Hi again! - There's another thing that I forgot to mention. 😀
Speaking of revisionism, maybe we forget that history was perhaps different among the countries around the world ?
I mean, the home computer market in old Europe (UK, France, Germany, Belgium; sowewhere around here) of the 1980s was very properous, but not so much in the US.
Over seas, the C64, Amigas and ZX 81 (Timex 1000) weren't nearly as popular as here.
Instead, gamers in the US had IBM PCs and the NES (and Macs; speaking under correction).
- Sure, there also were Apple IIs and PETs in the late 70s, before the video game crash. And several others, like the TRS-80.
The Tandy 1000 line was very popular, too. But here in Europe, the Tandy 1000 didn't really exist.
As a counterpart, we had the Amstrad/Schneider PC1512/1640 at best. And too many home computers.
Same with the IBM PC 5150. It wasn't always the reference system here in Europe.
According to the internet, we rather had the Sirius 1 PCs first,
followed by homebrew 8086 systems like the c't86 computer (Germany).
Also, the Atari 2600 almost killed the entire video game market in the USA.
That's why the NES was modeled like an VCR, not like a console. For example.
Anyway, long story short: Maybe we just forget that not all places on earth used to be the same ?
I not only mean economy, but also fashion and culture. In these days of the internet, the global village, we quickly forget about this, maybe.
Some countries experienced the 80s culture of the west in the 1990s, after when the iron curtain fell.
Let's take Russia, for example. They started all their real gaming in the 90s. With 1980s games from the NES/Famicom library.
Just look up the "Dendy" system. Sure, they got clones of Segas and ZX Spectrums, too, but you see what I mean.
Edit: Or the UK, with its Acorn/ARM PCs.
They had things on their little island the rest of the world rarely even heard of.
Edit: And then there's the demoscene.
Judging by the names in the credits, a lot of the demoscene and tracker music heros were from Sweden, Netherlands.
That's another unique specialty, perhaps.
Edit: Or in other words, maybe home computers in Europe had another social status as they did on other parts of the world?
So they were less seen as toy computers? 🤷♂️
For example, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4 or Thomson To7-70 looked elegant, like PCs, but by their specs were more like home computers.
Edit: And then there were the MSX computers, too.
They were more popular in the audio/video fields, maybe.
As title generators, I suppose. The popular Amiga Video Toaster wasn't PAL capable, was it?
So maybe MSX like machines filled that niche, not sure.
MSX had the Microsoft tag, after all. Even though it merely was a spec from some guys of MS Japan.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
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