I still remember the day my dad came over with a carrier bag and said 'do you want this?' - I was so excited to see his old Dragon 32 in there (he's just bought a C64). I have lots and lots of fond memories of it.
Born 1981, older brother, 1978. I well remember Starship Chameleon (on cartridge!), Donkey King (also Cuthbert in the Jungle, which 10 years later I was to find was a rip-off of Pitfall), Mined Out, and my brother getting FURIOUS with Escape from Alcatraz! Also, speaking of Assembler language, my dad's last programming contract (circa 2000) WAS for a company who hadn't updated their systems since Assembler, and he was the only Assembler specialist in the south east!
I feel for you at the end. I soldiered on with my Dragon 32 until about 1988 (mostly as loved programming games in Microsoft basic). My first game was Racer Ball, a Pac-man clone, and I recall Donkey King well. In fact it was re-branded to The King quickly due to your aforementioned copyright issues. Interestingly owning a Dragon 32 did not get me much credit in the playground. The Spectrums and C64s ruled the cool. But after years of saving my paper-round money I finally bought an Amiga 500 in spring 1989. My playground credit went from 0% to 100% overnight... I recently discovered xRoar and this has helped me re-live my ancient glories, and even try a few of the games I could not afford back then... and I even completed The Ring of Darkness. Don;t know if you ever saw that, but it was an Ultima clone...
Thanks for reminding me about the rebrand of Donkey King. You are quite right about the "street cred" or lack of it. My friends with computers tended to have Spectrums, and the Amiga was instantly cool due to the MIDI support and resulting kudos with musicians.
Think I was either 6 or 7 when my Dad got one of these. I remember getting Frogger for Xmas, it blew my mind! Also remember watching my Dad sitting for long periods and typing in code from a book so we could play a game, Unfortunately when you turned the computer off you lost the game and had to type it all in again to play it!
I enjoyed watching this video, it was informative and very well made. I had a Dragon 32 back in the 80s (and other machines too, but not all at the same time), and I have very fond memories of it. I think I must have sold it at some point, but I now have another one courtesy of eBay :-)
I have never heard of any tape games taking an hour to load , I had a c16 a zx81 a c+4 and a c64 and the average loading time was about 3 -5 mins , the only game that took ages to start was football manager , it loaded in minutes but took ages to start after the load as it was setting up all the data , later games were multi load games and they were a pain in the arse as you had to load the levels from tape as you played through them so if you died you had to rewind the whole tape and reload from the beginning
Loading times were much improved on cassette for other computers because after say 1985 a "Hyperload" system was used by Ocean which could see games that used 128K load in as little as 7 minutes is wasn't quite as long as people like to pretend - I loved making a cuppa whilst it loaded anyway or flicking through a computer mag. The Spectrum did have cartridge games by way of the slot provided on the Interface 2 add on which was also a Joystick interface
I loved my Dragon 32. Iearnt to program the thing to the point I actually managed to hack a program. Other than that, I used it to transmit data over 144mhz - a group of us set up a net so we could write and share software between each other. I was posh because I had the disk drive and a printer.
I know someone who has some claims to fame (valid ones) on this computer but I'm sharing it so will let that person share their experience with the machine etc ... I hope JetPac gets homebrew'ed /Commercial for this machine as I think it would be at least on par with the arguably best version (Expanded Vic 20 version)
Was there a game where there was a grid and you had to travel along all the lines in the grid painting them while avoiding the bad guys that also traveled along the lines? I have this dim memory of this game when visiting a friend once as a kid and I think it might have been a Dragon they had.
It's a shame the Dragon never flew, I think it had a fair bit of potential but the upgrades were too slow coming. The old Dragon factory is now a chocolate factory.
![BOWKYLION - วิงวอน (ex-change) [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/cLdnZWDaO-w/mqdefault.jpg)
I still remember the day my dad came over with a carrier bag and said 'do you want this?' - I was so excited to see his old Dragon 32 in there (he's just bought a C64). I have lots and lots of fond memories of it.
Born 1981, older brother, 1978. I well remember Starship Chameleon (on cartridge!), Donkey King (also Cuthbert in the Jungle, which 10 years later I was to find was a rip-off of Pitfall), Mined Out, and my brother getting FURIOUS with Escape from Alcatraz!
Also, speaking of Assembler language, my dad's last programming contract (circa 2000) WAS for a company who hadn't updated their systems since Assembler, and he was the only Assembler specialist in the south east!
brings back memories of my late dad bringing us a new game or 2 on a Friday.
I feel for you at the end. I soldiered on with my Dragon 32 until about 1988 (mostly as loved programming games in Microsoft basic). My first game was Racer Ball, a Pac-man clone, and I recall Donkey King well. In fact it was re-branded to The King quickly due to your aforementioned copyright issues.
Interestingly owning a Dragon 32 did not get me much credit in the playground. The Spectrums and C64s ruled the cool. But after years of saving my paper-round money I finally bought an Amiga 500 in spring 1989. My playground credit went from 0% to 100% overnight...
I recently discovered xRoar and this has helped me re-live my ancient glories, and even try a few of the games I could not afford back then... and I even completed The Ring of Darkness. Don;t know if you ever saw that, but it was an Ultima clone...
Thanks for reminding me about the rebrand of Donkey King. You are quite right about the "street cred" or lack of it. My friends with computers tended to have Spectrums, and the Amiga was instantly cool due to the MIDI support and resulting kudos with musicians.
Think I was either 6 or 7 when my Dad got one of these. I remember getting Frogger for Xmas, it blew my mind! Also remember watching my Dad sitting for long periods and typing in code from a book so we could play a game, Unfortunately when you turned the computer off you lost the game and had to type it all in again to play it!
Brilliant! I found this fascinating even though I’m not really into gaming, and I love the fond memories of the Dragon.
I enjoyed watching this video, it was informative and very well made. I had a Dragon 32 back in the 80s (and other machines too, but not all at the same time), and I have very fond memories of it. I think I must have sold it at some point, but I now have another one courtesy of eBay :-)
I have never heard of any tape games taking an hour to load , I had a c16 a zx81 a c+4 and a c64 and the average loading time was about 3 -5 mins , the only game that took ages to start was football manager , it loaded in minutes but took ages to start after the load as it was setting up all the data , later games were multi load games and they were a pain in the arse as you had to load the levels from tape as you played through them so if you died you had to rewind the whole tape and reload from the beginning
Loading times were much improved on cassette for other computers because after say 1985 a "Hyperload" system was used by Ocean which could see games that used 128K load in as little as 7 minutes is wasn't quite as long as people like to pretend - I loved making a cuppa whilst it loaded anyway or flicking through a computer mag. The Spectrum did have cartridge games by way of the slot provided on the Interface 2 add on which was also a Joystick interface
I'm old enough to have brought a dragon 32 from new. I seem to remember that buzzard bait came with a dongle to prevent piracy.
Yes, I remember a dongle. It had a fairly large box to accommodate it.
I loved my Dragon 32. Iearnt to program the thing to the point I actually managed to hack a program. Other than that, I used it to transmit data over 144mhz - a group of us set up a net so we could write and share software between each other. I was posh because I had the disk drive and a printer.
I know someone who has some claims to fame (valid ones) on this computer but I'm sharing it so will let that person share their experience with the machine etc ... I hope JetPac gets homebrew'ed /Commercial for this machine as I think it would be at least on par with the arguably best version (Expanded Vic 20 version)
Was there a game where there was a grid and you had to travel along all the lines in the grid painting them while avoiding the bad guys that also traveled along the lines? I have this dim memory of this game when visiting a friend once as a kid and I think it might have been a Dragon they had.
There was definitely a game like this, but I'm struggling to recall the name.
It sounds like Cuthbert Goes Walkabout th-cam.com/video/SxsSsTvMK94/w-d-xo.html
It's a shame the Dragon never flew, I think it had a fair bit of potential but the upgrades were too slow coming. The old Dragon factory is now a chocolate factory.