Those computer mag adds were to blame

[John Bennett]

I wonder if it could actually be recreated /realised properly in this era of cheap circuit boards and 3D printing 😀

Dunno if you can reset the Megadrive from the cart slot though…

 

[Body pop]

Yeah, if you were minted. 14" CRT would've let it down a bit, mind.

It has got me thinking about back then - that lot plus an arcade PCB would've set you back around a grand in today's money.
...Utterly no one I knew would've had anything like that. No I knew imported a PC Engine, no one could afford a Neo Geo.
I don't think I was in a particularly poor area either.

I wonder a bit of it is is because the parents spent any disposable income on other stuff as they weren't the video gaming generation, so it would've seemed an absurd expense just for the kids.

I remember them running an article ,where the prices of pcbs at the time were listed
It was like 25 quid for ghosts n goblins etc
This is when I really got drawn to superguns and stuff
It didn’t matter that the games were dated ,out of fashion
They had never ever been converted properly so this was the chance
40 years later ,still chasing the same buzz
A friend of mine imported the pc engine
Those adds had me tortured
That was the first proper arcade like machine for homes

 

[John Bennett]

I remember them running an article ,where the prices of pcbs at the time were listed
It was like 25 quid for ghosts n goblins etc
This is when I really got drawn to superguns and stuff
It didn’t matter that the games were dated ,out of fashion
They had never ever been converted properly so this was the chance
40 years later ,still chasing the same buzz
A friend of mine imported the pc engine
Those adds had me tortured
That was the first proper arcade like machine for homes

At the time of the late 80's it never really registered with me that you could buy actual interchangeable arcade PCBs.
It was 1997 when I properly twigged (and you could research via the internet, MAME and newsgroups like here) and me and the little brother bought most of our PCB stash (everything we loved as kids).
I had it in my head the PC Engine was expensive, but reading up now, it looked to be around £150 in 1989 money, which is less than half an Amiga and ST price. Games-wise, you could see it wiped the floor with them for anything sprite related, amazing little thing. Even the tinny sampled sound was good.

Wish they'd named it differently though - I had an actual PC, so I'd initially get all excited and confused seeing 'PC Engine' and these amazing looking games.

Of course NEC never bothered to release it here, they just got annoyed when people came to them with issues...

 

[Body pop]

I’m almost sure that they did have a distributor eventually for the pc engine
They were definitely on sale in a shop in Belfast
I got an Atari st at the time ,which though not as good ,was easier to accumulate a huge collection of games .which I still have
Years later I started collecting pc engine games ,but they are all gone now ..
As great as they were ,nothing replaces the arcade games
I just find a lot of console games to easy to play .

 

[big10p]

I believe Telegames distributed a PAL version of the TurboGrfx in the UK. May have been mail order only, though.

 

[Body pop]

Telegames ,now there’s a name I hadn’t thought of in years
They always had the latest games ,pc engine ,then the grey imports ,of megadrive and snes
Exciting times indeed ,just obtaining something you shouldn’t have

There was a video club that rented all the grey import stuff close to me
A quid a night and he had adapters and all sorts.
Was great for getting your fix

He helped a lot of people build up amazing collections of spectrum games too 😉 prior to this

 

[big10p]

Yeah, I kind of miss getting the badly photocopied mail shots from Telegames. Always lots of cool gaming kit that I couldn't afford. 😆

 

[big10p]

And that reminds me of Special Reserve, printed in colour! 🙂

 

[SIE]

What I wanted and what I got
I had the spectrum version which I enjoyed
So with the master system being the dream system for me at the time,surely it could be like the spectrum ,but with colour and music
I couldn’t wait
I think I completed it on first go or second
I got my dad to take it back to Woolworths and changed it for fantasy zone 2 ,paying an extra couple of pounds
It was superb and gave many hours of fun

i remember doing something similar with Vigilante on SMS. It was £29.99 and I got my Dad to buy it just a few weeks after xmas, took it home and completed it within the first hour. He was not happy 🤣

 

[John Bennett]

Now I’m off down another rabbit hole, I saw this advertised
Not sure it was supposed to play very well but a good effort on faking the scaler games.

 

[Bods]

I may have just wasted an hour looking for this. At the time the concept of putting a TV on a shelf and standing up looked like the best thing ever.
View attachment 62597
Vintage,, overpriced supergun there too.

That's mad

The Cyber-Tech Universal Energiser was an early 1990 retro gaming device—essentially an early form of a "supergun"—released around September 1990 by Cyber-Tech Distributions in Dursley, Gloucestershire, UK. Priced at roughly £179.95, it was marketed as a console that allowed users to plug arcade printed circuit boards (PCBs) directly into a home television via SCART be amazing if someone had one still

You could have made something like that to save spending £99 but would I want to stand up playing games on my C64 at home, not really just having a standard joystick plonked on the front is so lame, that should have at least had an arcade style joystick panel which is all I could have fitted in as I never had space in my bedroom for anything like that if I wanted it. I made myself a steering wheel and pedals to play driving games but I didn't make that till I had the ST or Amiga as I only remember playing Lombard RAC Rally with it, Buggy Boy on C64 would have been epic with it but never had Buggy Boy on Amiga

Having one of those Universal Energisers would have been unreal specially if you could get some older arcade pcbs for price of Console Carts

Telegames wasn't far from me, i remember getting some leaflets or something when I bought some stuff, maybe I still have it with lists of all the games etc they were selling

I never had the money to even buy all the magazines in the 80s let alone the many games for C64, I used to buy old copies of Zzap magazine from Leicester Commodore Centre, used to be 20p I think and we'd sit in Asda writing down the pokes from current magazines, digital camera would have been real handy then lol
so having a console wasn't worth it for me as I'd hardly have any games but always been happy with Computer systems and then proper PC for gaming

 

[bodgit]

I believe Telegames distributed a PAL version of the TurboGrfx in the UK. May have been mail order only, though.

And it wasn't very good as it ran the games slower due to the PAL/NTSC timing differences and that could also cause certain games to glitch. A curiosity in the PCE timeline.

 

[bodgit]

And that reminds me of Special Reserve, printed in colour! 🙂
View attachment 62612

I remember these ads. I definitely bought something Gameboy-related from there, if not the Gameboy itself.

 

[bodgit]

Your Sinclair June 1991, 'win a Simpsons pinball' ad that I mentioned earlier!
View attachment 62539

That ginger kid on the Simpsons pinball has taken me right back. I never entered any of these, my folks would have gone ballistic when the phone bill turned up.

 

[Body pop]

That ginger kid on the Simpsons pinball has taken me right back. I never entered any of these, my folks would have gone ballistic when the phone bill turned up.

Ah the phone bill ,I forgot about that 🤣
I loved that Simpsons pinball .it was one I played a lot of
Even though it may not be one of the best .i remember enjoying it

 

[Body pop]

That I didn’t know or maybe just forgot
All this pc engine talk has put me In the mood for a game of chan and chan
My friend that imported one ,only ever had that one game
It wiped the floor at the time with any other side scoller of the genre , I thought

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

I was looking for another old Atari ad but ended up with these 😆

 

[CMYKhazi-Dan]

I was looking for another old Atari ad but ended up with these 😆

 

[John Bennett]

The proper Stevie advert is actually for this::

Funkay!

 

[John Bennett]

You could have made something like that to save spending £99 but would I want to stand up playing games on my C64 at home, not really just having a standard joystick plonked on the front is so lame, that should have at least had an arcade style joystick panel


Telegames wasn't far from me, i remember getting some leaflets or something when I bought some stuff, maybe I still have it with lists of all the games etc they were selling

I'd argue the novelty of standing up to play games was and still is bewilderingly strong, considering how comfortable a bean bag and a large arcade joystick is.
But yeah, I did think 'crap joystick' when I saw that photo back in the day. Owning a PC, it was a battle to find anything that wasn't an analogue flight-stick to play games :-(.

Telegames are still on the go selling Lynx stuff, it seems