A trip down memory lane--who else got their start with this?

[Dawn]

Ooooooooo I have oh so many happy memories of the 8 bit era, I still wake up at night with the feeling of the Spectrum 48 rubber keys under my fingertips. The memories are so vivid they make me weep!!! My body still thrills with excitement at the thought of notching tapes to make them double sided how inventive was that? Wow, we were out there in our day weren't we?
My favourite time was when Manic Minor and Jet Set Willy sliced off The Bards Tale in The Shadow of the Beast and The Prince of Persia went One on One down by The Way of the Exploding Fist. Larry Bird and Michael Jordan hid from the Demon Stalkers up in the Atic Atac whilst Super Jetman went to the bathroom for a Super Boulder Dash. In the meantime, The Lombard Rally ran over Lode Runner and The Hobbit left his Gauntlet in the Wasteland!

One helluva day!!!!!

[KiwiHopeful]

Gentlemen, I believe we are being mocked.

[kokopeli]

We started with a Sinclair ZX81, a truly miserable experience compared to those fabulous multi-coloured C64 graphics! I remember spending all Christmas Day and Boxing Day tapping in line after line after line of code from a magazine so I could play Death Ray Martian Invasion or something similar, only to hit the 'delete' key about two lines from the end. Ahhh, they don't make Christmases like that anymore!

Sinclair_ZX81

[KiwiHopeful]

I remember the same thing on the C64. It was about 30 lines of actual instructions, then 1,000,000 lines of 370 POKE56333,127:POKE 1,PEEK(1)AND251

It was some fun though, wasn't it ... especially when it didn't work and you'd look at the screen until your eyes bled so you could find the one line with 8I2 rather than 812 or the missing comma ... boy, those were the days.

For Taffy: A history of the Amiga, part 1: Genesis: Page 1

[Taffy]

Jon, the Spectrum 48 was the ZX Spectrum, same as I had. I think it's full title was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k - with a whole 7 colour display capability! The awesome command line where you could program in Basic, and write games on the spot. The cool 'Load ""' command to get the flashing edges of the screen going to start your tape player, and the fantabulous screams of modulated data pouring down the aux lead.

Dawn, you aint lived gal.

[Banjo.Jon]

With all this nostalgia going on, I may well find myself raiding the parents loft to see if I can get the damned things working again.

My Parents still have one of these at home and even let me play with it at Christmas if I am vair vair lucky!

[Taffy]

OMG the Atari 7000 series game console!! I think we had one of those breifly too, but it disappeared as quickly as it came, so perhaps it was borrowed. Man those things we're fun fun fun!! Ok, maybe not that much fun.

[Banjo.Jon]

They certainly kept me entertained when I was younger. I think because they were so simple the whole family could play them, which in a way made them even more fun. I can't see my Mum and Dad being able to play the latest stuff on the PS3, far too complicated for them.

[KiwiHopeful]

Buy your mum and dad a Wii. It's lots of fun for people from 1-100.

Seriously, buy one.

[Banjo.Jon]

I think a Wii might be a present to myself once we have moved to NZ and got ourselves settled. Fancy one of those DS Lite's as well. Certainly a turnaround from a few years ago when I would not have touched anything by Nintendo. I now think they have the best products on offer.