Home video consoles weren’t the only platforms 80s families could enjoy video games outside the arcade. As computer graphics and processing speeds got faster and electronics prices dropped, consumer America began to see computers as entertainment centres rather than the room-long adding machines of the previous decades. Why own a video console your teenaged sons fought over whilst taking the tv away from everyone else when you could own a family-friendly computer: accounting for dad, word processing for mum and games for the kids. Best of all, nobody had to give up the tv for later models.
Acorn Computers: Electron, Archimedes, Atom, BBC Micro
Tamgerine Oric-1
APF Imagination Machine
Commodore Vic-20, Amiga, 64, PET, 16 (116), Max Machine
Vtech Createvision
Apple II, Mac
MSX
Amstrad CPC
VideoBrain
TRS-80
Sharp X1, MZ, X68000
NEC-PC-8001 computer
DEC PDP-1, 10
Atari 1200XL, ST, 500, 800
Sinclair ZX Spectrum, QL, ZX81
IBM PC
CPTV
Enterprise Computer
Mattel Aquarius
Coleco Adam
Jupiter Ace