In that era, I had first seen a 2D 'computer maze' game on teletype (i.e. paper) terminals of the student friends I knew, who were learning mainframe things at home in a period (70's/80's) before computing got personal.

We kids weren't allowed to play that game much (better, Chess), since it emitted reams and reams of updates, but there was always about a 60cm pile of green teletype paper around, for re-using with a different colour ink ribbon ..

Seeing it on a ZX81 in this manner is just glorious!

And now, watching my kids playing Counter Strike in the background while I hack on some playDate thing or two .. what a change in resolution.

I had an 8-bit (Oric-1) for my first computer, and I definitely lusted after a bigger machine - the Atari ST - for a few years in my teens, but circumstances happened (I got a modem wired up to the Oric) and I got access to much bigger metal, and professionally ended up with a MIPS Magnum pizzabox, a couple hazeltines, and a brand new PC on my desk by 1988, so I quite skipped the Atari habit.,,

But I sure would like to have one now! I once found one for 50eu in a second-hand shop in The Hague, complete with disks and monitor, which I drunkenly convinced a colleague to get, on a whim/dare, thinking we'd just have fun with it for a weekend .. but he managed to get quite hooked with its MIDI port in particular, so I'm on the hunt for another ..

In any case, I have most of the other 8-bit machines in my collection these days (its big), including an Enterprise 128, which I really should hack on a litlte more often, since I seriously lusted for this system too, Back In The Day™ ..

I'm really curious about the tech in this game, and this is for sure an adventure in architecture like no other - so I'll enjoy doing those notebooks and getting as far as I can to my own builds running, next time I'm in the 'lab kind of mood.

What's really fascinating, is all the modding that has already started on this. Those of us who have really, really fond memories of Tempest, Back In The Day™, are sort of getting our minds blown, that the source is not only available, the PDP11 is there for the taking, and MAME can give you that ol' happy feeling, but also there are new versions not just to be played, but to be made .. SVG to playable tunnel, wtf?! Delightful!

Kinda neat, imho. I think this aspect of the retro- scene is one of the reasons its so compelling - and important - as it quite clearly demonstrates that technology doesn't get old - its users do. There is always a new way to apply technology, even if it was created 'ages' ago ..

A lovely little machine, it would've been nice to see how things had proceeded, had this been successful enough to warrant a few more revisions. Certainly, it had relevance to the music-making computer users of the period. I wonder if its MIDI was ever used for productive purposes ..

What a trove of delightful stuff .. especially those Heavy Metal magazines, but also .. all the floppies! Lots of spelunking to be doing, I hope it happens ..

"Go for it!" - Crazy Climber arcade cabinet, 1982.

You could also use a pocket dialer, from Radio Shack, and if you got the right version, you could set a jumper and get the 2600hz free-call tones pretty nicely .. they changed the design to make the jumper inaccessible in later versions ..

I can still smell my old highschools' Vector 3 .. and that boot logo still sends me into conniptions over the fact that I would 'never' be able to do bitmap graphics on the thing, on the sly, while Professor Whathisname was blathering on about GOSUB or whatever ..