The BBC has released a 1984 documentary about video gaming from its archive.
Available to watch for free on YouTube, it details the battle for supremacy in the mid-80s gaming industry, which cost one company everything.
Retro gaming is having a major moment in the sun right now, with seemingly hundreds of handheld consoles released each month, while even Apple has relaxed rules about emulators appearing on its App Store.
Then there are services like Antstream Arcade, which makes 100s of classic games available to play across modern platforms via the cloud. While Evercade and Numskull enjoy great success with their respective retro gaming consoles and fun-sized arcade cabinets.
However, the most hardcore of retro gamers will make do with nothing less than original hardware running on old school equipment, such as a genuine CRT TV. And it is perhaps those that the BBC has in mind with its latest video plucked from the archives.
Made available to watch for free on YouTube (via VGC) is a 1984 documentary about the video games industry and, in particular, the battle for number one in the software charts between two of the period's biggest publishers – Ocean and Imagine.
Bandersnatch, Bailiffs and the Battle for a Hit Game was part of the broadcaster's longer Commercial Breaks: The Race for Santa's Software and is a fascinating insight into gaming in the mid-80s. The 29-minute clip even documents the complete collapse of Imagine – which came as a massive shock at the time – and you can watch it below.
Admittedly, some of it is pretty cringeworthy. The narrator's accent and delivery suggests he's never played a game in his life, which is not unusual for December 1984. Few other shows would dare focus on video gaming, even though the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 were massively popular in the UK at the time.
Just don't expect it to be like Channel 4's GamesMaster or Sky's GamesWorld of the mid-90s. Attitudes towards gaming had changed massively in a decade,
Still, it makes us yearn for a time when gaming was more simple (even though the games were most certainly not).
Now excuse me while I put down my Nintendo Switch 2 and spark up The Spectrum, which I managed to buy the other day. I have a date with Everyone's a Wally to be getting on with.
