Enter (September 1984)

Enter is a computer magazine that was targeted towards kids and published by Children’s Television Workshop (later Sesame Workshop). What computer loving kid could resist a cover with the Enterprise on it? While it did have some gaming content its emphasis was on education, including programming and general computer use. It covered all of the popular computers of the day that you might find in a home including the Commodore 64, VIC-20, TI-99/4A, TRS-80, Apple II, the Atari 8-bit line, PCs (DOS), Coleco Adam, Timex and possibly others. The September 1984 issue includes:

Features

The Empire’s Computer Secrets – This article is pretty nifty bit of history. Part of it is an interview with Ed Catmull, at the time responsible for many of the computer effects in early Star Trek and Star Wars movies among others. He would later become co-founder of Pixar. In the image below (from this issue of Enter), Ed can be seen showing of some of the computer equipment being used for movie making circa 1984. This article also covers the game coming out of Lucasfilm including Ballblazer and Rescue On Fractalus, both initially developed on Atari 8-bit computers.

Rock on the Road – An article about how computers are used to control light shows for various concerts including those of Genesis, Duran Duran, The Police, The Jacksons, ZZ Top, Culture Club, and Van Halen among others. Some specific equipment is covered including Var-Lites which were first used by Genesis.

The Write Stuff – An overview of the word processing software available for different computers along with their capabilities. Software covered includes Apple Writer IIe (Apple IIe), Atariwriter (Atari 8-bit computers), Bank Street Writer (Apple, Atari, Commodore 64, DOS), Cut & Paste (Apple IIe, IIc, Atari, Commodore 64, DOS), Easy Script 64 (Commodore 64), Electric Pencil (TRS-80 Models III and IV), Homeword (Apple, Atari, Commodore 64), Leading Edge (DOS), Letter Wizard (Atari), Oniwriter (Commodore 64), Quick Brown Fox (Apple, Atari, Commodore 64, VIC-20, DOS), Smartwriter (Coleco Adam), The Write Stuff (Apple II, DOS), and Wordvision (DOS).

Portable Power – An overview of a few of the newer portable computers available at the time. These include the Epson HX-20, NEC 820, Radio Shack Model 100 (I had one of these for a while), and the Olivetti M-10. These weren’t like today’s notebooks. They were typically all in one units with a built-in 4 to 8 line black and white LCD screen above the keyboard.

The Making of an Arcade Game – Behind the scenes at Bally Midway factory in Franklin Park, Illinois. This shows the process of assembling a Spy Hunter arcade machine.

Contest #4 – A contest involving renaming computer parts in which you could win an Apple IIc.

Departments

Feedback – Readers respond to a previous article about software piracy, a very hot topic at the time.

Bits – The news section, this month featuring: the Pac-Van, a mobile arcade that holds 25-30 games that could be rented for birthday parties and such; two students hack the electronic scoreboard at the Rose Bowl; Plaqueman, a new game from Home Computer Software; a sheep shearing robot…and more.

Ask Enter – Readers ask about compatibility, how disks work, if games are bad for your TV, and more.

Random Access – A high school student complains that while her school does a good job teaching computer programming, that doesn’t mean that you know how to actually use a computer.

User Views – Game Reviews
- The Seven Cities of Gold (Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari) – A graphical adventure game by Electronic Arts that features the exploration of North and South America through 400 years of history.
- Pitfall II: Lost Caverns (Atari 2600, ColecoVision/Adam, Atari 5200, Atari computers, Commodore 64, DOS) – A sequel to Pitfall. This was an excellent game for the time that I had for my Commodore 64.
- James Bond: 007 (Atari computers, ColecoVision, Commodore 64, Atari 2600) – An action game by Parker Brothers based on scenes from four different Bond films.
- Gumball (Apple, Atari) – An action/puzzle game in which you must catch different colored gumballs in the correct cart.
- Bump ‘N’ Jump (Intellivision) – A port of the arcade classic that is part race part destruction derby.
- Bruce Lee (Commodore 64, Apple II, Atari) – Work your way through the fortress with your martial arts prowess.
- Zaxxon (Commodore 64) – An excellent conversion of the classic arcade shooter.
- Boulder Dash (Atari, Commodore 64, DOS) – Somewhat like Dig Dug but with its own unique twists.

Software Scanner – Various software reviews.
- Run for the Money (DOS) – A game in which you have to fix your spaceship but its more about business planning than anything.
- Peripheral Vision (Commodore 64, Atari, DOS) – Drawing software that works with a light pen.
- Flight Simulator II (Commodore 64, Apple, Atari) – The original Flight Simulator was written for DOS based machines. The sequel is really an enhanced version of the original for various other 8-bit computers.
- M-SS-NG L-NKS (Commodore 64, Atari) – An educational fill in the blanks puzzle game featuring classic literature.
- Coco-Notes (Atari, Commodore 64) – Compose songs by catching notes.

Newsbeat – The latest in computer news, featuring the new Commodore 16 and Plus 4; the new Okimate 10 dot-matrix printer; various robots and robot software; new software including Breakdance, Archon II, and more; the Atari 780 Prosystem; the MindLink system; and voice controlled laser discs.

Showbeat – Including a preview of a new movie featuring Atari computers, Cloak & Dagger. This movie starred Henry Thomas (Elliot from E.T.). While some will no doubt argue that this was no E.T., it was a movie I loved as a kid and probably had a bigger impact on me.

Pacesetters – An article about One on One featuring Larry Bird and Dr. J as well as the 17-year old programmer that wrote it.

Connections – Info on a Commodore 64 music contest, BBSes, new Timex hardware and software, and where you might find out of print books.

Pencil Crunchers – A maze created with the help of a computer (Apple II) and a computer related crossword puzzle.

Next – What’s coming up next month (‘Life On-Line’, ‘Computers Go To College’, and more).

Programming

BASIC Training – Featuring Micro Mind Reader, a type in program that can read your mind for Apple, Adam, Atari, IBM, TRS-80 Color Computer, and Timex Sinclair.

BASIC Recommends – A recommendation for a BASIC programming book: ‘More BASIC: A Guide to Intermediate-Level BASIC Programming’

…and more!

Wasteland (DOS, Apple 2, Commodore 64)

‘Wasteland’

[DOS / APPLE2 / C64] [USA] [MAGAZINE] [1988]

Computer Gaming World, August 1988 (#50)
via CGW Museum
‘Wasteland’ ring a bell to anyone? Hopefully it does, since it was a huge contributor to the book of what we see in popular post-nuke games! It even got a sequel through Kickstarter a couple years back, and before that it spawned a spiritual sequel that you may have heard of: Fallout!

http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/159570403640/vgprintads-wasteland-dos-apple2-c64

Wasteland is one of THE classic role-playing games for 8-bit computers. Unlike most RPGs, Wasteland was not set in a fantasy world of wizards and dragons but in a post-apocalyptic future. Wasteland was developed for the Apple 2 and ported to the Commodore 64 and DOS based computers and released in 1988. Originally, two sequels were planned but one was turned into an unrelated game (Fountain of Dreams) and the third was cancelled (Meantime). Wasteland was a favorite of critics and fans alike and was hugely successful but it took five years to develop which is an unheard of amount of time, particularly for that era.

Wasteland is a turn-based RPG somewhat similar to the Bard’s Tale series by the same developers. However, the mechanics were really based on the pen and paper role-playing games Tunnels and Trolls and Mercenaries which were created by designers of Wasteland.

Fallout, while not a direct sequel, was inspired by and has many references to Wasteland. Fallout was released in 1998 and has spawned a series of sequels and spinoffs that continue to this day. Most of these games, particularly the original, have also been huge critical and popular successes. Wasteland did not receive a direct sequel until the Kickstarter funded Wasteland 2 was released in 2014. Wasteland 3 is scheduled for a 2019 release and it appears this series is continuing the high quality everyone has come to expect from these semi-related post-apocalyptic games.

The above ad is from the August 1988 issue of Computer Gaming World.

Cyrix 6×86

http://darth-azrael.tumblr.com/post/158381273387/tech-backissues-the-90s-were-a-time-of-bullshit

This ad is a little misleading in that Winstone scores were not the best measure of CPU performance. It is true that for a brief time Cyrix processors were faster and cheaper than Intel processors for the most common tasks. This was especially true of 16-bit code which was still the most common and tasks that benefited from faster integer performance.

However, Intel Pentium chips were still faster for 32-bit code which was becoming more common and for tasks that benefit from faster floating point performance. In addition, the pace of Intel’s development was more than Cyrix could keep up with and after a couple of years Cyrix became irrelevant.