Hey, Hey, 16k. What Does That Get You Today?

[Jonathon Watkins]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/' target='_blank'>http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/</a><br /><br /></div>Off topic-weekend-retro time. Do the names ZX Spectrum, ZX 81, Dragon Vic, Oric1, Commodore 64, Amstrad, Acorn Electron and BBC Micro mean anything to you? In a musical mood? Then you may wish to point your browser <a href="http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/">here</a> for a cheerfully nostalgia rousing chorus of " Hey, hey, 16k"<br /><i><span>Please note, some of the animations at the root site may be less than G rated/U rated.</span></i><br /><br />"…Then five minutes with finger crossed, hoping not to witness the terror, of a tape loading error." Ah, those were they days! The scary thing is that I have played nearly every game mentioned in that song. 8O A well spent youth I think! :lol: <br /><br />So, if you're in the mood for more classic gaming after this, and are near Milwaukee in the US, then the <a href="http://www.midwestgamingclassic.com">Mid West Gaming Classic</a> event may be just the thing for you. It's on today and tomorrow at the Brookfield Sheraton Hotel.<br /><br />And if you're STILL interested in retro gaming, and want to do some hard-core hacking, there's a yearly contest to write a game within a constrained amount of space. Last year's competition was for 1K or 4K. Meaning that the program code for the games was only permitted to occupy either one or four kilobytes of memory! The 2003 winners are shown <a href="http://starbase.globalpc.net/minigame/index.results.html">here</a>. The 2004 contest <a href="http://starbase.globalpc.net/~bhz/cgi-bin/minigame2003/YaBB.cgi?board=2003_compo;action=display;num=1083523864">will be announced in a couple weeks</a>, so if you're interested, keep an eye out!<br /><br />So, who's for another chorus of "Hey, hey, 16k. What does that get you today"? :mrgreen:

[OSUKid7]

lol...I saw that a few days ago. A little scary to say the least. 8O :?

[Jonathon Watkins]

lol...I saw that a few days ago. A little scary to say the least. 8O :?

I saw it last Monday, but have been too busy to post it. Plus I thought it would make a good weekend off-topic post. 8)

Why is it scary? :)

[dean_shan]

Nice. Some of those game look really fun.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Nice. Some of those game look really fun.

They were, they *really* were. (Or are, if you have an emulator :wink:).

[OSUKid7]

Why is it scary? :)
lol...maybe not scarey in that way, but who had the time to make such a strange music video...kinda makes you think.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Why is it scary? :)
lol...maybe not scarey in that way, but who had the time to make such a strange music video...kinda makes you think.
You ain't seen the half of it. Most of the really talented/weird ones have seemed to be British as well. 8O :lol:

Some people just have too much time on thier hands! :lol:

As did we when we were younger and playing the games. :lol:

[dommasters]

ZX81 was my first computer. Changed my life LOL. Fab machine. Shame Clive went crazy and tried to sell gocarts with hoover motors LOL. You could do LOADS in 1K never mind 16K.... but then the graphics were kind of poor :)
Remember pirating with two tape recorders linked together ... well I was very young and the pocket money didn't stretch far.
Anybody remember the commercial ZX81 apps ? Those guys must have made a fortune given they only had to write a 1K game.

READY. :)

1K Chess LOL

[SeanH]

Back in the day I used to know 6502 ASM inside and out. It was amazing how good the apps were on a micro with that limited address space. Here is a link of a bunch of machines that bring back memories of the past.

http://www.geocities.com/oneelkruns/65machines.html

Sean

[DaleReeck]

Back in the day, 16K was a whole game in itself. Now, only one page of a game's "Readme" file takes up 16K :D

[scargill]

Why is it scary? :)
lol...maybe not scarey in that way, but who had the time to make such a strange music video...kinda makes you think.

That would be my friend Rob....he does things like this for a living; thats why! But the band are also very good and talented; they are called MJ Hibbert and the Validators and I'd very much advise you visit their website here. (http://www.mjhibbett.com)

[xoiph]

Back in the day, 16K was a whole game in itself. Now, only one page of a game's "Readme" file takes up 16K :D

Back in the day, 16K was a few games in itself :wink:

[Kati Compton]

It really is quite impressive what some of the past minigame competitions acheived. There's a mini-Zelda type game (the one that won in 2003). I mean, it's not nearly as good, but it's TINY. And it has music to the tune of "Brave brave brave Sir Robin" (the coder's name is Robin).

I also have a friend that (not for the minigame compitition) wrote a JPEG viewer and a 3D texture-mapping engine for the 64.

:) I had a lot of fun playing Pocket 64 at the last C64 convention. Now that I have the latest and greatest version, I'll be even more impressive at the next one. ;)

[Kati Compton]

Back in the day, 16K was a whole game in itself. Now, only one page of a game's "Readme" file takes up 16K :D

Back in the day, 16K was a few games in itself :wink:
There's a new Atari cartridge out that you can plug an MMC into. I believe I heard that a 32meg card would hold all the games ever written for the machine, including the homebrew stuff.

[Jonathon Watkins]

I believe I heard that a 32meg card would hold all the games ever written for the machine, including the homebrew stuff.

Wow! 8O That is impressive. Why can't programmers today learn coding like that? :wink: Yes I know about the greater amounts of space needed for fancier graphics, music etc., but still, there seems to be a huge of bloat in modern programs. :?

[Janak Parekh]

Wow! 8O That is impressive. Why can't programmers today learn coding like that? :wink: Yes I know about the greater amounts of space needed for fancier graphics, music etc., but still, there seems to be a huge of bloat in modern programs. :?
A few programmers do -- check out the Assembly competitions in Finland (http://www.assembly.org/), amongst others. However, it's a terribly slow way of programming. The "fast" way of programming is to use languages like C++, abstraction layers and API, but these frequently lead to bloat. Software engineers know that there's no "silver bullet" to fixing software complexity. :|

--janak

[sponge]

Anyone here tried kkreiger?
http://www.theprodukkt.com/
FPS in 96KB. Been passed around quite a bit I know, but no mention of it here.

[billbuckner]

Anyone here tried kkreiger?
http://www.theprodukkt.com/
FPS in 96KB. Been passed around quite a bit I know, but no mention of it here. 8O How the hell???

[sponge]

Procedural.. well.. everything! Check out the textures, they're the sharpest you'll ever see due to the fact they're not bitmapped.

[jizmo]

Well, while we are at my favourite subject here, check out

http://www.256b.com

that has PC intros coded in assembly in 256bytes. For that 16k you could fit in over 60 of these babies. 8O

While some are a bit too simple, the jaw-dropping ones have texture mapping with multiple textures (generated in code), reflections, blurring and such. Many even have the tiny .asm source included and commented.

Believe or not, bytes here are better used than in the eighties. ;)

/ismo

[bjornkeizers]

Anyone here tried kkreiger?
http://www.theprodukkt.com/
FPS in 96KB. Been passed around quite a bit I know, but no mention of it here. 8O How the hell???

8O Is that for real???

I still remember the bad old days when games like Leisure Suit Larry came on a single floppy! And that was pretty advanced, because we'd just moved from tapes! Friggin TAPES! Oh the horror of waiting ten minutes to load it or worse yet, a tape loading error *cringes*

[Andy Sjostrom]

THANKS!
My first computer was a ZX81! Then I got a ZX Spectrum and I remember most of the games shown!

Really cool games! So much joy!

[hollis_f]

Any Brits with nostalgic memories of their first computer should head over to Bletchley Park (otherwise known as Station X - where they cracked the Enigma code and used the first ever computers). There's a computer museum there - but it's not like normal museums where all the exhibits are in glass cases. All the machines are there ready to be used. Speccies, C64, VIC20, Oric, Dragon, Lynx, ZX8? - they're all there.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Hands on? On those machines? Nice! 8)

I'll try and check it out if I'm ever over on that side of the country.