30 Sep
2007
30 Sep
'07
1:10 p.m.
Random mutterings...
I was just thinking earlier how huge the UK computer game market was in the
80s - and yet most of the titles were produced by UK people for the UK market,
and presumably never exported elsewhere. Other countries presumably followed
the same pattern - and there must be games which were huge in one country and
relatively unheard of anywhere else.
Which sort-of raised the question of whether anyone's ever tried to 'map' the
80s video game industry by popularity in each country?
Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious what was going on elsewhere
while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty Mole etc... :-)
30 Sep
30 Sep
4:17 p.m.
Jules Richardson wrote:
Which sort-of raised the question of whether anyone's ever tried to
'map' the 80s video game industry by popularity in each country?
Not that I'm aware of, but there are definitely organizations that will
be tackling it in the future such as the Game Preservation arm of the IGDA).
Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious
what was going on
elsewhere while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty
Mole etc... :-)
Most of what you just mentioned were action platformers for 8-bit micros
like the BBC, Spectrum, etc. So it sounds like the UK had a monopoly on
8-bit UK games for 8-bit UK computers :-) In the USA, we had access to
less titles but much more variety -- adventures, simulators, racing,
wargame strategy, etc.
--
Jim Leonard (trixter at oldskool.org) http://www.oldskool.org/
Help our electronic games project: http://www.mobygames.com/
Or check out some trippy MindCandy at http://www.mindcandydvd.com/
A child borne of the home computer wars: http://trixter.wordpress.com/
8:21 p.m.
On Sep 30, 2007, at 1:10 PM, Jules Richardson wrote:
Random mutterings...
I was just thinking earlier how huge the UK computer game market
was in the 80s - and yet most of the titles were produced by UK
people for the UK market, and presumably never exported elsewhere.
Other countries presumably followed the same pattern - and there
must be games which were huge in one country and relatively unheard
of anywhere else.
Your assumption that the games did not make their way stateside is,
in fact, incorrect.
I worked for a guy in Orange, California who's entire business was
importing Atari and Commodore (and, later, Atari ST and Amiga) games
to the US, and reselling them to Atari and Commodore dealers around
the country (as well as having his own brisk mail-order business).
Patching the games to work on NTSC machines? Heh. Well, let's just
say that the cracking groups came in REAL HANDY for figuring that out.
Great Brit-ware games certainly made their way to the US, even though
only a fraction were picked up by US publishers and officially
distributed here.
I still cherish my copy of Trip-A-Tron for the Atari ST.
1 Oct
1 Oct
12:32 p.m.
On 9/30/07, Jules Richardson <julesrichardsonuk at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious
what was going on
elsewhere
while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty Mole etc...
:-)
Having spent a lot of time discussing this very topic with a British
co-worker, I can say that one key difference is that we in the U.S. didn't
have any such thing as a Football Management game...
One thing that surprised him was learning that the Sinclair Spectrum made
almost no market impact at all in the US, but the ZX-81 / TS-1000 did. It
made a lot more sense to him when I explained that Commodore was offering
people $100 trade-in value on a $50 Timex-Sinclair 1000.
2 Oct
2 Oct
9:32 a.m.
And thusly were the wise words spake by Jules Richardson
Random mutterings...
I was just thinking earlier how huge the UK computer game market was in the
80s - and yet most of the titles were produced by UK people for the UK market,
and presumably never exported elsewhere. Other countries presumably followed
the same pattern - and there must be games which were huge in one country and
relatively unheard of anywhere else.
Which sort-of raised the question of whether anyone's ever tried to 'map' the
80s video game industry by popularity in each country?
Like I said, random mutterings. I'm just curious what was going on elsewhere
while us UK lot were playing Frak, Manic Miner, Repton, Monty Mole etc... :-)
I was buying Zzap! 64 in Canada, so I knew about (and played!) quite a
few of the UK games...
Cheers,
Bryan
6068
days inactive
6070
days old
4 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
-
bpope＠wordstock.com -
chaosotter76＠gmail.com -
feedle＠feedle.net -
julesrichardsonuk＠yahoo.co.uk -
trixter＠oldskool.org