I had a strange feeling that I already had a copy of this when it arrived but brushed it off. Turned out that I did already have it. Deja Vu for the Atari ST by Mindscape.

New arrival - a Mac Performa 400 that came with software and games. Here trying out Another World.

Lucky enough to find a manual for the Compaq 386/20e I bought a while back, even including the tape drive. #retrocomputing

Always good to hear some Atari 8-bit mentions on @thisweekinretro.bsky.social and this week supplied by @savetz.bsky.social. Thoroughly enjoyed the episode.

Completed this issue of C&VG October ‘84 with the flexi-disc that arrived yesterday. Now, if I could find the C64 version that you had to write to them to request it…

This week on The Digital Antiquarian: "Bullfrog in the Dungeon" www.filfre.net/2025/08/bull...

THE HEART OF NEON BLU-RAY www.kickstarter.com/projects/dok... Backed!

Gamers: Ghosts in the Machine www.kickstarter.com/projects/mel...

Once I knew this existed I just had to have it.

I will never again complain that my Atari 800XL took 15 minutes to load Solo Flight from cassette. My PS5 is taking over an hour to set up Assassin’s Creed Shadows from the Blu Ray drive! And they call it progress.

One of my favourite blogs is covering one of my favourite old machines, the TI-99/4a... bumbershootsoft.wordpress.com/2025/02/22/w...

A Eurogamer article yesterday on Lucasfilm Games told me something I didn’t realise… Star Raiders on the Atari 400/800 directly inspired Rescue on Fractalus! which led to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (that started out as “Return to Fractalus”).

Choose 20 games that greatly influenced you. One game per day, for 20 days. No particular order. Day 6: Asteroids (Atari) If I could buy one arcade machine this would be the one. #games #gamechallenge

Choose 20 games that greatly influenced you. One game per day, for 20 days. No particular order. Day 5: Tetris (Nintendo Game Boy) This must be at or near the top of the list of games most developers wish they had come up with. Perfect for the Game Boy. I lost days to it. #games #gamechallenge

Choose 20 games that greatly influenced you. One game per day, for 20 days. No particular order. Day 4: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (XBox 360) Skyrim may take the plaudits but for me it's Oblivion. That moment you exit the tutorial prison and emerge into the open world... #games #gamechallenge

Choose 20 games that greatly influence you. One game per day, for 20 days. No particular order. Day 3: Star Raiders (Atari 8-bit) This was a system seller. Take the old Star Trek mainframe game, speed it up, make it loud, fast and pseudo 3D. Do it in 8K of ROM. Astounding. #games #gamechallenge

Choose 20 games that greatly influence you. One game per day, for 20 days. No particular order. Day 2: Kick Off 2 (Amiga) The reason I bought an Amiga. Friends had it and I was desperate to be able to play it any time I wanted. Sensible Soccer didn't really do it for me. #games #gamechallenge

Choose 20 games that greatly influence you. One game per day, for 20 days. No particular order. Day 1: Lunar Rescue I loved this early arcade game so much. The first game I ever wrote was a version of this in Ext. BASIC on my TI-99/4a computer and played surprisingly well. #games #gamechallenge

Jack Tramiel wanted a new 64-kilobyte home computer in time for CES in January '82. He notified his engineers of this in late November, 1981. In their own words, the developers talk about the design sprint that followed created the world's best selling home computer.

Old Macs..... When trying to connect an old Mac to WiFi, in my case running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, if you get a prompt asking for a username and password try turning off the router's "fast roaming" 802.11r support. It took me ages to find a solution for this in an obscure forum post from 2013.

Hot off the podcast press Atari 8-bit goodness ataripodcast.libsyn.com/antic-episod...

Just collected a new arrival that I’ve wanted a good while now. Finally found a Roland MT-32 MIDI sound module for a decent price as it has a replacement volume knob.

This week on The Digital Antiquarian: Half-Life This week on The Digital Antiquarian: Half-Life www.filfre.net/2024/12/half...

New arrivals today for a bit of bedtime reading. Your Computer magazine was one of my absolute favourites in the mid 80s.

Budget cassette releases were a lifeline for Atari 400/800/XL/XE owners at the time. Many were high quality releases given a new lease of life like these Spy vs Spy games I have.

I bought a Switch game for a Christmas gift. Whenever I get my hands on a new game these days, it always reminds me how much more you used to get for your money.. Big box, lots of disks, thick manual, data sheets. This is my copy of Wing Commander for the Amiga. Many happy hours spent at this.

Well, the ZX Spectrum gets a mention in the Christmas Radio Times! You have to look hard though. Not sure that makes it worth the price.

Normally, we oldies tend to remember things being more intense when we were young. Snow fell deeper, summers hotter. Lightning more impressive. However I don’t remember there being major storms a couple of times a year seemingly every year with this intensity. And some still question climate change.

Going to finally get around to fixing a minor issue with my Oric Atmos’ keyboard in advance of the Loci interface arriving. Can you spot the problem?

It seems the expected delivery from Amazon for my 7800+ changed from “by 10pm tonight” to “estimated 21st December”.

Apparently Pong was released on this day in 1972.

When you get an Intellivision out to play the room just turns golden. Got to love that 1970s styling. Mine here has the Intellivoice attached and is playing Space Spartans.

I wanted a Sony Hit-Bit MSX for a good while before I managed to get one at a reasonable price. The build quality really didn’t disappoint.

So this was the OutRun of its day. That day being around 100 years ago.

Recently I have been mostly playing Wizardry - Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord. Not this original Apple ][ version though… the rather good modern remake for the Nintendo Switch by Digital Eclipse. Lovely touch that you can see the original Apple display overlayed if you wish.

A little Captain Blood seemed a decent choice to test out this Atari 1040 STe and matching SC1435 monitor when I picked it up.

After enjoying my import Mega Drive for a while I just had to get a U.S. SNES (right) for similar 60Hz speed reasons. So glad that isn’t the case these days. Later got the U.K. (left) one as the cartridge adapters never seemed to be fully compatible so I had the best of both worlds.

Though I had my Amiga for games, I was encouraged back into the realms of console gaming when SEGA released the Mega Drive. Being back in the days when U.K. consoles ran slower at 50Hz video and sound, I bought an import model for full speed 60Hz Sonic. Then found Flicky to be so, so addictive.

This game is a stone cold classic and I was astounded by it when I got the cartridge for my Atari 600XL. Doug Neubauer performed a miracle to do this in an 8K ROM and it became a system seller for the Atari 400/800. The package artwork even lives up to the game. Star Raiders.

Onward with my “owned from new” platform posts. The day this Amiga 500 arrived, my Atari 800XL died. I don’t suspect foul play but it may have died of a broken heart. Or perhaps CPU. I didn’t really program the Amiga and it became a game machine for me. Programming became an MS-DOS thing at work.

The Atari Falcon was such a good machine. Fast, bags of memory, DSP and a cool name. Unfortunately it had a short lifetime on sale, very little Falcon specific software and the case looked too much like an ordinary ST computer to make buyers aware that it was superior. Atari’s last computer.

Next in a series of “machines owned” posts, not really an upgrade from the Atari 600XL but I bought an 800XL as it was basically free with a disk drive in a Dixons bundle. That machine became my workhorse as a “bedroom coder”. This isn’t my original, but a heavily modded later purchase.

Post a video game gif from the year you were born. Well, can’t find a gif or video and only a cabinet shot, and don’t think video was involved, but the only one I could find was SEGA’s Periscope.

Post a random game from your collection, here on Saturday. It’s still (just) Saturday so here’s Leather Goddesses of Phobos by Infocom. This being the Atari 8-bit computer version complete with 3D glasses and scratch ‘n sniff card!

Next in my series of machines owned from new is the Atari 600Xl. At first I only saw it as a sideways move from the TI-99/4a but grew to love it when I got to grips with its capabilities. Especially when I upgraded to 64K with the memory expansion. It played Star Raiders and that was enough!

Just plugged in my Wii U for the first time in a while. Always nerve wracking but the NAND seems to have survived. Leaving it plugged in a good while now.

I have a soft spot for Rainbow Islands since I got a copy with my Amiga 500. For a while I played little else. A classic on every platform it came out for.

No, I couldn’t resist The Spectrum. Seen lots of complaints but mine works fine, feels good and works well. I like it anyway.

Forget your favourite games, what are your top 5 consoles? Well... 1. Nintendo GameCube 2. Sega Dreamcast 3. Sega Mega Drive 4. Nintendo 64 5. Sony PlayStation 2

Here’s my U.S. launch Nintendo DS that I pre-ordered through the long gone and sorely missed Lik-Sang web site (thank you Sony).