Feature Remember the excitement of leafing through a catalog for home computer bargains? Or perhaps gazing longingly at festive tech displays in Brit

Christmas 1984: The last hurrah for 8-bit home computers

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2024-12-28 11:30:04

Feature Remember the excitement of leafing through a catalog for home computer bargains? Or perhaps gazing longingly at festive tech displays in Britain's WH Smith (or ComputerLand if you lived Stateside)? Take a step back to 1984 and the last great hurrah of the home computer.

The video game crash of 1983 had already happened in the US, but the UK's home computer market was still buoyant in 1984, even if the cracks of over-saturation were already starting to show. This writer, glued to the BBC's television production of The Box of Delights, certainly didn't realize it at the time.

A browse through the pages of the 1984 booklet from famous Brit catalog retailer Argos shows computers from Atari alongside the Commodore 64 and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The shelves of retailers were packed with products from manufacturers that, in hindsight, were perhaps a bit over-optimistic.

Still, in 1984, UK consumers were spoiled for choice. As well as Sinclair's products, the BBC Micro was available alongside the Acorn Electron. There were new computers from Commodore in the form of the Plus/4 and Commodore 16.