pouët.net

Does this documentary cover the Atari XL/XE at all, or does it waffle on and on about the Spectrum, the C64 and the Amstrad, as if they were the only 8-bit machines around?

I will most likely buy The Amiga Years follow up, but I don't want to hear constantly about those three when I never owned any of them.

A little bit but not much. It's more about the birth of the Uk games industry.

Why not just watch it? JSYK.

(at risk of feeding the troll..)


They're all great Docu's. I backed all 3 from day one. I've even pre-ordered the Playstation Years one.

Its been a few years since the first one came out, from what I remember it moves from pre-spectrum era, through spectrum and c64 to amiga (and st). can't recall any amstrad coverage. its also about the people making the games than the machines.

The reason they made the Amiga one after is that everyone talked about Amiga so much, and they'd made significant contacts.

There is also the recently released "viva amiga" which covers the amiga story differently, and connects to the modern amiga scene. the bedrooms to billions series is better produced, and the extras on the Amiga Years (including demoscener, and trip hawkins interview) are standouts.

I'm not a troll, I simply get fed up of those three getting all the mentions.

It is called impact. If there is none - you get no mentions.

Back in the day, the three major formats - Spectrum, C64 and Amstrad - particularly in the UK market, were the only machines the software houses concentrated on.

A few brave software houses did release conversions for other 8-bit systems, but these were few and far between. Also, the quality could range quite a bit on the games themselves.

I've got a friend here in UK who worked on the music for 'From Bedrooms to Billions' so I'll give him the link to this thread; he may be able to get the actual producers behind the documentary to respond as well to the question.

There's no need, Felice: I've decided to buy both on Blu-ray. It might be a fun nostalgia watch, in any case, as I remember poring throught the magazine The Games Machine and seeing all this multi-platform stuff. I've been nostalgic for a while, now.

do your own documentary then.

Those three? I don't understand.. because AMIIIGAA is best?

I'm also a Brit, in my 40s, who grew up around all these machines. None is any less valid to british computing history, or the scene than any other..

OK. I had Amiga, and it my eyes it was the best, but I am not a fan of rose tinted Historical negationism.

Of course Amiga was the best out of ALL of them, back then ;)

Maybe I'm sour grapes because I only had the Atari 600XL and 800XL, but before that I had a ZX81 so I have some idea as to what Sinclair owners felt, and my neighbour at one point had a C64, but I only had a single "go" at it.

I had very little experience of the three big 8-bit systems, nor did I look at the magazines except Atari, so I didn't know what I may have been missing, but I really had no choice. Every child whose parents bought their computers for them most likely didn't have a choice, neither. At least I didn't end up with an Oric.

Nope, I'm glad I ended up with what I got, and did a fair amount of programming on it, even created some games (long gone, now). Ironically, when I did get access to more games, my father was really annoyed.

That's rather extreme for what I said, isn't it?

The term is correct, but yes sorry I wish I could edit the context it led to (darn pouet).. my point is that just because you are only interested in one part of history is doesn't mean the rest isn't relevant, knowing a 'things' place in the world through its context its what shows it to be special.

As a kid I wanted a spectrum around the time of the 128 (the generation a year or two above me had breadbin vic 20s then c64s and they seemed old).. my parents got me a Plus 4 :'( .. eventually I got an Amiga 500.. (an old friend of mine still has it from a trade.. I need to wrestle it off him).

Once you watch the Amiga Years, you'll realise the Amiga was one of those things, it's special because of its place in time, but people have failed again and again to recapture the magic, because the time, the world, the context has moved on.

Both "From Bedrooms to Billions" and "The Amiga Years" Blu-rays have arrived, so I look forward to watching them over the next few days. It will be a real nostalgia fest!

Enjoy! Make time for the extras too! especially The Amiga Years ones I mentioned

As an aside Kim Justice's YouTube channel has lots of mini documentaries on 80s computer games, software houses and companies that's definitely worth a look if that's your thing.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9ZWVL1Elyt2cdiQYjxS_1w

So I finally watched most of the From Bedrooms to Billions, and I was quite entertained for such long documentaries. As I figured, for the first full-length documentary, the Atari 8-Bit barely got a few shots (mostly adverts in magazines) and it was all about the Speccy, C64 and even the BBC Micro got centre-stage! I did, however, feel sorry for the Amstrad CPC people who were hoping to see more of Sugar's machine, but didn't. It was really quite informative, however, and it went into further detail than I'd ever seen before about the burgeoning UK games industry and how it rose to such prominence from people who'd learnt to code all by themselves. I myself made a few simple games on Atari, but none of them survive now. Covering all this history to the present day made it complete!

The Amiga Years, however, was my real highlight, and yes, the Atari 8-Bit series finally got a good mention, but obviously it was leading to Jay Miner's Magnum Opus, the Amiga computer. Good representation of historic figures here and their histories, especially the wonderful RJ Mical, who's obvious enthusiasm for the Amiga is infectious and his humorous anecdotes, namely Andy Warhol and the Amiga Launch (will he or won't he crash the Amiga with a flood fill on Debbie Harry's hair?) were wonderful to hear! I found this entertaining as well, although I wasn't able to sit through over three hours of the second Amiga disc, at least in one sitting. But I saw what I wanted to see, especially their coverage of the Demoscene on both discs.

My final verdict on From Bedrooms to Billions: 9/10

It loses a point because I ordered these as Blu-rays, and the video footage of all the computer games had nasty encoding artefacts all over them, but I don't know if that's true of the DVD version as well - can someone clarify?

Ok, so I finished watching "The Amiga Years" (still have the extras left) and one question is burning in my mind - who took a dump in who's sleeping bag?

They used poor source footage for the documentary; it's like that on the digital copy too.

They also had bad advice from their replicator and the NTSC blu-rays of #1 and #2 are screwed up (distracting motion artifacts). I tried to help them but they went with the bad advice of the replicator. Oh well.

+1 for Kim Justice, her doc videos are all amazing, highly recommended.