/vr/ - Retro Games

The establishment of the PC as the worldwide standard computer mostly killed off both the unique British and Japanese computer game environment.

Mate our economy has been going down the shitter for years.

NATO went with American computer technology which killed the entire reason for the British government to support their computing initiatives.

>>9614528
The white guys got replaced by the brown guys

everything went to shit in the mid 90s
well that's not true actually, far from it it was much, much earlier than that, but that's when it became plain to the layman that his new age hopes are just hopes, and it wasn't merely an inkling in the back of everyone's minds, and thus, society has gone mad

>>9614528
Microsoft Windows and the Sony Playstation happened.

>>9614528
>What happened to Britain after the mid-90s?
the government stopped handing out billions of pounds in tax write-offs and subsidies. when the handouts ceased, so did most of these garbage corporations. tax payers poured huge sums of money into Acorn, Spectrum, Amstrad (and many others) and got nothing in return. no edge on technology, no edge on computing and fuck all market share for any system. Amstrad was the only company that actually did well. The only real longterm success after billions of pounds pissed up the wall was Acorn's development of ARM, but that took 20+ years to get good.

>>9614583
false

>>9614659
zoom zoom, zoomy zoomzoom.

The real problem was the downfall of BASIC, which used to be a nearly universal lingua franca for every computer out there and as long as you relegated yourself to using the more or less universally implemented subset of functions you could be a full bore user developer and write software that would run on most any computer in existence, from University time-sharing systems to personal computers. Sure the OS makers and professional software writers would use a different language most of the time but countless small software businesses flourished and hobbyists themselves produced a shitload of software too.

Once BASIC went away and the industry started moving toward expensive proprietary toolkits with ever-shifting OS and dev stacks it was all over for the hobbyist industry because programming became much more complicated.

>>9614663
Don't forget to take your cocktail of pills that stop you from dying, Grandad.

>>9614667
not enough pills in the world to cure your severe mental retardation or dangerously low lack of knowledge how any of this works. stick to what you know best: weekly reporting to your local police station for your sex offender registry requirements.

>>9614665
> BASIC
that would have been a selling feature in the 1970s but by mid 1980s nobody cared anymore. people weren't buying machines to program BASIC, they were mostly bought for games.

>>9614671
Bold of you to assume I have the mental and/or physical fortitude required to become a sex offender.

>>9614678
> fails at make believe history
> why won't people take my schizo thought bubbles seriously?
> totally not a sex offender guys!
i guarantee your criminal record is so long that you're not even allowed to step into an airport.

>>9614679
You are clearly severely mentally ill for one small post that was not directed towards you to rile you up so easily.

>>9614676
Wrong, BASIC was popular right through and into the Windows 3.0 / Mac OS 7 era. There were many BASIC handheld computers sold right into the 1990s, many computers still sold then booted into BASIC or came with BASIC. But yes by the Windows 95 era it was quite dead.

>>9614528
It's a complicated matter, but from what I understand, the British industry had been declining since the late 60s or the early 70s. As the result of nationalist and supply and demand economic policies, there was little incentive to invest on manufacturing tools and improving labour skills. Manufacturing cost was expensive compared to their competitors, so most of the British wealthy chose to invest in the service sector. Politicians like Callaghan tried to push back against this shift and make British manufacturing competitive again by taxing the service sector, limiting pay raises and such, but it was met with heavy pushback which led to what was known as "Winter of Discontent". Thus, Thatcher was elected, and she deregulated the market while pursuing a monetarist policy that hurt British exports. Trade unions were seen to be a scary and powerful that threatened the crumbling British industry back then, but Thatcher's policy to remove their bargaining power altogether was proved even more detrimental to the industry

TL;DR manufacturing lost, finance won. They couldn't keep up with the rapid pace of the Japanese and German industry, and those who tried to save it did a few blunders that caused a pushback. Ultimately, most of the western world was flirting with neoliberal policies that reduced the power of their industrial sector as manufacturing jobs and tools were sent over to the eastern world for maximum profits, but Britain certainly doubled down on it.

>>9614681
>Wrong, BASIC was popular right through and into the Windows 3.0 / Mac OS 7 era
not that anon, but you are living in absolute fantasy land of make believe if you believe anyone cared about BASIC even during that era.
>many computers still sold then booted into BASIC
wow. that's fantastic. that wasn't the reason why people were buying computers. do any of you abject failures of this website even know history or are you just frantically googling and hoping to come up with the right answer?

>>9614726
It was the tail end of BASIC, which still shipped with MS-DOS, and the Mac supported it too. Apple IIs were still popular in education then. Amigas had BASIC. Atari. It was a popular programming language for hobbyists and was carried on from the home computer era of the 1980s, when it was universal.

Visual Basic is still the #1 most used language from Microsoft.

The answer is globalism. Most British developers were not interested in becoming part of massive mega corps and wanted to continue making the quirky and unusual games they enjoyed. However, the rise of games consoles meant you were forced to play by the rules of the likes of Nintendo, and the ability to cheaply mass produce disks was replaced with massive loyalty charges to create cartridges only allowed at high volumes.
Most of the British developers and publishers got destroyed by this, one single failure meant the death of a company, and Japanese and American megacorps eagerly scooped up all the talent and took them abroad.
This caused a massive braindrain.

There actually is still a pretty big British games industry now (they absolutely dominate in racing games post 2000), but everything produced is carefully concealed to look as American as possible to sell worldwide.

Globalism is the death of culture.

>>9614665
>my entire knowledge of programming is watching one youtube: the post

>>9614681
>But yes by the Windows 95 era it was quite dead
Shhh. Don't tell the people who paid me >500k last year for writing shit in vb for them

>>9614528
britsharts where never on any gaming map to begin with

>>9614851
Anon got cucked by a British chav.

>>9614851
You sound like a sour nintendo/capcom fanboy.

>>9614528
What happened to Britain after WWII? Bunch of limp wristed poofs these days.

>>9614851
Weirdly you didn't post this in the X-COM and Rollercoaster Tycoon threads, maybe you forgot to tell them they shouldn't be enjoying some of the best games ever made?

>>9614683
> MRS FATCH
While Thatcherism definitely is responsible for a lot of the long term issues with the UK's decline, it's a total red herring for videogames, an industry that actually massively benefitted from the focus on service industries. Good sources on what happened are the From Bedroom to Billions documentary, and the book Britsoft: An Oral History.

>>9614528
>What happened to Britain after the mid-90s
Tony Blair and his consequences have been a disaster for Great Britain.

>>9614528
>what is Tomb Raider
>what is Grand Theft Auto
>what is Wipeout
>what is Goldeneye 007
>what is Burnout
Grand Theft Auto V is the second highest selling video game of ALL TIME. Shartmerican devs don’t even make it into the top 20 list.

>>9614957
>Grand Theft Auto V is the second highest selling video game of ALL TIME
High selling garbage is still garbage.

>>9614940
>it's a total red herring for videogames
OP was asking about British computers. British video games themselves are actually insanely successful.
>massively benefitted from the focus on service industries
Yes, but a good hardware industry could benefit video game sales as well, like what was happening in Japan. British video games were always the most technologically advanced in the world, but it took a while before they actually competed with Japanese and American games. Take ARM for example, a powerful and insanely popular CPU that was born in the UK, yet the Brits themselves couldn't manufacture a financially successful computer or console hardware for it. The Acorn Archimedes was a market failure because British manufacturing was expensive. Imagine if Brits captured the video game hardware market and managed to create an ARM console in the late 80s.

>>9614953
i love thatcher! who needs a country with industry, or burgers that dont eat your brain?

>>9614974
Look at those goalposts go.

As costs rise and more complex tech emerges the amateur coder is kicked out of the bedroom to billion pipeline. Multiple companies become a couple of giants with a monopoly. Game design is decided by a comitee of investors instead of little tommy playing around in BASIC with his original characters. And each professional is just a cog in the mechanism. It happened everywhere, really, it's only more obvious in smaller markets that had healthy amateur scenes.

>>9614528
Imagine growing up on beans on toast, mushy peas, and manually transcribing code for bad educational games on the ZX spectrum instead of playing Mario or Zelda on the NES. That's almost Soviet tier depressing.

>>9614990
Thatcher economics allowed the british game industry to become profitable. And it's not that britain's over regulated manufactured goods would ever be competitive and flourish, especially not by over taxing viable alternatives.

>>9614528
>things

>>9615023
Wasn't the british gaming industry seeing the biggest leap in the blair era?
>it's not that britain's over regulated manufactured goods would ever be competitive and flourish
Tell that to the germans. The british manufacturing industry's fault was not being export oriented enough.

>>9614681
>BASIC was popular right through and into the Windows 3.0 / Mac OS 7 era.
Perhaps it wasn't yet obscure, but it was not something the average office worker, small business owner, or gamer was at all interested in.

>>9614990
To hell with you and your coalmines.

>>9614528
Everyone was out raving to hardcore and jungle

My personal take is that we suck as business minded people. Take ARM for example. Had we not sold it to softbank we'd be fucking rolling in the money.

>>9614528
>However, once you hit about the mid-90s, the British just fall off the map
Free Radical, Rockstar North, Creative Assembly, Reflections, Bizarre, Lionhead, Rebellion, Criterion, Codemasters, Traveller's Tales, Eurocom, Sony Cambridge/Soho/Liverpool, etc.
>They fall off in computer technology, video games, even music.
Computer technology sure, but not the others. British musical acts are still insanely successful, and the major video game downturn only happened in gen 7 when project requirements were too big for most studios, and some folded into bigger companies or turned to mobile games

>>9615018
Soviet and Eastern Bloc kids were obtaining surplus computer chips, usually clones of the Z80, and making their own home computers from junk parts they scrounged up because it was the only way to get a home computer unless your parents worked for the Politburo or something like that. But all the smarter kids were channeled into computer education classes too, there. Schools frequently had computer labs starting in the 1980s, it was seen as necessary to compete with the west. It's one of the reason there's so many good Russian and Eastern European hackers and computer programmers.

Today the Russians still make Speccy clones, often massively enhanced with multiple megabytes of memory, better sound and video capabilities, hard drive support, etc.

>>9614528
Not knowledgeable about the particular subject, but could part of it be the expanding material and logistical requirements of videogames that in themselves required larger teams and logistical support that larger US and Jap companies could better support? UK being highly educated, but not having the same corporate might.
>>9614979
>OP was asking about British computers. British video games themselves are actually insanely successful.
Not him, but op was asking about both. But thats definitely part of it, so good post regardless.

>>9614665
commodore basic was bad enough that it instantly pushed any serious programmer towards asm

>>9614905
Hard times create strong men etc

>>9614905
Britain failed to transition from colonialism economy into an independent economy.

Since this is a speccy thread...
Can I así why do spectrum fans resent Nintendo so much? Was there some sort of rivalry? Maybe it's just one shitposter but I often see speccy shitposts on Famicom/NES threads and I don't get it. Would make sense if it's was Master system or something, but why spectrum?

>>9614528
>even music

What are you talking about? Britpop was pretty big worldwide from the mid to late 90's. Plus a lot of UK techno/ house/ whatever groups.

>>9614743
> >It was the tail end of BASIC,
it was the end of basic.
> b..but..it's on other computers too!
changes nothing. notice how they were all released in the early and mid 80s? BASIC DIED IN THE MID 80s. it's like you're illiterate or pretending to be retarded. sadly, we all know you're not pretend to be retarded. you're legitimately brain damaged.

>>Visual Basic is still the #1 most used language from Microsoft.
why even lie about such trivial shit? nobody uses it anymore. people that still use in current year are laughed at and seen as poorly educated spastics.

>>9616923
LMAO... What you said is really dumb.

>>9617000
>BASIC died in the 80s
>calling beginners and people who need simple and quick software "poorly educated spastics"
Whoa, youre such a cool elite pro codemonkey, I bet chicks get wet for chuds like you.

Anyway....
https://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2019/02/12/tiobe-feb-19.aspx?m=1

>>9614528
Britain died when Labour won the 1997 election. Tony Blair destroyed Britain.

>>9617000
>nobody uses it anymore
Sadly that's complete bullshit
>people that still use in current year are laughed at and seen as poorly educated spastics
This is true

>>9617051
Blairites are retarded but thatcherites/tories literally have no brains.

>>9616927
>Can I así why do spectrum fans resent Nintendo so much?
As someone who lived right through the 80's, spectrum owners didn't and don't resent nintendo, I knew plenty of people in the UK who owned NES etc. There was no rivalry, there was more user-rivalry between sega and nintendo than there ever was with spectrum, c64, and amiga towards console etc. The console Vs home computer userbases were completely different with different needs/wants.
Home computers were a solitary affair, and no Spectrum owner etc would think twice about going round to a friends house to hang out and play on their NES or any other console for that matter.

>Maybe it's just one shitposter
Bingo, well more like shitposters, 4chan memery, and UK self-deprecating humour

>>9614528
The British was still extremally relevant after 1994, it wasn't until 2010s when they became irrelevant (in short Kinect, most of Rare's staff finding Playtonic and what was left of it became nothing but a rights holder and a developer of MMOs after Kinect's bombing).
Pic extremally related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEUdkSBe_L4

>>9614528
The British was still extremally relevant after 1994, it wasn't until 2010s when they became irrelevant (in short Kinect, most of Rare's staff leaving to find Playtonic and what was left of it became nothing but a rights holder and a developer of MMOs after Kinect's bombing).
Pic extremally related.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEUdkSBe_L4

The British came to realize that "muh speccy" was not gay enough.

>>9614665
>BASIC, which used to be a nearly universal lingua franca
The different non-intercompatible versions of BASIC on every computer barely even counted as the same language

>>9616927
>why do spectrum fans resent Nintendo so much?
It's mostly the other way.

>>9614665

>>9617547
>The different non-intercompatible versions of BASIC on every computer barely even counted as the same language
You dumb zoomer, most companies used relatively compatible versions of MS-BASIC, the only notable differences were usually hardware interface functions.

>>9614528
Punk died.

>>9617667
NTA but you need to stop projecting and bullshitting. You're not fooling anyone. Just embarrassing yourself and shitting up the board. Don't make me call your mom.

>>9617752
Unlike you I remember the era well, in magazines it was common for a BASIC program to have a relatively "bare" version and then routines for graphics or whatever that you could put in, they would often give them for the more popular systems. Zoomer.

>>9617781
maybe if you're not larping, you should remember well what year it is gramps and then think on why you're naggin rando loudmouthed "youths" all these years later instead of playing games in your retirement years.

>>9617672
>Punk died.

Punk comes and goes in waves. It appears, gets commercialized, the well known punk bands either break up, or move into some post-punk genre like New Wave. Then a new crop of punk bands come up out of the wordwork and the cycle repeats.

>>9617781
worst larp ever

>>9614665
When I was in school they had just stopped teaching programming and refocused and the teaching on basically microsoft office packages. I can see why, the idea was most software innovation had already happened and most people would just use ready made software. A bad move looking back but the small amount of programming I learned back then was a lot more impactful than the years of ms office skills. Now some zoomers can't even navigate folders, great job schools.

>>9614683
People working in factories were seen as entitled and lower class, why bother making stuff when you can tax the shit out of everyone make money using magic and have nonsense jobs.

>>9614996
I wonder if its happening again. Some guy makes a homebrew games for sega and sells the cart. Eventually professionals get into it and the shooter made by 1 guy doesn't get as much attention anymore.

>>9616927
British nerds being complete faggots about Nintendo is pretty common, because Nintendo didn't catch on over here like it did in America or Japan.
I used to know I guy who would get visibly upset if you brough up Mario, because it wasn't Spyro, and that was the thing he grew up with.
Some people are just going to be fucking insufferable. What can you do?

>>9618435
>Now some zoomers can't even navigate folders
What are you talking about, little kids nowadays are taught to code. It has been like that since 2010 or so. Programming seemed like the most promising skill a few years ago. Not so much now, since the IT bubble has popped, but they definitely taught most kids HTML and visual BASIC in the 2010s.

>>9618538
What I've been seeing on this board is you could get piled on for saying nintendo games are boring or not the best ever and you prefer another, significantly less popular game.

>>9616927
it's mostly shitpost. If you want to know what really annoys brits though, it's that the internet game people and all their videos, articles, etc. are by and large written by Americans, who largely ignore computer games in their writing unless it's about games running on MS operating systems. There is more to the world of classic games than Nintendo and Sega.

>>9618435
I doubt it. Homebrew games are sold to an inherently small audience and don't have wide appeal. If anything the bedroom industry is ripe these days, because as much as Hollywood says you need a thousand shitters over 5 years to make a single game, there's bedroom devs making games and releasing literally every day. Also remember that one of the all time best selling games was such a bedroom dev project, and started in 2009 to boot.

>>9620161
there was an article in the general media not too long ago that talked about new young hires being confused about how to navigate the traditional computer file system, arguably because they had been raised on machines that didn't use folder structure (or that didn't rely on the user knowing about it, like iOS).

>>9617027
>Whoa, youre such a cool elite pro codemonkey
anon, people that visit this board have far greater programming skills than you will ever achieve in your entire lifetime. i guarantee you're at least pushing 50yo and still struggle to understand how a C compiler works. many such cases of such abhorrent failures in the computing world.
> visual studio magazine
wow. a website from 2019! my sides. nobody uses visual basic anymore unless they're brain damaged spastics that are so poorly educated that they can't learn a real language.

>>9620161
>It has been like that since 2010 or so
if you went to schools that weren't shit or third world, programming was taught going as far back as the 1970s, possibly earlier. i was taught how to program in BASIC in 1986 in a public school. some education systems are so shit that they didn't take computing or programming seriously at all until late 2000s, but by then it was far too late. computer literacy got worse despite the world being awash with computers.

>>9620674
>there was an article in the general media not too long ago that talked about new young hires being confused about how to navigate the traditional computer file system, arguably because they had been raised on machines that didn't use folder structure (or that didn't rely on the user knowing about it, like iOS).

here it is:
https://www.theverge.com/22684730/students-file-folder-directory-structure-education-gen-z

>Gradually, Garland came to the same realization that many of her fellow educators have reached in the past four years: the concept of file folders and directories, essential to previous generations’ understanding of computers, is gibberish to many modern students.

the teachers and education systems don't blame themselves for dropping the ball and doing their jobs to educate people. they just blame online services instead of blaming themselves for being shit at their jobs. they only had one job - that was to teach - and they couldn't even do that properly. then they wonder why their students are retarded. quite amazing.

>>9620875
noone here is impressed by your autistic spastic coding skills. This ain't 1985

>>9620902
nobody uses visual basic anymore. you need to cope with the fact that you are a poorly educated midwit.

>>9620902
> 20th
> usage continues to drop
OH NO NO NO NOOOOHAHHAHAHAHAHA

>>9620906
Nobody cares, go back to posting your waifu desktop on /g/

>>9620906
Visual Basic and VBA are practically the same.

I bet not one of you has ever had sex

>>9622432
I don't want sex, I want a fulfilling life.

>>9616334
Literally COMMIEDOR 64.

>>9614528
Sinclair out of the computer business (spent too much money on the C5), Alan Martin Sugar (AMSTRAD) took over selling the Sinclair computers on a for-profit basis as opposed to Sinclair's cheap technology for everyone philosophy.

>>9614528
Oi Me Speccy thread? In my opinion Jet Set Willy is the first true Metroidvania and thus the genre should more correctly be referred to as Willyvania.

>>9617807
This.

Goddamn I've stumbled on some amazing punk bands in the last couple of weeks. The Liquids, Institute (several bands been called this over the years, this is Institute of Austin, TX, check out the Salt EP or their legendary live performance on public access TV from 2017 where the vocalist is so fucked up he can barely stand but still does a 20 minute set) Glue, Hank Wood and the Hammerheads, Slimy Member. The Reatards of course but Jay has been dead since 2010.

I used to not even listen to bands who were supposed to be punk after a certain year. Big mistake on my part. Liquids is one dude basically playing everything and he just put out another LP this month.

This EP is from 2019
https://youtu.be/Nhp2g9sfZOc

So there are definitely some young guys active now or last few years keeping punk alive and well.

>>9614528
This is a joke thread right? I'm a fucking burger and even I can appreciate what Britain contributed in the 90s.

All of Rare Software's catalog.
All the advancements in techno music and trip hop.
Everything from Eidos (Tomb Raider).
Everything from Lionhead Software (Black & White).
The Worms series and Team17.
Grand Theft Auto series.

Britain has influenced modern vidya and music a LOT from their output in the 90's.

>>9624852
>All the advancements in techno music and trip hop.
Do you have an RYM or last.fm account I can mine for techno and trip hop albums?

>>9620170
I see the opposite. If you dare to like something Nintendo has done at all, immediately the inquisition shows up.

>>9624958
Nice victim complex.

>>9624958
>noooooooo muh bing bing wahoo

>>9624852
You also have guys like the Casalis.
>Britain, 1994, be young Dario Casali
>one day at a friend's house, discover this new American computer game called "Doom"
>holy balls, never seen a game like this, must acquire and play
>runs like shit on your limp 386, even with the postage stamp screen size, but it's still amazing
>play non stop for over a year
>hook up your and your brother Milo's computer and play lots of deathmatch, you're both hooked
>one day see one of those gaming rags which has a free disc with stuff on it, it has a FUCKING LEVEL EDITOR for Doom
>you can do that?
>hurriedly buy it and take it home
>first thing you and your brother do is fill up Doom's E1M1 with explosive barrels and play it in deathmatch
>eventually start tweaking the levels in the game, and soon enough make your own from the ground up
>get increasingly good at this
>soon enough both of you join something called the 'Advanced Doom Editing Mailing List' where people showcase levels and various methods and tricks
>a community project begins there, involving some 50 people at the time, and this was to be the first 32 level 'megawad' for Doom 2, to be dubbed "Evilution"
>there's a lot of buzz about it in the fandom at the time, to the point that just hours before the scheduled release, the group which is now known as Team TNT, gets contacted by John Romero, one of the main devs of Doom, with an offer by iD Software to buy the rights to Evilution, to publish it as an official product
>with some negotiation this is agreed upon, but they're interested in more content than just this
>you and your brother has had some creative differences with the others regarding development, you wanted to push for more fresh and challenging maps, but a number of yours get cut or shoved in the secret level slots for being too hard, many of theirs are honestly not very good
>decide to contact iD yourselves to show them a set of about 8 maps (including some cut from Evilution)

>>9626941
>get ahold of American McGee, who loves what he's seeing, he asks if you two can fill this out into a full 32 on its own, so that it can be published as a full double bundle with Evilution
>absolutely!
>build and edit levels non stop for four months, arriving at the name "The Plutonia Experiment"
>without the constraints of the others, you and your brother are now free to be really ambitious and to make something far more novel, cohesive, and challenging
>through a mix of the desire to make something really tough and interesting for someone who has already beat Doom 2 on UV, but still wants something further and greater, and good old healthy sibling rivalry where you 'get' each other through increasingly demanding encounters for when you playtest each other's maps, it shapes up to be a truly visionary gauntlet for the seasoned veterans of the game
>the encounters are harsh and clever, your thorough understanding of the monsters and weapons of the game lets you put them to use in ways which the iD Software guys themselves never thought to
>as the deadline is up, they thankfully think it's perfect and don't ask for any changes
>Evilution and Plutonia then gets released together as the Final Doom bundle, which comes with a new .exe to run the game on Windows 95, which allows for higher resolutions and increases static limits to accommodate some of the excesses which the original game couldn't quite handle
>it's quite a hit and well loved in the fandom
>in fact, Plutonia is frequently regarded as the far greater half, sometimes even the best part of the Doom games, it's a milestone which continues inspiring people for decades
>putting Plutonia in your portfolios, you and your brother get picked up for some gigs, Milo is hired by Barking Dog Studios for the game Global Operations, while you go and join a company started by a big fat guy who worked on the extended .exe, named Gabe Newell, and you start work on a game which would become known as Half-Life

>>9626956
>>9626941
That's interesting as fuck anon, thanks for the history lesson. I feel GabeN has hired lots of Brits and Europeans over the years. Valve would probably be nowhere after Half-Life if they didn't focus on getting the popular European modders and indie devs back in the day.

>>9614541
>unique British game environment

Damn, think of how many more games could have been made staring an egg

>>9621450
Hahahahahahahajauebfbznznanpfffft