Computer Games

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

Dragon 32

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

FM Towns

TurboGrafx-16

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

 

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