age distribution and home computers

[analoq]

I don't know if it was my location or just chance, but the Amiga was largely off-the-radar when I was growing up. I only saw one once in my life at a computer store, but I was AMAZED by it. Wish I had the opportunity to familiarize myself with it at the time, but I suppose I can rekindle via emulators. At least we got some decent ports of Amiga games on the PC, e.g. SuperFrog etc...

[Katz]

That is indeed an interesting chart analoq, probably because I'm sad enough to find such things interesting (:
I was born in '76, so I figure I'm part of that short lived rise, I must confess I totally skipped the C64 thing altogether, I was bought an Amiga in 1989 and the first thing I remember seeing in a computer shop was Shadow of the beast, I recall being blown away by both the graphics and music!
The magazines back around then often had Amiga and C64 sections, particularly CU Amiga which I regularly bought, at the time I never understood why it had any C64 stuff since I totally missed the boat with C64 hehe. But the thing that caught my interest is that your chart shows the typical age range of the C64 clan, which is typically a bit earlier than my birth year, so armed with that knowledge, I can now get on with my life once again...

[analoq]

That is indeed an interesting chart analoq, probably because I'm sad enough to find such things interesting (:

I was interested enough to curl the HTML, parse it with grep and write a Python script to quantify the data to CSV. Then creating the chart in Numbers, loading it into Photoshop to rasterize the vectors then FTP it.... you've got a lot of catching up to do before you'll be as sad as I am (:

the first thing I remember seeing in a computer shop was Shadow of the beast, I recall being blown away by both the graphics and music!

That's precisely what amazed me! I didn't even know what the game was called until you mentioned it, I looked it up and that's what I saw being demoed at the store, thanks for inadvertently helping me figure that out!

[Zzr]

1977 here. When i met the C64 i was hardly old enough for really getting into it, and when i was old enough i spent my Time on the Amiga 500 -> 2000 -> 1200, where i got my focus towards that great Classic Games and stepped into composing pretty much at the same Times when i also got my first Guitar. I totally missed out the 64 after getting used to the Amiga.

we are most receptive to influences during puberty i think, (big changes in not only our physical bodies, but in how our brains are changing the way they work) so whatever is big in our lives at that time will be a big part of us in the future.
if you are hitting 'the change' when the Amiga is The Big Thing then chances are the Amiga will be your special machine.

exactly this happened to me with the good ol' Amiga. And i still put a lot of Time into it, think it wont stop even 20 Years further. It will just sound better

[Soppa]

That is indeed an interesting chart analoq, probably because I'm sad enough to find such things interesting (:

I was interested enough to curl the HTML, parse it with grep and write a Python script to quantify the data to CSV. Then creating the chart in Numbers, loading it into Photoshop to rasterize the vectors then FTP it.... you've got a lot of catching up to do before you'll be as sad as I am (:

the first thing I remember seeing in a computer shop was Shadow of the beast, I recall being blown away by both the graphics and music!

That's precisely what amazed me! I didn't even know what the game was called until you mentioned it, I looked it up and that's what I saw being demoed at the store, thanks for inadvertently helping me figure that out!

Yeah, I have fond memories of the Shadow of the Beast too. The game was ahead of it's time in terms of graphics quality (nice parallax scrolling) and the music. Sadly the gameplay wasn't IMHO that good, and also the game was quite difficult. Still I spent countless hours with it.

[RobinsonMason]

Yup, same story here, except that my first home computer was a VIC-20.

I used my VIC-20 and C64 for many things other than just gaming (word processing, print shop, education) and never really thought of it as just a game console with a keyboard. I would never have traded in the multi-purpose C64 for a Nintendo, so I cringe when I see it lumped in with those systems. Most importantly, the ability to program or otherwise create your own content was what made the system shine -- and you didn't need to wait 3 minutes for your OS to load, then have some expensive Visual Basic or other program --- you could type code in from the flashing cursor moments after turning the system on!

In fact, when given the choice to upgrade to an Amiga when our original broke, I opted for a C64c instead. I really liked that system. And that's why I still blog about it now.

[Analog-X64]

Maybe its my memory fading, but growing up here in Canada, it was Commodore and Atari that ruled as far as PC's. Didnt know anyone with a BBC or Sinclair's.