I learnt to code in 1984 on my MSX which came with Microsoft MSX Basic.
We had the computer because my grandpa was into tech and bought new computers all the time. He gave my parents the computer and because my room was the only one with a bit of space, it came to sit on my desk. We had a couple of games for it on cartridge, but they were kinda lame.
One day by accident I stumbled upon the MSX Basic interface and didn’t know what I was looking at. I asked my dad and he didn’t really know anything about it, but remembered my grandpa also gave us a book with the computer. The book was about learning Basic and because computers were a new thing at the time, it was written in a way that made it easy to understand. I asked my dad what you could actually do with Basic, he didn’t know but it had something to do with telling the computer what it should do. So I said: “Could you create games with it?” He said: “Sure, I guess?”.
My little goblin mind freaked out, something that would allow new games! The games we had were lame so I really wanted new games. So I spent thousands of hours learning everything I could about that machine, Basic and coding in general. My grandpa gave me lots of books and I learned all the hardware and the assembly etc. I made a lot of games over the years, some good, most bad and made my siblings play them. We still remember some of them and joke about it. Especially because one of my brothers specialized in finding ways to cheat and exploit my games, which was tons of fun.
Later in life I studied to become an Embedded System Engineer because I really like the low-level programming side and the hardware aspect. Also the gaming industry sucks to work in, so I’ll pass on that. Maybe some day I’ll create another game as a passion project, but life gets in the way at the moment.
I learnt to code in 1984 on my MSX which came with Microsoft MSX Basic.
We had the computer because my grandpa was into tech and bought new computers all the time. He gave my parents the computer and because my room was the only one with a bit of space, it came to sit on my desk. We had a couple of games for it on cartridge, but they were kinda lame.
One day by accident I stumbled upon the MSX Basic interface and didn’t know what I was looking at. I asked my dad and he didn’t really know anything about it, but remembered my grandpa also gave us a book with the computer. The book was about learning Basic and because computers were a new thing at the time, it was written in a way that made it easy to understand. I asked my dad what you could actually do with Basic, he didn’t know but it had something to do with telling the computer what it should do. So I said: “Could you create games with it?” He said: “Sure, I guess?”.
My little goblin mind freaked out, something that would allow new games! The games we had were lame so I really wanted new games. So I spent thousands of hours learning everything I could about that machine, Basic and coding in general. My grandpa gave me lots of books and I learned all the hardware and the assembly etc. I made a lot of games over the years, some good, most bad and made my siblings play them. We still remember some of them and joke about it. Especially because one of my brothers specialized in finding ways to cheat and exploit my games, which was tons of fun.
Later in life I studied to become an Embedded System Engineer because I really like the low-level programming side and the hardware aspect. Also the gaming industry sucks to work in, so I’ll pass on that. Maybe some day I’ll create another game as a passion project, but life gets in the way at the moment.
Great story!
Love reading all the nostalgia these historical tidbits inevitably bring up