Comments on: A blast from the past

A blast from the past

Bravocharlie — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 12:35:19 -0800

The Usborne Guide to Computer Games 1982 is full of fun ways to make traditional video games more exciting and contains some very accurate predictions.

By: Null Pointer and the Exceptions

Null Pointer and the Exceptions — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 12:55:30 -0800

1. Centipede 2. Wizard of Wor 4. Donkey Kong 6. Pac-Man 8. Pac-Man 9. Space invaders 11. Yar's Revenge? 12. Tempest? 13. ??? Atlantis? 15. ??? Defender? 16. Wizard of Wor 17. Battlezone

By: Malor

Malor — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:04:14 -0800

For someone writing in 1982, those were amazingly good predictions. They grabbed for the ultimate pie-in-the-sky scenarios, and all of them came true. They got the HOW wrong in one case, long distance gaming, but they were very close on time. They said 'by 2000', and multiplayer gaming was fairly easy and free by 1998 or so. You could do multiplayer long before that, but it was generally either primitive or very expensive, as the commercial games usually required an hourly fee to play. They had easy, turn-based multiplayer by the late 80s with bulletin board 'door' games, but it's not the same as a live link to someone. These days, single player games are getting a mite scarce. Quite a shift. They were particularly good in their 'Battle of Waterloo' prediction. Medieval: Total War let you do almost exactly what they're describing, plus tons more besides. And the 'hand-held gaming' took awhile longer to come true, but the PSP is quite capable of TV-quality display. PSP games, sadly, aren't that good, but the slightly less-advanced Nintendo DS is nearly TV-level and has tons of great games. You can really hear the age of the article in the 'ultimate gaming' prediction. Quadraphonic sound and laser lighting? Well, okay, we have surround sound for games, but laser lighting? Huh? (lasers were teh kewl back then :) ) If you youngsters are interested in very recent history, think link is a good illustration of just how primitive computers were and how very recent all this computing richness really is. In 1982, a home computer couldn't play Nethack, much less Spore. :)

By: phooky

phooky — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:04:22 -0800

I love the hand-drawn pictures of pixellated video game screens. That poor illustrator.

By: Malor

Malor — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:05:52 -0800

s/think link/this link/

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:08:19 -0800

Man I'm such a nerd. At various points in my life I have owned almost all of the games on the cover of that book.

By: porpoise

porpoise — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:51:34 -0800

Malor: (lasers were teh kewl back then :) ) Lasers are still cool today. We've added mirrors now. =)

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 14:21:45 -0800

Actually, it's funny that the ultimate game is more of a combination of those predictions than anything like what they said it would be. The immersive environment once seemed to be the holy grail of gaming, but it's much more a matter of multiplayer distance gaming with detailed locally stored imagery and the ability to individually control NPCs while the computer "referees". World of Warcraft may not be everyone's cup of tea but in many ways it's the apotheosis of these predictions.

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:31:36 -0800

While growing up I loved this series of Usborne books. Their Introduction to Computer Programming book literally introduced me to computer programming and got me to ask my parents for a computer at home. After that, my life was never the same, for the better, I suppose. Thanks, Usborne.

By: Luddite

Luddite — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 16:34:03 -0800

It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that this book is responsible for a fairly hefty chunk of how my life turned out. Weird. Even weirder seeing as how when some people say that sort of thing they're talking about the bible.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:26:27 -0800

The part about a computer not being required was a lie, btw.

By: jiawen

jiawen — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 19:47:55 -0800

One of my first favorite books is The Usborne Book of the Future. It's SF, but it's extremely hard SF, and it's written at a very kid-readable level. It was my first introduction to the Daedalus probe, among other things. Excellent stuff. Thanks to the magic of eBay, I have a copy again.

By: AndrewStephens

AndrewStephens — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 22:46:13 -0800

Those Usborne books were fantastic, I had a few growing up - a book of simple BASIC games, one that taught you how to write a text adventure, and another that explained Z80 assembler to 8 year olds (with pictures of robots putting things in filing cabinets to show how memory access worked!) It's a shame that there doesn't seem to be anything like them around for kids today.

By: vronsky

vronsky — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 14:16:26 -0800

Null Pointer - links no worky. Wizard of Wor was my first video game thanks for the link Bravocharlie.

By: Skeptic

Skeptic — Tue, 02 Jan 2007 17:01:08 -0800

I had that book, and I've often looked back in wonder at how accurate those predictions were (a heckuva lot more accurate than those in other Usborne guides). In particular, the football game scene could be lifted directly out of FIFA 2006, or something in the style...