I can add from my point of view that situation in Poland was a bit similar to Portugal.
We had a big flow of incoming quality British and Spanish games, distributed and sold by pirates of course :)
On the other hand we terribly lacked literature about programming. The only books about Z80 available were written by some nerdy eggheads who as examples used some advanced theoretical math stuff, which would instantly discourage most teenagers interested in coding.
Any local programmer couldn't really compete with productions of companies like Ocean. Please note that proffesional companies used for development the most powerful machines at the time - Amigas, Atari ST and Polish guys had just rubber Spectrums with tape players, hardly comfortable to do something more serious.
But some tried, especially with text games as they could be a niche. Knowledge of English was generally poor so a text game in Polish could sell actually quite well because it didn't have competition unlike arcade games.
But they didn't sell well as pirates cracked them mercilessly, quite often stealing the work of their real life friends (at the beginning Spectrum community wasn't that big and many people knew each other).
So if you could write games and earn no money or crack games and earn money what would you choose? Good thing of it was that kids like me could play a lot of western games for small money. Bad thing was that all the software that could appear in other circumstances never happened :sad:
Some people also tried with educational software hoping that it will be parents and not kids who will buy it and parents will prefer to buy it legally from the authors and not some suspicious types at flea market. There is quite a lot of this educational software and every year I found some new MIAs. Still I would say that it didn't sell well as parents quickly gave up on their educational mission and allowed the kids just to play the games :)
Situation improved around 1990 when more literature, tools and hardware (especially floppy disks) become available. But at the same time prices of Amigas and PCs from China plummeted and it was over for Spectrum. It survived a few more years on demoscene (I'd say that demoscene always dies the last ;) ) but it was all of it.
The ZX80 enjoyed modest success in the USA. The ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000/1500 enjoyed fair success stateside partially because the Timex machines were mostly compatible with the software and hardware for the regular UK machines. There is a fair amount of American ZX81/Timex software about especially from the early days of 1981-82.
However the Spectrum was not successful because Timex 2068 was not compatible with most of the Spectrum software. That was a fatal flaw which limited the machine's appeal and meant it didn't achieve much market penetration.
The C64 quickly became the home computer of choice in the USA and shaped the American scene.
I also think that cost was less of a factor in the US. There was generally more disposable income around so the price difference between the Siclair/Timex offerings and the Commodore was less important.
Apologies for the brit-centric angle here, but I'd be interested in knowing the breakdown of the UK releases. I'm not suggesting me or anyone else looks into it as infoseek won't cover it, it would be an enormous piece of work and there are more grey areas than already mentioned.
Its not so straight forward...
the corse grain aproach would be to just go through the list, and accociate a release title with the company that published it. then you could work out where in the UK..
However it would not clearly show situations where say a programer who lived in Bristol but say - sent there program to a publisher in London or Liverpool.
How woud you want to show that, as the program title being pined as being from Bristol or from the publisher location?
I think thats where you would run into problems. But its intrseting never the less. I was always curious who was the biggest publisher in terms of titles.
I would also like to add that in this classification there is a tricky point, and it is that games programmed or whose authors were dutch, german, portuguese, etc... but they were released in UK, Spain, etc, they do not appear as coming from their authors original countries. Thats probably the only point it could improve from Infoseek. For example there are some Portuguese games, like:
Obviously these cases are not thousands or even hundreds, but they surely improve the quality level idea we have from the software of these countries ;)
As for 'People From Sirius', I thought it was a spanish game, published here as 'El Mundo Perdido' and re-released in the UK as 'People From Sirius'.
According to Infoseek, is the opposite, what is strange as there are 4 authors: 4 spanish, 1 italian (suppose).
Actually, as far as I know, there are 2 italian: Mauro Spagnolo and Vania Villa. The rest of the authors were added since in Topo Soft the game was slighlty modified, hence why they are included as authors ;)
Actually, as far as I know, there are 2 italian: Mauro Spagnolo and Vania Villa. The rest of the authors were added since in Topo Soft the game was slighlty modified, hence why they are included as authors ;)
Ah, I know. It was first published in the UK and Topo just modified it.
Certainly, we shouldnt forget former Yugoslavia with about 300 titles, mostly from Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
Some of them are real hits as: Movie (Imagine), Kung Fu (Bug-Byte), Phantom Club (Ocean), Mind Trap (Mastertronics), etc.
Certainly, we shouldnt forget former Yugoslavia with about 300 titles, mostly from Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia.
Some of them are real hits as: Movie (Imagine), Kung Fu (Bug-Byte), Phantom Club (Ocean), Mind Trap (Mastertronics), etc.
Thats also true :)
I want to take advantage and ask you where was the Spectrum more popular? Serbia, Croatia or Slovenia??
Thats also true :)
I want to take advantage and ask you where was the Spectrum more popular? Serbia, Croatia or Slovenia??
It's a difficult question, but i will try. :)
My impression is, that spectrum was the most popular in Serbia and Slovenia.
The three most popular computer magazines were: "Računari", "Svet Kompjutera" (Serbia) and "Moj Mikro" (Slovenia) and they gave a lot attention to Spectrum to the end of the 80s.
Also Spectrum scene was very active in the media, especially on two radio stations: "Radio Student" (Slovenia) and "Ventilator 202" (Serbia).
Many Spectrum authors were able to demonstrate their programming knowledge here.
First commercial tape for Spectrum (Kontrabant), released by "Radio Student" in 1984.
That same year, the first commercial game from Yugoslavia (Kung Fu), appeared in England in release of Bug Byte, with very good reviews.
Comments
that was actually pretty interesting...
It was an interesting read, Bruno.
I can add from my point of view that situation in Poland was a bit similar to Portugal.
We had a big flow of incoming quality British and Spanish games, distributed and sold by pirates of course :)
On the other hand we terribly lacked literature about programming. The only books about Z80 available were written by some nerdy eggheads who as examples used some advanced theoretical math stuff, which would instantly discourage most teenagers interested in coding.
Any local programmer couldn't really compete with productions of companies like Ocean. Please note that proffesional companies used for development the most powerful machines at the time - Amigas, Atari ST and Polish guys had just rubber Spectrums with tape players, hardly comfortable to do something more serious.
But some tried, especially with text games as they could be a niche. Knowledge of English was generally poor so a text game in Polish could sell actually quite well because it didn't have competition unlike arcade games.
But they didn't sell well as pirates cracked them mercilessly, quite often stealing the work of their real life friends (at the beginning Spectrum community wasn't that big and many people knew each other).
So if you could write games and earn no money or crack games and earn money what would you choose? Good thing of it was that kids like me could play a lot of western games for small money. Bad thing was that all the software that could appear in other circumstances never happened :sad:
Some people also tried with educational software hoping that it will be parents and not kids who will buy it and parents will prefer to buy it legally from the authors and not some suspicious types at flea market. There is quite a lot of this educational software and every year I found some new MIAs. Still I would say that it didn't sell well as parents quickly gave up on their educational mission and allowed the kids just to play the games :)
Situation improved around 1990 when more literature, tools and hardware (especially floppy disks) become available. But at the same time prices of Amigas and PCs from China plummeted and it was over for Spectrum. It survived a few more years on demoscene (I'd say that demoscene always dies the last ;) ) but it was all of it.
The ZX80 enjoyed modest success in the USA. The ZX81/Timex Sinclair 1000/1500 enjoyed fair success stateside partially because the Timex machines were mostly compatible with the software and hardware for the regular UK machines. There is a fair amount of American ZX81/Timex software about especially from the early days of 1981-82.
However the Spectrum was not successful because Timex 2068 was not compatible with most of the Spectrum software. That was a fatal flaw which limited the machine's appeal and meant it didn't achieve much market penetration.
The C64 quickly became the home computer of choice in the USA and shaped the American scene.
I also think that cost was less of a factor in the US. There was generally more disposable income around so the price difference between the Siclair/Timex offerings and the Commodore was less important.
Its not so straight forward...
the corse grain aproach would be to just go through the list, and accociate a release title with the company that published it. then you could work out where in the UK..
However it would not clearly show situations where say a programer who lived in Bristol but say - sent there program to a publisher in London or Liverpool.
How woud you want to show that, as the program title being pined as being from Bristol or from the publisher location?
I think thats where you would run into problems. But its intrseting never the less. I was always curious who was the biggest publisher in terms of titles.
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0000149
which were released in UK and therefore they appear in the archive as British.
Dutch games:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0001734
German ones:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0005540
and Italian ones:
http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0003660
Obviously these cases are not thousands or even hundreds, but they surely improve the quality level idea we have from the software of these countries ;)
According to Infoseek, it's the opposite, in spite of there are 4 spanish authors.
Actually, as far as I know, there are 2 italian: Mauro Spagnolo and Vania Villa. The rest of the authors were added since in Topo Soft the game was slighlty modified, hence why they are included as authors ;)
Ah, I know. It was first published in the UK and Topo just modified it.
Some of them are real hits as: Movie (Imagine), Kung Fu (Bug-Byte), Phantom Club (Ocean), Mind Trap (Mastertronics), etc.
http://zx-pk.ru/
Thats also true :)
I want to take advantage and ask you where was the Spectrum more popular? Serbia, Croatia or Slovenia??
As counterpart, Turrican 1 & 2 and many RainbowArts games were converted by UK programmers..
It's a difficult question, but i will try. :)
My impression is, that spectrum was the most popular in Serbia and Slovenia.
The three most popular computer magazines were: "Računari", "Svet Kompjutera" (Serbia) and "Moj Mikro" (Slovenia) and they gave a lot attention to Spectrum to the end of the 80s.
Also Spectrum scene was very active in the media, especially on two radio stations: "Radio Student" (Slovenia) and "Ventilator 202" (Serbia).
Many Spectrum authors were able to demonstrate their programming knowledge here.
First commercial tape for Spectrum (Kontrabant), released by "Radio Student" in 1984.
That same year, the first commercial game from Yugoslavia (Kung Fu), appeared in England in release of Bug Byte, with very good reviews.
Here is a fairly complete list of spectrum titles from ex-Yugoslavia (thanks to TomCat):
http://retrospec.sgn.net/users/tomcat/yu/ZX_list.php
http://zx-pk.ru/