Anime Criticize my computer history timeline

[felipepepe]

Last week I finally finished my video game / computer timeline for the CRPG Book and posted it on Gamasutra for "peer review".

As usual, almost no one gave a damn, but I did get some good feedback about the MSX and casual gaming on the early 2000's... I've updated the timeline and now present it to the ultimate challenge: RPG Codex criticism.

Just check it here: http://imgur.com/a/zBmvI

or here:

Spoiler

The goal was to give context to readers on what's going on - to understand why graphics suddenly get A LOT better in 85-86, why there are so few RPGs in the mid 90's and mid 00's, why now games are using FMV (and what is FMV), etc...

So, please, DISCUSS!

 

[Darth Roxor]

"Here comes the challengers". Disgusting!

 

[Nekot-The-Brave]

I've been watching some dude named Ahoy on youtube that does a bunch of shit like this. I'm glad you included Quake.

 

[deuxhero]

Very American/European centric. Where's the PC9801? The FM Towns? Ect

 

[felipepepe]

Very American/European centric. Where's the PC9801? The FM Towns? Ect

There's a separate section talking about the birth of JRPGs where I talk about the PC-88, 98, FM-TOWNs, etc...

 

[Maggot]

Am I retarded or is Quake listed as 1995 instead of 1996?

 

[felipepepe]

Yeah, I need to fix the timeline, make year divisions easier to see....

 

[RuySan]

If there's an Amiga, a Spectrum and isn't full of american centrism it's fine by me.

But seriously, it looks great.

 

[ghostdog]

Maybe you should also mention the Amstrad CPC somewhere, it wasn't as big as amiga and atari st but it was popular.

 

[Delbaeth]

Maybe you should also mention the Amstrad CPC somewhere, it wasn't as big as amiga and atari st but it was popular.

And while it wasn't so popular, I remember that Amstrad and Sega made the MegaPC, a computer which can natively play Megadrive/Genesis cartridges.
Amstrad also sold adapters to link a Megadrive to a CPC6128 display screen, and maybe I'm wrong but few of the 6128plus series could also have a Megadrive port (but there I'm perhaps confusing it with MegaPC).

I'm not so sure, because while I had the adapter for 6128, and witnessed an Amstrad playing Megadrive cartridges back in the day, it was a white one, while every pictures about MegaPC I looked at since were about black/dark blue computers.
So maybe the one I played at friends' home was a MegaPC, but I believe it was a 6128plus (perhaps not the standard version).

 

[Jarpie]

AFAIK various models of Amstrad CPC were popular mostly in continental europe and UK, not so much in USA.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

AFAIK various models of Amstrad CPC were popular mostly in continental europe and UK, not so much in USA.

The Amstrad was very popular in the UK, despite being looked down upon by everyone. It was essentially the fast food computer of the unwashed masses because it was cheap. Since it had a Z80 CPU, games could easily be ported from the Spectrum, and since it didn't have sprites games tended to look like Spectrum games without the colour clash, except in exceptional circumstances where they were written with the Amstrad in mind. So there tended to be two sets of games publishers; those two targeted the Amstrad and Spectrum, and those that went after the C64. Plus a few that wrote games for both and used different sets of developers. Those games, titled and packaged identically, tended to look and play quite differently in many cases.

Interestingly, somebody where I work was selling an old Amstrad CPC464 a couple of years ago, and despite my latent hatred of the machine (stemming from the fact that it had more colours than my C64) I offered to buy it if there were no other bids, just to save it from being scrapped. I think it did eventually go to a good home.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

As someone who stills own his Amstrad CPC I lament the lack of it in the timeline, but I also understand its absence. But if Amstrad should be in there it would be for more than just the CPC. (Fun fact: The Amstrad CPC was biggest in France, and there are a lot of French-only games on the platform.)

Amstrad bought the Spectrum off Sinclair in 1986 ("Deal of the decade" I think the UK still calls it) and they also made themselves known in the PC market in the late 1980s.

So I think Amstrad at least should get a mention somewhere, but it doesn't have to be a full-fledged entry in the timeline.

I'll look into this better later today.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Amstrad bought the Spectrum off Sinclair in 1986 ("Deal of the decade" I think the UK still calls it)

I've never heard it called that. I do remember that Uncle Clive and the Cockney Wide Boy hated each other (but then again Clive hated everybody) so this was an interesting development. Sinclair was in rapid decline by then and the deal pretty much signalled the end for non-C64 8-bit computers in the UK as Amstrad put out a repackaged Spectrum that was practically indistinguishable from the CPC and nobody had any reason to buy either.

 

[commie]

Maybe you should also mention the Amstrad CPC somewhere, it wasn't as big as amiga and atari st but it was popular.

Was about to express my rage at no Amstrad(I had a CPC6128) as it was a popular machine in Australia. In the mid-late 80's mainstream store shelves almost exclusively had Amstrad games and C64 games. PC games and Amiga ones were stocked more in the big department stores. Don't know about it being 'fast food' as in Australia it was more expensive than C64 and Spectrum. It was about the most expensive thing that wasn't a 'proper' computer like PC, Amiga or Apple.

There was a horde of magazines for it too. More exclusive Amstrad stuff than other types here.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Don't know about it being 'fast food' as in Australia it was more expensive than C64 and Spectrum.

In the UK it was definitely cheaper than the C64, despite including a monitor, but more expensive than the Spectrum. I think the market was for people who wanted more of a 'computer' than the Spectrum (i.e. proper keys), and since it had a monitor it looked more like a proper computer. Lack of sprites and a bottom of the barrel sound chip pretty much killed any interest from gamers or people who had money to make a choice. All the people I knew who owned one had it bought for them by parents who wanted to do work on it. It didn't really have an impact in education as the BBC basically dominated use in schools almost until the end of the decade. I can remember going for a university interview in the '90s and being shocked that the unnamed university was still using Beebs in their Physics lab!

At some point Commodore reduced their prices to the point where nobody else could compete. I think after a certain point the only Amstrad buyers were former Amstrad owners who wanted an upgrade, like the 6128 with more memory and disk drives, but wanted to keep all their existing software.

 

[felipepepe]

Hummm... I could add the Amstrad CPC 464, but that would mean removing the Famicom and keeping just the NES release in the west.

 

[Bumvelcrow]

Hummm... I could add the Amstrad CPC 464

Don't bother - they're like the red-headed step child of British computing. Everybody around at the time tries to pretend they never existed.

 

[mondblut]

No word on gender issues? Were you fired from homosutra or something?

 

[felipepepe]

Roberta Williams is there, clearly I'm doing my part to further the SJW agenda.

 

[Delbaeth]

(Fun fact: The Amstrad CPC was biggest in France, and there are a lot of French-only games on the platform.)

Indeed. For the record, Visual Novels were a very big thing there and then, almost more popular than VN in Japan.
And that's how Ubisoft or Infogrammes (which later bought Atari) started their road toward AAA industry, adapting european 'comics' (french mostly), and even back then during late 80s, they were considered as 'AAA' for VN games (because they adapted comics series), when compared to Ere, Loriciel, or Lankhor.

The french VN scene was very prolific during that time, especially on Amstrad CPC.

 

[PlanHex]

Is it just me or are the only mentions of Wizardry and Ultima in relation to how they inspired Dragon Quest and thus jRPGs?

Not that I'd know where to put a mention of them otherwise, just stood out to me that they were not mentioned before, then suddenly popped up as inspiration for something genre-defining.

 

[felipepepe]

Is it just me or are the only mentions of Wizardry and Ultima in relation to how they inspired Dragon Quest and thus jRPGs?

Oh, that's because the timeline is spread across the book, like chapter divisions. You'll read the 1975-1979 page, then all the RPG reviews from that time, then the 1980-1984 page, and so on...

So before reading about Dragon Quest in the 1985-89 page you'll have already read (or flipped through) entire reviews about Ultima & Wizardry.

 

[Jarpie]

In Finland there were just one computer in mid and late 80s, Commodore 64, it was even called "The Republic's Computer" in the advertisements. Hardly anyone had anything else, and Spectrums etc "low-tier" computers were being mocked for being shit. Amiga was decently popular starting from the late 80s to about '93-'94 but PC quickly took over the market.

 

[Neanderthal]

I remember me Viglen fondly, wonder whatever happened to them?