this post was submitted on 04 May 2024
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I had to go look up when those things came out (1977) because by the time I got my hands on one in 1982 in the school library they were already little more than toys even when compared to the luxurious Vic 20.
I know we played some games off cassettes on them. I feel like Oregon trail was one of those games, but I'm suspicious of my own memory because I know I was playing that on my Apple 2, which I think had joystick driven hunting on it.
God I'm getting old and can't remember the finer points anymore.
I do remember that other kids bullied the HELL out of me for carrying one of those plastic boxes full of floppies with me at school. Not a good time to be a nerd back then.
It's wonderful how included and valued nerdiness is these days. Being interested in anything non mainstream in the conformist 80's was hell outside of a tight friend group.
By tenth grade I had been commissioned to write some software. When I completed it, I walked away from all of it because of the social stigma. Didn't touch a computer again for ten years. I won't say I regret that because walking away led me to other life adventures, but I will say I regret the circumstances that drove me to do it.