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June 17, 2008
The History of 8bit Gaming in the UK
The History of 8bit Gaming in the UK, a website by Tony Barnett, I recently found and seemingly details a good amount of press releases from 1982 onwards for the UK's gaming scene. Makes for some interesting reading, especially for companies which still exist in one form or another. Certainly, the UK 1980's gaming scene was very different to the USA one, so that too is a nice contrast.
Tony also seems to run the parent site ZXSoftware.co.uk, which contains information on Sinclair systems.
Posted by AndrewArmstrong at June 17, 2008 12:35 PM
Comments
Sounds great Tony :) I'll keep an eye on it! But be sure to tell us if we miss a major milestone.
Posted by: Andrew Armstrong at June 28, 2008 07:38 AM
The information for the 8bit history section of my site (zxsoftware.co.uk) is drawn from the weekly computer press of the time.
You can check the main sources I'm using by checking the magazine section of the main site.
The intention, which is very long term, is to provide a complete history of the 8 bit gaming machines (and related games, ad-ons etc) released in the UK and to a lesser degree the 16 bit machines and early consoles. Hence the site is tagged as experimental at the moment until I can truly determine the breadth of information which will fall out of the weekly coverage.
I hope, in time, to punctuate each entry with the relevant images (people, machines, anything I can find) but this will come in phase two once all the text is in place.
I estimate getting the just the text in place will take at least two years so it might be worth checking back every couple of months to check the progress. As far as it's practical I am working through each year in order so 1982 first leading up to 1992. Progress at present is about a third of the way through 1984 which I aim to have finished around the end of July.
Even for US based readers I hope it will end up as a useful research tool for anybody interested in the early years of gaming if for no other reason that to show how the US based companies treated the UK market.
Regards,
Tony Barnett
Posted by: Tony Barnett at June 28, 2008 06:35 AM