talkmagic.co.uk

uncanny, i was talking about old school games last night with a friend, one of them being cannon fodder. I went home and loaded it up for the first time in nearly 15 years

I knew that - I am mentalist remember

My best childhood memories weren't really childhood. It was the long summer after I'd finished my exams. I had 3 months of doing nothing.

I stayed up late watching films with friends.
I got drunk on cheap beer with my friends.
I played an obscene amount of videogames with my friends.

I got my first job...

Good days. 5 years ago now. Phew. What a 5 years it's been!
Turning 18, passing my driving test, getting engaged.
Good times gone by and plenty more to come I'm sure!

i got the 48k spectrum as a combined birthday and christmas present..in 1982...got it from the Ideal Home Show i think...

i'd of been 10! blimey...

anyway, lords of midnight, deathchase 2000 and all those ULTIMATE games too...genius...

and of course, daley thompson's decathlon (he was white!), and barry mcguigan's boxing..i think that was one of the first "create your own player" kinda games...that i remember at least..(before some nerd corrects me! )

i even bought the spectrum drum machine...rubbish! but good fun with the footpedals...

magicmonkey wrote:i used to love my speccy....jetpac was fantastic fun, and as for jet set willy....woooohoooooo! pyjamarama, attic attac, skooldaze all classics

....... Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner .... classics ... I remember Jetpac too and how could I ever forget Attic Attac (although admittedly, I had completely forgotten about it until I read your post ).

AndyRegs wrote:Sitting by the radio for the top 40 countdown and trying to press record just after the DJ stopped talking for your favourite songs.

lol I also used to do this. Up until about 3 or 4 months ago I still had all my old cassettes that I'd recorded on (about 20 or 30 casettes), some dating back to 1983 ish .

'Skool Daze', its sequel 'Back 2 Skool', and its spin-off 'Contact Sam Cruise' were all great. I liked 'Attic Attac', but never quite mastered it. 'Avalon' was a cracking game about an astral-travelling wizard, who had to collect spells along the way through a pseudo-3D dungeon. It was damn difficult, though.

Which reminds me of POKES (one for innuendo bingo, perhaps). You'd type out these little programmes (often saving them to a tape yourself), and they let you have infinite energy, or 99 lives in the game. Of course, sometimes they didn't work...

Unlike the full programmes in computing magazines. Because they never worked.

My cartoon era was more 'Top Cat' and 'Hong Kong Phooey'. In fact, my childhood nickname was Boss Cat. As some people here will recall, 'Top Cat' was known in the TV listings as 'Boss Cat'. This was because of the BBC's stance on advertising, and there happened to be a cat food brand called Top Cat at the time.

Now...'Thundercats'. It never occurred to me at the time, but the series started with the main characters travelling from Thundera. In the course of the journey, they age a few years. This means Lion-o has hit adolescence when they arrive on Third Earth. He has a little sword with a single eye in it and, when he waves it around and gets excited, the sword gets bigger and bigger. Then Lion-o cries out "Ho!", the eye opens and energy shoots up into the sky.

They made that show for children. It's just sick.



On the subject of 'Dungeons & Dragons', another forum I visit had a link to the final (unfilmed) script: http://www.michaelreaves.com/requiem_preface.htm

Ah the good ol atari, I used to love playing that thing, one button and a joystick was that was needed. Some contollers these days wouldn't look out of place in an apache.

I also used to love actually calling to a mate's door to see if they wanted to do something. None of this email, text, skype or MSN for me.

Its maybe not best to mention the denim jackets, mullets, baggy t-shirts, tight jeans and red DM boots...........

Mmm, you know? Isn't it? Small boys in the park? Jumpers for goalposts?

The end of primary school and the first few years of secondary are the source of my best childhood memories. I spent the last primary school summer helping the caretaker to shift desks and in return he showed me how to make a match jump, which was my first magic trick.

At the start of the third year (crikey, that's 1980!) a friend of mine asked me to join the punk band he was setting up. We found a drummer and a bass player, wrote a suitably cynical fanzine, and I smashed away at a borrowed organ (steady now...) We found a singer in one of the hardest kids in the year so we were instantly hooked into some of the hardest kids in the school, which meant no one would dare go near us. We did our first gig at the school Christmas show and we were terrible. Really terrible. All anyone could hear was the lead guitar and the drums, and Macca the singer shouting tunelessly. And we only had 4 songs in total. The kids miming to heavy metal with cardboard guitars who went on before us got a better response! we got folded arms and bored expressions. It all fell apart after that. The guitarist and I had a few rehearsal bands after that, but we didn't know any proper musicians so we were a bit stuck.

The best summer was the following one. My parents had started going away to their caravan on their own, first for weekends then for whole weeks after they realised I could be trusted to just go about my business without having any "secksy parties". It was blisteringly hot and I'd been accepted onto O-level art. The teacher had told us to get weaving over the summer, so I spent the mornings painting in oils (damned messy stuff - I stank of linseed oil and turps all summer) and the afternoons shooting action men in my mate's back garden with his worryingly large collection of air weapons. Actually, the next 2 years of school were great, consisting mostly of physics, computing and art. Our art teacher took us seriously and let us hang out in his office drinking coffee, sketching and listening to some really weird music, like Varesse, Cage and Stockhousen.

My first computer was a 1k ZX81. I got a book about Z80 assembly language and I was hooked. My science teacher let me borrow the school's 16K RAM pack at the weekends but the infamous wobble was so bad it was unusable. Then I got a 16K Spectrum and used to leave it loading Arcadia or Brian Bloodaxe when I left for school so that it'd be ready when I came home.

The worst summer holiday in some respects was the one at the end of the 5th year. I'd got a summer job sat in a pokey little office in a backstreet (literally!) programming house chasing bugs in other people's code for £35 a week (thanks to our ex-head boy being a salesman there and seriously wanting to sleep with me!). I had to get up at 7am every morning to get there and every Thursday breakfast telly would play the new #1 hit just as I left for the bus. That's how I know Karma Chameleon was #1 for 6 weeks in 1983... and I hate it with a passion. Mind you, when I went back to school flush with cash to start the lower 6th, I met my first serious girlfriend. We were together for 5 years of parties and fun.

'E were a great baker were me granddad....

Anyone remember stink bombs? We used to throw them onto the tube as the doors were closing - those things stunk to high heaven. I were a right little bu**er. (But most of the time I was angelic).

Tomo wrote:Mmm, you know? Isn't it? Small boys in the park? Jumpers for goalposts?

I know it was having real friends and not 693 online friends.

Below I have cut and pasted an email I received a while ago, its pretty relative here:

You Know You Grew Up In The 80's if:
1. You used to buy cassette singles… and still have some stashed somewhere…
2. You can sing the rap to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and can do the Carlton
3. Girls wore biker shorts under their skirts and felt stylishly sexy.
4. You yearned to be a member of the Baby-sitters club and tried to start a club of your own.
5. You owned those lil' Strawberry Shortcake pals scented dolls (or your sister did).
6. You know that "WOAH" comes from Joey on Blossom
7. Two words: Hammer Pants
8. You watched "Fraggle Rock".
9. You had plastic streamers on your handle bars... and spokey-dokies or playing cards on your spokes for that incredible sound effect
10. You watched "Duck Tales" (Woo ooh!)
11. It was actually worth getting up early on a Saturday to watch cartoons.
12. You (your sister, cousins) wore a ponytail on the side of your head.
13. You saw the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the big screen..and still know the turtles names.
14. You made your mom buy one of those clips that would hold your shirt in a knot on the side.
16. You wore stonewashed Jordache jean jackets and were proud of it.
17. L.A. Gear....need I say more?
18. You remember reading Tales of a fourth grade nothing and all the other Judy Blume books.
19. You know the profound meaning of "WAX ON, WAX OFF"
20. You wanted to be a Goonie.
21. You ever wore fluorescent clothing. (some of us...head-to-toe)
22. You can remember what Michael Jackson looked like before his nose fell off and his cheeks shifted.
23. You have ever pondered why Smurfette was the only female smurf.
24. You remember the CRAZE, then the BANNING of slap bracelets.
25. You still get the urge to say "NOT" after every sentence.
26. You remember Hypercolor t-shirts.
27. Barbie and the Rockers was your favourite band.
28. You thought She-ra (Princess of Power!) and He-Man should hook up.
29. You thought your childhood friends would never leave because you exchanged handmade friendship bracelets.
30. After you saw Pee-Wee's Big Adventure you kept saying "I know you are, but what am I?"
31. You remember "I've fallen and I can't get up"
32. You remember going to the skating rink before there were inline skates.
33. You ever got seriously injured on a Slip and Slide.
34. You have ever played with a Skip-It or Elastix
35. You had or attended a birthday party at McDonalds.
36. You've gone through this nodding your head in agreement.
37. Don't worry, be happy
38. You wore like, EIGHT pairs of socks over tights with high top Reeboks.
39. You wore socks scrunched down
40. You remember boom boxes and walking around with one on your shoulder like you were all that.
41. You remember watching both Gremlins movies.
42. You know what it meant to say "Care Bear Stare!!"
43. You remember watching Rainbow Bright and & My Little Pony Tales
44. You thought Doogie Howser/Samantha Micelli was hot.
45. You remember Alf, the lil furry brown alien from Melmac.
46. You remember New Kids on the Block when they were cool...and don't even flinch when people refer to them as "NKOTB"
47. You knew all the characters names and their life stories on "Saved By The Bell," The ORIGINAL class.
48. You know all the words to Bon Jovi - SHOT THROUGH THE HEART.
49. You just sang those words to yourself.
50. You remember watching Magic vs. Bird.
51. Homemade Levi shorts.. (the shorter the better)
52. You remember when mullets were cool!
53. You had a mullet!
54. You still sing "We are the World"
55. You tight rolled your jeans.
56. You owned a bannana clip.
57. You used to (and probably still do)
say "What you talkin' 'bout Willis?"
58. You had big hair and you knew how to use it.
59. You're still singing shot through the heart in your head, aren't you!

Wills wrote:

Tomo wrote:Mmm, you know? Isn't it? Small boys in the park? Jumpers for goalposts?

48. You know all the words to Bon Jovi - SHOT THROUGH THE HEART.
49. You just sang those words to yourself.

Now I was just about to type '..and you're to blame, you give love a bad name!' when I read number 49

I used to dance around my room singing it along with others.

Used to love my old computers, I had all the spectrums and I remember being so excited to get my first 16bit machine an atari st .. spent hours with STOS and the 3d Construction KIT!

then moving onto PC's and loving dos and setting up autoexec.bat and config.sys files, changing stuff to get games to run!

and when I first got into mp3's setting up a dos based jukebox using batch files it used to take ages to rip tracks!


the good old days...

Secret magical powers were revealed to me the day I held alfot my my magical sword and said "By the power of Grayskull, I have the power!"

I found a He-man and the Masters of the Universe dvd set al Wal-mart around christmas and now my 7 year old son is hooked, just like I was back then. I think it is great! Now all I have to do is find She-Ra, Thundercats and Speed Buggy and we'll be set.

Big D