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Games Entertainment

Classic Console TV Ads 290

Posted by chrisd from the intellivision-sees-all dept.
superpenguin writes "Here is a site with some TV ads for classic computers/games systems like the Atari and Intellivision, as well as games for those systems. Find out whether Atari basketball or Intellivision basketball plays more like real basketball. Some real gems here. These ads are in Real Media format."
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Classic Console TV Ads More

Classic Console TV Ads

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  • I remember seeing an ad for the mario brothers game. It was funny ... but sad. Oh so sad. :)
  • Classic for me, born 4/17/79 is quite different than classic for someone else. I find NES and Sega Master system to be the Classics (although atari was first) simply becuase the games made the video game industry what it is today. In my opinion, they were more influential than atari, and far more ground breaking than PS2 or Gamcube. (I consider Xbox a pc with less functionality) So, call me what you will I guess, but in my opinion, classic starts with NES.

    • " Classic for me, born 4/17/79 is quite different than classic for someone else."

      wowee me too 1979 born.. isnt it a *classic* coincidence!!!
      • actually, I'm in college, being exploited for slightly higher than minimum wage, and start law school after this year. God Willing, I can start doing some exploiting (kidding kidding, I really don't mean that...I'm actually going to school for constitutional and copyright law (ANTI DMCA)....I'm going to exploit people who can afford it)

    • Re:classic is relative (Score:2, Interesting)

      by tenjah ( 590104 )
      Of course the notion of "classic" depends on your age. Remember though, we're all generation X brother. Sheit, I was born in '76. I sure as hell remember these kind of ads. In my country we also had these cool Pacman stickers that came in cereal packets. Anyone remember those?? Waka waka waka...../.
    • Wow, what a difference a few years makes. Personally I found the Atari 2600, 5200, and 7800 much more fun than the NES. Hell, for one thing I didn't need to blow on all my Atari game carts to get them to work. I seem to remember having that be a huge issue whenever playing an NES game. Pull out cart, blow on connector, put it in slot. If you didn't it had a good chance of not working at all or the colors would be screwed up, etc.

      Also, before the Atari I had tons of fun on my Commodore Vic 20 writing stupid Basic Goto loops and playing games in the early 1980's when I was a kid. The Vic-20 had some cool games too.

    • Re:classic is relative (Score:3, Interesting)

      by swb ( 14022 )
      Wow, you're young. Classic for me is definitely the Atari 2600, Intellivision. I can even remember playing the Fairchild system (which I think was hardcoded with only a few pong-type games).

      I also remember making lineprinter banners of Snoopy, Neil Armstrong's Moon photo, playing "Civil", a civil war stimulator on an HP3000 timesharing system, and hand-typing program listings from "Creative Computing" into my Apple ][.

      An I'm only 35!
      • hand-typing program listings from "Creative Computing" into my Apple ][.

        Dave Ahl! Creator of Hunt the Wumpus, publisher of Creative Computing and printer of that damn Nuclear Reactor simulator for the PET in every single BASIC computer listings book. (And I can connect with those memories - I spent time with a Nybble magazine and my Apple ][ as well).

        Whatever happened to him? A google search doesn't turn him up. Also who was the guy (Landstrom, Langford?) who did the insane postscript coding - raw programs in postscript to generate fractals and the like. He advocated selfpublishing, and I have one of his books in storage somewhere.

        Heh. I'll stop now - this story is already flooded with "Remember..." posts. Good to see there are some other people out there on Slashdot from the dawn of the PC (back before that meant "IBM PC"), and who remember timesharing systems.

        --
        Evan

      • I just threw out the old Fairchild system a few years ago. It had some good games for its day, I know I spent many hours playing Red Baron on it.
    • Remember when dual Xeon 2.8Ghz chips came out? I was like "Wow this must be the coolest thing ever." Those were the good old days, my friend...

    • I find NES and Sega Master system to be the Classics (although atari was first) simply becuase the games made the video game industry what it is today. In my opinion, they were more influential than atari, and far more ground breaking than PS2 or Gamcube. (I consider Xbox a pc with less functionality) So, call me what you will I guess, but in my opinion, classic starts with NES.

      And you would be incorrect. Classic starts with PONG, and goes up from there.
    • OK, So I might get flamed for this. In my opinion, classic is when a genre becomes popular (and maybe affordable) to the masses. No matter what year you were born. Some of us (like me) are just lucky to have experienced the real dawning of a future classic.

      Classics for console systems is 1977-1984, give or take a year or two. Everything since then is icing on the cake. If you didn't experience the classics at that time, you missed out. Blame your parents for being too busy doing drugs or planning their careers to have kids and prevented you from being born at the right time to enjoy the new age of gaming consoles.

      Screw all the snot nosed brats that downplay the classics for what's out now. What do you think you'd be doing now if the classics weren't doing what they were doing then.

      <REALITY CHECK>
      Oh my... I'm beginning to sound like my parents.... I'll just go back to eating my oat bran cereal now
      </REALITY CHECK>

  • and thus completley unviewable to me :)

    • Re:These ads are in Real Media format (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I've always wondered why anyone would use this piece-of-crap format...

      mpg would be best
      at least avi or wmf viewers are free (and not crap)
      quicktime bites my ass because of stupid-apple-lame-ass-programmers make the free version laggy & crappy... but still better than realmedia

      postage size video & tinny audio, was shit in '96, and is shit now.

      I wish they had gone bankrupt a long time ago... there time is past due.
    • Unviewable? Why is that?

    • Would you like some cheese to go along with your whine? Crikey, they warned you about the realmedia in the blurb! If you really care, stop being such a little girl and find the nearest loser with a box that can play the video. Alternatively, you could just use your imagination and pretend you watched the video; by this time tomorrow, you won't know the difference. Or you could just suck it up and keep quiet.

      Yes, this is a flame, feel free to mod me down, but you have to admit the original poster isn't being very proactive. (The irony that I'm whining about someone else whining isn't lost on me, either, but what the hell...)

    • These ads are in Real Media format and thus completley unviewable to me :)

      Remember, we all love CHOICE at Slashdot!

  • Here's some more retro ads (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Skuld-Chan ( 302449 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @02:56AM (#4198970)
    For Commodore Computers - where they compare the Vic 20 to the 2600 and the C64 to the Apple 2, IBM and Radio Shack computers,

    Commodore Billboard [commodorebillboard.com]

  • Time! (Score:3, Funny)

    by saveth ( 416302 ) <cww@noSpAm.denterprises.org> on Thursday September 05, 2002 @02:57AM (#4198971)
    A lot of these ads and technologies came about before I was old enough to do anything about them, but I still remember a fair bit.

    I lived in England when the first Nintendo hit the market, and I begged and begged my parents to buy me one. They finally did, on my first birthday in the United States, in 1989.

    What's interesting about this, though, is that I didn't quite understand the concept of a console game system. I even asked my mother where the coin slot on the Nintendo was, as embarassing as that seems, now. I guess I was quite a confused child. :P
  • Check out the commercial for the original Legend of Zelda game on the NES. [spoony-bard.com]

    I'm not sure which is worse, the lyrics - or that nerdy looking rapping blonde kid.

  • Seeing those old ads reminds me of how exciting computers used to be. Perhaps it's just because I'm old. Do kids still get a kick out of looking at screenshots of the latest games? I bet they don't care much about stuff like screen resolution and amount of RAM anymore - that stuff isn't so relevant anymore.
    • screenshots are very important...I mean..as soon as I saw the screenies for the new robotech game I went nuts...it's cell shaded, so it looks like you are playing the anime...now that's art!
    • Seeing those old ads reminds me of how exciting computers used to be. Perhaps it's just because I'm old. Do kids still get a kick out of looking at screenshots of the latest games? I bet they don't care much about stuff like screen resolution and amount of RAM anymore - that stuff isn't so relevant anymore.

      I played CGA solitaire and gin games. I played monochrome adventure games. I was ecstatic about switching to VGA from EGA. My first modem was older than the majority of the current Slashdot readers.

      This sort of thing doesn't happen anymore, as far as I can tell. Pretty graphics are a given, and sound is no longer optional; nor is it done with beeps or even MIDI.

      I miss the days of waiting for the Next Big Thing or the next Duke Nukem or for the Police Quest III strategy guide to hit the shelves.

      I'm also rather disappointed that I didn't keep my 386 and 486 around for, if nothing else, posterity. I've got a Pentium 133 in the corner, serving as a router, but I do miss old technology and the surrealistic feeling of power it could give, a mere ten years ago.
      • I can still see excitment on graphics or sound with modern games. It's just on a very diffrent level.

        No longer is it "Hey, they mad the NES say 'IM BAD' using nothing but beeps and tones!!!" ala "Bad Dudes". Now it's "Wow, the soundtrack to this game rocks. Music is top notch, etc, etc..." Ever watch a movie? Ever thought "The soundtrack to this film is great." Same thing with modern games.

        Graphics, however are not at that nearly 100% realistic level yet. The Final Fantasy movie came damn close, but it's still not there. And no games produce that kind of quality in real time yet anyway. So, yes, it's very possible to get excited about graphics of a new game the same way we did in moving from Super Mario Bros to SMB 2 or 3, or NES to SNES, or MIDI to Sound Blaster(TM). I stil remember the first time I played Doom with a sound card. WAY diffrent experience! Now there are games like Thief that are so sound centric, that it's unplayable without sound.

        But aren't we missing the big picture?

        Citizen Kubuto looked great, but what about gameplay?

        I'd rather play Super Mario Bros. 3.

        It's more FUN (to me at leat). It's got better game play. New games aren't all devoid of great gameplay (Half-Life, Max Payne, Starcraft, Super Smash Bros Mele, and the Grand Theft Auto series come to mind...)

        These days the next big thing can very well be a great new way of using the game to tell the story (Wing Commander did this, and so did Half-Life (Think about it, what other game never leaves the 1st person perspective even for a one second cut scene, ever?)) Or the next big thing can be a gimick like Bullet Time in Max Payne. Or it can just be a georgous new rehash of an older saga, like Metroid Prime. On the surface, it's just a FPS, in the Metroid universe. the graphics are georgous, but are they more or less so than Return To Castle Wolenstein, or Alien Vs. Predator 2? I dunno. Hard to say. But Metroid Prime certainly has me excited. I can't wait to delve into another chapter of Samus' adventure. We shall see how well a side scroller like Metroid translates to an FPS.

        For further reading, may I suggest you play any of the Donkey Kong Country series on the SNES. Pay close attention to Cranky Kong [overclocked.org]. You'd like him. ( ;
      • I miss the days of waiting for the Next Big Thing or the next Duke Nukem

        What's to miss? We're still waiting for the next Duke Nukem [3drealms.com] ; )

        -A

    • Nope (Score:2)

      by Bastian ( 66383 )
      Nowadays, everyone I talk to wants to talk about framerates. 1280x1024 is a given for screen resolution, and colordepths surpassed the limits of human perception long ago. Of course, the framerates people talk about have surpassed what they can see, too, since they're usually talking 90+ fps on computers whose monitors can only do 70-odd hz at 1280x1024 and they tend to be using their own out-of-the-box visual input and processing hardware, where persistence of vision starts taking care of things around 30fps, making anything faster only useful if something is moving across the screen quickly enough to go in huge jumps at lower framerates.

      The last time I was wowed by anything of that sort was when I plugged a Playstation 2 into a 5' wide HDTV and fired up Gran Turismo 3 on a 16x9 screen aspect ratio. From about 8 feet away from the screen, it doesn't look pixellated anymore, whereas a console sending out a standard TV signal looks terrible on a screen that large, let alone the distortion from the wider screen.

      Other than that, I am starting to get the feeling that the biggest limit on what games can do nowadays isn't what the hardware they are being run on is capable of, whether it is a console or some gee-whiz computer with some overclocked GeForce card with Peltier cooling. It seems to me that the limiting factor is more how much time the artists on a game's production team can afford to put into the models - going back to games like GT3 and GTA3, it looks like the polygon count on any one screen is oftentimes well below the capability of the hardware.
    • I don't know how you define "old", but I know a lot of people who still get excited about new games. I'm 23 now, and I still love video games as much as I did when I was 12. I have a friend who, at 30, owns damn near every console ever made, and he still gets giddy when something new comes along -- and he's not even a geek (he's one of those damn marketing droids). Sure, most people don't care how much RAM a console has anymore, because it's become pretty much irrelevant. There aren't many games that can really push the hardware. With any luck we'll soon see a push to good storylines in games, like there used to be (NES). I know I can't wait for October 2 so I can get my hands on Hitman2.

    • I'm totally with you. But not just about games. It was about computers themselves. They were so powerful that they left science behind and took on an aura of magic. And much of the "common art" of the day (television shows, movies, magazines, books, etc.)used computers as a device to suspend disbelief: maybe a computer could do this...

      actually, I'm not going back far enough- from the 50s and 60's computers were the enemy- the mechanization and resultant dehumanization was the constant theme played into the ground. 2001, Colossus the forbin project, etc. etc. "computers are evil becuase they can destroy you" - then there was a switch to the thinking that "well, they're dangerous, but thats becuase they're powerful..." and that is what I am a product of.

      So my childhood was filled with the movies "war games", "tron", "wierd science" (oh yeah, my parents tried to instill a sense of "culture", but all that crap went in one ear and out the other)

      Now I'm sure this can be related to the first time you had a computer go "on line" not necessarily internet, but through a modem to a local bbs. It was empowerment. There were others out there who had the knowledge and there was plenty for the taking. Everything from computer hacks, to zero-day warez, to Ann-R-Key (say it real fast) files, this was the final step.

      And in the background of my mind I knew that all the pieces of the recipe were in place, and the new revolution was just an arms length away. It was the future, and it was dying to be discovered.

      yes friends, it was pr0n. ;)

      (oh-kay, ignore that last line. But you know what I mean!)

    • I have been playing games ever since the early commodores in 4th grade. The drives were tape drives - cassette tape drives. I'm almost 28.

      I was just wowing over screenshots just this morning... I will likely play games until I am very old. I cant wait to see what they are like when I am 50....

      but I dont really pay attention to hardware as much as I used to. one, because I quit being an IT manager - and two, because things are faster, cheaper, better all the time. The only thing i marvel at is looking at what i paid for parts - then seeing what you get for the same - or less these days.

      In '96 I built a dual 266 PII system. Each Processor was $750.00. Do you have any idea of the system you can get for $750 these days!.

      I guess I finally understand the old addage: "When I was your age......"

      when my kids (I dont have any yet) are my age, computers will be seamlessly integrated into thier surroundings. they will likely be a sloid cube of chip that contains every component a "modern" machine has in about 1 cubic inch - and will just be replaced rather cheaply when you find the need to upgrade.
  • The old Legend of Zelda ads were tripped out. Anyone remember those?

  • mplayer (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Using Linux? Hate RealPlayer? :)
    mplayer - http://www.mplayerhq.hu ...

    Get the Realplayer codecs from a RA player, and use mplayer instead.

    (aa du är instead)
  • Wow great stuff, brings back alot of memories like learning to program on my 800xl in Atari BASIC. Anyone remember ATASCI? We used to make ATASCI animations for the welcome screen of our (300bps) BBS =) Oh and the memory of how bad that E.T. game sucked! I can't believe they have a commercial for that one. Atlantis & Demon Attack rocked. OK I feel old now...
  • It is interesting to see how the marketing techniques have changed. Certainly worth a laugh! For those of us who are not American based it is also a great way of comparing how the style of adds is different between the US and other countries.

    It would be great to see some foreign versions of the same products to be able to compare side by side!

  • Check out these also (Score:4, Informative)

    by jukal ( 523582 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @03:01AM (#4198983) Journal
    The site [theoldcomputer.com] has some other good stuff as well, like: Bootup screens [theoldcomputer.com], Magazine adverts [theoldcomputer.com], and emulators [theoldcomputer.com] on which you can run the ROMs [theoldcomputer.com] of the classic games. Thanks to Whoeverrunsthatsite.
  • Should win the politicians over, or severely piss off the voting majority.

  • Let me tell you... (Score:4, Funny)

    by cscx ( 541332 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @03:03AM (#4198991) Homepage
    That Intellivision Poker and BlackJack dealer was one pompous prick-hole. Primitive virtual emotions --- he'd get pissed when he'd lose and his eyebrows would turn like \/. I believe that was one of the first interactive "people" in games that I had ever experienced.
    • one of the games I grew up with on my gradfather's computer was the Sierra Hoyle card games collection - hearts, old maid, etc. It was great - you could play as (and against) characters from other Sierra games. I had a blast playing as Roger Wilco from the Space Quest series and against Rosilla (?) from King's Quest because I knew all the references. It was a riot. The characters had primitive expressions too. They growled (especially the bulldog), they pouted, they grinned. It was quite a trip.

      Triv
  • Being born in 1984, I remember none of these ads. I did have an Atari 2600, bought at a thrift shop on my own when I was 12(in 1986) because my parents wouldn't buy a game console.
    However, we always had a computer in the top half of the performance curve.
  • Dear Lord! 20 posts on slashdot and I'm still getting 60K+ downloads from the site.
  • 20+ MB of movies on that page, and it's still not slashdotted. He's gonna get one HELL of a bandwidth bill.
  • I found it! it's a miracle!!!

    I found the Real Player 8 download on their site instead of the RealOne Crap

    Real Player 8 [newaol.com]
    • RealOne actually isn't that bad... you just need to compile a dummy evntsvc.exe file which is the spyware with just an
      int main(){return 0;}
      exe. Tah dah, bye bye spyware. RP8 will keep pestering you to upgrade.
    • Here [207.188.7.150] is an RPM of RP8 for x86 Linux.

      Or go here [real.com] for other versions, and fill in some bogus information.

      (NOTE: Just because I posted this does NOT mean I don't want Real to rot in hell. Thank you.)
    • EXACTLY! God, so it isn't me! I didn't have realplayer on my system in the den so i figured the commercials were worth getting the player (and they were :) )

      spent about 5 minutes scanning Real's download
      page trying to find something other than RealOne, nope, didn't find Realplayer 8. Went to www.download.com, looked up realplayer 8, found it, clicked the download link..AGGGHHH! The SAME RealOne splattered page comes up again that i just viewed just a moment ago.

      Eventually I found it too, but thanks for the link nonetheless.

      Getting a piece of "free" software shouldn't be so hard to find. Under different circumstances i'd attribute it to an easter egg hunt. :)
  • I love how as you go down the list you see tons and tons of gameplay, then for E.T. it's only a title screen and a second of walking. Considering how much the gameplay focused less on the movie, and more on falling into wells it was probably a very good marketing decision.

    That being said, I have to rather embarisingly admit to enjoying that game as a kid. And at least it taught our generation an important lesson about wells! One which I note the children of the nes age didn't pay as much heed to.
    • Exactly. I know if I fall in a hole in the ground, all I have to do is stretch my neck and I'll float right out. Just have to be careful when you get to the top. Got to work to the side slowly or I'll fall right back in.

      Of course I haven't falling into a hole yet, cause even time I see one, I stretch my neck while standing next to it, but I don't see a flashing light come from the hole, so I just stay out.
    • That being said, I have to rather embarisingly admit to enjoying that game as a kid.

      There's some revisionist plot, I am convinced, to label ET as the "worst video game ever", and "the game that killed Atari". Most people who prattle this off on the net are under 20, so they clearly weren't around when it came out. It was a fun game. Not the best game ever, and it was derivative of the better (imo) Superman, but it certainly had plenty of fans.

      And at least it taught our generation an important lesson about wells! One which I note the children of the nes age didn't pay as much heed to.

      It'll be a few years before there is another good "don't fall in ditches" edutainment presented to kids. It runs in 30 year cycles - Timmy always getting rescued by Lassie, ET stretching his neck to float, and soon... who knows? The incipent arrival of a new antiditch educational program was presaged by Dawn's comment in BtVS: "What if they're all in a ditch somewhere? Ditches are bad. Mom always used to talk about the ditches"...

      Ghods, I need coffee...

      --
      Evan

      • I'm 29 now and played E.T. on the Atari when I was a kid. IMHO, it was crap then and it's crap now. My cousin, on the other hand, loved it. So whether it is a good game or not is subjective.

        But it is a fact that millions of copies of E.T. were buried in the Arizona desert because they could not be sold. In fact, Atari first paid way WAY too much for video game rights to the title, then actually produced more copies of the game than there were Atari systems in existence at the time. Too bad they didn't put that kind of effort into the gameplay. And that is what really contributed to the failure of Atari as a company: they stopped making great games.

        Their half-assed port of Pac-Man, the E.T. debacle, and a dozen other crap games reveal what must have been serious management problems. In that light, games like E.T. were the symptom, not the disease itself.

        • Hey, I didn't say ET was well managed as a title - yeah, they overproduced it, plus it came out right as the great video game crash hit. Atari seldom made any good games for the VCS (there were a few notable exceptions). All I said is that ET did, at the time, have a much warmer reception by actual video game players than it has been retroactively painted. It wasn't until there were retrogaming webpages that I saw the phrase "ET is universally regarded as the worst game ever released for the 2600". Before that, it was a fairly mild game with some people who really enjoyed it, and others who thought it was dumb.

          --
          Evan

  • What I really want are videos of current Japanese videogame commercials. A while ago some big gaming site posted the Chu-Chu Rocket commercial, and since then Edge (UK videogame magazine) has been summarising an ad each month. Now I am hooked!

    Does anyone know where I can download some of these? I would particularly like to see the Japanese ad for Tactics Ogre: Knights Of Lodis on GBA.

  • Because the link is damned impossible to find... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Nailer ( 69468 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @04:01AM (#4199076)
    Unix Realplayer [real.com]

  • These ads are in Real Media format.

    That really pisses me off. Why do videos have to be saved in Real Media format? What's wrong with MPEG? Perhaps I don't want to install RealPlayer on my system?

    I know it might make sense if you're encoding and streaming, but think of your public. I won't let RealPlayer anywhere near my Win32 system (hey, I'm at work... :-P) because it screws up all the file associations...

    • It's more of an issue that the webserver is misconfigured and attempts to send the streams as application/octet-stream. You have to save them to disk first, which is irritating.

      Real Media format makes sense for the people who are still on 56k (still the vast majority of computer users). MPEG really requires quite high bandwidth to be useful.
    • That really pisses me off. Why do videos have to be saved in Real Media format? What's wrong with MPEG? Perhaps I don't want to install RealPlayer on my system?

      You know, you don't have a god-granted right to look at other people's work. If it's easier for them to publish in Real format, that's their right to publish in the format that they choose. I just wish these format-snobs would get it into their heads that the world wasn't invented for their personal conveniences.
  • This reminds me of an episode of Dallas in which one could see the Barnes playing "Yar's Revenge [atarihq.com]" on an Atari VCS system... wasn't this some kind of advertising ?

  • Awesome (Score:3, Insightful)

    by selectspec ( 74651 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @06:26AM (#4199241)
    What's incredible about these ads is that they have that "retro futuristic" theme. Watching them now, you still feel like you are witnessing something from the future. Plus, bonus Phil Hartman.
  • Sure, I'll just develop some computer games, wait 20 years, and post to Slashdot about how "retro" or "cool" they suddenly are, and watch my sales go through the roof!

    I never considered Slashdot to be some pinnacle of jounalistic integrity, but come on, this is nothing more than a ploy to boost Atari's cartridge sales and edge out up-start Nintendo. That is so not rad, guys.

  • Oh I remember how badly I wanted the Coleco Adam system. With it's white casing, it was just so pretty.

    I never got one though :-(, which I guess is ok, because my friends only had C64s

  • Baseball (Score:2, Funny)

    by Graemee ( 524726 )
    Find out whether Atari basketball or Intellivision basketball plays more like real basketball....

    In which version do they go on strike?
    • Find out whether Atari basketball or Intellivision basketball plays more like real basketball....

      In which version do they go on strike?
      The one where they play baseball, not basketball :)

      The commercial reminds me of the Simpsons episode where the family is watching a commercial for a soccer game: This match will determine once and for all which nation is the greatest on earth: Mexico or Portugal!

  • Wow! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @08:01AM (#4199442) Journal
    It is funny to me. So many people comment that they were too young to remember these ads. I was born in 1969 (an old fart I guess) so I remember most of them. The day has come when I am retro (old school).

    I learned BASIC on a Trash80. I had an Atari 2600 and later the Atari 800 computer and played Star Raiders thinking it was the bomb and remembering how it stayed in the top ten for Computer games sales forever. I played games that came on tape drives start the load and go to dinner and a movie (sorta like I do when I start a mozilla compile now).

    My first PC was a 386SX (for SUX) and I remember when I first got online at my local BBS at 2400 baud thinking it was lightening fast.

    I remember working of the Mac SEs in the education labs. So much good GUI sense in such a little package. A fully functional GUI OS on diskspace half of what some PDAs have now.

    Jeez, I remember loading linux for the first time and I thought it was enough to have a quick machine with a Unix-like OS. I did not even care about the fancy desktops and GUI eyecandy.

    • When I think "old computer" I think about the Atari 400 and that awful, awful Timex Sinclair thing that had membrane keyboards as opposed to keys that would actually move up and down! Of course, considering how many cookie crumbs and burrito bits are lying in the cracks of my keyboard right now, I guess I shouldn't be chuckling quite so hard...

      The other thing that sticks out in my mind is daisy-wheel printers. Sure they were more expensive than the dot matrix printers and a hell of a lot slower, but you could actually read your printouts! What a novel idea! Man, I wanted a daisy-wheel printer so bad!

      The Timex Sinclair is worthy of a post or two in itself! Not only was that keyboard a joke but the friggin' screeen would blink everytime you pressed a key because the memory couldn't handle the strain of adding another character to the display! One of my friends got one and we laughed at his sorry ass.

      GMD

  • Where's bill plympton nowadays? Kinda funny seeing him push videogames. I think I saw him in a SNL commercial for some cheese-based trivia game.

  • I own and Run the Site www.TheOldComputer.com (Score:5, Informative)

    by Hot Trout ( 606389 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @08:50AM (#4199690) Homepage
    yep .... it's my fault. I am the webmaster of the website. It's great to get this amount of feedback after so much work. All help it promoting this private owned site is greatly appreciated. People are free to email me more retro gaming/computing adverts in whatever format they have. On the point of realplayer format; it was the only format that the adverts were available in. Hope you all enjoy them. Regards HT

  • Those nutty commercials (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drwiii ( 434 ) on Thursday September 05, 2002 @09:04AM (#4199789) Homepage
    Here's the soundtracks to a few old 80s commercials [min.net] I found on videotape. There are some video game commercials in there, but the most "unique" one by far is the one for Mister T Cereal.
  • Then you really need to check out Atarian Magazine. [abscape.org] It was a short-lived Atari-run magazine that only ran for three issues. Only issue #1 is archived there, but you can see why it didn't last long.

    Be sure to check out pages one [abscape.org] and two [abscape.org] of the "Adventures of Atari" comic. Will Atari defeat the evil forces of Ninja-Endo? Stay tuned, kids!

  • How they did them (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Guiness17 ( 606444 )
    I remember articles in Electronic Games (anyone else get that magazine? It was great!) discussing the various techniques used to shoot the commercials to avoid seeing the scan line.

    There were long discusions about some fellow who developed a method of actually having someone stand in front of a TV and talk about a game being played in the backround. IIRC it was something similar to the 'blue screen' used in movies and newscasts...big stuff in early eighties!

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