
That kind of moment happened all the time.
#Use bo2 gsc studio series
You'd put up with it – and hey, who would've guessed a series about the Roman Empire was interesting after all and you could live without spaceships and nuclear physics.
#Use bo2 gsc studio tv
It was more likely you put the TV on anyway and watched what was on. Maybe you had a VCR to watch something interesting recorded from a previous day, maybe you didn't. What does it mean for something good to be on TV anyway? An episode of Doctor Who? An edition of Horizon about nuclear physics? How about The Computer Programme? How likely was it that something good would be on? For most of 1980s, there were only four channels available in the UK: BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4. Maybe they chatted with their friends, played an analogue game or read a book. That would doesn't sit right with the word game, does it?ĭo you think anyone just sat in front of the computer quietly waiting for a game to load? Probably not. Tutorials aside, developers are getting better at respecting our time.

We don’t have to worry about the “opportunity cost” of playing a game because if we don’t like it or we get bored or we’re having a bad Everyday Shooter day then we can switch to something else quickly. It is astonishing how much time technology has saved us. Today, the time between the moment I perceive the existence of a game to the moment I play can be less than a minute. I mean, why would you? What could possibly be gained from waiting so long you might not have time to play the very game you’ve been waiting for? No one desires a return to the tape loading days. Rewind and try again and maybe this time- BOOT ERROR Nope, for the owner of an Atari 800 computer, it was insert cassette tape, turn on computer holding down the START key, press PLAY and hit RETURN. Of course, once I’ve downloaded the game, which can take anything from a few seconds to an hour depending on my broadband and the size of the game, it’s time to play. Even though I hate PayPal, I still groan whenever a store page doesn’t offer a PayPal option because I have to get up, leave the room and find a debit card. Of course, there’s still a strong retail component today but I haven’t bought a physical copy of a game in years.

Sometimes the latter was the only option, particularly if you were not an owner of a ZX Spectrum or Commodore 64 which were the leading platforms in the UK. Computer owners faced either a trip to a local computer store or filling in an order form and posting it off with a letter and a cheque in the post. Putting aside now antiquated ideas of difficulty like pixel-perfect jumps, black magic was required before we could actually play a game.įirst, there was no downloading. Boy oh boy, in the romantic, halcyon days of the home computer, playing a videogame was arduous.
