h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I still have some problems with the bit about BASIC and re-programming games, I'm afraid.

BASIC wasn't, as far as I'm aware, what let you reprogram games to get extra lives, and such like. You could use BASIC, but the action replay cartridge and its like would have been much more useful, which existed on the consoles too, as you've mentioned at some point.

The main thing about BASIC was that you could write your own programs (possibly games, but probably not to commercial standard - commercial games probably used machine code or something like that), which you couldn't with the consoles. I think my first taste of programming was on the commodore 64.

Apart from that, I don't see any major problems with the entry, I think it's probably ready for the edited guide.

silverfish is basically right (although a lot of reasonable early games were written in basic with minor machine code optimisations).

in fact the inability to use the power of the machine as a computer, and to program it in general is part of what makes most people regard a specific machine as a console.

I'm trying to make comments now that will get this boxed off and into the Edited Guide, so excuse the brevity here:

1st Para - surely the first videogame was 'Pong'? Certainly in terms of home gaming (which is the focus of your entry), Pong was first. Was 'Spacewar' the first to be ported from the arcades to the home? Where does 'Space Invaders' sit in all this?

I'd suggest dropping this entire sentence and starting the entry with 'it was not until the arcades were invented ...'


Second para: To allay the concerns about BASIC, after the bit about 'or occasionally create entirely new games of their own devising' you could add in brackets: '(though probably not to commercial standard)'

Under 'The Golden Age'
Second Para - 'FMV' needs an explanation in brackets (Full Motion Video)

Under 'A New Era'
'In the mid-90s, Nintendo hired Sony to create a CD-drive add-on for the SNES.' As already stated, this didn't happen. Sony decided to propose the idea, but Nintendo rejected the proposal from the very beginning - they never asked Sony to create this.


Jims

It's almost there... I can feel it... one last push...

I'm on a time limit here, but I'll update it soon.

Excellent!

nice and interesting to read!

I personally don't like the beginning with the "word"-thing, but the rest is well done.

Han Solo

Hi HanSolo. I'm going to leave in the start, but if you have a better one, I'm reading...

This entry has just been updated again. If there are no more comments, please accept it, Sam.
*Lays two to one odds on someone coming up with a new comment.*

I think that intro reads much better - although you might want to correct that typo, unless there really was a game called Spacwar

Jims

It's like working on the set of Southpark, here...

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