turboZII wrote:
Please don't be disappointed, I was just an amateur programmer and I've never worked for commercial staff.
I'm not disappointed! Even if you were just a hobbyist programmer who had some games featured in magazines, that's still a respectable achievement. Significantly, you were there at the time, and can offer insight into things we might not otherwise know about. Would you describe your work as "doujin soft"?
Let me put it another way. In Europe, where I'm from, there were magazine type-ins throughout the 1980s and during the early 1990s. Readers had to sit and type them in, line by line. At first simple games in BASIC, and then bigger and more complex games. A French magazine once featured a game over 4 issues, it was so big. And it would have taken days to type in.
This month in Retro Gamer magazine, there was a feature on magazine type-ins. It was a fascinating article, with interview material from magazine editors, and some of those who wrote the games. The author did a lot of great research.
By virtue of the fact that Japanese computer history is in the Japanese language, it's much more difficult for us in the west to find the information, unless we're reasonably fluent speakers. I studied Japanese while at school in the UK, but I never took it far enough.
Even if you only ever created hobbyist games, you can still reveal to us what it was like at the time. Information on doujin games is difficult to find in English.
You do not have to answer these, but here's some things I'm curious to know. Please ignore them if they are too personal.
* What years did this take place?
* What computer languages did you use? What computers did you work on?
* Do you have photos from the time, of you working on an old computer?
* Which magazines featured your games? Are there scans online of the magazine covers?
* Were your games only printed in the magazines, or were they included on cassette tapes and floppy disks on the front of magazines? Did magazines even provide tapes and disks of user programs in Japan?
* When you submitted your work to magazines, was it on a cassette/disk, or did you print it out? If you printed it out, did it use
thermal paper, or was it a dotmatrix ink printer?
* How easy was it to get work featured in magazines? Did the magazines reject a lot of entries?
* Please describe the process of submitting a game.
* What were the magazine staff like to speak with? Do you have any correspondence letters from them?
* Did you know or speak with any other hobbyist programmers? Were there clubs you could visit? BBS bulletin boards? Newsletters with correspondence?
* In the UK, readers claim that a lot of the time they would type in a program, but it wouldn't work due to errors. Did you ever type in a program from a magazine and it didn't work?
* Did you have any favourite amateur games which you found in magazines?
* What do you do now? Are you in software? Was having your amateur work in magazines useful to you, for example on a CV, or was it just fun to show your friends?
* When you were sitting down programming your hobbyist games, what could you see outside your window? What 1980s music did you listen to while programming?
* Have you ever heard of the doujin game
Umi no Mukou (海のむこう) by Tsukka Software?
* Have you ever heard of Sorceriman (ソーサリマン)?
* Are you surprised that there are people in the west interested by the history of Japanese computers?
* In Japan, are there those who are interested by European computer history, involving the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC?
I could ask questions all day. There's plenty of valuable, first-hand information that you might know.
I'm just pleased that you're happy to visit the forum and speak about your time.