No Time To Play

I’ve wasted the past week getting back into an older hobby of mine, namely retrocomputing (and -gaming).

So far I found:

• a BASIC compiler for the ZX Spectrum, a more convenient alternative to the z88dk cross-compiler. Not that I plan to do any development for the good old Speccy. (Insert shifty eyes here.)

• a modern, open source 8-bit console, roughly comparable to the Nintendo Entertainment System, except simpler and more powerful. In a genius move, they designed it to use the same controllers, which are plentiful due to a thriving NES clone market.

• a publisher selling new games for old machines, and I mean on casette tape, boxed and everything. What are you going to play them on? Why, an original micro, of course!

Then again, that’s about all you can do with a Spectrum, whereas a Commodore 64 can accomodate modern hardware and a modern operating system, and actually serve web pages. Which doesn’t cease to amaze me, pointless as it may be.

Why bother with these ancient, ridiculously underpowered machines? Aside from the nostalgia factor, I think any modern software developer has much to learn from the sheer variety and quality of available titles. Nowadays, we have millions of times more resources, yet all too often we don’t know what to do with them. And there’s too much waste in the world as it is.

(Illustration: Computer Museum: assorted microcomputers, by cmnit; CC-BY-SA)

Retro diversions by Felix Pleșoianu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.