There was a popular TV show in the 80s called Telly Addicts as a case in point; a game show which tested the contestants' knowledge of TV programmes, and the constestants were perfectly ordinary people.
the term "addict" in the 80s/90s UK slang wasn't exclusively used in a negative way - it was popular slang for a fan or enthusiast kinda like how we use the word "geek" more often today. (Oxford English Dictionary still shows it's informal meaning to be "an enthusiastic devotee of a specified thing or activity.") For sure there was a lot of a negative press about gaming but in this context I think the presenter is being a bit more playful than he sounds in today's context.
Whilst affable Fred Harris is inevitably more polite Mcnaught Davis doesn’t even try to conceal his contempt for gaming!
It's great. He's very angry about sports games isn't he.
@@grantd165Yeah. He's arguing as if someone suggested they were an alternative for getting outside and doing things.
@@bruceyboy7349 It's funny isn't it. Someone should tell him you can do both!
@@lux3512 but not at the same time
It's not condescending, it's humour... He's just joking.
I happened to like the "crude shoot em ups" and 30 or so years later still do!
Those two would have their minds blown by Doom Eternal, for a start!
Watching this when I've just turned 50 is getting me all misty eyed. What a generation to be a part of.
watching at 54 :-) i remember back then like it was last year - C64 was king!
The best generation before life became so complex thanks to the internet.
Yes mate! Same! Glorious!
Ahhhh drawing them maps......
Your friend sat next to you with graph paper. What an era to have lived through
Soon to be 50 😮
I had a Colecovision > Atari 2600 > MSX > C64 > Sega MD & PC.
Simpler times, there were only _two genders_ and asking a girl out was legal...
Great clip! I watched every episode of Micro Live as a teen in the 80s and even then groaned to myself at the general disdain for how most of us were using home computers!
@Benson nice to see you! Seriously I used to watch anything tech on the BBC back then and they were all.... similar in style.
Wow Gordon! The man, the myth, the legend! So it is true…respect…unfortunately I only had access to GAMESMASTER hosted by Dominic Diamond and special guest Patrick Moore in the early 90’s so missed these Micro Lives but hooked now. I had a Spectrum 48k and was amazed when I won the £5 jackpot on FRUIT MACHINE if you remember that?
@@balaclava8237 hah! Yes, I seem to recall some games where you could win actual prizes. There was one which ended up with a treasure hunt around the Uk too as I recall. I also watched gamesmaster and it was way more sympathetic to us gamers - I do love the general disdain on these early shows though!
🎮🕹
As a gamer rapidly approaching 60 I will happily admit to still being an 'addict', from my early days playing on my Atari VCS/2600 to my present day PS5/Xbox Series X/ Nintendo Switch* i've enjoyed whatever system has come my way, and hopefully will continue to do so for however many years I still have left to me.
Old gamers never die, they just lose control of their peripherals...
*not the OLED one, I'm not that flash! 🎮🕹
“Perhaps the most appalling use of computers.” Good old Mac, Dailey Thompson’s Decathlon is pretty mild compared to what we get up to on computers these days 😂
Accompanied by a different type of 'joystick waggling'.
Joystick destruction
I remember watching this episode! I was gobsmacked at the quality of Marble Madness on the Amiga, I had a C64 at the time. It would be 2 long years before I could afford one. Great nostalgia watching these old shows
That "Oh shut up, will you?" 😂
He's right, it was annoying.
I love how the subject was treated without prejudice on British TV in the 80s. On German TV you won't find such a contribution, it was always about how evil computer games are.
yes its not really changed really as germany still has some of the most strictest game censorship in the world along with australia, funny how australia gets all mad over potrayals of fictional drugs and strong violence.
Do you think that the 'video game violence' discussion was even a thing back in the year 1986?
@@kingwinter2024 totally, that and using sex to sell games such as Barbarian, tits and violence that made old ladies clutch their pearls
There’s some pretty clear prejudice in this video lol
The BBC would be all about computer games and their links to colonialism if it was made today.
How things have progressed, still love the 1980's
I love commodore , still own my c64 and Amiga from the 80’s. There’s a lot of nostalgia attached to them .
I had that Scrabble game! I remember playing it on my Spectrum. I don't ever remember accidentally making the words "risky sex toy drool" though. Well done, Fred :D One thing I do remember is that I was baffled by how they managed to fit an 11,000-word dictionary into the limited memory space, and I seem to remember that I eventually managed to reverse-engineer it, but the details of how it was done have been lost in the whirlwind of my life, sadly. I think it was some sort of tree structure.
The last time I asked an "addict", I didn't get a shiny new disc in my baggy, I got some nice white "sherbet". It did make me stay up all night playing Decathlon.
You'll break your joystick if you're not careful.
Pinball construction set was my go to. That, M.U.L.E and any sim game. Like SimCity, Railroad Tycoon, etc… I loved anything that would allow me to create my own games. Quake construction had me working nonstop on single player levels. So much so, that many of mine were very popular online. I created elevators that would take you to new levels. Levels that looked like you went from the inside to the outside. Underwater areas that held secret keys to get into secret areas. That construction set was so intricate and most people didn’t know just how much you could do with it. To the point, you could make levels that the actual designers of the game would gush over.
So many great times from my first computer, the Commodore Vic 20, then the TI 994a, Amiga and then PC. I used to program the hell out of the Commodore 64. I even had a light pen, that had very few actual pieces of software for it… But it was easy to program for it. So I essentially had a touchscreen windows interface, long before that was a thing. I could use it to put multiple icons on the screen for different games on the same cassette or discs drive and load them separately by touching the icon with the light pen.
I remember having a modem for the Atari 2600, that let you dial into a 800 number and for $20 a month on a credit card… You could download one game at a time, because that is all the cartridge memory supported… but, you could simply erase that game and download whatever else you wanted whenever you wanted. Which was essentially, Xbox Live 20 years before it actually became a thing. Which was awesome. It saved a lot of money buying games.
Regardless, I love history with computers and games. I was there from the very start. Pong, the arcades, the first home consoles… I even had a light gun game that would project aliens and birds and stuff on the wall and you could use the light gun to shoot them and it would score you. Was one of the coolest yard sale finds I found in the 80s. Regardless, it was a hell of a time to grow up and experience it all from the very beginning to what we have now. It’s amazing how far graphics have come in 40 years. From little tiny pixels to the lifelike Visuals we have today and it’s only going to get better as time goes on. The point where you won’t be able to tell video game from real life.
Advanced AI that will try to outsmart us with NPC characters and being able to have a real conversation with those characters in real time and have them remember those conversations and continue them at a later time. Which will allow players to build friendships in the game and add a real psychological emotional aspect. Allowing you to care for those characters in the game world, and if anything happens to them, it would affect you just like it would with a real person. Real-time speech recognition and intelligent response. Something I’ve been talking to developers about for 20 years and it’s finally starting to happen. next generation after the PS5 and Series X, should be really incredible.
As they are going to be using ARM processors that will be exponentially more powerful than the X86 and on top of that… both AI and raytracing hardware acceleration, along with the ability to offload some of the work to super computers online. Which will bring amazing real world physics to gameplay. Allowing us to shoot the corner of the building which can fall to the street below and kill our enemies, for which they can do the same to you. Making every step you take a lesson in patience and awareness of surroundings… realizing that the world around you can be used as a weapon for both you and the AI. Not to mention, that AI can collaborate together to take you out by coordinating their movements based off of yours.
Should be a lot of fun and I can’t wait. Let’s just hope that developers can keep up with the technology. Which has become ever more expensive to create these games. Especially when you were talking about implementing AI and physics. Which thankfully, engines like UE5 are making it much easier for developers to do so. By implementing those features with drag and drop functionality. We will see what happens, but it’s definitely exciting as it has been from the very start.
damn just looking at the packaging on those games makes me so nostalgic for my 10-year-old self's love for computer games and computers.
I've never come across the phrase "Ask an addict" before, but I'm going to start using it now.
03:02 kinky sod
Being half dead I had to verify that a few times. 👍👍👍
Ahhh Fred Harris, i remember him narrating Boris The Bold cartoon in the 70s.
Good old Fred, i always got him mixed up with Christopher Lillicrap back in the day.
Crazy days.
Wonder what happened to him?
He was in The Burkiss Way, a comedy show on Radio 4 in the 70s. I saw a couple of recordings of it.
Funny I always got him mixed up with Jona Lewie
I think The Pawn is still very popular now. Well I've heard a lot of people talking about it but others say it's a bad influence. Not tried it myself of course.
I use the pawn regularly
I watched this and then after saving for roughly two years I got my Amiga 500 and a copy of Marble Madness!
Brilliant thank you for adding to the BBC archive
I remember watching this series growing up in the 80's. I thought it was shown on a Sunday afternoon but looking through BBC Genome it was shown on various days of the week throughout the 80's.
Scrabble on the ZX Spectrum - even for forty-ish years it's a classic game.
On the Spectrum 48k, FRUIT MACHINE was a winner. £5 jackpot was the target.
This is an awesome video! Great memories from the 80s with my Commodore 64!
"Ask an addict" 😂 1:59
So the lesson here is video games based on sports are a terrible use of a computer, whereas video games based on board games are a fantastic use of computers.
Okay. :S
'Snapper' a Pacman clone for BBC Micro/ Acorn Electron is a "monster game".
The most 80s middle class middle aged male approach to gaming.
Back when games didn't have microtransactions. I'd want that Trivial Pursuit one but now its full of microtransactions.
Grumpy Mac not holding back there 😂
That "Mission Omega" loading screen looks eerily reminiscent of Ian Bird's Millennium 2.2. Judging by the story line of Mission Omega, it appears Millennium 2.2 is an unofficial sequel.
If you are not sure... Ask an addict. Love it
I wrote a 'crude' shoot-em-up, finished it last year, started it in 2014, it was based on an arcade game named Star Force.
ok
Did you try bringing it out on STEAM?
@@davidlister370 it's on itch my game... called Galaxy Pilot by BeDazzled, check it out, let me know how it plays, it's pretty basic, kind of started off as a project that mutated into a bigger one that got turned into a game... I was just pleased to finish it really, I actually made it into a real world cabinet just like a proper arcade game, it's in my kitchen gathering dust.
Nice! I used to play Star Force in our youth club at School (circa 1986) and it was the first Arcade game I saw emulated on a PC (circa 1994 or 95) using Sparcade, which blew my mind at the time. I'll go and check it out :)
“Ask an addict for advice”. I’ll remember that next time in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens
Decathlon with keyboard and joystick use was a real desktop workout.
Why would I ask an addict about what adventure game to buy for the Commodore 64?🤔 🤣
Imagine seeing and reviewing (20)23 games back in that day, I mean if games could time travel >Fred Harris comes across GTA V ......and goes into Scanner mode.
This is both euphoric and depressing, I vividly recall this being on the BBC when I was at school moving from punch cards to micros. Their will never be am equal time to the late 70s early 80s for technology.
Marble Madness was the first game I bought for my Amiga, really was arcade perfect.
How times have changed!
I remember watching this years ago when was first broadcast thinking, "dumb as a pile of bricks." If memory serves, the series didn't stick around for long. Some things never fundamentally change; presenters still more focused on impressing their imaginary audience, rather than entertaining or informing anyone.
It was aired at a time when home computers in the UK were still not ubiquitous, and the average user was an average person without a lot of tech knowledge. To say they didn't inform anyone misses the point - you may have been a genius at computers and tech (maybe you were the Micro Live Prestel 'hacker' (cracker), who knows?) in which case, yes, a lot of it would pass way beneath you. That said, the presenters were well-known and generally liked for a certain audience - Fred Harris, Chris Serle, Lesley Judd, IMD and so on.
It "stuck around" for several years, on and off, and if you take the various programmes as a whole (including "The Computer Programme", "Making the Most of the Micro" and so on) it was a fairly comprehensive block of high-level/low-level (depending on how you want to define those terms) information.
And back in the '80s presenters tended to do far less to "impress" their actual audience (they had a fairly good idea how many people were watching) than they do these days - thanks in part to a far fewer number of TV channels and other entertainment outlets to distract people.
We still have our Amstrad CPC 464, With a colour moniter! And its still works- had some great games on that. Our favourite was How To Be. A Complete B*****d" 😂
What happened to adventure games? They should make a come back. I know the massive multiplayer games (or whatever theyr'e called) exist but they're full of shooting and swords and crap. In game questions and cvonversations perfect for AI too.
Search for "AI Dungeon"
How about Rust, Night in the Woods, I believe Final Fantasy is still releasing new editions. My kid plays Genshin Impact. You can also find the simplistic versions, of these type of games as apps on your phone, because they are too simple for consoles and computers.
All adventure games had swords, or fighting of some sort. You just need a tiny bit of skill, to fight in today's adventure games. A very tiny amount of skill.
The Outer Worlds and Fallout 3, NV and 4 come to mind. They're good adventure games, though they're action adventure. Plenty of conversations with response choices, though 👍🏻
I think the old school types go by the name Interactive Fiction now, there are quite a few modern ones out there.
@@tachikomakusanagi3744There's also a lot of games that use a game book structure, which I feel is similar. I highly recommend "The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante" and "Roadwarden", and there's always the "Choice of Games" series if you want the game book equivalent of cheap mass market paperbacks.
I remember those days, boring old farts telling us whats a good computer game, hilarious.
02:58 Fred just saying what's on his mind...did Yewtree ever look into him?
10 seconds of ''BEEP BEEP'' and he said oh shut up will you!!!???.
And he is a tech head...Fast forward to Today, kids listen to that 24 7!..🖥🖥✍🏼
The last lines still hold up today.
'the humble Commodore 64' .... it was a God compared to the VIC 20 I had before 😂
Just shows how far computer games have evolved from a handful of bytes to the teens or hundreds of gigabytes we now have.
And still, you still have to look past the oversaturated genres and creatively bankrupt schlok to find the actual good stuff.
Some things change, some things stay the same.
„Well, if sex doesn‘t excite you, look at this joystick!“ 😅😁
That sports game is Go For The Gold AKA Hes Games, not Daley Thompson's Decathlon. It seems some of you spent too much time going out and getting a spot of fresh air and not enough time indoors playing games!
RISKY SEX..yip..he looks the type🤣🤣🤣 but i honestly wish i hadnt watched this..talk about feeling ancient..a long time ago but still fresh in the memory..life is fleeting😔
It's 2024, I'm 47 years old, games have come on in leaps & bounds... Yet i get a sinking feeling when i play a new Assasins Creed game, I've seen it all before 😢
5:44 Was never into the Amiga. Knew could never have one so didn't interest me. Even in college in the 90s would poke at Michael Harris (reading this?) for still loving his when we were all on Windows. However, seeing those graphics now and knowing it was 1986, it really was advanced for its time.
Was Fred Harris separated at birth from Jona Lewie?
Or Pino Palladino ?
They got it so wrong, us kids back then went crazy over all these games, they're touting text adventures more and more traditional games for educational purposes really, but we couldn't care less.
Fred’s got a dirty mind .. bad Fred.
These computer things seem interesting, might try one
I had marble madness!!🤗Great until you get to the level with the tube worms that would get you!
Mac and Lesley are absolutely rinsing Fred at Scabble. Get Rekt.
"sports games are perhaps the most appalling use of computers"
With a couple of exceptions, I have to agree
BBC got it wrong ...40 years on and yes the quirky games are ok but its the shoot em ups that shine as a tribute to that age
Enters "SEX" then follows with innuendos: "Oh yes, I'll definitely have that yes please", and "Well if that doesn't excite you" then even a "leave it playing on its own" 😂
The 1980s were to gaming what the 1950s were to rock 'n' roll
"And even for the humble Commodore 64"......1986, the C64 was only a 1/3 through it's humbler to come life !!
I was 8 ...The illegal part excited me
That C64 is gleaming white... a UA-camr retrobriter's dream.
I am pleased to say I got 'hardened mollusc secretions' immediately...honest!
Inside Fred's head is why would anyone play games when you can get into a good old spreadsheet.
"Ask an addict" for advice?
A game called 'Porn'?
"Go down the pub"?
How times have changed! 😂
Perfect example of how out of touch this show always was. You can tell if they had to press more than one button or key at a time it was beyond their mentality. The average teenage gamer back then would of used Thrust as the game to show off gravity, the choice of a true gamer! 😀
Oh Ian McNaught-Davis don't be an old fuddy duddy.
So many double entendres 😂 Awesome
"....you can always leave it playing on its own while you pop down the pub!" oooohhher missus!
What a bizarrely antagonistic review of games
It's not antagonistic. He praised many of the games.
(1:03) Apparently "adventure games" can present a real mental challenge.
You mean, kind of like... Going outdoors, and embarking on a...real adventure?
Walking up a hill, that sort of thing?
They were notoriously hard at the time, real fiendish puzzles. A lot of them didn't really make sense, but part of it was this idea that the game had to be meaty. And since they didn't have much room to program, the best way was by making the game hard.
But I think the draw of those games to this day is the ability to explore a wide area even if you only have 30 minutes for a quick session. For people who live in cities, are disabled in some way, are busy with their lives, or just want something new, a game presents a way to interact with far-flung imaginative places. We don't judge people for picking up a good book, so why should we judge them for picking up what's essentially an interactive version of one?
Have you ever tried playing text adventures from the 80s? Those are brutal!
@@volo870 (and dado) I see what you're saying (🥴"See what you're saying" - that's the English language for you)
It's a bit of escapism, if I *can't* walk up that hill today.
A lot of them though, it wasn't so much that they were hard, as either 1. the parser didn't understand what you meant. 2. Limited "vocabulary" where specific ITEMS had to be called exactly what they were, not a synonym.@@dado__
@@lmcgregoruk Yeah, that was definitely part of it, though from the games I've read about and played the puzzles are often still very obtuse even if you know the parser limitations.
1:58 "Or better still ask an addict" Really!!!!
I asked my cousin, but he just offered me some skag.
I like my crude shoot em ups!
This is the funniest bbc thing ive seen on youtube.
I'll definitely have that!
I tell you what, the BBC youtube content is better than any of their tv channels, wonder how long its gonna be before they start charging for it
Well 2027 the licence fee is finally supposed to be getting scrapped.
One of my mates had a Dragon32 does anyone remember that?
In which an old man tells kids to go touch grass.
Mcnaught Davis loved, all the boring bits of computing..... Spreadsheets, accounting, yawn! Little did he know how the gaming industry would take off. RIP Ian...
Six Fred! You could've used Six! Dirty boy...
They weren’t the best spokespeople for computer games.
Talking about games whilst insulting gamers.... I cannot fathom why this is not on the air anymore...
I've always said for years, the best computer around this time was the Amstrad CPC 464. The best all-round machine, however when I look at the games on UA-cam many of them are absolute rubbish. Same as anything I guess, when you didn't know any different what could you expect.
I liked Ian McNaught Davis in general but he was a real snob/naysayer when it came to computer games. He often talked them down as if they were unimportant or a poor use of the increasing power of computers.
The presenters spent the rest of their lives playing Solitaire when the PC became mainstream 😆
Ask a addict 😂
Nobody told EA Sports that people get bored of sports games. 😚
Some early examples of online pawn and sex here.
what did he mean by risky sex???🧐
Not taking your socks off, probably.
Might have thought a computer virus was an STD
Naff.
I much prefer gaming back then. Now it really mostly is the same type of crap that doesn't interest me.
🤣🤣🤣
Sadly, it is mostly shooters now. And Minecraft, which is also a kind of shooter.
No, no they are not and no it is not.
You are still burning calories playing sports games. Just make sure to lift potato chips into your mouth to burn more.