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How many retro gamers do you suppose actually play TRS-80 and Commodore PET? Who didn't grow up with it?


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Usually when I go to a retrogamer place like Reddit everyone is speaking of console systems.  Of course before 1982 every console only had games by its creator (except for a few games from Activision and Games by Apollo). So for the earliest games the prime places to go were computers such as the TRS-80 and Commodore PET. But how many retro gamers play mostly on these systems though do you think?

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Just an update to this thread, I asked this on Reddit too and someone was saying not many owned computers in the '70s and most weren't buying them for games, but of course I was thinking of magazine like Cursor when I made this. And I wasn't necessarily asking about people who grew up with it, but how many people choose to play magazine games on the PET? Like some people choose to play Atari VCS or NES games (these seem to be the most popular).

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Pre '82 wasn't just PET and the TRS-80 Model I...Atari and Apple were also big names.

What kind of games are you talking about?  Commercial games on cassette, disk and cartridge, or just keying in BASIC games from a magazine like the one you mentioned?  And what years, because there's a huge difference between something like '77 and '81.

Channel F, 2600, Intellivision and O2 were out in the 70s, they cost a fraction of a home computer and were typically far better at playing games, so a home computer was never a "prime" place to go.

 

As far as people into computers older than they are, you'd probably need to attend one of the more popular conventions.  I usually go to Tandy Assembly and the CoCo seems to have a fanbase that was born decades after that computer was relevant.

 

Now a 20 year old who mostly or only plays games typed into a PET...out of 8 billion people on on this planet, there are probably more weirdos out there that would do that than there are PETS available.  In other words, very few.

 

 

 

 

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On 12/25/2022 at 12:51 AM, Frozone212 said:

First computer was Windows 98. I find the PET an amazing machine but too limited for gaming

 

The PET was made primary for writting business applications in BASIC, if you wanted to play games like Solitare than you had to write it yourself...

 

(At least they threw in the text characters for the card suites :) )

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6 minutes ago, MrMaddog said:

if you wanted to play games like Solitare than you had to write it yourself

 

Not really, wiki lists 300+ PET games released from the late 70s thru early 80s. Can see screenshots for a bunch of them at VGM.

 

I played a bunch of Space Invaders on the PETs at my high school in McHenry, Illinois from 80-82 (we moved to Texas summer of 82). Somebody even modified a radio to hook up to the parallel port for sound, as shown at 0:06.  Of course writing your own games was part of the fun, so I did that too.

 

 

 

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