That was one of the criticisms of Atari, and is why Nintendo released their first releases as the "Black Box" series, with pixel art on the cover showing an accurate representation of what you could expect from the game.
Indeed, when newcomers complain how modern games prioritize graphics over a good gaming experience (implying this is a recent thing) they obviously weren't around in the eighties when horrible games were sold with box art.
The childhood trauma of coming home having blown all your chore money, geeked to pop in your new Atari VCS game only to realize you'd bought a total stinker... 😝
At 48 years old, being a dentist, I remember writing those programs in Atari Basic (it is what was strongest here in Chile), "thanks" to the pandemic I decided to return to programming and learned Python, not yet enough to dedicate myself to this passion for programming, but I do like being able to "convert" those programs from Basic to Python and see them work again. Thank you very much Kari for the endearing content you generate. Greetings
@@bluesoystercultist7164 wena !!!! de echo yo tenia Atari por que el Commodore ese si que era escaso, solo unos pocos tenían ese compu. Hasta hoy tengo el 65XE y el 800XL, busco la consola Atari 2600
Greetings from a German Atari 600XL user who is now a software developer, Atari Basic was the first code I ever saw and typed in my life. I remember changing the numbers in the included "thunder/lightning" example listing and sitting there in awe, proudly admiring the results of my changes.
Wow... With so many retro computer channels on here now, it's refreshing to see something a little different. The old programming books, particularly those aimed at children, may be the most overlooked aspect of retro computing. I had one such book in the 80s, and I read it over and over again, and typed in the programs that were in the back. I've spent recent years collecting many books. Maybe this will encourage me to do a little exhibition of a neat little program or two.
I just took a short glimpse of your video, but this is precisely my style. Simply showing the original code and new code side by side is fantastic. So, there is no room for magic, just craft, transforming old code into a new environment. Really cool!
@@lucasrem Natural progression from systems analyst to enterprise architect, from starting in small companies to big corporate and government enterprises.
So the, 90's when I was a child, felt like and endless landscape of constantly improving technology. I'm fascinated with the 8 and 16 bit era, since it was just out of my reach (being an infant lol)
I remember programming games like this in class when I was a kid in the early 90s. I love how the artwork during those times sparked your imagination and basically created the graphics and sound of the game in hour head haha.
I'm laughing. brings back some fun memories.... 1984, I was 14, my dad just got me a Texas Instruments 99-4A (I wanted a C-64, but I have one of those dads that always gets the slightly cheaper brand), and typing in programs from computer magazines, and it takin 45 min to save it all on CASSETTE! ...good times :)
Great to see a 00s CompSci generation programmer playing with old tech and reinventing old code for other Python newbs. I've a classroom idea forming. Keep up the good work!
This brings back memories from the 80s lol. I was born 1978. I find it really cool your shirts from the 80s. Very cool to see the past lol. I really enjoy your videos,mechanically talented brain. God bless
Awesome stuff. I used to have these books back in the day, the artwork stoked my naive young mind and I honestly imagined graphics akin to the artwork in the book!!
My dad worked with a guy who coded games in the early 1980s. They had a commodore 64 and whatever game his daughter wanted he made her. I was at their house with dad and hung out with his daughter, then about 9. She had a unicorn game she was playing. She had one you played as a giant lollipop and even one that involved shopping at a mall in 2600 looking graphics. Ahd about 100 other games. it's crazy to think whatever her idea was became a game she was pretty lucky
I have this Battle Games book.. “borrowed” it from the school library in 1985 when I was 10.. so it’s a bit late being returned 😅 And yes we had a singular BBC Micro in the hallway on a trolley.. used to use it every lunchtime ☺️ Unfortunately I never did become a programmer.. Great videos, really cool seeing you enter these programs 👍
This brings back so many memories, using my dads TRS-80 with similar programming books, writing my first basic programs. Cool to see people today still find fun in it :)
Back in the day, computer magazines used to also include programs like this you could type in - games, utilities, neat demos, etc. Mostly they'd be in BASIC, but sometimes for faster arcade games they'd actually include a block of raw machine code in hex format you'd have to painstakingly type in!
And just before you could run the the code, your little brother tripped over the power cable and all the memory was gone. I had to wait a whole year before I could convince my parents that I needed a datasette for my "home work".
I love how most of your videos have some tone of ''this is an old thing from 35+ years ago: i've used it as a toy when i was younger, so here's everything about it." Keep up the good work, awesome video, as always 😊
This brought back memories. My Dad subscribed to these and would program quite a few of these. I remember flipping through the pages and helping him pick what games to program.
I did not know you could get those books online for free - thank you! I had so many of them when I was a kid which was, sadly, when the BBC Micro was contemporary.
Oooh that's the shootout game I did from this book as a child, before becoming disenchanted with it sadly. It was years before I dipped my toe into programming again. Great video as always!
Hi Kari, pressing all my nostalgia buttons with these books!! They used to write them in the most vanilla BASIC and then include special variations where the individual machines' own flavours of BASIC were different. That's why you'll find STOP in this listing (as it was required in some variants of BASIC), where END would be more normal on the beeb - I think STOP is mainly used in BBC BASIC for debugging, as it always returns an error message. IMHO, BBC BASIC was the most advanced BASIC of its day as it has elegant loops (REPEAT.... UNTIL something) and nice procedures (DEF PROCsomething.... ENDPROC).
Love everything about this video. I used to spend hours with these books as a kid on my C64. As an adult I’ve amassed a huge collection of them from eBay over the years. All for the nostalgia 😊
I had that book as a child of around 8 years old in the 90s. By that time it was already pretty retro, but we had an old DOS computer with Basic on it. I didn’t know how to code (I mostly just liked to look at the pictures) but I just typed the words in and sometimes it worked, but normally it didn’t. But those rare moments it did work were like magic! And the very few times I was able to modify small bits to customise the game were genuinely transcendent experiences and set me on the path to ultimately becoming software engineer. Great to see that book again!
I had this book as a kid. One of the best things for it is once you learnt the basics you could then modify the program to taste. Also the artwork on those books is so cool 😎
These listings books/magazines were part of my childhood so it's absolutely wild seeing a member of the next generation reviving them and even converting one to a modern language. So creative. A great trip down memory lane for me.
These are quite clever little programs showing particular functionality to provide the basics of a game, but leaving it open to the home user to add to it, adding ASCII graphics, 'Play again?' features and even levels if they have the patience to do so. I'd forgotten this sort of thing from back in day!
Even nicer, and more pythonic, you can just use range(), like the loop, to check membership within a range of numbers. Obviously remember that range is half open and includes the start but excludes the stop. So providing you initialize D to an invalid value first, all you need is: while D not in range(4,11): D = int(input("DIFFICULTY (4-10)")) No if statement required, no loop break, super slick.
Love it. This was one of my activities during 2020 when I was stuck at home and recovering from pneumonia. I managed to get a Compute! 1987 Amiga fractal mountain routine running in Pygame. Much more educational than just playing a game.
Oh man, the ART in the background of all the game code pages! My favorite part about retro materials was the immense effort put into the artwork to kind of "help along" the reader imagine what the boxes and symbols represent, lol. Loving this channel! I'm 31 and know JS about this and FA about where to get any of these original products!
wow, I just did this a few months ago with these books, Spy Games and Creepy Computer Games, but I translated them in to VBA and did it in MS Excel :D I used to buy these books back in the 80s to use on my Commodore 64. Loved the Write Your Own Adventure Games, really educational books. Well done to Usborne . And great to see a youngling interested in our old world :D
A few months back I converted several games from a copy of "Practise Your Basic" I still had from when I was in grade 7 in the late 80s. I did a little googling, but I couldn't figure out a way to make ia python equivalent of inkey work. Thanks for digging up msvcrt! Super useful! I've added that to my personal python cookbook document!
I had that exact book back in the day (along with a couple of other programming books). I used to love looking through the book at the pictures to choose a game to type in.
I had those books when they came out (I'm showing my age). When I saw that Osborne made them available for downloading I also had the idea of rewriting them for Python but didn't get round to it. Your walk-through here is fantastic!
Yes did all the typing out of games from the magazines in the early 80's and was always underwhelmed. Enough so it put me off coding. So I became an IT Project Manager instead. Excellent channel.
This is how I learnt to start understanding different codes/scripting. Still couldn't make anything on my own but pretty confident these days when editing what exists
Very cool! I have done this too, converting old BASIC games into C. It's a good way to learn the differences and similarities between languages, and to think about how to structure your code which becomes useful when you do other things in your own programs later.
Very similar to “Compute!” Magazine in the US which was based for the Commodore series of PC. Lots of programs! And they also included an MLX complier programs as well (machine language) which were awesome to sit and punch in programs included in the magazine for hours. Lol.
Awesome job, just went through using your video and created it to using Python. Then posted it to github, adding credits to you and linking your video in the code. Along with the link to the Usborne page. Great job, lots of fun!
Remember entering these games by hand in my Vic-20! What a blast from the past. I've downloaded these PDF's before, after hearing about Usborne releasing them for free back in an old Ars Technica article. I haven't tried entering the programs again though. Cool to see them still around.
O WOW, This really takes me back!!, I remember back in the 80's typing a programme from a game magazine into my Amstrad 464, which was so long I had to leave the computer on all night in order to finish it!. Of course, this was the 80's and there was a power cut obviously!!! 12 hours of game data lost!!!....... I didn't restart it!!!
Wow... I have my old (1982) "Writing BASIC adventure programs for the TRS-80" book that teaches you how to make text adventure games. I had an idea that maybe it could be made in some modern language like python or java, and learn a bit about the language (I dropped out of programming long time ago). Now the idea came back and nudges me :D Nice keyboard by the way :)
Hi when i was at primary school here in Australia in the 80s, we had BBC micros as well. Only in grade 4, 5 and 6 if memory serves. At the time our school must have had a small budget and I would try machines were very affordable for the school. It’s probably the only time in my life I had used one and seen one around. After that it was Apple IIs and Macintosh computers with b&w screens.
I remember checking these out of the library when I was a kid. We also somehow had BBC micros in my junior high school (in America), all of them sharing a pair of floppy disks via a weird serial port network. Felt really advanced by the standards of 1986!
Hey Kari, cool project. As a child, I programmed some games for the C16 from a magazine :) That inspired me to become a computer scientist. I think this is also a good way to learn python. cheers.
The "Beeb" bought back good memories of taking my Computer Studies CSE (yes you read that right, before the days of GCSE's). I wrote a database program for my exam piece. We had a "computer room" with about 12 BBC computers, all saving our programs to a Winchester disk.
Just found your channel. This is so great :) I remember there was a radio show here on Thursday nights where they actually played back a most annoying beeps and squeaks sounds from the old days. I used to record them from the radio broadcast with a tape recorder and then load the program on the C64. Those were the days. Would love to see you replicate in python the stuff you could do in the days with ‘sprites’ on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
Perhaps that was Datarama. That was a regular radio show in 1983 that broadcast code (typically 30 seconds long). I think Micro Live on BBC television did the same during the end credits sometimes. They also did a thing with a flashing square in the top-right of the screen, but you needed a light pen taped to your television screen (over that area of course).
Nice!. A couple a years ago I did the same, but with some of those old "Write your own adventure/fantasy Game from the Usborne books", for the sake of fun. I never though someone else would do the same.
You should program all the games of that book! make a youtube series of programing it! would love to watch all of them, keep on the good work, you are amazing.
I could never have dreamed this would be a thing in the twenty twenties. I would have thought we'd be busy space travelling by now. But it was a sign of the times that you put the magazine on screen to "make it easier". For me, easier is paper, you can put it anywhere and don't need to use up "valuable" screen space with it.
Arrr the 80’s good gaming years in fact the best ever. Watching this makes me want to add python to my coding bow. 🙇 great vid and interesting to watch. 🎉
Very cool covering this topic. I think I might still have that book :) I remember trying to type a lot of those games on my Commodore 64 and couldnt get them to work.
hi there kari.. that Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code program or BASIC was what i was taught was i was in secondy school many many many years ago when the BBC micro model B first came out.. it took so long time to type it all out correctly and spell correctly and when it dont work you had to go and find where the problem was took so long to do and find
in high school we had IBM 386 machines all over camups. In computer class we were allowed to play around with basic and vb and the such. There were games (snake, gorillas, etc) that we could get into and modify. it was so much fun. Such a great video. thank you.
When I was younger I always found the artwork was vastly more impressive than the game.
That was one of the criticisms of Atari, and is why Nintendo released their first releases as the "Black Box" series, with pixel art on the cover showing an accurate representation of what you could expect from the game.
That's how they sold the games.
Indeed, when newcomers complain how modern games prioritize graphics over a good gaming experience (implying this is a recent thing) they obviously weren't around in the eighties when horrible games were sold with box art.
The childhood trauma of coming home having blown all your chore money, geeked to pop in your new Atari VCS game only to realize you'd bought a total stinker... 😝
@@catsaregovernmentspies Activision was more honest IIRC. At least on the cartridge label.
As a 49 year old, it is refreshing to see someone so young interested in retro micros!
I still have my ZX81. Wish I'd kept my Commodore now.
@@miroslaw5615 old enough to have used the BBC Micro at school and seen the release of the ZX Spectrum!
Hell, as a 29 year old, it's still refreshing for me.
@@OneAndOnlyMe yeah I wish I still had my Commodore 64 setup too.
It's good to see that younger generations are keeping older systems alive.
The artwork in those books is amazing. Somehow the style always reminded me of the movie parodies in MAD Magazine
At 48 years old, being a dentist, I remember writing those programs in Atari Basic (it is what was strongest here in Chile), "thanks" to the pandemic I decided to return to programming and learned Python, not yet enough to dedicate myself to this passion for programming, but I do like being able to "convert" those programs from Basic to Python and see them work again.
Thank you very much Kari for the endearing content you generate.
Greetings
Wait, Chile!?
Wena conchetumare :D
Yo tenia entendido que tener acceso a productos como el C64 era casi imposible en los 80
@@bluesoystercultist7164 wena !!!! de echo yo tenia Atari por que el Commodore ese si que era escaso, solo unos pocos tenían ese compu. Hasta hoy tengo el 65XE y el 800XL, busco la consola Atari 2600
Greetings from a German Atari 600XL user who is now a software developer, Atari Basic was the first code I ever saw and typed in my life. I remember changing the numbers in the included "thunder/lightning" example listing and sitting there in awe, proudly admiring the results of my changes.
Just found this channel yesterday, seeing such a young person interested in our yesterday is brilliant and so are you 😇
Well said.
Não se engane isso é pura modinha e hype
Wow... With so many retro computer channels on here now, it's refreshing to see something a little different. The old programming books, particularly those aimed at children, may be the most overlooked aspect of retro computing. I had one such book in the 80s, and I read it over and over again, and typed in the programs that were in the back. I've spent recent years collecting many books. Maybe this will encourage me to do a little exhibition of a neat little program or two.
I just took a short glimpse of your video, but this is precisely my style. Simply showing the original code and new code side by side is fantastic. So, there is no room for magic, just craft, transforming old code into a new environment. Really cool!
Those books got me started. I never looked back. Today I'm an enterprise systems architect.
Why so bored ?
You should create again, post it here !
enterprise systems, why that ?
@@lucasrem Natural progression from systems analyst to enterprise architect, from starting in small companies to big corporate and government enterprises.
Where could I get my son something like this? What would I even search for?
It's great to see you getting into rhe gateway drug that got so many of us into programming back in the day 💯
So the, 90's when I was a child, felt like and endless landscape of constantly improving technology. I'm fascinated with the 8 and 16 bit era, since it was just out of my reach (being an infant lol)
10:35 thought you had 3 hands for a second 🤣 good video, keep em coming!
Worth noting that the `msvcrt` module is only available on Windows systems so if you are using Linux or Mac you can use the 'keyboard' module.
Thanks - I probably should have mentioned that in the vid👍
54 year old BBC Micro owner here. That start-up sound at 1:10 brings back so many memories. 😍😍😍
💯
You learned coding, why care how old it is ?
Reminds me of when I first got into microcomputers way back in the late 1970s. So much effort, so much fun.
I remember programming games like this in class when I was a kid in the early 90s. I love how the artwork during those times sparked your imagination and basically created the graphics and sound of the game in hour head haha.
These books started my journey in to programming on the ZX Spectrum+ back in the 80's.
Ace days typing in the progs from the magazines back then.
@@Urko2005 Me too into my ZX81
"over 40 years ago". Don't mind me crying over here
5 years old in 2008, too. I'm only 29 and that still made me feel old.
I'm laughing. brings back some fun memories....
1984, I was 14, my dad just got me a Texas Instruments 99-4A (I wanted a C-64, but I have one of those dads that always gets the slightly cheaper brand), and typing in programs from computer magazines, and it takin 45 min to save it all on CASSETTE!
...good times :)
Great to see a 00s CompSci generation programmer playing with old tech and reinventing old code for other Python newbs. I've a classroom idea forming. Keep up the good work!
This brings back memories from the 80s lol. I was born 1978. I find it really cool your shirts from the 80s. Very cool to see the past lol. I really enjoy your videos,mechanically talented brain. God bless
I love the Usborne books, not only these computer coding ones but others too, great to see them being put to use!
Awesome stuff. I used to have these books back in the day, the artwork stoked my naive young mind and I honestly imagined graphics akin to the artwork in the book!!
Amazing video, Kari! Combining old tech with new is what i love doing also! Great T-Shirt of Robocop. Love the movie too. Keep up your great work!
Thanks so much!
@@karilawler Always welcome. I am a Software-Developer reaching back to the 80's. Love that you have chosen this topic.
Love seeing younger people loving the stuff i used to do in my teens in early 80s. The BBC was a very upmarket machine in its day.
UK only machine !
My dad worked with a guy who coded games in the early 1980s. They had a commodore 64 and whatever game his daughter wanted he made her. I was at their house with dad and hung out with his daughter, then about 9. She had a unicorn game she was playing. She had one you played as a giant lollipop and even one that involved shopping at a mall in 2600 looking graphics. Ahd about 100 other games. it's crazy to think whatever her idea was became a game she was pretty lucky
I have this Battle Games book.. “borrowed” it from the school library in 1985 when I was 10.. so it’s a bit late being returned 😅
And yes we had a singular BBC Micro in the hallway on a trolley.. used to use it every lunchtime ☺️
Unfortunately I never did become a programmer.. Great videos, really cool seeing you enter these programs 👍
I have a book of dinosaurs loaned in 1977. OMG I'm on the run, as the late return fine will be massive.
@@Inaflap
Careful... with inflation how it is, some governments might see library overdue fines as a way to solve budget problems 😂
I like your tshirt . I find your videos entertaining and relaxing .
This brings back so many memories, using my dads TRS-80 with similar programming books, writing my first basic programs. Cool to see people today still find fun in it :)
I really like how you re-program these games in python. truly amazing.
Back in the day, computer magazines used to also include programs like this you could type in - games, utilities, neat demos, etc. Mostly they'd be in BASIC, but sometimes for faster arcade games they'd actually include a block of raw machine code in hex format you'd have to painstakingly type in!
And just before you could run the the code, your little brother tripped over the power cable and all the memory was gone. I had to wait a whole year before I could convince my parents that I needed a datasette for my "home work".
I love how most of your videos have some tone of ''this is an old thing from 35+ years ago: i've used it as a toy when i was younger, so here's everything about it."
Keep up the good work, awesome video, as always 😊
This brought back memories. My Dad subscribed to these and would program quite a few of these. I remember flipping through the pages and helping him pick what games to program.
I did not know you could get those books online for free - thank you! I had so many of them when I was a kid which was, sadly, when the BBC Micro was contemporary.
I am 46 and used to use those old BASIC programs in magazines and the nostalgia hit hard. This was fantastic to watch.
Wow Kari, yet another cracking video. Really like your style!
Thank you very much!
Thanks!
As someone who typed in 100's of BASIC programs from magazines in my youth, and also as someone who enjoys Python, this was a great video! Thanks!
Oooh that's the shootout game I did from this book as a child, before becoming disenchanted with it sadly. It was years before I dipped my toe into programming again. Great video as always!
Hi Kari, pressing all my nostalgia buttons with these books!! They used to write them in the most vanilla BASIC and then include special variations where the individual machines' own flavours of BASIC were different. That's why you'll find STOP in this listing (as it was required in some variants of BASIC), where END would be more normal on the beeb - I think STOP is mainly used in BBC BASIC for debugging, as it always returns an error message. IMHO, BBC BASIC was the most advanced BASIC of its day as it has elegant loops (REPEAT.... UNTIL something) and nice procedures (DEF PROCsomething.... ENDPROC).
It's fantastic that Usborne made these books available! I'm trying out the Space Games (in Python) now thanks to this video.
Thanks Kari I have enjoyed all your videos, takes me back to my youth and my ZX81 and Spectrum days, please do keep the content coming.
Love everything about this video. I used to spend hours with these books as a kid on my C64. As an adult I’ve amassed a huge collection of them from eBay over the years. All for the nostalgia 😊
I had that book as a child of around 8 years old in the 90s. By that time it was already pretty retro, but we had an old DOS computer with Basic on it. I didn’t know how to code (I mostly just liked to look at the pictures) but I just typed the words in and sometimes it worked, but normally it didn’t. But those rare moments it did work were like magic! And the very few times I was able to modify small bits to customise the game were genuinely transcendent experiences and set me on the path to ultimately becoming software engineer. Great to see that book again!
What a lovely channel, Kari. Please keep making your good content.
I had this book as a kid. One of the best things for it is once you learnt the basics you could then modify the program to taste. Also the artwork on those books is so cool 😎
These listings books/magazines were part of my childhood so it's absolutely wild seeing a member of the next generation reviving them and even converting one to a modern language. So creative. A great trip down memory lane for me.
These are quite clever little programs showing particular functionality to provide the basics of a game, but leaving it open to the home user to add to it, adding ASCII graphics, 'Play again?' features and even levels if they have the patience to do so. I'd forgotten this sort of thing from back in day!
Thanks for another great video! Loved these old books. Incidentally, in Python, you don't have to do "D >= 4 and D
Even nicer, and more pythonic, you can just use range(), like the loop, to check membership within a range of numbers. Obviously remember that range is half open and includes the start but excludes the stop.
So providing you initialize D to an invalid value first, all you need is:
while D not in range(4,11):
D = int(input("DIFFICULTY (4-10)"))
No if statement required, no loop break, super slick.
@@samwalker7567that’s lovely!
And not as super readable as her implementation.
Love it. This was one of my activities during 2020 when I was stuck at home and recovering from pneumonia. I managed to get a Compute! 1987 Amiga fractal mountain routine running in Pygame. Much more educational than just playing a game.
Fantastic - loved this. I grew up with a BBC and these books. Was always more into coding than the games themselves.
Oh man, the ART in the background of all the game code pages! My favorite part about retro materials was the immense effort put into the artwork to kind of "help along" the reader imagine what the boxes and symbols represent, lol.
Loving this channel! I'm 31 and know JS about this and FA about where to get any of these original products!
wow, I just did this a few months ago with these books, Spy Games and Creepy Computer Games, but I translated them in to VBA and did it in MS Excel :D
I used to buy these books back in the 80s to use on my Commodore 64. Loved the Write Your Own Adventure Games, really educational books. Well done to Usborne .
And great to see a youngling interested in our old world :D
Kari your BASIC to Python skills are really smooth! :D My Python knowledge of libraries is flaky at best and you absolutely sail it.
A few months back I converted several games from a copy of "Practise Your Basic" I still had from when I was in grade 7 in the late 80s. I did a little googling, but I couldn't figure out a way to make ia python equivalent of inkey work. Thanks for digging up msvcrt! Super useful! I've added that to my personal python cookbook document!
Nice, it really brings back memories. I had the C64. Quick tip for Python when checking a number range: you can just write if 4
super awesome video, it was really fun checking out the old type-in-the-code books :)
I had that exact book back in the day (along with a couple of other programming books). I used to love looking through the book at the pictures to choose a game to type in.
I had this book! so many memories, thank you!
I had those books when they came out (I'm showing my age). When I saw that Osborne made them available for downloading I also had the idea of rewriting them for Python but didn't get round to it. Your walk-through here is fantastic!
Yes did all the typing out of games from the magazines in the early 80's and was always underwhelmed. Enough so it put me off coding. So I became an IT Project Manager instead. Excellent channel.
This is how I learnt to start understanding different codes/scripting. Still couldn't make anything on my own but pretty confident these days when editing what exists
Very cool! I have done this too, converting old BASIC games into C. It's a good way to learn the differences and similarities between languages, and to think about how to structure your code which becomes useful when you do other things in your own programs later.
I am currently working on a new game for the BBC Micro. This made me smile.
I HAD THAT BOOK and used it on the ZX Spectrum!!!!
Wow, the algorithm has done me proud!
Glad i discovered you, these are things i expect from a youtuber
Very similar to “Compute!” Magazine in the US which was based for the Commodore series of PC. Lots of programs! And they also included an MLX complier programs as well (machine language) which were awesome to sit and punch in programs included in the magazine for hours. Lol.
I thoroughly enjoyed this video. A nice trip down memory lane and I learnt a bit of Python too. Great work and I can’t wait to see more! Cheers! 🇨🇦
Awesome job, just went through using your video and created it to using Python. Then posted it to github, adding credits to you and linking your video in the code. Along with the link to the Usborne page. Great job, lots of fun!
Loved! I love retro text games. Your video inspired me to study Python.
Remember entering these games by hand in my Vic-20! What a blast from the past. I've downloaded these PDF's before, after hearing about Usborne releasing them for free back in an old Ars Technica article. I haven't tried entering the programs again though. Cool to see them still around.
Love your Chanel, keep up these videos!
Thank you so much for this video! I've re-coded Vital Message in C#. I'm an amateur, and this was a nice exercise!
Love this idea. Using old magazine listings then porting them sounds like a good time to me. 😁
O WOW, This really takes me back!!, I remember back in the 80's typing a programme from a game magazine into my Amstrad 464, which was so long I had to leave the computer on all night in order to finish it!. Of course, this was the 80's and there was a power cut obviously!!! 12 hours of game data lost!!!....... I didn't restart it!!!
Coding micro computers in the 80s. Learnt so much - miss those times and the computers.
Kari, love the show and your content. Reminds me of early 2000’s late night shows on tech tv
Wow... I have my old (1982) "Writing BASIC adventure programs for the TRS-80" book that teaches you how to make text adventure games. I had an idea that maybe it could be made in some modern language like python or java, and learn a bit about the language (I dropped out of programming long time ago).
Now the idea came back and nudges me :D
Nice keyboard by the way :)
Hi when i was at primary school here in Australia in the 80s, we had BBC micros as well. Only in grade 4, 5 and 6 if memory serves. At the time our school must have had a small budget and I would try machines were very affordable for the school.
It’s probably the only time in my life I had used one and seen one around. After that it was Apple IIs and Macintosh computers with b&w screens.
I remember checking these out of the library when I was a kid. We also somehow had BBC micros in my junior high school (in America), all of them sharing a pair of floppy disks via a weird serial port network. Felt really advanced by the standards of 1986!
Hey Kari, cool project. As a child, I programmed some games for the C16 from a magazine :) That inspired me to become a computer scientist. I think this is also a good way to learn python. cheers.
The "Beeb" bought back good memories of taking my Computer Studies CSE (yes you read that right, before the days of GCSE's). I wrote a database program for my exam piece. We had a "computer room" with about 12 BBC computers, all saving our programs to a Winchester disk.
I grew up on those books. Looking back they’re masterpieces really
Thanks for yet another great video! Looking forward to see more retro themed coding content!
Just found your channel. This is so great :)
I remember there was a radio show here on Thursday nights where they actually played back a most annoying beeps and squeaks sounds from the old days.
I used to record them from the radio broadcast with a tape recorder and then load the program on the C64. Those were the days.
Would love to see you replicate in python the stuff you could do in the days with ‘sprites’ on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum.
Perhaps that was Datarama. That was a regular radio show in 1983 that broadcast code (typically 30 seconds long). I think Micro Live on BBC television did the same during the end credits sometimes. They also did a thing with a flashing square in the top-right of the screen, but you needed a light pen taped to your television screen (over that area of course).
Your presentation style and subject are giving me Violet Berlin vibes from Bad Influence.
Nice!. A couple a years ago I did the same, but with some of those old "Write your own adventure/fantasy Game from the Usborne books", for the sake of fun. I never though someone else would do the same.
Great idea for a video! Really fun to watch how far we have come.
Omg that BBC start sound. What a childhood memory boot.
I had the BBC Electron! Awesome content, tvm!
This is cool. I have some of those books and was interested in re-implementing some of the games in Python with my daughter.
You should program all the games of that book! make a youtube series of programing it! would love to watch all of them, keep on the good work, you are amazing.
I have this book since my childhood. Way back when I was trying to use a ZX81. 😊 I was 7 or 8.
Thanks for this video! You made my day 😊
I could never have dreamed this would be a thing in the twenty twenties. I would have thought we'd be busy space travelling by now.
But it was a sign of the times that you put the magazine on screen to "make it easier". For me, easier is paper, you can put it anywhere and don't need to use up "valuable" screen space with it.
Arrr the 80’s good gaming years in fact the best ever. Watching this makes me want to add python to my coding bow. 🙇 great vid and interesting to watch. 🎉
Oh my...I didnt remember that book but when I waychwd the video it triggered so many memories...thanks a lot❤
Very cool covering this topic. I think I might still have that book :) I remember trying to type a lot of those games on my Commodore 64 and couldnt get them to work.
Thank you so much for this video! This was really a brilliant idea. Now I want to go check those vintage programming magazines too XD
oeeeefffff i remember this coding in Basic way back from my C64 days! Seeing it just brought back some lost memories :D
Awesome this book, I have never seen that and already love!
hi there kari.. that Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code program or BASIC was what i was taught was i was in secondy school many many many years ago when the BBC micro model B first came out.. it took so long time to type it all out correctly and spell correctly and when it dont work you had to go and find where the problem was took so long to do and find
in high school we had IBM 386 machines all over camups. In computer class we were allowed to play around with basic and vb and the such. There were games (snake, gorillas, etc) that we could get into and modify. it was so much fun. Such a great video. thank you.
It's so nice to see a lady who could easily have been my daughter being so fond of the hardware that my generation grew up with.