1983: PAUL DANIELS' Computer Game | Micro Live | Retro Tech | BBC Archive
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- "The massive problem with all of this is that it's not written for ordinary people, and it's a shame. The magazines and the manuals are completely non-understandable, it's gobbledygook." - Paul Daniels
Micro Live takes a trip to Blackpool, where magician, presenter and self-taught computer programmer Paul Daniels is hard at work coding his first computer game - Paul Daniels' Magic Adventure - on the Atari 800. Will you like it?
Daniels feels that the unnatural language surrounding computers and their associated literature is a huge barrier to entry for many potential users.
Originally broadcast 2 October, 1983.
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I liked this video, not a lot, but I liked it.
I bet Paul enjoyed treating Debbie McGee to a pearl necklace or two. Perhaps even a cleveland steamer.
I know a secret , he had10 inches on the flop , and as thick a a rolling pin.
Debbie got his wand out a few times
Absolute perverts.
Get a grip of your lives
Yes Paul
You can tell how creative Paul was, he saw something, didn't understand it and sought out answers, that's magic
Met Paul a few times. Very down-to-earth. On one occasion I was sat behind him at a magic gala performance at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool back in 1990. He was with Deb in the audience watching the evening show. At the halfway break he stood up and and said “anybody want an ice cream?” and bought lots of ice creams for everybody sat around him. Always had time to stop and talk to people. Jeremy Beadle was also in the audience that night as he had a passion for magic and tricks.
2 hated gits of the 80s and 90s, trying to be liked.
Ah yes I remember Jeremy Beadles series "The Deceivers" which covered magic, illusions, cons, and the like. It was brilliant fun. The man was far more than a practical joker.
I worked with Paul briefly in the 2000s and found him very eloquent and thoughtful. He understood the entertainment industry incredibly well and was still bristling with excellent programme ideas. I found it depressing that broadcasters were simply not interested in making use of him by then, just regarding him as a dinosaur from yesterday.
Supposedly he was once given special early morning access to the Ideal Home Show as the previous day he'd gone he'd ended up spending most of his time talking to fans and signing autographs and so as a kind gesture they gave him some time there before the regular punters.
"What will I do today?"
~ Watch Paul Daniels talk about Atari programming a smarthome.
I didn't see that coming...
I met Paul Daniels a number of times as he lived locally to me, lovely guy in real life, as was his wife.
Hello you! :)
rip
Wrong, he was an arrogant and bad tempered person.
I read "I was his wife" 😆
If only this was 2-3 years later. He could have got an Amiga. Now that would have been magic.
The Amiga prototype was already at the end of 83a
As a boy growing up through the 80s, wanting to learn more about computer programming, I felt exactly the same way.
Gone are the days when after four hours of sweating,cursing and manual input, the family gathered around the computer mouths agape as a tiny "matchstick man" on the screen waved at you.
I remember my dad being rather impressed with the 40 or so "WAV" files he had saved of movie quotes, on his Amiga.
What a great resource this is. More uploads like this please!
Paul smashing it. I never knew this about him.
Gaming, home security. Wow.
...casual racist, homophobe, misogynist, all round unpleasant git really
well not anymore since he died many years ago.
@@purefoldnz3070 reeeeeeeeee
Good old Paul Daniels. You have to love his enthusiasm. I really do miss this era.. What Mr Daniels was saying was SMART living! The man died too young. He would love Alexa and what have you.
Alexa is creepy and any intuitive individual is repulsed.
I had no idea he was into programming. He was defo onto something with the smart living.
From "gobbledegook" to writing your own game is pretty impressive
I was obsessed with magic and Paul Daniels as a kid and I pestered my grandfather to buy me a Paul Daniels magic set which I practised until I got quite slick at the tricks, and I can still do the card trick today lol. I never knew he liked computers, I guess they seemed like magic then. Fascinating, especially the proto smart home he was discussing.
Nah that was a real automate home. Not some fraudulent fad marketing “hurrr direr da futurez ish nao” infantile nonsense. Boy these videos always bring out you doped up losers trying to justify your overindulgence.
@@richardjames1431 They sold a lot of individual tricks too, the five linked rings one is still a seeming miracle to my mum to this day.
He wanted his computer to activate th8ngs around the house, he truly was magic, we now call this Alexa.
Wow, as a kid I loved Paul Daniels. Strange that 40 years later I find he was in to programming. Loved his take on the whole magazine method and views on the books 😀. Clearly a highly intelligent person with a taste for technology. God bless him.
RIP Paul Daniels. You great Northern wizard.
Had the pleasure of meeting Paul Daniels at a charity do once. He was surprisingly down to earth, and VERY funny.
When he said he'd written an adventure game, he meant written in the sense of created the plot. The actual coding was done by Gil Williamson.
According to Gil Williamson in a comment on Atarimania, there was supposed to be a second part to the game but it was never released.
never released.... I wonder why.? Looks about as exciting as watching Debbie McGee prance about
As I recall it (very hazily from some very old mag articles), he did cobble together a very rudimentary, rough and ready early version, which was then given a major (supposed) polish - or basically a complete overhaul -by Williamson.
Whilst Daniels could often be an annoying little whatsit (interspersed with the odd moment of "his magic stuff's not bad"), in fairness I do kinda respect him for thinking ahead of the game on this one. He did seem to have twigged on to "the next big thing" (computers) even if his own effort at capitalising on them came off rather weakly.
@@mattsan70 maybe the second half was where they fell off? Or his wig?
I'm a Williamson and I was born in the UK.
No idea how this ended up on my YT feed but my first PC was an Atari 800 with 48K memory and a floppy drive. A few of my friends had Atari PCs and I was the only one with a floppy drive... cassette loads were horrible. The skills and understanding I gained from that helped me for years to come.
same here
So funny. I used and wrote programs for computers (in basic) from 1977, when I was 13. But this guy was so earnest and so devoted - plus he was lucky to get an Atari 800. If only Atari hadn’t imploded. But this video illustrates how different the world was back then.
I met Paul Daniels twice such a lovely guy to his fans! He once sent me a signed book that was out of print needed my address so he found out where I worked to get my address. My manager was shocked! He was so surprised to chat to the real Paul Daniels.
Legend has it he wrote and designed "Wizbit" on that very same computer.
BBC computers takes me back to school in the early 80s, loved them I remember playing a game called Cat and Mouse.
That was about when I saw his show in Blackpool! Brilliant stuff.
It's an irony and great shame that programming and actual computing has become _less_ accessible in the 41 years since then. Sure there are more resources than ever to help people get into programming, and in terms of access to information things have never been better, but the initial hurdle of getting into it and understanding what you're doing is so much greater. You can't just turn a computer on, sit down, and immediately type into a prompt and get results. That experience, I think, was invaluable in getting many people into computing back then. Just ordinary people who were interested could sit down and feel the excitement as this new world of immense possibilities dawn on them. If you asked me to picture a computer enthusiast, Paul Daniels would never have come to mind. But here he is, excited by the things he can do!
ah - funny this guy, Paul Daniels seemed very familiar to me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I had to Google it a bit and then it all came back to me, I loved to see him on the telly doing his magic 🙂
Paul Daniels was the only man who could actually do real magic.
Yes he made something disappear into Debbie. Now you see it; now you don’t! Such an expert with the wand.
In later years I never remember him mentioning that he liked all this. He had his own RUclips channel as well but never mentioned it.
He may have forgotten about this chat (he had so many)
@@couldbegood I'm assuming he just concentrated on his magic more as later in life, in his house on the Thames he was talking about the tricks he was inventing himself. I'm glad I bought his last DVD set. He'd mentioned it on his channel. Due to so many of his magic friends having died without leaving their knowledge he said he wanted to do a set that revealed several of his stage act tricks and his method for his stage act. I'm no magician but at the time had money to burn so bought it. Was very interesting. He was a great story teller.
Great video, yes he could be annoying but you can't deny he was the best at what he did. Anybody else remember Rick Dangerous on the Atari? 😎
Saw him in the ATARI Center here in Birmingham back in the early to mid 80's.
Atari 800 design is AMAZING!
I love how he set up the whole scenario where he bought all the magazines, did his research, weighed up all the options... Then walked into a shop, told them he knew nothing about the subject, and got ripped off with a computer that hardly anyone in England owned for around five times the price. Nice one, Paul! 😁
😂
"It's tragic"
@@yannakakidis Very clever, Sir.
@Simon Laszcz I agree. And it's easy to forget now just how much of a murky, uneven minefield buying a computer - each with their own formats, even if they did have much of the programming principals behind them - was back then in those very early days, before the big players and "safer bets" to go for started to make themselves apparent.
The Atari was one of the most powerful 8-bit computers ever. I would say that it had the edge even 4 years later when the C64 launched.
It also had the very first interpretation of USB called SIO.
Paul Daniels: the first Jargon Buster
As difficult as personal computing was in 1983 in terms of massive barriers to entry on account of cost and arcane command based user-interfaces it really took another 30 years for personal computing to **finally** become accessible to pretty much everyone in the form of touch-screen interfaces. This is even despite the quality of life improvements with graphical user interfaces popularized by Microsoft Windows. By the 90s while most people that grew up with computers (primarily Millennials but also gen-X'ers to a lesser extent) could competently operate one (at least for word processing and browsing the internet) it was still very much out-of-reach to older generations that weren't technically inclined. And even for those that knew how to use a normal desktop PC or laptop many who were not technically inclined only did so begrudgingly and out of necessity and with no joy. Only when touch-screen alternatives to mouse-and-keyboard UIs became widely available and relatively low-cost did computer use finally achieve almost complete market saturation across the demographic spectrum.
Can you summarise this into a small pamphlet ?
Home computing took off back then because of far more expensive mainframes. It's all relative. Indeed, some people say IBM's original home PC, built to compete against the other home computer companies of Apple, TI, Tandy, Atari, et al, was underpowered. Compared to certain processors of the time, it was. But it was still faster than others. Just like how BASIC is slower than Assembly, BASIC can still be a superior choice, depending on the application. Note that C took over from Assembly by the 1990s because of its structure and ability to compile made the end product faster, but being easier to learn than Assembly.
Erm... ubiquitous computing has made computers easier to operate and consume from, but inordinately harder to program. There are now more programming languages to learn, not less, you don't get development environments or compilers built in, you can't just test a programme you type in, it's all built and set-up for one way computing... Them to us. They don't want people getting their own ideas unless financed by big business.
I like hand shandy's so I buy every magazine I can!
Now that's magic!
😂💙👍
I can remember watching that when it was first shown
Paul Daniels came to our school in 1984 or I think 1985, either way, we gave him a hard time.
He stormed off very angry LOL, and thus cancelling his magic show.
Teachers were not best pleased LOL.
Now that's ... tragic !
Please don’t say you all shouted “WIGGY!” As he entered.
Maybe your school didn’t say ‘Yes Paul’.
@@sylviac4256 Couldn't control the pupils by the sounds of it.
i met him and debbie in a little chef in milton keynes in 2002. he was driving a bentley turbo with the number plate MAG1C.
interesting because its him, but this looked like what you had to do until Windows opened it up to people not as smart as Paul.
It was a geeky thing back then until we realised it had to do what we already do like posting letters, going to the shops, going to the library or going on holiday, but 1000 times quicker.
RIP Paul Daniels
this has inspired me to get programming :D
I would like to know if he kept up with the computer hobby at all.
Nice video of some classic computing, made a nice choice by going with the atari 800, the only better would be an 800xl
Debbie McGee.
What first attracted you to the multi millionaire Paul Daniels?
Fantastic
BASIC was never standardised, each manufacturer had their own variation.
Before the internet: Buy every computing magazine for 18 months, and still don't understand it.
Now: Watch a 1 hour tutorial on YT, all set.
If only computers had been as advanced as they are today during Paul Daniels's time. That way he wouldn't have had to spend 18 months buying every magazine and reading up on the best computer / camera / sex toy to buy - he could have just looked it up on the internet! He died before his time really.
Good old Ted. What a guy.
Paul Daniels at the height of his powers lol.
Paul wasted his money. For the amount of cash he spent he could've bought a Vectrex with games, 28 boxes of Wham bars, 49 copies of Razzle and an ounce of weed.
Amazing
I see there's a video posted on YT with some footage of Paul Daniels Magic Adventure. Hmm, I would love to know how many were sold as it appears to have been available only for the Atari 800, which makes me suspect it wasn't popular enough (despite Paul Daniels being popular in the 80's) to warrant release on other computers, such as the BBC Micro which Paul keeps referring to...
The thing is that Paul was a UK celeb only and the Atari 800 and Atari 8-bit home computers were only popular in the U.S. at the time so I doubt it sold well. The 16-bit Atari ST did gangbusters in the UK though but I'm sure it wasn't backwards compatible with the older models.
@@davedogge2280 it wasn't compatible. The smart money at the time would have been Atari. All the schools had BBC but they were too expensive. Most of the public had Sinclair- because it was cheap (simplified explanation!)
@@JamsterJules Atari actually made faster computers than Commodore but Commodore won the battle in Britain, sometimes VHS wins over Betamax so to speak.
@@davedogge2280 my 800xl was better than the C64. But it was a closed market. Mum's and dad's went out to buy the computers for the kids. The salesman won lol
@@JamsterJules I did notice that on the Atari 800XL (I think Tandy in the North sold a load) ran Dropzone far more smoothly than the C64.Also I think that the Atari 800XL had one more sound channel on it's sound chip compared to the C64. So the best is not necessarily the winner.
His glamorous digital assistant, Debbie McGeee
MacGee
Nice that he had £1000 (nearly £3000 in today’s money) to splash out. I remember reading about his game in the Atari I/O magazine that he mentioned, but I don’t think I ever played it, and I don’t recall ever seeing second hand copies offered to me when I was dealing in Atari 8-bit stuff.
That's a big budget for the day. My BBC Model B was £399, from memory the Atari was about £500. Mind you by the time you added a monitor, tape drive, floppy drive and a printer, £1,000 could be spent.
spending £1000 was nothing to him, Remember that Paul was a millionaire entertainer and brilliant magician. And in 1983 he was at his peak. Fantastic guy who I met in person a few times.
@@totallymagic
Paul Daniels came to our school in 1984 or I think 1985, either way, we gave him a hard time.
He stormed off very angry LOL, and thus cancelling his magic show.
I think he just liked to show that he had more money than just about everyone else.
Here in Canada when I was 14 my parents bought me an Atari 600XL around 1983. I can't imagine with sky high inflation back then and Dad working a blue collar job and Mom not working how they did it. I think I'm still in shock.
Wow....Paul had hair, that's surreal
It isn't it
His magic wand was a real lady pleaser.
Syrup.
That was during his wig days. He got rid of it a few years after that.
Yes he had hair…. But not a lot…
Cool video, He was into smart homes well before they were a thing.
Well ahead of his time there. I like it but not a lot.
Indeed. well ahead of his time.
Paul Daniels came to our school in 1984 / 1985 round that time, the kids in the school gave him such a hard time, he shouted at the kids, and stormed off stage, never to be seen again.
Couldn't predict the "not a lot" comments. Very original and inventive.
Paul talking about programming his Atari 800 to activate security cams and lights when burglars entered his home, rather like one controls stuff in the house with Apple's Siri. But instead he could have done all that with magic ..
Wow, ahead of the time back in 1983, programming his Atari to activate security cams and lights in the home.
0:48 he wouldn't be listening to Queen on that hi-fi though, we know that much
Wow doing smart home things before 2015 lol
Paul Daniels with hair. I would have been thirteen at the time. My brother was into computers in the early eighties and he joined the computer club at senior school. He had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, playing games on it at home. My first experience of computers was the BBC Micro at junior school in 1980, aged ten. I am not really a gadgets person and certainly not a techno-wizard!
I think he should have got a BBC B rather than an Atari mind.
cant believe daniels is now doing a computer programme, what happened to the magic stuff?
Paul was a complicated man,.... Not basic.
Ha 😄 I see what ya did there
His computer was an 8 Wizbit
Here in the US, I bought all the mags for research, then plonked down $1000 for a PAL region Sony Betamax 🤣
If you bought a computer in the 80s, you bought it on a rainy Monday in Guernsey and then you brought it back to a house with all brown furniture.
What?
@@douglasfreeman3229 IF YOU BOUGHT A COMPUTER IN THE 80S, YOU BOUGHT IT ON A RAINY MONDAY IN GUERNSEY AND THEN YOU BROUGHT IT BACK TO A HOUSE WITH ALL BROWN FURNITURE!
Goes to show the gap in the market back in those days .
We had fun back in the day
Lmao when you didn't have a war , polio or Saville about
@@Scitch-et4vk war and paedos is nothing new
@@Scitch-et4vk There was never a war at our school and the pupils weren't asked to fight. Polio was almost unheard of and Saville left the vast majority of school-children alone, so if you were afraid of these things then you probably had a completely skewed perspective on reality and annoyed everyone.
I wonder what he would think of smart phones,if he were still around,shame he died to young brilliant magician 🌈👌
He died in 2016 so would have been around for the early smartphone era
Than Microsoft windows introduced for masses and rest is technology advanced to date RIP Paul he is so right it was complicated to get your hands on
Well I mean Windows 3.11FW was the first popular version of Windows, I mean most people were still using MS-DOS with possibly some other GUI if they were using a PC back then (IBM compatible PC I mean) , Atari, Amiga etc all had much better graphical interfaces than the first versions of Windows. Windows 95 was infinitely more popular than Win 3.11 though.
I still don't understand computers today!
Bloody hell, there was a time Paul Daniels had hair!? Not a lot.
Original.
@@douglasfreeman3229 got to admit, I thought twice about it 😂
A bit ahead of the game with home automation..
I bet he liked Alexa.
Sigh the BBC was once good.
ZX Spectrum all the way (48K obvs).
ZX Spectrum was the business. I eventually ended up with the 48k machine after false starts with the unreliable '81. The Speccy gave me so much fun. I even wrote games with my bro' after watching Fred Harris in "Me and My Micro". Did you ever watch that?
When the bbc was normal and unbiased.
I think you mean when you were normal and unbiased. Here's an idea - try to go a day without being triggered - maybe lay off the social media for a bit.
The BBC had its own computers?!
Yep, the BBC Micro
Made by Acorn computers. Watch the docu-drama "Micro Men" (2009) on RUclips for the full story.
Nostalgia Nerd video that touches on the BBC Micro
ruclips.net/video/2nBUmXoa1qY/видео.html
I'm guessing you're just under "the right age", eemoogee - the BBC Micro, commonly the Model B, in a joint venture with Acorn. WIth the aim to teach people computing and to get one into every school. As such they were the introduction to computers to thousands of people. My father also bought me a second hand one with I still have, and cherish.
If you have a mobile phone with an ARM architecture SoC (almost all phones) then this is a descendant of the BBC computer (Acorn Electron) etc.
What happened to this guy?
Died 6 years ago
got old n died. the fate of all men.
It's not gobbledygook, it's just not understood.
You are right. I don't know what he was talking about. Probably trying to make it all look terribly difficult to make himself look more like a genius. Old psychological trick.
Anyone fancy a pint ?
So you bought every computer magazine and then went and purchased an Atari 800 😂😂😂😂
For a grand 🤣
Yes. That's what I thought.
Typical Paul Daniels
Not a lot.
Maybe Alan Sugar had similar thoughts about all the instruction books being gobbledegook, his Amstrad computers CPC464 and 6128 came with a really excellent, easy to understand, comprehensive users manual.
Amstrad doesn't get enough credit for its contribution towards computing.
The CPC might have been one of the later 8 bit computers but they aimed it towards people who yet to own a computer and not against C64 and Spectrum owners. Also being an all in one system benefited at a time when most household owned one TV.
They also concentrated on markets where computing had yet to take off like Spain and France. And didn't waste money trying the crack America which had already become a saturated market.
Unlike Atari, Commodore, Sinclair and Apple which failed selling computers for business users. Amstrad were not only successful but at one point they were Europe's biggest seller of PCs.
@@MATTY110981 Agreed on all points. I loved my CPC, taught me a whole lot of sruff.
@@MATTY110981 Don’t forget the IBM compatible AmSTrad PC 1512 etc.
He was so up himself even back then.
THat's how he became successful. He had an attitude. Without that he would have still been delivering milk throughout the Eighties.
He said he struggled with computers for 18 months, found it hard to learn about them, and name checked people who helped him. Yeah, really up himself...
Back then, he visited our school and the kids gave him a hard time LOL.
He shouted at the kids and stormed off 😂😂😂😂
@@spidyman8853 Did his toupee spin round in anger?
I like to think it did😀
@@JiminyCricket8899 not a lot
Check the wig. Had to sit through this guys crap shows in late 80s and early 90s. Tedious
I wasn't a fan either.
You sat voluntarily watching one of his shows and then want say it is boring.
I always found Paul Daniels to be a little shifty...
Remember Paul daniels defending his use of the N word? 🤔
Words are evil and violent, like some of the words we use now will be to people of the future.
What a little poindexter.
What we need now is a magazine on gobbledygook! 🤓
Not surprised the atari books seemed like gobbledegook.. Should have bought a bbc micro.. That had both an excellent Basic, AND an excellent manual that guides through early learning. Also would have been better than the atari for his hw/sw experiments.
Anyone fancy a pint ?