Christmas 1976 our family also had no money for expensive toys, barely enough for food. My mother and younger sisters were in the kitchen baking up treats. I was sent to pick up some last minute ingredient from the neighborhood grocery store late on Christmas eve. The store was closing as I got there and the manager told me they were selling out the temporary toy counter. I had very little money left over but went to look. Among the toys was a Simon. I asked the price but it was too high. Deeply discounted but still too high. The sales clerk kept quickly lowering the price saying one number after another until it was almost free. When I said I'd take it he loaded up my basket with the Simon and a selection of other toys as well. "No charge." My younger siblings and I had a most excellent Christmas through that act of kindness. Simon beeped along happily in our house for some years to come.
You were lucky. My family had to spend the Christmas of 1976 living in a shoe box in the middle of the road and then work a 36 hour shift at the mill, but we still long for those happy times.
- It was so foolish for me to fix this game before I started recording this video, but no worries: I've ordered another one dead from eBay! I love your brain, Clive. You're awesome! Thank you!
Clive, I want to thank you for inspiring the interest for engineering in many of us. Your soothing voice is like a decoupling capacitor to fight one's ripple of indecisiveness. You're so cool, keep it up!
I experienced that on the vintage computing festival berlin, where I had the most fun playing "hunt the bit" on a PDP-7 :-) (while there were also vintage atari consoles and 1st gen play stations etc. exhibited in a "playable" fashion, but that didn't interest me as much)
A few years back my local maker group built one of those that was 20ft in diameter. Tons of LEDs and load cells for the buttons. You would play it in teams of 4-8 and stand on the buttons to press them
@@megamanx466 I wish I filmed more of the build. I've got quite a few photos from it though. We were planning on doing another event with it this year, but as you can imagine covid delayed those plans for good reason. we designed it modularly in 8 huge pie shaped wedge sections that can fit in the back of 2 trucks. So it's fairy easy to transport to any location. It definitely needs some repairs after two days of people jumping on it. The black part was skinned in abs plastic over plywood, so its super durable, but the buttons were skinned with plywood and colored fiberglass. The fiberglass was layed over some strips of LEDs in the button to make it look like it glows. After two days of people jumping on it, it did up breaking through in a few spots though. With 16 load cells and 11 different channels of 120 volt led lights the electronica were pretty wild too. It was designed so we can connect a network of PIs over WiFi to dmx lights and throw them all over the event space. Then they all flash and match the color of the simon itself. We also modified an original simon to be the start button for the full sized one. It's bolted on a welded pedistool that sits in front of the full sized thing. It also flashes the buttons the same colors as the 20ft one. You end up pressing the original tiny start button on it. People got a kick out of that. We even got the original graphics files from Hasbro. We ended up making our own tones, and added some more base to the sound files, so it's like something kinda like close encounters. It played out of an in built automotive style speaker system inside of the center, then also would connect up to the speakers outside at the event space. Next time we run an event, probably in quite a while at this rate, I'll either film it myself, or find someone else who can film, the setup, teardown, and event.
@@ReRamp That sounds awesome! Perhaps next year you can get Hasbro to contribute towards it. Either way, sounds like an excellent project for a video! 🤯😃
I was lucky enough to get a new one for Christmas 1979. I still have it in its original box (as I do most of my presents but I am from an era when you were grateful for what you got and looked after it) and it still gives great fun and joy when we get it out at Christmas when friends and family come around. But I have never taken it apart so thank you Clive for enlightening me!
I remember as a young teenager getting one of these from Woolworths which was mis priced at £2 instead of £20. I grabbed one, paid, and got out of the shop asap. It gave many years of fun for the whole family until it stopped working and unfortunately got thrown away - no BigClive in those days showing how to fix it!
I've got the original simon, a speak & spell and a merlin. I've got those about 3 years ago for my son when he was 5 years old. He also has a C64 which he first used with a datasette, then a 1541, then 1851, then jiffy dos for the 1581. It was really fun to see him appreciate the speed upgrades :-) Now he can write a simple basic program and save it to floppy.
I'm rather Impressed that you can complete a sequence while still talking. You never cease to amaze me Clive. I had Pocket Simon the push buttons were far from satisfying, It took great restraint not to throw it at the wall.
Amazing timing for this video! I just found one of these Simon games new in the box at a thrift store a few days ago! The manual even explains how to dismantle the slide switch covers and the top panel to replace the bulbs, and a spare bulb is even stored inside of the game. Last time I played one of these was likely 40 years ago! My family couldn't afford it back when it was new, either.
I never had a Simon, but my parents did buy me a Merlin when it first came out. Some day I should dig it out of the attic and see if it has the original TMS1000 inside. Yeah, it really is hard for today's generation to understand how mind-blowing these toys were back in the day. The 80's were a magical time. 8)
Mine is still in the Rec. Room running strong. When we have get-togethers we end up needing to replace the batteries from so much playtime. PS: I am 74 years young and have owned this from the first day they went on sale. Never replace a lamp, but thanks for letting me know we have a spare inside. Stay safe, and happy holidays.
I have played Adventure (one of the VERY first computer games, after Hunt The Wumpus) running in a PDP-8 emulator, running in a VM plugin for the world simulator Minecraft, which was running inside Java, running on Win7Pro64, running in VirtualBox, running on MacOS. Now that's abstraction! (I did this Because at the time, the JRE for MacOS had hiccups - MC java runs natively now, eliminating a few layers, heh. And I had help. Other people set up the VM inside the ridiculous collection of MC plugins called Fead The Beast for it to be possible. And it wasn't my MC FTB server either.)
i remember these games. My uncle had one at his house that I played as a kid. So many memories! Thank you so much for sharing this with us. looking forward to reading the rabbit hole links LOL!
My parents were too tight to buy me a real Simon when they first came out but I got a Tandy hand held version years later from Radio Shack. Many hours were spent playing that thing.
Thank you for opening this window into a past where spare bulbs were taped inside. Such a breath of fresh air in a time where right to repair is being fought over.
The reason the colored plastic "button" parts have two positions for the rubber buttons is because they use a different position for the contact based on what position on the game the plastic lens is, the configuration allows them to use one (expensive) set of molds to make the parts, and they could load different colored plastic depending on the part they wanted to make. (The could make, say, a thousand of each color, one run at a time, one day they make blue, the next, red, etc)
Ohhhh wow! I loved the lights and buttons just like you! I remember as a kid how beautiful and exciting it was but was too young to understand the game.
My very first electronics project was a sparkfun Simon game. I had a simon as a kid. It was great to play alone, but this was a game that was also fun to play in groups, too, unlike the other handheld games like merlin or mattel football.
Top Banana! I do remember SIMON and the arguments little brother and I went through to get more share! Great to see it again and I do wonder just how much you could difference
I liked my Simon back in the day and wanted many hours on it. Didn't realise it was that expensive though. I guess nowadays it would be about quarter of the size and about £5. It's funny you posted this as I was thinking about one the other week and mentally coding one. Bull electronics is another flashback!
I made some good money back in the days repairing these for locals. The lamps were always so cool to me the way they mounted and their brightness. Most all repairs were bulb replacements and switch repair/cleaning. When owners saw their machine working again, they thought I was a genius. We used to play with them during long night function and thermal testing of flight hardware at NASA and it helped pass the time.
Grew up in the 80s playing on one of these and a Merlin that were older than me. Thanks for showing us the guts. I always wondered about the need for two batteries.
You’ve taken me down a rabbit hole of memories with this. My parents refused to have such battery powered things around the house on the premise that the batteries would leak which would lead to tears. I would have to visit friends who had gotten them for Christmas or Hanukkah. I remember eating pretzel logs and drinking RC Cola while playing this and other electronic games with friends who were lucky enough to have them. Playing Simon with cola isn’t good for Simon. After a spill, the buttons started sticking amongst other things.
I remember being a small child in the late 80's and being fascinated by stuff like this. Takes me right back! Those wedge base lamps are ubiquitous in car and motorbike instrument cluster backlights.
The good old TMS1000N was made for the electronic door chime kit and it had 50 different tunes and two selector switches for one group for Xmas tunes and Happy Birthday tunes....It was a bloody good thing to have those days.... as you got a WOW from your friend who did not have one.
@@rayceeya8659 You have to have a different attention span altogether as I have the new one and the length of the # of pulses you need to remember is much shorter.
ooo Bull ! I remember those ads - so many cheap treasures of tat I saved up to get - packets of components, surplus speakers and god knows what. loved em.
Excellent video big bloke, can't wait to see you sort out a dead one! your style and execution lends itself perfectly to electronics of this era, in my opinion nobody else describes the 'feel' of this part of our electronics history better than you...cheers.
I remember when my parents bought this game home for my sister and I in 1978. I was 8 years old. I drove them crazy with it! :-) Before that I was playing the small hand held football game. It used the 7 segment display & from what I remember, it was a lot of fun. Not long after that, they bought me a handheld Pac-Man game. I wasn't very impressed with the handheld Pac-Man game. It was nothing like the arcade version.
The paper contact cleaner tip is a good one. I especially like to use it on gold plated PCB edge connections (e.g. nes games), you can feel the paper dragging the crud off if it's dirty, it just glides over the board once clean. You can also fold an index card and insert into edge connectors.
haha! yes, I totally forgot about Merlin. I had one in the late 80's we found at a garage sale. we too were encouraged to go play in the toy store with all the things we couldn't have. thanks so much for the memory lane
I remember we had one when I was a kid. I didn't realize how new they were at the time. My assumption on the extra socket for the rubber bumper on each button is that the mold was the same regardless of the part position.
My aunt brought me a Simon from USA to Denmark back in the early 80s. I credit Simon for my ability to memorize things. Thanks Clive for bringing back very very good memories
Clive, a lot of the early home "video games" like Simon used controls designs similar to the ones used in pinball machines and the early arcade video games. To prevent damage from abuse, both used two part switches with the button being a separate component from the switch. The return spring and the travel limits were built into the button part.
i remember when they came out they were close to $80 USD but they lowered the prices for christmas the second year of its release. thats when my parents bought one for us, and i think they regretted it. i always loved this game we used to play for hours and hours....but the parents got tired of hearing "the noise" real fast. Lol I bought a newer one in the late 90s for my kids and it just wasnt the same IMO. I still have both units, it would be nice to see the difference/changes made from old to new. Thanks for the trip down 'memory' lane, and thanks for sharing
UFOs were BIG in the 1970s. I remember watching a popular UK TV program called UFO as a teenager back then. It starred Ed Bishop as Col Edward Straker, CIC of SHADO, an international military organization charged with protecting Earth from alien invasion. Straker was a 35-ish American with white hair who ran the British SHADO headquarters. The program had all manner of cheesy 1970s models and special effects to play with - it was lots of fun for the short run it had. Space 1999 was another UK production of the same era. Anyway, this Simon game came out at exactly the same time and probably owed much of its early popularity to those two TV programs and vice versa.
Blotting paper and CRC Contact Cleaner - works a treat for most contamination problems (especially in LV switching applications). For higher current contacts - replace the contact cleaner with Brasso - then use contact cleaner for protection. I use this strategy to keep our outdoor solar lights running for years!
We had one of these when I was a kid, but it was definitely one of the later models -- I'd say Christmas of 1978 or 1979 is when we got it. It definitely was when they'd become cheaper -- our family did not have much money, either, and certainly could not have afforded the equivalent of $100 for a Christmas present. So it definitely wasn't one of the earlier, more expensive models. What a fun trip down memory lane -- and I had no idea the original ones were *so* important to the electronic gaming industry! Very neat!
I remember playing with my sisters/brothers Simon back in the day. It was a great thing to see and a tear-down of it. They actually gave you an extra bulb so you could fix your own electronics? Simple, yes, but those days are long gone. =[
Quite remarkable that today you can buy a small keyring version of this for about £1. Would be interested in seeing you tear down one of those modern versions and comparing!
Would be a fun challenge to make one of these from discrete logic one day, both as a challenge and to demonstrate how revolutionary those microcontrollers were.
Simon -- my childhood nemesis! The last serious game of Simon I played was on one of the harder levels. I was 9 or 10 years old, and was into executing a seemingly very long sequence -- then my brain froze and I pressed the wrong colour. I got so frustrated I never played the game again. Maybe I'll try again, Simon. Maybe...
It's difficult to see looking back just how revolutionary and high tech this particular game was. People hadn't seen anything like it before - it made noises and flashed lights, which is something many things do today but this was one of the first. I know in our house back in the mid 70's the only things that lit up were lights in your house and your massive colour tv, and the only thing making a noise was your tv, radio and your doorbell. Watches and clocks were analogue and usually windup. With 'Simon' you were buying into the new modern revolution. Seems crazy now.
Wow I remember playing with one of those. It had to be well over a decade old by then. So many good memories. I don't think it is anywhere to be found anymore, but I will have to do some digging.
They pitched the game as being digital in the ads to show off the tech. I think from my research the original jingle they made for the ads went something like: "Simon is a computer Simon has a brain you better do what Simon says or else go down the drain"
I seem to remember that on the one our family had,.it wasn't a decal, it was a metal foil plate with light blue paint on it. There was a game on it where you could program your own sequence, and because of the pitches if the sounds it made, I always programmed it with the tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. MB also made a 'pocket' version for when pockets were bigger. The TI TS1000 chip I think was the one in the much loved TRS80 microcomputer (which could be why they're now very rare, due to enthusiasts modding thier own pocket Tandy's). Wasn't 'merlin' the owl shaped maths version of the Speak and Spell? (latter, immortalised by the ET phone-home film). ...I'm seeing a lot of Stephen Spielberg influences and nods!!!
I remember John Meshna Corporation in Massachusetts selling junked electronics. I took apart something sold as a “digital shift register” with three 6146 tubes driving a lot of little boards with I think flip-flops made with miniature tubes... never did get around to using the 6146 tubes for anything
I wasn't expecting so little in it. There's one of these at my parents' somewhere. I remember something about changing bulbs in the instructions. On the box they used a photo of part of the rear of the circuit board to show its 'electronic brain'. There's an interesting amount of stuff in their Battleship game.
I had a Tandy "pocket repeat" version of this game, smaller with LEDs (and just one battery!). In the very early days of home computers, I connected the LEDs and buttons to the computer with relays etc, and programmed the computer in Basic to play Simon!
1:14 - "I assume everybody's seen a Simon before." Oh my goodness, seen one?! I owned one as a kid in the early 80s. I couldn't click this video fast enough! Simon, Etch-A-Sketch, my Cabbage Patch Doll and my mini Pac-Man game were my go-to toys as a young kid until around 10 yrs old. Then my parents got me a Nintendo around 1987 and it ruined my enjoyment for the simpler toys in life. lol
I had one of these! At some point, I took it apart and added wires from the speaker so I could connect it to my stereo. There's actually a decent amount of sound frequency that the built-in 2" speaker can't reproduce. (Yah, I took everything apart as a kid.)
At some point in the future, the incandescent bulbs in this will have the same "Wow!" factor as vacuum tubes do when opening a piece of vintage electronics. A good reason not to retro fit LEDs.
Until about a year ago I had no idea what a wedge light was. On my car one of the front running lights had failed and the other one was dim. With great difficulty I replaced them with LEDs. Everything was great for a few months until one of my my new LEDs failed. I replaced both of with incandescent bulbs, they are more reliable.
Meanwhile in China they make half decent vacuum tube amplifiers that have red or blue leds lighting them from underneath, because the awesome glow from the cathode isn't enough. It's that strange crossover between what was actually good tech, and try and update it for no reason.
Who's to say today's babies buy an old house and find some quirky corner with a light bulb in it and say WTH is that ? If I ever get wind of them demolishing ?????? ????????? I'll try to get there before they do and rescue a light bulb. It can't be original to the building (1910) I don't think but quite possibly at the first upgrade maybe 15 years later.
As a kid I was never fortunate enough to own one of these. I went on to prove to my parents that I could manage without their charity and bought my own 'Flag Man' in my late teens which was Nintendo's pocket friendly version I guess. Upon reflection I probably paid more for that at the time than I care to admit now I'm older and (slightly) wiser. Of course, you Clive, stirred some nostalgic curiosity in me so I went down that rabbit hole and found some Flag Man videos on RUclips. Oh man . . . . . . . sweet sweet memories 🙂
Lamps like that are someone common in sewing machines I've repaired as well (Viking for example). I would add too - corroded solder is the worst. The best way to fix that is to remove the bad solder, clean the part, and then re-solder it.
I remember when it launched, I was already a jaded computer gamer, as I'd been haunting the computer lab at the university near my house, playing Hunt The Wumpus and Adventure on the PDP-8 and -11 they had there.
The challenge was to make a game without a display. The chip has matured enough, buttons, lights and other small electronics no problem, but the LCD isn't quite there yet. When the first LCD's arrived you got an avalanche of similar (the jump between three positions) games which took much creativity out of the process. Tetris and a few others being the exceptions. But to make a fun electronic game without having display, that would still be just as much a challenge today as it was back then. I think the use of colored translucent plastic, to make the 4 different buttons is something to be appreciated. Avoiding the cost of using colored lights yet still creating 4 different 'interaction points'. Very clever.
Hey Clive! I 3d printed lamp holders to hold LEDs that use the original wedge base mounting, this allows you to convert the game to LED without any physical modification and is totally reversible.. that corrosion on the top could be some kids spilling their soda all over it (like I did with mine!)
Converting one (a more broken one) to LED would be great. But you'd have to do it properly, and emulate the thermal inertia of the bulbs. Like bus brake lights, they don't look right if the lights come on and go off instantly.
Still have my "Pocket Simon" which must have come a few years later. It was always of my favorites with the (smaller) lighted buttons really great to play with at night in the dark. Now my son has a modern one about the same size as the circular part of mine and of course it has digitized speech and sound effects etc. I like the original better!
I had a Bop-it when I was a kid. I very quickly learned that I wasn't allowed to play it at night, so I modified it. Possibly the 3rd toy I ever took apart as a kid, but first one I could play in the house. I took it apart, carefully removed the speaker, put it back together, then tried to play it, didn't even occur to me that without the speaker it was pretty useless. I was about 10. My father wasn't very impressed, I got shouted at and he threw it away. I also had a metal detector, I loved this thing, but I wanted to know how it worked. My father wouldn't tell me, so, I got a screwdriver and found out for myself. There was a lot of glue and by the time I had finished, it was not possible to repair it. And that toy was my first experience at taking something apart, and it's why I still love taking things apart. A few years later, I fixed my first games console. Since then I've fixed many laptops and learned many many things from dismantling electronics. The console was a PSOne.
Thank you for my first good laugh in two days! Let’s all hope we don’t discover the ENTIRETY of its history together. I’m sure it could tell some stories. A much needed laugh, and an item I recall well whilst perhaps only slightly younger. I similarly had my own opportunities with it in-store only. A good choice for I might have forgotten of it entirely. Hat’s off.
that simon doesn't have the TMS1000 in it. it's a newer model with the purpose-made ASIC that was apparently cheaper to make. The TMS version will have a 28 pin chip in it instead. The earlier version's lamp holders were screw in style too, vs. those clip in ones.
I never had the Simon but I do remember seeing the commercials for it when I was a kid. However, my brother and I did have the Little Professor (I was always so fascinated by the red LED display), and later the Speak & Math. I still have the motherboard for that thing and a diagram of what I figured out for the keyboard pinout, so if I really wanted I could fire it up. I also have a couple of those Tiger Electronics handhelds, but those are just a blobbed chip and LCD screen.
New Video - 30 seconds ago Comments - Oh hey new guy, yeah we been here for a couple weeks Me - Reminded of forgotten Patreon account Do enjoy these videos tearing into older tech and being able to see how things looked then. Possible idea get a modern version and compare the insides. Pretty cool seeing that even these toys are designed with consumer serviceability in mind. I would have never thought there would be a spare bulb inside.
Christmas 1976 our family also had no money for expensive toys, barely enough for food. My mother and younger sisters were in the kitchen baking up treats. I was sent to pick up some last minute ingredient from the neighborhood grocery store late on Christmas eve. The store was closing as I got there and the manager told me they were selling out the temporary toy counter. I had very little money left over but went to look. Among the toys was a Simon. I asked the price but it was too high. Deeply discounted but still too high. The sales clerk kept quickly lowering the price saying one number after another until it was almost free. When I said I'd take it he loaded up my basket with the Simon and a selection of other toys as well. "No charge."
My younger siblings and I had a most excellent Christmas through that act of kindness. Simon beeped along happily in our house for some years to come.
Back when people were decent to people because it was the right thing to do. Still that guy is a true mensch.
Given it didn't come out until 1978 I think your memory is a little hazy when it comes to the date.
You were lucky. My family had to spend the Christmas of 1976 living in a shoe box in the middle of the road and then work a 36 hour shift at the mill, but we still long for those happy times.
@@fuzzybobbles Damn, you had a shoe box we only had a match box and they were all spent.
Brings a tear to the eye. Ty.
You have about two hours before Ebay is emptied of every Simon still in existence.
Well ebay has one less. I just bought one.
They still make them. No need for eBay.
@@xenonram So cool to have an old one though.
- It was so foolish for me to fix this game before I started recording this video, but no worries: I've ordered another one dead from eBay!
I love your brain, Clive. You're awesome! Thank you!
Everyone is off to eBay now to get one
there are other bits of him to love, too! heheh
Clive, I want to thank you for inspiring the interest for engineering in many of us.
Your soothing voice is like a decoupling capacitor to fight one's ripple of indecisiveness. You're so cool, keep it up!
You sir are a poet. :)
As a child I always found that the Simon looked like the album of ELO (Electric Light Orchestra) my dad had.
I can’t unsee it now!
Or Bill Gates companies logo. Lol
The simplest games are often the best and most playable.
And yet Simon is terrible
I experienced that on the vintage computing festival berlin, where I had the most fun playing "hunt the bit" on a PDP-7 :-) (while there were also vintage atari consoles and 1st gen play stations etc. exhibited in a "playable" fashion, but that didn't interest me as much)
Stick in hole is still the simplest and most fun "game" ever invented.
Space invaders in the pubs and Flip on the BBC micro were the only games I ever really enjoyed playing!
Simple can be good!
@@DenkyManner yes but in a good way 👍👍
"anybody who's 50 or...oh my god, I've lost track already" hahaha, very good. Yes, it was a great game. We enjoyed it very much as kids.
A few years back my local maker group built one of those that was 20ft in diameter. Tons of LEDs and load cells for the buttons. You would play it in teams of 4-8 and stand on the buttons to press them
Wow, that must've been something, lol!
That'd deserve a video! 😃
@@megamanx466 I wish I filmed more of the build. I've got quite a few photos from it though. We were planning on doing another event with it this year, but as you can imagine covid delayed those plans for good reason. we designed it modularly in 8 huge pie shaped wedge sections that can fit in the back of 2 trucks. So it's fairy easy to transport to any location. It definitely needs some repairs after two days of people jumping on it. The black part was skinned in abs plastic over plywood, so its super durable, but the buttons were skinned with plywood and colored fiberglass. The fiberglass was layed over some strips of LEDs in the button to make it look like it glows. After two days of people jumping on it, it did up breaking through in a few spots though. With 16 load cells and 11 different channels of 120 volt led lights the electronica were pretty wild too. It was designed so we can connect a network of PIs over WiFi to dmx lights and throw them all over the event space. Then they all flash and match the color of the simon itself. We also modified an original simon to be the start button for the full sized one. It's bolted on a welded pedistool that sits in front of the full sized thing. It also flashes the buttons the same colors as the 20ft one. You end up pressing the original tiny start button on it. People got a kick out of that. We even got the original graphics files from Hasbro. We ended up making our own tones, and added some more base to the sound files, so it's like something kinda like close encounters. It played out of an in built automotive style speaker system inside of the center, then also would connect up to the speakers outside at the event space. Next time we run an event, probably in quite a while at this rate, I'll either film it myself, or find someone else who can film, the setup, teardown, and event.
@@ReRamp That sounds awesome! Perhaps next year you can get Hasbro to contribute towards it. Either way, sounds like an excellent project for a video! 🤯😃
I was lucky enough to get a new one for Christmas 1979. I still have it in its original box (as I do most of my presents but I am from an era when you were grateful for what you got and looked after it) and it still gives great fun and joy when we get it out at Christmas when friends and family come around. But I have never taken it apart so thank you Clive for enlightening me!
Howzit Calum.
I remember as a young teenager getting one of these from Woolworths which was mis priced at £2 instead of £20. I grabbed one, paid, and got out of the shop asap. It gave many years of fun for the whole family until it stopped working and unfortunately got thrown away - no BigClive in those days showing how to fix it!
i miss woolworths
Thanks, it's refreshing to see one of these old boards where everything is neatly spaced out and one can read the traces trivially.
Although to be fair, if modern boards were designed with the same spacing your phone would be about the size of a car park.
I just miss thru-hole generally.
I loved mine when I was young. And we share the same name. Thanks for another great video.
I've got the original simon, a speak & spell and a merlin. I've got those about 3 years ago for my son when he was 5 years old. He also has a C64 which he first used with a datasette, then a 1541, then 1851, then jiffy dos for the 1581. It was really fun to see him appreciate the speed upgrades :-) Now he can write a simple basic program and save it to floppy.
Already a head start on "Learn to code"
I'm rather Impressed that you can complete a sequence while still talking. You never cease to amaze me Clive. I had Pocket Simon the push buttons were far from satisfying, It took great restraint not to throw it at the wall.
Thanks for the links... that was such a fun rabbit hole to go down.
My daughter still has the Simon game from her early childhood. She's 41......
Amazing timing for this video! I just found one of these Simon games new in the box at a thrift store a few days ago! The manual even explains how to dismantle the slide switch covers and the top panel to replace the bulbs, and a spare bulb is even stored inside of the game.
Last time I played one of these was likely 40 years ago! My family couldn't afford it back when it was new, either.
I still remember going to bed on christmas day in the late 70's and still hearing those sounds in my mind after hearing them all day!!!!!!!!!!
I never had a Simon, but my parents did buy me a Merlin when it first came out. Some day I should dig it out of the attic and see if it has the original TMS1000 inside.
Yeah, it really is hard for today's generation to understand how mind-blowing these toys were back in the day. The 80's were a magical time. 8)
Mine is still in the Rec. Room running strong. When we have get-togethers we end up needing to replace the batteries from so much playtime. PS: I am 74 years young and have owned this from the first day they went on sale. Never replace a lamp, but thanks for letting me know we have a spare inside. Stay safe, and happy holidays.
Kind of iconic that one of the first electronic games exists in hundreds of video games.
Very true, and as a part you have to complete to even advance
I did notice one in World of Warcraft. It would electrocute you (non-fatally) if you got one wrong.
I have played Adventure (one of the VERY first computer games, after Hunt The Wumpus) running in a PDP-8 emulator, running in a VM plugin for the world simulator Minecraft, which was running inside Java, running on Win7Pro64, running in VirtualBox, running on MacOS. Now that's abstraction! (I did this Because at the time, the JRE for MacOS had hiccups - MC java runs natively now, eliminating a few layers, heh. And I had help. Other people set up the VM inside the ridiculous collection of MC plugins called Fead The Beast for it to be possible. And it wasn't my MC FTB server either.)
i remember these games. My uncle had one at his house that I played as a kid. So many memories!
Thank you so much for sharing this with us. looking forward to reading the rabbit hole links LOL!
My parents were too tight to buy me a real Simon when they first came out but I got a Tandy hand held version years later from Radio Shack. Many hours were spent playing that thing.
Thank you for opening this window into a past where spare bulbs were taped inside. Such a breath of fresh air in a time where right to repair is being fought over.
When I next see my dad, I'll absolutely have to show him this video, as he's just about the right age for it.
The reason the colored plastic "button" parts have two positions for the rubber buttons is because they use a different position for the contact based on what position on the game the plastic lens is, the configuration allows them to use one (expensive) set of molds to make the parts, and they could load different colored plastic depending on the part they wanted to make. (The could make, say, a thousand of each color, one run at a time, one day they make blue, the next, red, etc)
Twelve people who spilled a drink on their SIMON downvoted this for bringing up traumatic memories
Up to Nine now 🤣
lmao! I always hated that danged game
Wow! We had one of these in the late 1970's out on the farm when it first came out. It was loads of fun.
Ohhhh wow! I loved the lights and buttons just like you! I remember as a kid how beautiful and exciting it was but was too young to understand the game.
Even today, I find backlit coloured plastic compelling.
My very first electronics project was a sparkfun Simon game. I had a simon as a kid. It was great to play alone, but this was a game that was also fun to play in groups, too, unlike the other handheld games like merlin or mattel football.
Top Banana! I do remember SIMON and the arguments little brother and I went through to get more share! Great to see it again and I do wonder just how much you could difference
I liked my Simon back in the day and wanted many hours on it. Didn't realise it was that expensive though.
I guess nowadays it would be about quarter of the size and about £5.
It's funny you posted this as I was thinking about one the other week and mentally coding one.
Bull electronics is another flashback!
Im 43 this year. i grew up playing this game. My grandma had one, and had it as long as i can remember and it still works to this day.
14:13: did you spot the little screw sticking an the loudspeaker- magnet? :-D
I have :)
I timed that at 12:12 but looking back, it appears at 8:28 as he's removing the PCB.
Pretty sweet to see the enclosed replacement bulb is still taped in place on this unit!
I made some good money back in the days repairing these for locals.
The lamps were always so cool to me the way they mounted and their brightness. Most all repairs were bulb replacements and switch repair/cleaning. When owners saw their machine working again, they thought I was a genius. We used to play with them during long night function and thermal testing of flight hardware at NASA and it helped pass the time.
Grew up in the 80s playing on one of these and a Merlin that were older than me. Thanks for showing us the guts. I always wondered about the need for two batteries.
Surely inspired by Close Encounters of the Third Kind! Spaceship plays tunes at you... you echo them back...
@@TheWacoKid1963 you're wrong... The tms1000 chip was launched in 1974, but Simon launched in 1978...
Shouldn't it have five buttons then?
That would have been an AMAZING easter egg! Close Encounters came out 1977, Simon debuted at Studio 54 (!) in NYC in 1978. It could have happened.
You’ve taken me down a rabbit hole of memories with this. My parents refused to have such battery powered things around the house on the premise that the batteries would leak which would lead to tears. I would have to visit friends who had gotten them for Christmas or Hanukkah. I remember eating pretzel logs and drinking RC Cola while playing this and other electronic games with friends who were lucky enough to have them. Playing Simon with cola isn’t good for Simon. After a spill, the buttons started sticking amongst other things.
I remember being a small child in the late 80's and being fascinated by stuff like this. Takes me right back! Those wedge base lamps are ubiquitous in car and motorbike instrument cluster backlights.
yep, and also fruit machines, i 'rescued' loads from the innards of a scrapped one 😁
Always wanted a Big-Track or the Steam Engine at the back of the usual catalogues, got neither ;)
The good old TMS1000N was made for the electronic door chime kit and it had 50 different tunes and two selector switches for one group for Xmas tunes and Happy Birthday tunes....It was a bloody good thing to have those days.... as you got a WOW from your friend who did not have one.
I'd forgotten that application, but I remember the kits now.
Glad to see a game from my childhood!
Great blast from the past. Thanks for the video
Simon is just so ultra nostalgic it's unreal
You really have to be a certain age these days to appreciate these simple machines.
@@rayceeya8659 You have to have a different attention span altogether as I have the new one and the length of the # of pulses you need to remember is much shorter.
ooo Bull ! I remember those ads - so many cheap treasures of tat I saved up to get - packets of components, surplus speakers and god knows what. loved em.
Excellent video big bloke, can't wait to see you sort out a dead one! your style and execution lends itself perfectly to electronics of this era, in my opinion nobody else describes the 'feel' of this part of our electronics history better than you...cheers.
I remember when my parents bought this game home for my sister and I in 1978. I was 8 years old. I drove them crazy with it! :-)
Before that I was playing the small hand held football game. It used the 7 segment display & from what I remember, it was a lot of fun.
Not long after that, they bought me a handheld Pac-Man game.
I wasn't very impressed with the handheld Pac-Man game. It was nothing like the arcade version.
The paper contact cleaner tip is a good one. I especially like to use it on gold plated PCB edge connections (e.g. nes games), you can feel the paper dragging the crud off if it's dirty, it just glides over the board once clean. You can also fold an index card and insert into edge connectors.
haha! yes, I totally forgot about Merlin. I had one in the late 80's we found at a garage sale. we too were encouraged to go play in the toy store with all the things we couldn't have.
thanks so much for the memory lane
I remember getting a musical doorbell kit for xmas with a TMS1000 in it....
I can imagine what would it be like if to ring the bell you should've played it the same way as this thing is being played. ;DDD
Cool! I still have one of these! Spent hours mastering it back in the day.
I'm impressed that there are so few components! I had a modern copy when I was younger, that had additional games via an led matrix in the middle.
I remember we had one when I was a kid. I didn't realize how new they were at the time. My assumption on the extra socket for the rubber bumper on each button is that the mold was the same regardless of the part position.
My guess would be it was designed with a bit of overkill and omitted after testing but didn't change the mold.
That looks familiar *opens google chrome*
Good point!
I was thinking the buttons on the Super Famicom controller.
My aunt brought me a Simon from USA to Denmark back in the early 80s. I credit Simon for my ability to memorize things. Thanks Clive for bringing back very very good memories
"big clive opens up simon"
Oh, dearie me, that sounds gleefully painful ;-)
that's definitely something simon didn't say
>_>
Clive, a lot of the early home "video games" like Simon used controls designs similar to the ones used in pinball machines and the early arcade video games. To prevent damage from abuse, both used two part switches with the button being a separate component from the switch. The return spring and the travel limits were built into the button part.
i remember when they came out they were close to $80 USD but they lowered the prices for christmas the second year of its release. thats when my parents bought one for us, and i think they regretted it. i always loved this game we used to play for hours and hours....but the parents got tired of hearing "the noise" real fast. Lol I bought a newer one in the late 90s for my kids and it just wasnt the same IMO. I still have both units, it would be nice to see the difference/changes made from old to new. Thanks for the trip down 'memory' lane, and thanks for sharing
UFOs were BIG in the 1970s. I remember watching a popular UK TV program called UFO as a teenager back then. It starred Ed Bishop as Col Edward Straker, CIC of SHADO, an international military organization charged with protecting Earth from alien invasion. Straker was a 35-ish American with white hair who ran the British SHADO headquarters. The program had all manner of cheesy 1970s models and special effects to play with - it was lots of fun for the short run it had. Space 1999 was another UK production of the same era. Anyway, this Simon game came out at exactly the same time and probably owed much of its early popularity to those two TV programs and vice versa.
Blotting paper and CRC Contact Cleaner - works a treat for most contamination problems (especially in LV switching applications). For higher current contacts - replace the contact cleaner with Brasso - then use contact cleaner for protection. I use this strategy to keep our outdoor solar lights running for years!
We had one of these when I was a kid, but it was definitely one of the later models -- I'd say Christmas of 1978 or 1979 is when we got it. It definitely was when they'd become cheaper -- our family did not have much money, either, and certainly could not have afforded the equivalent of $100 for a Christmas present. So it definitely wasn't one of the earlier, more expensive models.
What a fun trip down memory lane -- and I had no idea the original ones were *so* important to the electronic gaming industry! Very neat!
I remember playing with my sisters/brothers Simon back in the day. It was a great thing to see and a tear-down of it. They actually gave you an extra bulb so you could fix your own electronics? Simple, yes, but those days are long gone. =[
Quite remarkable that today you can buy a small keyring version of this for about £1. Would be interested in seeing you tear down one of those modern versions and comparing!
Would be a fun challenge to make one of these from discrete logic one day, both as a challenge and to demonstrate how revolutionary those microcontrollers were.
There's a screw magnetically attached to the speaker. :-P
very well spotted.
@@reg2590 There are TWO.
I spotted that as well! I was hoping Big Clive would have removed it at the end of the video.
You can get "Keyring" versions of Simon, too, that are solid reproductions.
My own as a child had screw-in lamps as well.
I got a MIB Simon game I scored from an antique store a few years ago. It looks like it had almost never been played.
Simon -- my childhood nemesis! The last serious game of Simon I played was on one of the harder levels. I was 9 or 10 years old, and was into executing a seemingly very long sequence -- then my brain froze and I pressed the wrong colour. I got so frustrated I never played the game again. Maybe I'll try again, Simon. Maybe...
Invented by the Father of Video Games, Ralph Baer and toy industry legend, Howard Morrison.
It's difficult to see looking back just how revolutionary and high tech this particular game was. People hadn't seen anything like it before - it made noises and flashed lights, which is something many things do today but this was one of the first. I know in our house back in the mid 70's the only things that lit up were lights in your house and your massive colour tv, and the only thing making a noise was your tv, radio and your doorbell. Watches and clocks were analogue and usually windup. With 'Simon' you were buying into the new modern revolution. Seems crazy now.
Wow I remember playing with one of those. It had to be well over a decade old by then. So many good memories. I don't think it is anywhere to be found anymore, but I will have to do some digging.
Good one kool,remind me of that guy with the giant 5mb disk ,80s retro guy or something.kool keep up the good vids man.
They pitched the game as being digital in the ads to show off the tech. I think from my research the original jingle they made for the ads went something like:
"Simon is a computer
Simon has a brain
you better do what Simon says
or else go down the drain"
Mentioning J&N Bull got me thinking about all the other surplus shops, like Field Electric in Borehamwood and oh, so many more...
I seem to remember that on the one our family had,.it wasn't a decal, it was a metal foil plate with light blue paint on it. There was a game on it where you could program your own sequence, and because of the pitches if the sounds it made, I always programmed it with the tune from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. MB also made a 'pocket' version for when pockets were bigger. The TI TS1000 chip I think was the one in the much loved TRS80 microcomputer (which could be why they're now very rare, due to enthusiasts modding thier own pocket Tandy's). Wasn't 'merlin' the owl shaped maths version of the Speak and Spell? (latter, immortalised by the ET phone-home film). ...I'm seeing a lot of Stephen Spielberg influences and nods!!!
I remember John Meshna Corporation in Massachusetts selling junked electronics. I took apart something sold as a “digital shift register” with three 6146 tubes driving a lot of little boards with I think flip-flops made with miniature tubes... never did get around to using the 6146 tubes for anything
I wasn't expecting so little in it. There's one of these at my parents' somewhere. I remember something about changing bulbs in the instructions. On the box they used a photo of part of the rear of the circuit board to show its 'electronic brain'.
There's an interesting amount of stuff in their Battleship game.
I had a Tandy "pocket repeat" version of this game, smaller with LEDs (and just one battery!). In the very early days of home computers, I connected the LEDs and buttons to the computer with relays etc, and programmed the computer in Basic to play Simon!
this used to drive my parents MAD.Even though they bought it for my sister and me.😂👍👍
Great for in the car! My sister and I used to play it on the 6 hour car trip to my grandpa's place.
@@johnpossum556 So many memories. 👍👍
1:14 - "I assume everybody's seen a Simon before." Oh my goodness, seen one?! I owned one as a kid in the early 80s. I couldn't click this video fast enough! Simon, Etch-A-Sketch, my Cabbage Patch Doll and my mini Pac-Man game were my go-to toys as a young kid until around 10 yrs old. Then my parents got me a Nintendo around 1987 and it ruined my enjoyment for the simpler toys in life. lol
I had one of these! At some point, I took it apart and added wires from the speaker so I could connect it to my stereo. There's actually a decent amount of sound frequency that the built-in 2" speaker can't reproduce. (Yah, I took everything apart as a kid.)
At some point in the future, the incandescent bulbs in this will have the same "Wow!" factor as vacuum tubes do when opening a piece of vintage electronics. A good reason not to retro fit LEDs.
At least here the chances of them burning out are low. When it comes to pinball games and hifi receivers, likely chance there sadly
Until about a year ago I had no idea what a wedge light was. On my car one of the front running lights had failed and the other one was dim. With great difficulty I replaced them with LEDs. Everything was great for a few months until one of my my new LEDs failed. I replaced both of with incandescent bulbs, they are more reliable.
Meanwhile in China they make half decent vacuum tube amplifiers that have red or blue leds lighting them from underneath, because the awesome glow from the cathode isn't enough. It's that strange crossover between what was actually good tech, and try and update it for no reason.
Who's to say today's babies buy an old house and find some quirky corner with a light bulb in it and say WTH is that ?
If I ever get wind of them demolishing ?????? ????????? I'll try to get there before they do and rescue a light bulb. It can't be original to the building (1910) I don't think but quite possibly at the first upgrade maybe 15 years later.
@@fuzzybobbles an amber led does look classy though
As a kid I was never fortunate enough to own one of these. I went on to prove to my parents that I could manage without their charity and bought my own 'Flag Man' in my late teens which was Nintendo's pocket friendly version I guess. Upon reflection I probably paid more for that at the time than I care to admit now I'm older and (slightly) wiser. Of course, you Clive, stirred some nostalgic curiosity in me so I went down that rabbit hole and found some Flag Man videos on RUclips. Oh man . . . . . . . sweet sweet memories 🙂
A few years back I bought a DIY kit to make a Simon game. First thing I soldered besides battery contacts. Uses an Attny to control everything.
Lamps like that are someone common in sewing machines I've repaired as well (Viking for example). I would add too - corroded solder is the worst. The best way to fix that is to remove the bad solder, clean the part, and then re-solder it.
I remember when it launched, I was already a jaded computer gamer, as I'd been haunting the computer lab at the university near my house, playing Hunt The Wumpus and Adventure on the PDP-8 and -11 they had there.
Oh, I've actually been inside one of these! This might be the first one I've seen Clive do that I've been inside of already.
That was a pleasingly suggestive comment.
@@BOBKB3NZX Yes, I was wondering if I was going to regret the phrasing. But it's worked out so far.
So have I. As a kid I did tend to tear things apart. I had the older version with the larger chip.
You must be tiny.
@@joshuarosen6242 LOL
The challenge was to make a game without a display.
The chip has matured enough, buttons, lights and other small electronics no problem, but the LCD isn't quite there yet.
When the first LCD's arrived you got an avalanche of similar (the jump between three positions) games which took much creativity out of the process. Tetris and a few others being the exceptions.
But to make a fun electronic game without having display, that would still be just as much a challenge today as it was back then. I think the use of colored translucent plastic, to make the 4 different buttons is something to be appreciated. Avoiding the cost of using colored lights yet still creating 4 different 'interaction points'. Very clever.
Hey Clive! I 3d printed lamp holders to hold LEDs that use the original wedge base mounting, this allows you to convert the game to LED without any physical modification and is totally reversible.. that corrosion on the top could be some kids spilling their soda all over it (like I did with mine!)
Converting one (a more broken one) to LED would be great. But you'd have to do it properly, and emulate the thermal inertia of the bulbs. Like bus brake lights, they don't look right if the lights come on and go off instantly.
Still have my "Pocket Simon" which must have come a few years later. It was always of my favorites with the (smaller) lighted buttons really great to play with at night in the dark. Now my son has a modern one about the same size as the circular part of mine and of course it has digitized speech and sound effects etc. I like the original better!
I had a Bop-it when I was a kid.
I very quickly learned that I wasn't allowed to play it at night, so I modified it. Possibly the 3rd toy I ever took apart as a kid, but first one I could play in the house.
I took it apart, carefully removed the speaker, put it back together, then tried to play it, didn't even occur to me that without the speaker it was pretty useless. I was about 10.
My father wasn't very impressed, I got shouted at and he threw it away.
I also had a metal detector, I loved this thing, but I wanted to know how it worked. My father wouldn't tell me, so, I got a screwdriver and found out for myself. There was a lot of glue and by the time I had finished, it was not possible to repair it. And that toy was my first experience at taking something apart, and it's why I still love taking things apart.
A few years later, I fixed my first games console. Since then I've fixed many laptops and learned many many things from dismantling electronics.
The console was a PSOne.
Knowing there's a ROM dump makes me want to start a new project and code one up on a newer micro like the ESP32 in C/Cpp
All the cool kids are using Circuit Python.
Sparkfun have done an AVR kit. I think you still have to programme the atmel controller.
Thank you for my first good laugh in two days! Let’s all hope we don’t discover the ENTIRETY of its history together. I’m sure it could tell some stories. A much needed laugh, and an item I recall well whilst perhaps only slightly younger. I similarly had my own opportunities with it in-store only. A good choice for I might have forgotten of it entirely. Hat’s off.
You can still get contact cleaning strips for relays, I used to use them at the power station quite often. It is quite satisfying
that simon doesn't have the TMS1000 in it. it's a newer model with the purpose-made ASIC that was apparently cheaper to make. The TMS version will have a 28 pin chip in it instead. The earlier version's lamp holders were screw in style too, vs. those clip in ones.
I never had the Simon but I do remember seeing the commercials for it when I was a kid. However, my brother and I did have the Little Professor (I was always so fascinated by the red LED display), and later the Speak & Math. I still have the motherboard for that thing and a diagram of what I figured out for the keyboard pinout, so if I really wanted I could fire it up. I also have a couple of those Tiger Electronics handhelds, but those are just a blobbed chip and LCD screen.
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Do enjoy these videos tearing into older tech and being able to see how things looked then. Possible idea get a modern version and compare the insides.
Pretty cool seeing that even these toys are designed with consumer serviceability in mind. I would have never thought there would be a spare bulb inside.
This brings back good Christmas memories.