Retro Computers

Retro Computers

@retrocomps.bsky.social

Semi-automated posting of old computers and videogames. Sometimes other bits of retro aesthetics and design. ~6-8 posts a day, ~24 posts on holidays. ⚠Outbound links tagged and monitored by Bluesky.

22,749 Followers 1 Following 7,945 Posts Joined Aug 2023
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3 hours ago
An article from the May 1988 issue of ST-Log Magazine. Up top, a knight in shining armor with lance charges on his horse. Down below, the article describes the setup and strategies of of Strathello.

Strathello: A C Version Of Capture The Flag

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9 hours ago
The cover from the June 1988 issue of Computer Magazine (the IEEE trade magazine) is a watercolor painting with possible digital touchups, showcasing the CD as an office building to indicate its use in business computing. Up top, the logo 'Computer' fills the cloudy sky. The bulk of the image is a idyllic city on a bay (get it? drive bay?). Cover left is the CD Tower (the parking lot and traffic cirlce around the base forms the "CD Drive"), which reflects the huge filing cabinet on top that forms the "Skyscraper" the parking lot surrounds. Individual cabinets in the skyscraper-cabinet are labelled things like Version Histories, File Archiving, Data Logging, and various cabinets are open to reveal the "workers" working in the "skyscraper" keeping books, working on easels, typing on fan-fold typewriters, and otherwise engaging in the world of business circa 1988. Cover right, the bay of the faux town has the headline story: "The Optical File Cabinet." Cover by Jay Simpson.

THE OPTICAL FILE CABINET (Source.)

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15 hours ago
A sleek grey box with a CD rom popup on the left, a floppy drive (!) on the right, and two controller ports and AV ports out the front (!). The grey controller has a D-pad, A/B, Select/Start, far fewer than its companions.

FM Towns Marty (Fujitsu, 1993)

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21 hours ago
An article about the game Lemmings for the PC-9801, X68000, and FMTOWNS computers, from the Japanese magazine Technopolis (Dec 1991). Powers, goals, and levels are depicted.

Lemmings got into everything back in the day

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1 day ago
The main interface for the game Fallout. The PC is currently in a cave; a two-headed cow corpse is visible screen left. Top center is dominated by the Pipboy view. Left are the player's current inventory (a rifle and two stacks of ammunition); top center is the PC's appearance, a grey green army man; middle is the current armor, some football-pad-looking leather armor; bottom shows the left hand is empty, and the right hand has a grey pistol. Top right are the character's key stats (ST 15, DX 17, IQ 11, HT 14, PD 2, DR 7, Move 7, Dodge 7), attack stats (Magnum, 3d bullet), Total Weight 10, Points 138, and Unspent Points -38. Bottom left is a log showing everything the player has looked at, an inventory button, the menu button, HP 14, FP 15, the left hand button showing Punch/Kickthe right hand button showing a Magnum, three toggles for action control, a Pip-Boy button, a Character Sheet button, a button for movement, and a mollyguard that would show combat options.

Fallout (PC, 1996)

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1 day ago
Subroutines: "A subroutine is a sort of mini-program within a program..." "Suppose you had a robot helper whome you could program to run errands for you. If you wanted something from the shop you would have to give it precise instructions telling it how to get there. Every time you wanted the robot to buy something you would have to give it the same instructions. It would be much simpler to give the robot a shopping routine to tell it to refer to each time." From Introducing Computer Programming: BASIC for Beginners" by Usborne Hayes Electronics

So many programmers are around today thanks to the colorful illustrations and clear language of the Usborne computer guides

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1 day ago
A man stands, holding the globe in his hands. Behind him, a satellite shoots lasers at missiles; further behind that, a nuclear bomb goes off in the distance. Labelled "The ARMAGEDDON Man: Martech, For the COMMODORE 64/128 CASSETTE." The art is signed 'Steiner.'

Sixteen nations have their hands on the nuclear button. As Global Commander of the United Nuclear Nations, you must stage satellites, intercept communications, perform inspections, negotiate, scrutinize, and try to save the world from nuclear fire. This is THE ARMAGEDDON MAN (C64, 1988).

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1 day ago
Four grey units form a semicircle. Up top, individual storage units form four compact "shelves" of data storage. Down below, four desks jutting out from the storage units provide keyboards, monitors, punch card hopper, and pre-video output devices; wooden shelves are propped up in front of each machine.

The soviet BESM-6 has one of the best names in all of computing: BESM stands for "Big Electric Computing Machine."

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2 days ago
An ad from the August 1983 issue of Compute! Magazine. Up top, the slogan: "Learn to type or get blown to bits!" Page center, a boy sitting at his computer trying to type gets exploded; the evil face on the CRT has a lightning nose that is reaching out of the machine to explode the boy. Below, dense breathless ad copy proclaims "MasterType makes typing a blast," "MasterType earns a ten-gun salute," and "MasterType teaches your fingers to fly." At the very bottom, the Lightning Software logo appears below the MasterType logo.

LEARN TO TYPE OR GET BLOWN TO BITS.

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2 days ago
A small, six-building town, of blue buildings with red roofs, stretching along a road into the horizon. The lines of the roofs don't line up with the buildings. The border is grey. On the horizons, one sees cactuses. Below in the text area, it reads "YOU ARE IN THE VILLAGE OF SERENIA. AROUND YOU IS A DESERT. COMMAND?_"

Hi-Res Adventure #2: The Wizard and the Princess (C64, 1982)

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2 days ago
An old school Windows shareware title with a lot going on. Menus are Play, Options, Info, and (greyed out) "TRIS-ME 1997 (C) Unregistered Version." The playfield is a standard black field with falling Tetronimos composed of rounded spheres of various colors. Top left are colorful notes of Level, Score, Money, and Bonus; playfield left is the Next indicator, with hearts, clovers, magic wands, and a timer. Top right is a spellbook, with the colorful word "CAST!" below; below that are various spellcasting reagents, and their point values. A strung-out orange tank cat with green stripes has a chat balloon, currently empty, where messages would appear; at the bottom right are the buttons "Play!", "Buy!", "Stole!", and "Return!" The whole thing is set up against a faux-granite backdrop.

TRISME (Stephane Giacone, 1997) (Source.)

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2 days ago
Up top, the headline: "SANYO FIRST OFF THE BLOCKS WITH A CD-ROM AMIGA 500? A combined CD-ROM/Amiga had already been developed in Japan as early as last August, the Express can reveal." The article describes how the specs resemble an Amiga 500, but the case resembles an Amiga 2000 with a Sanyo badge; while Commodore US knew nothing and Commodore Japan did not respond (not terribly good signs), the quote from the lead engineer Nakamura stated they were looking forwards to porting Amiga home titles to the Japanese market. But don't go looking for one at your local used game shop. Instead, this deal would fall through and they would spend 1990 shovelling out the C64 "Games System" (like a C64 you can't program, but more expensive!) and spend further development money reinventing this working Amiga with the CDTV (1991, 2 years later, 60000 units sold) and the CD32 (1994, 4 years later, 125000 units sold).

Despite a strong opening act, Commodore made multiple errors through the 80s. Perhaps one of the biggest ones was the Sanyo Amiga CD-X. The CD-X was set to use the established Amiga 500 electronics and receive Japanese arcade ports from Taito, Capcom, Sega, and Konami... in 1989. (Source.)

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3 days ago
A simple mechanism for predicting the Callipic cycle, a technique for estimating the time, solstice, and lunar state, used by Greek navigators. The dial on the left shows the state of six heavenly bodies, a crank, and the instructions for use inscribed on the front; the middle shows the mechanism itself, with various step gears used to multiply or divide the main gear into smaller or larger periods; the spring spirals on the back act as a kind of 'checksum', alerting the operator to the end of a calendar month or year.

Antikythera mechanism (2nd century BC; reconstruction 2012, Tony Freeth)

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3 days ago
A magazine entry from Soft magazine. Up top, a depiction of a bald man concentrating firmly while looking at a Mastermind board, and the Comodore 64 logo. In the middle, a single paragraph explainer. Down below, a roughly 100 line BASIC program, with copious comments to declare functions. Art by Hans Chr. Thaysen, program by L. M. Laursen.

Mastermind (Source.)

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3 days ago
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3 days ago
A scan of the "Capute!" article from the August 1983 issue of Compute!. It contains bug fixes for TI Teeth Wisdom, Bee Trap For VIC, memory Trainer For TI, Atari P/M Graphics Simplified, Slow List On The VIC-20, UnNEW for VIC And 64, Minefield For 64, Checkers, Crosswords For VIC, TI General-Purpose Data Base, 64 Odds And Ends, and Retirement Planner For VIC.

While the early microcomputer era allowed you to get dozens of pieces of software for a very low price right from your newsstand or library rack, there was also inevitably errata to follow - unless you did painstaking bug hunting yourself.

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3 days ago
In the center of the screen, a rabbit samurai raises his sword and prepares to attack a rhinoceros in a forest; snowy mountains are in the background. Up top, we see the samurai's face contorted into anger, while the rhino says: "All those who challenge me die, ronin..." The corners of the screen give the player's money (3 ryo), Karma (4), the Player's health (9/10), and the enemy's health (8/10).

"ALL THOSE WHO CHALLENGE ME DIE, RONIN"

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4 days ago
In a landscape screenshot, the top shows a rotting knight flying on a skeletal dragon, with red eyes watching the attacking knight from the night sky. The text reads: "Maya screams in despair as she recognizes the gruesome remains of her ex-lover. Sir Karl brandishes his sword as his death dragon swoops towards the scattering crowd. Press button or return to continue."

Death Knights of Krynn took the familiar gold box D&D formula and moved it the world of Dragonlance, where Arthurian heroes fought Gothic horrors.

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4 days ago
"Heat and PPP Paid Apartments Multiplying": A magazine article from Boardwatch magazine discussing the hot new thing in the housing market - apartments WITH fiber-optic! A 1300 square foot apartment in Bakersfield, CA goes from the high $500s to the mid $700s.

Why did Gen X become Gen X68000? Perhaps it was because new computers were $200 while a 1300 square foot apartment with broadband Internet went for $500. (Source.)

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4 days ago
A magazine ad showing the Hyper7. It's a dedicated word processor all-in-one, with a PS/2 keyboard, a monochrome backlit LCD monitor device left, twin vertically mounted 3.5" floppies device right, and a thermal printer device rear. The screen on the device shows a multi-application operating system, including word processor, spreadsheet, rolodex, drawing program, graphing program, disk utility, telecommunications terminal, and tutorial. The only thing it's lacking is a way to program on the thing.

The NEC Bungo Hyper 7 (1991) (Source.)

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4 days ago

excuse me this is a Denny's

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4 days ago
A screenshot from the 1983 Jetsoft arcade game, Bongo, featuring all of the beloved characters we've come to know and love over the past 43 years; the portly red-hatted explorer Bongo, his little furry friend who watches from a platform on the top-right of the screen, the weird hopping football-shaped creatures (referred to in the C64 port as "bouncing bongos"), the bird/pterosaur, and last but not least, Bongo's hated nemesis, A Dinosaur. The player currently has 94,990 points.

March 10th is a day where we all celebrate the little red-hatted, portly hero of gaming who single-handedly popularised the entire platformer genre for years to come

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4 days ago
A man with an evil hipster smile, wearing a No Fear shirt, looks up at you, in an orange background. He's looking up over red glasses, so you know he's evil. The title reads, "Get plugged in". Around the hipster floats various consumer electronics: a portable DVD player, a pager, a cordless phone, a satellite disk, a settop DVD player. The text reads: "When you log-on at www.buyitnow.com you'll discover a whole new concept of shopping. You'll find pagers and plasma TV's and everything in between. In addition we've got tools, toys, sports items and even things for your dog or cat. We also offer the best customer service on the web through e-mail, live chat, or phone @ 1-888-55BUYIT. Just remember, no matter where you are or what you are shopping for, at www.buyitnow.com we have a store for you!" Below the logo and motto it says "Shop now @ www.buyitnow.com Secure Fast & Fun!" From the October 1999 issue of Family PC.

GET PLUGGED IN

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5 days ago
In this EXTREMELY text- and font-dense ad, a Commodore 64 is a computer flying to space, and the red Action Replay cartrige is a shuttlecraft about to dock with it. Headings include "WARP 25 BREAKS THE 5 SECOND BARRIER!!!" "PLUS UNIQUE CODE CRACKER MONITOR" and "POWERFUL DESIGN WITH ON BOARD L51 LOGIC PROCESSOR CHIP"

Total Back Up Power Takes A Quantum Leap!

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5 days ago
In this William Geise illustrated ad, the title "Computer Graphics" appears up top, being cast from a giant Apple II monitor on an iceburg; the casts are a gradiant from purple to orange to yellow to green to blue to purple again, hewing towards neon tones. From the tan Amdek monitor flies a red biplane, a parachuting penguin, and a leaping unicorn; dolphins jump from the ice into the monitor. Around the iceberg, a sea otter peeks up, a penguin tap-dances, and a whale tale lifts a unicorn on a floe. The monitor is sitting on a giant Apple II. Down below, breathless text describes three different programming packages: "For the artist: Special Effects by David Lubar and Mark Pelezarski. Paint on your computer in over 100 colors with 96 different brushes!" "For the designer: The Complete Graphics System II by Mark Pelezarski. Everythign needed for computer-aided design." "For the programmer: The Graphics Magician by Mark Pelezarski, David Lubar, and Chris Joehumson. Add fast, smooth animation and hundreds of pictures to your programs." In the bottom left, the penguin software logo appears next to ordering information, with a sunfish floating to its left; at the very bottom it says, "All Penguin applications products are now on unprotected disks for your convenience."

COMPUTER GRPAHICS

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5 days ago
An ad in a faux movie poster style, reading "Cinemaware Presents: The TREE STOOGES" Moe, Larry, and Curly appear right (They can save the day by making ASSETS of themselves!"; the Evil Banker appears stage left ("He took their NEST EGG and told them to BEAT IT!"); and the Widow and her Three Beautiful Daughters appear below ("They're about to be thrown out on their ARREARS!"). On the bottom, Amiga screenshots depict the handdrawn cartoons plus the realistically colorized screenshots of the old black-and-white films.

Can THREE Stooges save ONE orphange from FOREclosure?

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5 days ago
An ad for the company Creative Software. The four left boxes depict VIC20 cartridge games: a man in space for Moondust, giant robot wasps attacking buildings in Save New York, a UFO shooting at a fighter jet shooting at a satellite dish in Astroblitz, and a giant fly attacking a garbage truck in Trashman. All are marked "Joystick controller required." The five smaller applications on the side are a sports car on a jack named Car Costs, a car attached to a comically giant loan agreement named Loan Analyzer, a set of bar charts named Household Finance, a safe with valuables inset into a wall covered in floral wallpaper named Home Inventory, and a man leaning over and considering his computer named Decision Maker.

The #1 independent VIC-20 full-line software publisher in the US is proud to announce 4 new Game Cartridges & 5 Home Appliances for the COMMODORE 64.

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6 days ago
The cover of Family PC magazine for October 1999. Below the white-and magenta logo are the words "Real Life. Real Answers." The cover image is a kid holding a gun, looking at the viewer very intensely - well, as intense as a clean-cut 14-year-old wearing his hat backwards holding a pink plastic lightgun can be, anyways. The headlines on the left hand side read: "Teens & Violence", "Should We Blame The Games?", "How to Talk to Your Kids," "9 Games Kids Shouldn't Play," "PLUS: "Halloween Fun & Crafts," "Online Trading: Tread Carefully"

Teens & Violence: Should We Blame The Games? (Source.)

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6 days ago
An ad for AI West (May 4-6 1998), in black and red. Up top, the beveled logo, with the red call to action: "Plan Now To Attend" Below, the full name: "The Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computer Technology Conference and Exhibition" A full page red heading declares, "The ONLY West Coast Conference/Exhibition on ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE in 1988!" Smaller headings in the dense text emphasize The Conference ("Emphasis will be on COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS..." "32 Technical Sessions and 12 Tutorials are planned"), The Exhibitions ("Leading suppliers will be displaying their latest equipment..."), Who Should Attend ("Corporate Executives, Computer Systems Designers, Office Automation Specialists..."), Organized By (Tower Conference Management, DM Data, Applied Artificial Inteligence, Society for Computer Simulation, PC AI, Spang-Robinson Report). Bottom center is a clip-out coupon asking for information about attending or exhibiting (complete with line for Telex number), and bottom right is a red wireframe human head.

"As the leading West Coast exhibition devoted to PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS of Artificial Intelligence, AI '88 provides a forum where vendors and users can meet to discuss specific needs, exchange ideas, and get down to serious buying and selling..." (Source.)

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6 days ago
In the background, a female, red-silhouetted elf with red eyes faces left; a male, blue-silhouetted human faces right. Center, a full-coor skeletal cerberus with bat wings rampant, its skull faces and red pixel eyes focused on you. Below, the words "A fierce battle with Dark Dragon ensued" appears in florid script.

Shining Force CD (Sega CD, 1994)

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