As a boy I used to spend hours in the pc shop reading and drooling over the game cassettes until my dad rewarded my dedication with my very own Commodore 64 which I still have today.

I love how they keep referring to people who play games as "addicts".

Whilst affable Fred Harris is inevitably more polite Mcnaught Davis doesn’t even try to conceal his contempt for gaming!

I happened to like the "crude shoot em ups" and 30 or so years later still do!

Great clip! I watched every episode of Micro Live as a teen in the 80s and even then groaned to myself at the general disdain for how most of us were using home computers!

Watching this when I've just turned 50 is getting me all misty eyed. What a generation to be a part of.

That "Oh shut up, will you?" 😂

I remember watching this episode! I was gobsmacked at the quality of Marble Madness on the Amiga, I had a C64 at the time. It would be 2 long years before I could afford one. Great nostalgia watching these old shows

“Perhaps the most appalling use of computers.” Good old Mac, Dailey Thompson’s Decathlon is pretty mild compared to what we get up to on computers these days 😂

I love how the subject was treated without prejudice on British TV in the 80s. On German TV you won't find such a contribution, it was always about how evil computer games are.

🎮🕹 As a gamer rapidly approaching 60 I will happily admit to still being an 'addict', from my early days playing on my Atari VCS/2600 to my present day PS5/Xbox Series X/ Nintendo Switch* i've enjoyed whatever system has come my way, and hopefully will continue to do so for however many years I still have left to me. Old gamers never die, they just lose control of their peripherals... *not the OLED one, I'm not that flash! 🎮🕹

How things have progressed, still love the 1980's

I love commodore , still own my c64 and Amiga from the 80’s. There’s a lot of nostalgia attached to them .

Brilliant thank you for adding to the BBC archive

This is an awesome video! Great memories from the 80s with my Commodore 64!

I had that Scrabble game! I remember playing it on my Spectrum. I don't ever remember accidentally making the words "risky sex toy drool" though. Well done, Fred :D One thing I do remember is that I was baffled by how they managed to fit an 11,000-word dictionary into the limited memory space, and I seem to remember that I eventually managed to reverse-engineer it, but the details of how it was done have been lost in the whirlwind of my life, sadly. I think it was some sort of tree structure.

Pinball construction set was my go to. That, M.U.L.E and any sim game. Like SimCity, Railroad Tycoon, etc… I loved anything that would allow me to create my own games. Quake construction had me working nonstop on single player levels. So much so, that many of mine were very popular online. I created elevators that would take you to new levels. Levels that looked like you went from the inside to the outside. Underwater areas that held secret keys to get into secret areas. That construction set was so intricate and most people didn’t know just how much you could do with it. To the point, you could make levels that the actual designers of the game would gush over. So many great times from my first computer, the Commodore Vic 20, then the TI 994a, Amiga and then PC. I used to program the hell out of the Commodore 64. I even had a light pen, that had very few actual pieces of software for it… But it was easy to program for it. So I essentially had a touchscreen windows interface, long before that was a thing. I could use it to put multiple icons on the screen for different games on the same cassette or discs drive and load them separately by touching the icon with the light pen. I remember having a modem for the Atari 2600, that let you dial into a 800 number and for $20 a month on a credit card… You could download one game at a time, because that is all the cartridge memory supported… but, you could simply erase that game and download whatever else you wanted whenever you wanted. Which was essentially, Xbox Live 20 years before it actually became a thing. Which was awesome. It saved a lot of money buying games. Regardless, I love history with computers and games. I was there from the very start. Pong, the arcades, the first home consoles… I even had a light gun game that would project aliens and birds and stuff on the wall and you could use the light gun to shoot them and it would score you. Was one of the coolest yard sale finds I found in the 80s. Regardless, it was a hell of a time to grow up and experience it all from the very beginning to what we have now. It’s amazing how far graphics have come in 40 years. From little tiny pixels to the lifelike Visuals we have today and it’s only going to get better as time goes on. The point where you won’t be able to tell video game from real life. Advanced AI that will try to outsmart us with NPC characters and being able to have a real conversation with those characters in real time and have them remember those conversations and continue them at a later time. Which will allow players to build friendships in the game and add a real psychological emotional aspect. Allowing you to care for those characters in the game world, and if anything happens to them, it would affect you just like it would with a real person. Real-time speech recognition and intelligent response. Something I’ve been talking to developers about for 20 years and it’s finally starting to happen. next generation after the PS5 and Series X, should be really incredible. As they are going to be using ARM processors that will be exponentially more powerful than the X86 and on top of that… both AI and raytracing hardware acceleration, along with the ability to offload some of the work to super computers online. Which will bring amazing real world physics to gameplay. Allowing us to shoot the corner of the building which can fall to the street below and kill our enemies, for which they can do the same to you. Making every step you take a lesson in patience and awareness of surroundings… realizing that the world around you can be used as a weapon for both you and the AI. Not to mention, that AI can collaborate together to take you out by coordinating their movements based off of yours. Should be a lot of fun and I can’t wait. Let’s just hope that developers can keep up with the technology. Which has become ever more expensive to create these games. Especially when you were talking about implementing AI and physics. Which thankfully, engines like UE5 are making it much easier for developers to do so. By implementing those features with drag and drop functionality. We will see what happens, but it’s definitely exciting as it has been from the very start.

03:02 kinky sod

I've never come across the phrase "Ask an addict" before, but I'm going to start using it now.

damn just looking at the packaging on those games makes me so nostalgic for my 10-year-old self's love for computer games and computers.

I remember watching this series growing up in the 80's. I thought it was shown on a Sunday afternoon but looking through BBC Genome it was shown on various days of the week throughout the 80's.

The last time I asked an "addict", I didn't get a shiny new disc in my baggy, I got some nice white "sherbet". It did make me stay up all night playing Decathlon.

"Ask an addict" 😂 1:59

I watched this and then after saving for roughly two years I got my Amiga 500 and a copy of Marble Madness!

I think The Pawn is still very popular now. Well I've heard a lot of people talking about it but others say it's a bad influence. Not tried it myself of course.

Ahhh Fred Harris, i remember him narrating Boris The Bold cartoon in the 70s. Good old Fred, i always got him mixed up with Christopher Lillicrap back in the day. Crazy days.

Grumpy Mac not holding back there 😂

Scrabble on the ZX Spectrum - even for forty-ish years it's a classic game.

Back when games didn't have microtransactions. I'd want that Trivial Pursuit one but now its full of microtransactions.

'Snapper' a Pacman clone for BBC Micro/ Acorn Electron is a "monster game".

If you are not sure... Ask an addict. Love it

That "Mission Omega" loading screen looks eerily reminiscent of Ian Bird's Millennium 2.2. Judging by the story line of Mission Omega, it appears Millennium 2.2 is an unofficial sequel.

How times have changed!

The most 80s middle class middle aged male approach to gaming.

“Ask an addict for advice”. I’ll remember that next time in Manchester’s Piccadilly Gardens

5:44 Was never into the Amiga. Knew could never have one so didn't interest me. Even in college in the 90s would poke at Michael Harris (reading this?) for still loving his when we were all on Windows. However, seeing those graphics now and knowing it was 1986, it really was advanced for its time.

Why would I ask an addict about what adventure game to buy for the Commodore 64?🤔 🤣

I wrote a 'crude' shoot-em-up, finished it last year, started it in 2014, it was based on an arcade game named Star Force.

The last lines still hold up today.

Decathlon with keyboard and joystick use was a real desktop workout.

What happened to adventure games? They should make a come back. I know the massive multiplayer games (or whatever theyr'e called) exist but they're full of shooting and swords and crap. In game questions and cvonversations perfect for AI too.

We still have our Amstrad CPC 464, With a colour moniter! And its still works- had some great games on that. Our favourite was How To Be. A Complete B*****d" 😂

Marble Madness was the first game I bought for my Amiga, really was arcade perfect.

This is both euphoric and depressing, I vividly recall this being on the BBC when I was at school moving from punch cards to micros. Their will never be am equal time to the late 70s early 80s for technology.

So many double entendres 😂 Awesome

Imagine seeing and reviewing (20)23 games back in that day, I mean if games could time travel >Fred Harris comes across GTA V ......and goes into Scanner mode.

I'll definitely have that!

I had marble madness!!🤗Great until you get to the level with the tube worms that would get you!

These computer things seem interesting, might try one

'the humble Commodore 64' .... it was a God compared to the VIC 20 I had before 😂

That sports game is Go For The Gold AKA Hes Games, not Daley Thompson's Decathlon. It seems some of you spent too much time going out and getting a spot of fresh air and not enough time indoors playing games!

So the lesson here is video games based on sports are a terrible use of a computer, whereas video games based on board games are a fantastic use of computers. Okay. :S

Was Fred Harris separated at birth from Jona Lewie? Or Pino Palladino ?

„Well, if sex doesn‘t excite you, look at this joystick!“ 😅😁

Just shows how far computer games have evolved from a handful of bytes to the teens or hundreds of gigabytes we now have.

I am pleased to say I got 'hardened mollusc secretions' immediately...honest!

I remember those days, boring old farts telling us whats a good computer game, hilarious.

RISKY SEX..yip..he looks the type🤣🤣🤣 but i honestly wish i hadnt watched this..talk about feeling ancient..a long time ago but still fresh in the memory..life is fleeting😔

10 seconds of ''BEEP BEEP'' and he said oh shut up will you!!!???. And he is a tech head...Fast forward to Today, kids listen to that 24 7!..🖥🖥✍🏼

That C64 is gleaming white... a KZfaqr retrobriter's dream.

Fred’s got a dirty mind .. bad Fred.

Mac and Lesley are absolutely rinsing Fred at Scabble. Get Rekt.

This is the funniest bbc thing ive seen on youtube.

I was 8 ...The illegal part excited me

It's 2024, I'm 47 years old, games have come on in leaps & bounds... Yet i get a sinking feeling when i play a new Assasins Creed game, I've seen it all before 😢

BBC got it wrong ...40 years on and yes the quirky games are ok but its the shoot em ups that shine as a tribute to that age

They got it so wrong, us kids back then went crazy over all these games, they're touting text adventures more and more traditional games for educational purposes really, but we couldn't care less.

"And even for the humble Commodore 64"......1986, the C64 was only a 1/3 through it's humbler to come life !!

The 1980s were to gaming what the 1950s were to rock 'n' roll

Oh Ian McNaught-Davis don't be an old fuddy duddy.

Inside Fred's head is why would anyone play games when you can get into a good old spreadsheet.

"sports games are perhaps the most appalling use of computers" With a couple of exceptions, I have to agree

What a bizarrely antagonistic review of games

I like my crude shoot em ups!

Enters "SEX" then follows with innuendos: "Oh yes, I'll definitely have that yes please", and "Well if that doesn't excite you" then even a "leave it playing on its own" 😂

"Ask an addict" for advice? A game called 'Porn'? "Go down the pub"? How times have changed! 😂

One of my mates had a Dragon32 does anyone remember that?

1:58 "Or better still ask an addict" Really!!!!

Six Fred! You could've used Six! Dirty boy...

(1:03) Apparently "adventure games" can present a real mental challenge. You mean, kind of like... Going outdoors, and embarking on a...real adventure? Walking up a hill, that sort of thing?

I tell you what, the BBC youtube content is better than any of their tv channels, wonder how long its gonna be before they start charging for it

02:58 Fred just saying what's on his mind...did Yewtree ever look into him?

They weren’t the best spokespeople for computer games.

In which an old man tells kids to go touch grass.

I remember watching this years ago when was first broadcast thinking, "dumb as a pile of bricks." If memory serves, the series didn't stick around for long. Some things never fundamentally change; presenters still more focused on impressing their imaginary audience, rather than entertaining or informing anyone.

Ask a addict 😂

I've always said for years, the best computer around this time was the Amstrad CPC 464. The best all-round machine, however when I look at the games on KZfaq many of them are absolute rubbish. Same as anything I guess, when you didn't know any different what could you expect.

Perfect example of how out of touch this show always was. You can tell if they had to press more than one button or key at a time it was beyond their mentality. The average teenage gamer back then would of used Thrust as the game to show off gravity, the choice of a true gamer! 😀

Talking about games whilst insulting gamers.... I cannot fathom why this is not on the air anymore...

The presenters spent the rest of their lives playing Solitaire when the PC became mainstream 😆

Naff.

what did he mean by risky sex???🧐

🤣🤣🤣

Some early examples of online pawn and sex here.

We had imagination

how do you kill that which has no life?

I liked Ian McNaught Davis in general but he was a real snob/naysayer when it came to computer games. He often talked them down as if they were unimportant or a poor use of the increasing power of computers.

You are still burning calories playing sports games. Just make sure to lift potato chips into your mouth to burn more.

Nobody told EA Sports that people get bored of sports games. 😚

I much prefer gaming back then. Now it really mostly is the same type of crap that doesn't interest me.