Can you guess the game?
Tags "ptast.gif", mission: asteroid
Hi everyone 
The Lord has been directing me to an entry in another one of my devotionals* entitled "A High Calling" that has to do with the teachers we've had in our lives, the battle against ignorance that they wage, the lack of appreciation overall for their profession as opposed to others (in our society) and to give God thanks for those that have taught us and for "the lifelong value of their investment in you."
In my prayer time with God, I was thanking Him for the teachers I've had in my life and I recounted the some of the different unique experiences I've had with the various schools I've been to, from kindergarten on up to college. But one experience I had in one of the elementary schools I attended (back in 1979-1980, I believe) came quickly to mind and had to do with computers.
I think I relayed this in another post but the school district had recently purchased some Commodore PET computers and gave our school some of them. I can't remember the exact model but it looked like this one. For a while, one of them was sitting on top of a metal cart with wheels in the hallway right outside the door of the classroom I went to for math. I'm not sure why it was sitting there, perhaps there was no room for it in the classroom but one day, the teacher's assistant took me out to work/play on it. There was a cassette tape player connected to it and the assistant plugged in a tape with a program that literally took around 5-15 minutes to load, if it loaded correctly. If not you had to reload it all over again. The program could not have been more than a few KB's.
The program itself was a game where "you" were a ship starting out at the left hand side of the screen, represented by the character ">" and you have carefully make your way to the right hand of the screen dodging the "asteroids" that looked like "." However, I remember the "." being a bit bigger. The screen was filled with these dots and always moved downward, if I remember correctly.
I can tell you that this was quite a challenge for a 9 year old boy and I was only able to get the ship across a few times without getting destroyed. I was only on the computer two times that I can remember and I think at some point after that, the computer was moved somewhere else. But it was fun and one of my more memorable experiences during that time period.
Challenge Question: Can anyone guess the name of this game and provide a link to a description of it on the web? I have no idea and I didn't find it during a cursory search in Google.
It's amazing to see how much computer technology has changed since that time. As far as I can remember, the PET and my story above was my very first experience with personal computers.
Thanks for reading and take care...
* The devotional is "The Finishing Touch" by Charles R. Swindoll and the entry "A High Calling" and the section quoted is on page 420 and 421.
The Lord has been directing me to an entry in another one of my devotionals* entitled "A High Calling" that has to do with the teachers we've had in our lives, the battle against ignorance that they wage, the lack of appreciation overall for their profession as opposed to others (in our society) and to give God thanks for those that have taught us and for "the lifelong value of their investment in you."
In my prayer time with God, I was thanking Him for the teachers I've had in my life and I recounted the some of the different unique experiences I've had with the various schools I've been to, from kindergarten on up to college. But one experience I had in one of the elementary schools I attended (back in 1979-1980, I believe) came quickly to mind and had to do with computers.
I think I relayed this in another post but the school district had recently purchased some Commodore PET computers and gave our school some of them. I can't remember the exact model but it looked like this one. For a while, one of them was sitting on top of a metal cart with wheels in the hallway right outside the door of the classroom I went to for math. I'm not sure why it was sitting there, perhaps there was no room for it in the classroom but one day, the teacher's assistant took me out to work/play on it. There was a cassette tape player connected to it and the assistant plugged in a tape with a program that literally took around 5-15 minutes to load, if it loaded correctly. If not you had to reload it all over again. The program could not have been more than a few KB's.
The program itself was a game where "you" were a ship starting out at the left hand side of the screen, represented by the character ">" and you have carefully make your way to the right hand of the screen dodging the "asteroids" that looked like "." However, I remember the "." being a bit bigger. The screen was filled with these dots and always moved downward, if I remember correctly.
I can tell you that this was quite a challenge for a 9 year old boy and I was only able to get the ship across a few times without getting destroyed. I was only on the computer two times that I can remember and I think at some point after that, the computer was moved somewhere else. But it was fun and one of my more memorable experiences during that time period.
Challenge Question: Can anyone guess the name of this game and provide a link to a description of it on the web? I have no idea and I didn't find it during a cursory search in Google.
It's amazing to see how much computer technology has changed since that time. As far as I can remember, the PET and my story above was my very first experience with personal computers.
Thanks for reading and take care...
* The devotional is "The Finishing Touch" by Charles R. Swindoll and the entry "A High Calling" and the section quoted is on page 420 and 421.
