Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

One for the ancient videogamers out there...

Braybrook as well, John Rowlands and Steve Rowlands for Creatures and Mayhem in Monsterland.

cr4.GIF
 
ATOMIC SUPLEX said:
I only know Geoff Minter.

Oh, I'm friends with Richard Wilcox. He did commando for the spectrum and airwolf.
Click to expand...


I often have moments when i think commando on the spectrum was the best 'puter game i've ever played, it terms of playabilty etc, not objectively like, but for me.
 
what a thread!

Kanda said:
1. Barbarian

barbarian_palace_software.jpg


2. Unsure
Click to expand...

omg!!! i not seen that for years!!!! memories are flooding back...i'm almost in tears!!!!

as for number two - i think it was nemesis but that's wrong cos that was a shoot 'em up.
 
Got to be the legendary Braben & Bell for Elite.

Hours of flying between far flung star systems on my Dad's BBC B, desperately trying to dock at space stations, fucking it up endlessly until I'd made enough cash for a docking computer....:cool: :cool: :cool:
 
braben and bell.

minter was quite good for originality but elite was just awe-inspiring. absolutely amazing that they could do THAT on a BBC B.
 
tommers said:
braben and bell.

minter was quite good for originality but elite was just awe-inspiring. absolutely amazing that they could do THAT on a BBC B.
Click to expand...
RIGHT ON COMMANDER! :D

Pure genius.

:cool:
 
Did you know...he also wrote the arcade perfect conversions of Bubble Bobble and Rainbow Islands? I only know this cos I knew the Graftgold crew cos they were based in my home town and used to come to the computer club at civic centre...

Bizarrely, I actually prefer Gribbly's Day Out to Paradroid and Uridium...
 
EastEnder said:
RIGHT ON COMMANDER! :D

Pure genius.

:cool:
Click to expand...

serious question.... do you think it has all been downhill from there? honestly, when you think of the other games that were released at that time.. elite was in a completely different class.

I'm still angry that the computer mag I read at the time, "personal computer world" or something, gave it's Game of the Month award to Pyjamarama instead of Elite. :mad: I even added up the review scores too, and elite won! It's only cos Pyjamarama was on the fashionable spectrum and elite was on the more mature BBC. I bet they fucking regret that decision now!! :mad:

(I was an angry and deeply geeky kid.)
 
BUt but but...Pyjamarama was a fucking GENIUS game, and like it's 'sequel' Skooldaze had tons of really cool little gameplay elements. Admittedly not as massive as Elite, but easily up there in terms of game design and innovation etc...
 
tommers said:
serious question.... do you think it has all been downhill from there? honestly, when you think of the other games that were released at that time.. elite was in a completely different class.
Click to expand...
Difficult to avoid a bit of bias due to misty spectacled reminiscing...... but, I still think Elite was unsurpassed. I used to play that game for hours and hours and hours.....

It was, to the best of my knowledge, the first game that really presented an unconstrained environment - all the other games were about going from A->B->C, usually in a crappy 2D world. I just loved the fact that you could do whatever the fuck you liked in Elite - wanna fly round the sun all day? No problem! Wanna sit outside a space station watching passing traffic all afternoon? Bring it on! And the way they squeezed what felt like a seriously big universe into a piddly 32K was outstanding....:cool:

A seminal classic, best of it's time by a million light years.

photo.gif


:cool:
 
kyser_soze said:
BUt but but...Pyjamarama was a fucking GENIUS game, and like it's 'sequel' Skooldaze had tons of really cool little gameplay elements. Admittedly not as massive as Elite, but easily up there in terms of game design and innovation etc...
Click to expand...

yeah I liked skooldaze.

but.... come on. "easily up there in terms of game design and innovation". !?!?!?

Pyjamarama was an arcade adventure platform game involving avoiding enemies, collecting items to solve puzzles, losing three lives to end the game. I mean yep, maybe collecting items to solve puzzles was an innovation at the time, but I'm sure other games had done it before. And yes, maybe the game within a game was a new idea (apparently you could play space invaders in one of the rooms). Cool. Not saying it's a bad game.

But come on.... Elite. I mean, where do you start? There was NOTHING like it before that came out. It contained 8 GALAXIES, each containing 256 WORLDS. The player could trade items between different economies to increase their wealth so that they could buy improvements for their ship. Is that the first time that was possible in a computer game? Your enemies flew different ships that acted differently, handled differently and reacted to you differently. You were rated on your combat prowess. You could save your progress. You didn't have any of this "three lives" crap, you had a ship and once that was destroyed then that was it.

I mean, I'm probably wrong but I can't think of another game where these concepts (which are now present in pretty much every RPG, Driving game etc etc) were present before elite. It was completely groundbreaking.

So there. :D

cue somebody saying "yes, but in 1974, the game star trader included space trading". :D
 
EastEnder said:
It was, to the best of my knowledge, the first game that really presented an unconstrained environment - all the other games were about going from A->B->C, usually in a crappy 2D world.
Click to expand...

fucking hell. exactly. that is exactly what it was. typical, I miss the biggest one! :rolleyes:
 
Braben and Bell for Elite for me as well. An awe-inspiring, jaw-droppingly amazing game on my Electron and it only ran in BW and took a third of the screen memory as game memory, so the top and bottom of the screen was full of noise. I once played it for 32 hours straight at the weekend. Even the novella it came with was wicked.

It's the reason I play Eve-online too fucking much.

Bell has a website with emulators (and the novella) on it:
http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/c64/

Acorn_Electron_Elite.png


2nd would be the Bitmap Bros.
 
Ahhhh IK+ :) I think I played 'Stunt Car Racer' too - Think I borrowed it as I can only remember playing it a couple of times and then wanting to play it and not being able to find it :( Wish we never chucked the amiga out...
 
kyser_soze said:
*nods sagely* Good choice with Crammond there, altho I preferred 'Stunt Car Racer'...
Click to expand...

Stunt Car Racer was teh bollocks. :) Cracking game. I'm not a massive racing game fan, that was one I loved though.

Hmm... just thinking about this. My main era of gaming was the amiga. So I guess it's a tossup between the Bitmap Brothers (Gods, Speedball 2, Chaos Engine), the guys who did Turrican 1 and 2, whoever they were (near perfect slices of gaming heaven, which in my view haven't been beaten for difficulty curve, ever, or music come to that) and the team behind Rainbow Islands and Parasol Stars/Bubble Bobble.
 
I always thought Elite was one of those games that was better in theory than in practice. Conceptually it ought to have been amazing, but there was always this feeling that there just wasn't any real direction or point to it, plus the fact that you were looking at a bunch of flat black and white lines.

Manic Miner was a better game, for my money. :cool:
 
If we're talking Geoff Crammond....

The Sentinel on the Commodore 64.

18 months of my life spent completing the 10,000 levels on that game, I've never known such pressure from a game. Download VICE, get The Sentinel and play it, you won't regret it.

Oh, and how about the guys behind the Ultimate Play the Game games on the Speccy, Ashby Computers and Graphics, Atic Atac, Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore, Jetpac etc, all classics.

Mark.
 
Turrican 1 and 2,
Click to expand...

Chris Hulsbeck, altho I think he 'only' did the music.

The Sentinel on the Commodore 64
Click to expand...

ARRGH! Another supreme game! 3d chess on a varied landscape!

BTW - point taken about Elite vs Pyjamarama...and Elite is one of the reasons I've never played EON cos I know it would destroy life, relationshi and socialising...
 
RenegadeDog said:
I always thought Elite was one of those games that was better in theory than in practice. Conceptually it ought to have been amazing, but there was always this feeling that there just wasn't any real direction or point to it, plus the fact that you were looking at a bunch of flat black and white lines.

Manic Miner was a better game, for my money. :cool:
Click to expand...
See a doctor. Now.

I don't know what's wrong with you, but it's bad, real bad.....:eek:
 
marksims68 said:
If we're talking Geoff Crammond....

The Sentinel on the Commodore 64.

18 months of my life spent completing the 10,000 levels on that game, I've never known such pressure from a game. Download VICE, get The Sentinel and play it, you won't regret it.
Click to expand...

This is one of those games I always wanted to play but never got round to. :(

What's VICE?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

ska invita
Help Create a live weather/train times/ tides/ news all-in-one diplay
Replies
13
Views
488
ska invita
ska invita
newme
Xbox one - second hand for Xmas
Replies
7
Views
373
mwgdrwg
mwgdrwg
pseudonarcissus
The end of an era..the passing of AOL dial-up
Replies
16
Views
471
NoXion
NoXion
editor
Help Software to let me select videos to be displayed on projector via HDMI
Replies
14
Views
668
elbows
elbows
krtek a houby
The voices of the Victorian era
Replies
1
Views
201
krtek a houby
krtek a houby
Back
Top Bottom