Asteriods, Frogger, Missile Strike, Twin Kingdom Valley, Racer, Repton, Chuckie Egg, Elite, etc, etc… all loaded (very slowly) from cassette tape. Home computers were very new back then and I’d never used one before. When I was around 8 yrs old, my parents bought a BBC Micro Model B - an early 8-bit home computer. Just type in BASIC code/commands and press Enter. This is what you saw when you booted it up - straight into an interactive programming environment: a 1980s REPL. Weekends… we have a lie-in and they watch cartoons until we get up, so usually an hour or two. They generally don’t get ready early, so they generally get about 0-30 mins total screen time per week, Monday-Friday. In the mornings, if they get ready early, they get the rest of the time before we leave, and the bedtime glide path starts with dinner at about 6pm - and no screens after dinner is a hard rule. The kids get very little screen time Monday to Friday - partly because we want it this way and partly because there just isn’t time. I’m going to mention screen time up-front. I’ll add more games as we go along, progressing through gaming history, one classic game at a time. The kid doesn’t really know any better, so we can play Space Invaders unsullied by time and expectations and enjoy a speedrun through gaming history, playing just the highlights. The plan is to load a selection of the “best of the best” games from computer game history, starting with games up to, roughly, 1985.
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