Philosophical Musings of a Book Nerd

As a kid I loved these books: not just the books on computers but the Rigby and Usborne children's books in general. They had wonderful pictures and explained their various topics quite clearly. In fact I would be regularly borrowing them from the school library and pouring over them. It is funny though that despite my interest in science and technology as a child I ended up getting a university degree in the liberal arts.

This particular book is literally a blast from the past for an ex-computer geek like me. This was a time when computer games look like this:

or like this:

as opposed to this:

or this:

It is a very interesting read for those who what to know how computer games back in those days were constructed, though I must admit the basic principles behind them have changed little, it is just that the processing power is now much greater. We still use liquid crystal displays, particularly in mobile phones, and as such the graphics and the game play on our modern handheld devices have changed dramatically. I remember when if you wanted a hand-held computer game you had to buy the game and the device that it was imprinted upon. These days if you want a hand held computer game you just press your Googleplay or iStore icon on your mobile phone.

When this book was written the standard home computer was the Commodore 64, which looked like this:

or an Atari 2600, which looked like this:

for those who are not in the know, the Atari 2600 was the ancient version of the Xbox, the Nintendo, and the Playstation. However, with game consoles, things still have not changed much since you still buy the games, though these days they are on DVD and Blueray as opposed to a cartridge, which for those who do not know, looked like this: