My journey

The long-awaited story of what was happening within the worlds largest computer retailer has finally been written. Last week I took ownership of the newest and probably the only book written about Commodore by someone who was there on the inside.

David John Pleasance has written the story of Commodore, published by Down Time Publishing and now available for all to purchase but originally backed by thousands on Kickstarter. In Stock ORDER NOW !- Commodore : The Inside Story

Many amazing stories from the frontlines

Only picked it up last night and have enjoyed the early chapters about David and his start with Commodore. I think this will be a regular read for the next week or so untilI’m finished.

Three issues in at the time of this post and I can easily say that Classic Adventurer is a magnificent publication, in fact, a quality magazine dedicated to Adventure Games hasn’t been available since the early 1980’s when Micro Adventurer was published.

I took to plunge and ordered a printed copy of issue #1 but have since only downloaded the next two in PDF format (easy to read on my iPad). The print quality is of the highest I’ve seen for a magazine, more like a top end book than a magazine and now take pride and place on my limited bookshelf.

The Classic Adventurer magazine

The beginning of the computer gaming revolution was launched back in the late 1970’s on machines that were small in memory, slow in processor speed but developers were high with spirit and imagination. Break Out is the story of how the Apple II launched the now billion dollar industry.

As you might be able to tell from my other posts I’ve been a big fan of the old school text adventure games which dominated the gaming industry back in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Recently I stumbled across this book while reading an excellent new Adventure Game magazine called “The Classic Adventurer“. In the second issue, there was a write up on a new book called Twilight Inventory.

Twilight Inventory is a collection of reviews of forgotten text adventure games from the 1990s. Created by enthusiastic amateurs, during the last days of the 8-bit computers, these home-grown titles abandoned the flashy graphics of commercial arcade game experiences, concentrating instead on devious puzzles, descriptive text and exciting stories.

Taking inspiration from folklore, legends, films and books, these were games with tales and settings unvisited in mainstream titles both back then and now. The features contemporary reviews and additional background information, this book is designed to give the reader a flavour of the small, but vibrant and flourishing, British adventure game scene of the early 1990s.

When companies such as Zenobi Software, Compass, River, Tartan and FSF Adventures, kept a loyal community supplied with unique experiences, delivered through the postal system in a protective Jiffy bag.

For a short time, the PDF version is free for download, so I’d suggest you take a look.

The History of the BASIC programming language

Discovered this book by accident, one of those random searches on Amazon results in often finding little gems.  The History of the BASIC programming language is one of those gems.

With just a handful of commands, this language which started life designed to go hand in hand with large computers and timesharing of the 1960’s turned out to be the ultimate accessory for the soon to become booming home computer industry of the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.

If you have ever used BASIC, wondered how Microsoft built a multi-billion dollar empire off the back of this language and where it all started then this is a great little book which will shine a new light of the history and influence Kemeny and Kurtz had on the industry of computers and programming.