InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "gogo boy!"

skjam (skjam) wrote in scans_daily,
@ 2009-11-03 23:38:00

Current location:	getting ready for a snooze
Current music:	computer hum
Entry tags:	medium: british comics, title: load runner

Load Runner #3 July 21-August 3 1983

Back in the early 1980s, I was in England for a while--more on that in another post. The main thing is that I managed to pick up a bunch of British comics, some of which I still have. One of these is Load Runner #3, from July 1983. Among other things, this was the time of the microcomputer boom, affordable home computers that sold like hotcakes. Naturally, the folks at ECC Publications saw a market for a comic of stories all tangentially related to computers in some way.

I don't know enough about the British publishing industry to know if this is an orphaned publication, though reprints seem unlikely. So the following scans comply as much as possible with the one-third rule.

It only makes sense to have the lead feature be named the same as the comic itself, I suppose. The "goons" chase Mike inside one of the pawns, where he finds a cockpit. The chess game begins, each "capturing" move causing the attacking piece to fire upon and destroy its target. Despite the cockpit, Mike is evidently not able to control his piece's movement. But apparently, he is supposed to pull the trigger...

British comics of the early 1980s were big on "fumetti", or photo-comics. I rather liked the "Doomlord" series myself, but this one is Time Plan 9. Paul, Karen and Duncan have skipped school to investigate an odd, seemingly meaningless program his computer is running. But Paul's mother gets home before them. She hears an odd noise in Paul's room, and when she investigates, faints dead away.

When the kids find her, Paul isn't worried, as his mother is quite sturdy, and they just haul her to bed.

Great Caesar then looks out the window and seeing the automobiles, becomes convinced this is not Rome. He gives a recently minted coin to the children as proof of his identity. The kids quickly fill Julius in on the 20th Century, then turn to the computer in hopes of figuring out what the Time Plan is, and what it has to do with Caesar's appearance.

The kids debate the wisdom of telling Caesar what's going to happen to him, and decide it's best not to tamper with history. But while they were gabbing, the Roman left the room, and they can't send him back if they don't know where he is!

This exciting item was being given away to one lucky reader. You young'uns will no doubt be amused at what was considered a top of the line microcomputer back in the day. For you older folks, did you or anyone you know actually own a Mattel Aquarius?

No British comic would be complete without a sports-related story, this one being "Andy Royd", about a human secretly playing football in a time when only robots compete. After helping Davy's Dominators win a game, Andy flashes back to when he first joined the club...as an assistant groundskeeper. The Dominators were bottom of the league back then, and the grounds were falling apart, allowing Davy to reveal his secret.

In the practice match, Davy spots a flaw in the robots' programming, and ignores the coach's instructions to make an easy goal. This demonstrates his main advantage over the computer-controlled opponents. Back in the present, Davy and Andy toast their success, and prepare for the new season.

Only two pages, so can be posted in full.

Brainy is a bit of a cheapskate; comparable contemporary comics were offering up to five pounds to readers who got their letter printed.

"Trumbull's World" takes place in a dystopian world of the future, overpopulated and run by a fanatical religious government. Programmer Trumbull has invented a stardrive equation, then hidden it inside a virtual reality adventure game disguised as pieces of a clasp. (Presumably knowing the government was going to capture him before he could get the plans to the rebels, but having loads of time alone with his computer.)

Trumbull's children Marc and Jan have entered the game to solve the clues their father left and get the equation. They manage to figure out the Shambling Terror's one weakness--they are blind and track by sound. The kids follow the clues and find the first part of the clasp, followed by figuring out how to cross a river.

The next area is arid, and involves a place called Damnation Canyon. A bird arrives with a note that says "Don't look. Don't listen." But next to the bird are two little men chained to a rock. They call themselves "plugs" and offer to help the kids through the canyon.

Meanwhile in the outer world, the evil dictator demands to be put into the game himself, so he can search for the equation.

Jan agrees to accept the plugs, and--

Aggie (the girl) claims she could have taken both of them solo, but is grateful anyway. The boy smashes the cassette players, and tells Aggie to meet him at the Old Chapel at noon the next day.

Next morning, the boy helps a black girl escape more dazers (oh so scary with their Walkmans and old-type roller skates), and makes the same offer to her. At the chapel, the girls are joined by another boy named Benny. The leader boy arrives and explains that they're all in danger--more danger than he knows, because the Arcadians are bugging the chapel.

A puzzle page with no answer key to follow! Best luck on this one.

Your thoughts? Amusing stories about your first microcomputer?

(Post a new comment)

	proteus_lives 2009-11-04 06:06 am UTC (link)
	52K is the expansion?? Jesus how far we've come. I remember my dad bringing home our first personal computer in 85/86. It was a thing of wonder. We were not allowed to touch it. (Reply to this) (Thread)

blakeyrat
2009-11-04 06:25 am UTC (link)

I had a buddy, who develops video games as a hobby, complain to me today that the maximum texture size supported by (most if not all) video cards is 2048x2048 pixels.

Do the math, that's 2048x2048x32 (RGBA). That's 16 MEGABYTES in a single texture. My first computer was a Commodore 64, with 64k of RAM (natch), you'd have to disassemble 256 Commodore 64s to get enough memory to store that single video texture.

Hell, the first computer I programmed Hypertalk on had 4 MB RAM, and Hypertalk ain't quick to start with.

Young turks.

(Reply to this) (Parent)

	johnzdrake 2009-11-04 06:57 am UTC (link)
	My first was the TRS-80 Color Computer with a magnificant 16K and of course virtually unlimited additional storage on the good old cassette player. My best friend had a Sinclair first though, so he was slightly cooler and more cutting edge than I. (Reply to this) (Parent) (Thread)

	skjam 2009-11-04 12:37 pm UTC (link)
	I had a Sinclair myself, as it was the only microcomputer sold at the PX. The sales clerk neglected to tell me about the cassette drive though, marking the first of many times I would discover I needed extra gadgets to make the first gadget I bought work properly. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2009-11-04 03:41 pm UTC (link)
	VIC-20, Apple ][, 486-33, Pentium 100... and so on. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	retro_nouveau 2009-11-05 12:22 am UTC (link)
	Yay, I used a TRS-80 & cassettes as a high school sophomore. A friend had an Apple ][, which I thought was way cool because it could play more games than Zork. :) (Reply to this) (Parent)

	cmdr_zoom 2009-11-04 06:07 am UTC (link)
	(final scan) Who put a Space Invaders board in a Missile Command cabinet? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	blakeyrat 2009-11-04 06:19 am UTC (link)
	I dunno, but that guy sucks at Space Invaders. Somehow he managed to get his shields wiped out with like 85% of the aliens left. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	skjam 2009-11-04 12:33 pm UTC (link)
	I would guess that the arcade operator has made a deal with a cut-rate supplier. Back in the day, you used to see machines with the wrong game inside all the time, patching together two broken ones on the cheap. (Reply to this) (Parent)

	blakeyrat 2009-11-04 06:18 am UTC (link)
	The famous game Lode Runner came out the same year... coincidence? (Reply to this) (Thread)

	skjam 2009-11-04 12:30 pm UTC (link)
	Perhaps not. (Reply to this) (Parent)

Wow that artwork takes me back!

creeper_lady
2009-11-04 02:23 pm UTC (link)

I would recognize that Peter Dennis art work on the title comic anywhere (I'll look a fool if it's not lol), he did some of my favourite Storyteller illustrations when I was a lass *nostalgic* ... it's a shame I can't seem to find any information on him :(

My family's first computer was a C64, I remember watching my parents spend hours typing in code just for everything to go wrong and nothing happen, that said even when they did get it working an hours typing would equal a minutes worth of entertainment and maybe a dancing robot sprite.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

	Re: Wow that artwork takes me back! skjam 2009-11-05 03:00 am UTC (link)
	You are correct, Ma'am! It is indeed Peter Dennis on art. Y'know, given Scans Daily's usual proclivities, I'm surprised we didn't have an entire thread on the psychosexual implications of the "plugs." (Reply to this) (Parent)

	foxhack 2009-11-04 08:22 pm UTC (link)
	I started to play with computers in 1996. But even now I like to tinker with these old computer systems via emulation. It's amazing what some programmers could pull off with such limited hardware... I wish modern coders would be so efficient. (Reply to this)

	icon_uk 2009-11-04 10:32 pm UTC (link)
	I learned to program (in BASIC of course) on a ZX81. Membrane keyboard so no buttons to actually press, 8192bytes of ROM, audio tape memory, thermal paper printer. If nothing else it taught me endurance and patience. (Reply to this)

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