Warlord wrote on 2022-11-06, 06:41:
I dont remember gaming on PCs to be really a thing in the 80s. Back then it was all about amigas and comodores and NES and like saga master system. We did have a Atari but didn't play it that much. Then early 90s PC gaming became a thing for me with games like Wolfenstien 3d. I played the hell out of red barron as a kid one summer. Then SNES came out and I was honestly playing that more than anything else at the time.
That's how it was here in Europe, at least. But
the USA and USSR of the 80s were different, I suppose.
Commodore wasn't relevant over there, except for online services like PlayNet/Q-Link.
Users over the big pond had their PET, TRS-80, Apple II, Macintoshs and Osborne's.. 😉 And IBM PCs, of course.
With the exception of the NES (and old 2600 consoles), no real console or home computer market existed after 1983 anymore (big video game crash).
But PC were still life and sound in the business fields.
That's why the IBM platform was so big over there. The Tandy 1000, a PC compatible with homr computer features, was available.
People in the US could simply use the same software from work at home.
Here in Europe, that wasn't common.
At home, we played games on C64, did business on a cheap PC clone without a hard disk.
Because, that's what we grew up with, after all: playing disk jockey all the time - thanks Commodore!
Only a small percentage of our Amiga users had invested in a HDD by 1990, also.
Whereas overseas a HDD was a standard component, even in very low-end PCs.
Like the TRS-80, the Tandy 1000, 2000 etc were available in many of the ubiquitous Radio Shacks (TRS= Tandy Radio Shack).
Radio Shack was a series of radio/TV repair shops with its own line of products.
They sold electronics parts, batteries, screws and other products of daily life.
The Amiga was irrelevant over there, I think. Except for TV studios, maybe.
The famous Video Toaster was an NTSC device, no PAL support.
Here in old Europe (Commodore land) it was perhaps rarely seen, if at all.
If it was, it had to be used with a transcoder device (NTSC-PAL, PAL-NTSC), I assume.
Okay, later on in the states ('89) there also was the TurboGrafx 16, technically.
That was an 8/16 Bit console, better known as PC Engine in Japan.
But the NES really was the number one of many years to come.
In the mid 90s, Russia got a clone fleet of NES consoles named Dendy. Its mascot was a white elephant.
By ~1990, both the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo rivaled each others for many years to come.
That's when things slowly normalized among different places around the globe.
Edit: The UK was also a special case. The little island had their BBC Mircos. Acorn Archimedes, Acorn RISC PCs, ZX81, Sinclair QL, ZX Spectrum etc.
The company Amstrad also made the famous PC compatibles PC-1512 and PC-1640,
also sold in Germany via Schneider.
Those PCs were what comes closest to the Tandy 1000, maybe.
The 1640 had an EGA like graphics chip, making it a good games computer for ~1986.
Edited.
Edit: Another special case, here in old Germany, maybe.
Tele game consoles (pong consoles) from the 1970s.
Like Interton VC4000 ('77) or MBO Teleball
('77).
These were very primitive game consoles with cartridges.
The ancient term "Telespiel" (tele game) was often used instead of video game.
A tele game differenciated somewhat from a regular video game insofar,
that it was played on TV on a simplistic game console.
In online services such as BTX (Bildschirmtext in Germany/Austria, Videotex in Swiss), the term "Telesoftware" existed.
That was software that could be downloaded via telephone line.
So if you ever want to confuse your friends, talk about "tele software" if you mean to download something. 😉
..
Unfortunately, these primitive TV consoles were still sold and praised as being fun in the 1980s. Such a shame.
Germany had so much creative minds, but the mindset of business life didn't allow for bigger investments.
Everything had to be economized, not make loss - not even in the testing phase. *sigh*
"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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