Commodore type-in games from Compute magazine
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 10 ก.ค. 2021
- Back in the 80's folks would get magazines that included free games that you could type in from the text that was in the magazine. This video is a look at what one of those games looked like.
BIKER DAVE from the November 1986 edition of COMPUTE! magazine. - วิทยาศาสตร์และเทคโนโลยี
Thank you for the video. It brings up fond memories of typing in programs and then hunting for the typos.
I learned more about BASIC programming modifying magazine type-in programs than I did from any teach-yourself books. I loved pimping out the graphics and maxxing out the sound. The magazines had to provide code for unexpanded machines, so the fun was to alter the code to take advantage of any expansion (usually memory) that I had installed.
I did as well. It was a great learning tool seeing how someone else did their code to make the machine do a particular thing.
I remember typing the game “witching hour” from this magazine. It was worth it, like a chess game or checker game. Spent hours playing it too.
Hunting for typos either in your own typing or in the magazine listing was often more fun than the resulting game.
For the amount of code this one is pretty impressive.
Oh man, me and my friend used to spend HOURS typing in those old programs only to discover that it didn't work! This was usually because one of us typed something wrong, but about 10% of the time it was Compute's fault and they would print a correct the following month. Some pretty great programs and games here and there over the years. Two that stand out were "Doodle", which was a fairly comprehensive art program with some impressive features for the day, though it only supported monochrome graphics (no multicolor mode); and "Turbo Tape" which was a utility to save your programs in a special format on tape so that it would load about 5 times faster than normal (close to disc drive speed in fact). It could load fast on any C64, even one that did not have Turbo Tape running on it, which I thought was very clever.
I love that you can now find the MAGAZINE DISKS archived ONLINE... I remember typing in all of those GAMES - and even ones with the MLX editor...Then when your game didn't work you had to wait till the corrections in the next issue...
My dad and mom made a few of these which to this day are on deskets. I was fortunate enough to read them and put them on my PC. :) now I can enjoy them via emulation.
I used to type in programs from Compute! magazine into my Atari XE. I remember I used to look at the Commodore 64 screenshots and lust over the better graphics. In retrospect it was probably more a case of the grass being greener on the other side of the fence. But I finally have that Commodore 64 now and I’ve scratched the itch by typing in a game. Loved every minute.
I need to do a type in game for my Atari 800xl / 1200xl computers. I'll have to dig out my old compute magazines... cheers.
I remember typing the PC version of that game in during typing class in junior high. Mightily impressed all the kids who were still working away at their monotonous typing exercises.
Yes! Typed in the game Pachinko from Compute magazine.
The computer was an Amiga 1000 with the 512 upgrade, extra disk drive and color monitor. The year was 85 and I had a tanning salon of all things.
Paid like $2500 for the computer and dot matrix printer.
The game was the hit at parties and when people got bored with it I just ran a program to generate random colors and shapes on the screen.
I got an Amiga 1000 when they first came out. Had a Hayes 1200 modem to go with it.
I remember this as a young fella, I really hated having to go over all the lines to look for that 1 spelling error lol
Same here but it was usually 2 or 3 typos for me… it definitely improved my typing skills
It is wild seeing this all these years later. I remember spending so much time doing this on my Atari XE! Nostalgia.
Great video! This brings back memories of typing in machine language programs from Compute's Gazette's using their MLX editor which, thankfully, included checksums. I remember going back and forth along each line, looking for errors and having to take breaks so I wouldn't go nuts.
Yea, that was HUGH when the MLX editor could do the checksum so you didn't have any typos. That thing was a life saver.
My mom still complains about how we made her read these to us so we could type it in. Also my dad had a "boggle" game he sold on tape and sent them via mail order.
That first line brings back memories. I haven't touched a C64 in almost 40 years but I still remember the memory addresses to change the background and border colors.
You should try out this emulator online... nothing to download, it plays within your web browser.... c64online.com/c64-online-emulator/
Re-live the good old days..... cheers
I spent hours and hours typing in various programs and games for these Commodores back in the day as a kid... wow... and lots of time finding typos , etc to fix... good old times.
I couldn't believe my eyes when I started watching this video, an American with a Sinclair Spectrum. That's a rare thing to see. Anyway nothing to do with the subject of the video, great video thanks
Love my Spectrum. Picked it up at a boot sale in London.
Thanks for making me feel old lol
Ah, yes, I remember way back when, I used to type in those basic programs from various magazines and examples from Basic books. It was tedious and frustrating at times, but also very rewarding. I used to have a Dragon 32 and an EACA Colour Genie back then. Now I don't. Bummer.
I hope to come across a Dragon 32 at some point. What a classic.
Perhaps Biker Dave was named after Super Dave from David Letterman's late night show. Pretty spiffy for a BASIC program!
Ha ha ha… it might have been. Hadn’t thought about that.
We used to type in these games for Atari 800. I have a couple Commadores I could do this with.
Wow, it seems Biker Dave is a copy of an older game that was on the Prinztronic 5000. A very strange console my Dad had in the early 80's. I actually loved that game when I was little. 😄
Nice video, thanks, and kudos for having the patience in this day and age!
Thanks
F'ers always had errata so after hours of work you had to buy the next issue! Shaking my head at all the puffs with happy memories.
So true with the typos in the magazine.
Spent hours & hours typing in programs! LOVED those magazines from wayback when! :)
I remember those days, 😂
I like your set-up , not sure if I knew about your channel before
Thanks…
Good Times, i have one issue too somewhere in the attic lying around.
Time to get it down and start typing….
I would buy COMPUTE and ATARI magazines every month and then spend hours typing in the code into my ATARI 800XL. The hardest code to debug was the machine language listings (allowed access to the graphic blitter chips for sprites that AtariBASIC couldn’t access. Some code listings could be interred using an app that would return a checksum for each line to match with the checksum in the magazine. Initially, I didn’t have a floppy drive, so all that work typing would be lost when the computer was unplugged or powered off. So I purchased the ATARI 1050 floppy drive to save my programs and later the AMIGA 500 computer which had a 3.5” floppy drive and 10 key pad built in. These magazines introduced me to coding which ultimately resulted in a BSCS degree and Software Engineer profession. I bought my first IBM 80386 computer a few years later while attending university. Dr Dobb’s was also a good resource for coding examples. Fun times.
I think I will do an Atari type in next. Perhaps on my Atari 800xl.
Ah yes, I remember COMPUTE! well. Started on the VIC-20 and typed in many a game from COMPUTE!.
The machine language type in games were murder to type in. Nothing but digits so it was easy to make a mistake until they came out with their machine language proof reader thing (I forgot what it was called) but it basically did a checksum of sorts on the lines you were typing in.
@@yaggieboat - What they started out doing for most platforms (I think the Apple II was the only exception, since it had a machine monitor you could use for entering ML code directly) was have you type in a Basic loader for each machine language program. You'd be typing Data statements for hours. To handle typos, they eventually had a short Basic program in the back of each issue called Automatic Proofreader that you would type in before the type-in you wanted to enter (I just saved it to disk, and would load it before entry). It created some machine language routine that would look at each line of Basic you typed in, and would produce a checksum that gave you an idea of if you entered the code correctly. Each line of code in the magazine would have a 2-digit code next to it. What you got, and what was in the magazine was supposed to match. If it didn't, you knew you entered the line wrong.
Later, they added another program in the back of the magazine, called MLX, that was only for entering pure machine language programs (Automatic Proofreader was for Basic programs). MLX reduced the amount of typing a little, because you didn't have to type in the loader for each program, and you didn't have to type "DATA" at the beginning of each line. It would do the checksum for errors, but the main thing was it would produce a runnable executable file on disk. The difference between this and the Basic loaders was with the latter, you had to load the Basic loader, which would then Poke the machine language into memory, and then make a USR() call to execute it. Every time you wanted to run the program, you had to sit and wait while first, the Basic loader loaded, and then while it ran, Poking the ML code into memory (this could take a couple minutes), and then finally executing it. With MLX programs, you could just Bload the ML program (or whatever), and run it. Not too much waiting.
@@yaggieboat "MLX"
I typed in the Atari 8-bit version, back in the day. Nice to see the C-64 version.
Spent hours and days doing it. My fav mag.
Mine as well
i been doing this recently...fun I missed out on in the 80's when I was learning guitar instead.
What a waste of time that was. Actually typed in Speedscript, Laser chess, turbotape, balloon crazy, among others. Biker Dave might have come on a disk by then. Having said that, summer was endless in those days.
I remember turbo tape being one of my favorites. It totally made my life a little bit better because I didn't have a 1541 yet at that point. But, yea, it was definitely something that eat up a lot of time.
I never entered these without first loading Automatic Proofreader (checksums in the left margin), later they did publish a disc, as too for Gazette. Many of those D64 images are now up on Bombjack. The first I typed in was Rectan (3-D plotter) and Speedscript. It and Astro-Panic (a game) were entered using MLX with eight fingers spread across the number keys and just listened for the beep (or buzz). I see your setup includes a Backbit, great cart but not an option for the new emulator C64 mini / maxi
I remember when the proofreader came along it was the greatest thing ever…
I remember typing in 3 pages of machine code in raw hex, and it not working. That was pain as a 10yo. To this day I am not sure if the mag had a typo or I was at fault
I remember that frustration as well back in the day.
I remember typing in these programs from a commodore only magazine. I started doing this when I was in sixth grade and I had little patience. I used to hate searching for the typos. Couldn't you just scan these in and OCR them now?
You could do that or you could just download the image from the Internet. I’m sure all of these are out there on one of the old retro computing sites somewhere. I figured I would do this one just for fun and nostalgia.
It would be cool if you took that code and broke it down into a series of youtube shorts showing what line does what . I bought a c64 mini just to make games with , but one problem is that a standard keyboard does not have the same keys as a c64
That is one major advantage of the maxi.. all the keys are there including the run/stop restore.
Someone should compare the C-64 version of these type-in games to the PC version of those same games. This would illustrate the fact that the C-64 has better graphics and sounds than the IBM PC's and IBM PC Compatibles had back in those days.
Very true. I’ll have to dig out a pc jr and do a side by side.
In general, most magazine games weren't worth the time it took to type them in (this often applied to games in books as well), although there were exceptions. I recall a joust clone called Rug Rider that was decent. And there was a game with elevators in a high-rise building that I recall enjoying. I wanted to play the game Laser Chess, but it was two player only and I didn't have anyone who wanted to learn to play it with me.
As for Compute!, as I recall, they started out covering all the various 8-bit machines, although Apple, Commodore and Atari got the bulk of the coverage. Then they created separate magazines for the more popular systems. At least they had Compute!'s Gazette for the Commodore systems.
As these systems were dying out and computing as a whole was being assimilated by Intel/Microsoft, Compute! itself went to 100% Intel coverage. Then they announced that the were ending the individual magazines and would instead have small sections in Compute! I know it's a small thing, but I was actually kind of offended to find that the section for other systems (like Commodore) was actually an insert that was only included if you had previously been a subscriber to one of those other magazines. Anyone who subscribed to Compute! itself or who bought it at the store didn't get that section. It felt like they wanted to minimize other systems as much as possible and not bother the Intel/MS master race with information about the 'peasant' systems. Intellectually I know it probably made financial sense, but I couldn't help seeing it as them thinking that those other systems were beneath them.
It didn't last long and after only a few months, they stopped publishing the insert altogether.
Even though the games weren’t much fun they gave the person typing it in an insight into how these things worked. A good way to learn coding on your own. It was a shame to see the old Gazette die off. A period of time in my childhood I will fondly remember.