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by iforgotmypass 1624 days ago
Perhaps someone could help out solve my 20 year old mystery? When I was a kid, I had briefly access to a computer. My memory might be mistaken on the details, but I just can't find on Google what kind of computer it was. It had 5 inch floppies, I am pretty sure that games on it only used four colors (cyan, magenta, white, black). I think it had joystick similar to Atari's. It had Bubble Bobble game.

Edit: Photos of Commodore computers look really close to what I remember, but not exactly. Also, Latvia (where I live) just recently had regained independece from USSR and it was a time when the market was flooded with clones for everything. E.g. instead of NES kids had famiclones like Zhiliton, UFO or in my case, I think it was Dendy.

Edit: Floppy reader was in-built, not external, as far as I remember.

Edit: Sorry, more like 30-year mystery. Somewhere around beginning of 90s.

Edit: I think it also had game Alley Cat.

Edit: Thank you everyone for chiming in! This inspired me and gave extra keywords for further investigation and narrowing down the exact model / make. Gonna continue searching on Sunday.

10 comments

The colors sound like normal PC CGA graphics, but the joystick sounds like maybe a PCjr (or compatible), which, IIRC, sometimes came with a joystick, since the machine itself had built-in joystick ports. The CGA graphics could be explained by the games being written for PC CGA graphics, and not the better, but obscure, PCjr graphics.

But… 20 years? That’s like, 2002. PCs were abundant then, and CGA graphics were already ancient, and use of joysticks in games were already relatively uncommon; mouse & keyboards were the norm.

You could click through the different platforms bubble bobble was released for on mobygames to see which one looks familiar. The DOS version seems to have had a CGA 4-color mode but it wasn't cyan/magenta. Amstrad CPC looks like a candidate:

https://www.mobygames.com/game/cpc/bubble-bobble/screenshots

https://www.retro-exo.com/exodos.html has "eXoDOS/eXo/eXoDOS/Bubble Bobble (1988).zip" which you could try with DOSBox. Other commenters mentioned that the DOS screenshots use the red/green/yellow CGA palette but plenty of CGA games switched video modes for a tiny extra bit of variety.
On that note, does anyone know whether the original IBM TTL monitors supported "hardware emulation" of alternative palettes?

On a compatible Amptron(?) display we had, the brightness and contrast pots had an integrated switch. If you pulled on the brightness adjuster, it switched to a green-black monochrome palette, while the contrast control switched it to the red-green-yellow palette.

I just played it and it's pretty fun. If I force CGA mode, the Taito title screen is in white/cyan/magenta but the rest of the game (first two levels at least) are in yellow/green/red.
I think we need a little more info, roughy date, location?

Some computers were very regional.

Alley Cat also ran on the PCjr: https://oldcomputers.net/ibm-pcjr.html
Could it have been a BBC Micro?

They look a little the commodore but have 8 colours from memory though…

Right time period.

Some had a built in joystick i think from memory but can’t find any photos from a quick search.

That sounds like CGA. Could have been any IBM compatible, can you describe the shape of the case and whether or not the floppy drive(s) were built in or external?
FWIW, threads lock after a few days. So if you figure this out within the next day or two you should be able to update the thread. I'm interested :3