Adrian Surpățeanu would agree.

edit: Forgot that I had referenced the character in question earlier, so I added the link here.

But srsly now, one thing I sure don't miss is the dreaded "R Tape Loading Error". Every LOAD was a crapshoot. You could try fiddling with the azimuth on the tape deck heads, and all sorts of other arts that some might consider unnatural.

Not sure about that, but I'm sure you can ask one of the esteemed profs (Țăpuș? Carabaș?) to show you in. The hardware was in great condition last I checked in '17.

> And if you insist on authenticity, later model Spectrums, including their Romanian counterparts, had 3.5" floppy drives or interfaces anyway.

At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, I'd put one of these younger ones face to face with a HC '85 loading a game off magnetic tape; if only to watch their brains melting with impatience at a game that has 1% the graphics and 10000% the gameplay of all the stupid shit they get hooked on nowadays.

Well, I suppose I *am* an old geezer.

Nevertheless many of them do have genuinely good stories, and many remember them fondly for that aspect in particular. After all, if the mechanics are the same tired crap, you stand out and live and die by your story. Chrono Trigger explored time travel / dystopia themes that were at the time rather unvisited in games (though this is old hat by now). Had great music too, ofc. And from time to time someone manages to make something interesting out of the JRPG formula even nowadays. Don't know if you have the time/patience, but I highly recommend OMORI. It's Earthbound-like in mechanics and style, superficially. It starts off cutesy and could even fool one it's a great game for children. It's very, very, very definitely not for children, heheh.

Dude... If it's publicly accessible, I definitely gotta check out that building then. Thanks for the tip! I'm sure there's still plenty of viable Romanian Spectrum clones lying around, it's just that few realize their importance. I still have the CoBra I grew up with (badly in need of major restoration alas), and a CIP-03 in an unknown state. Have to make the time to work on them one'a these days.

The tape loading time wouldn't be such a problem I think. In this scenario, it's totally acceptable to use one of the gigabillion SD-card based virtual drive solutions, even though, of course, SD card on its own is orders of magnitude more powerful and complex than the Spectrum, heh. And if you insist on authenticity, later model Spectrums, including their Romanian counterparts, had 3.5" floppy drives or interfaces anyway.

Indeed, let me add that to the list.

Regarding NES games: I went through a JRPG phase more than a decade ago, which had me playing Chrono Trigger, the old (pre-VII) Final Fantasy games, Earthbound and a few others that I can't recall. The gameplay consisted for the most part of the same linear bureaucratic process wherein the player would split their time between fighting mobs, the game map and the town, where stuff could be bought and checks could be marked in the proper binders. I could never replay these games, so the only part that I still wholeheartedly enjoy are the soundtracks.

> Would sure like to see a retro bar with HC-85s for a change

Not sure how many of these you can find anymore... anywhere, really. There's one on the second floor of the new UPB/ACS building, I played with the BASIC interpreter for a couple of times when I last visited.

Besides, I'm not sure how you'd go about renting these, given the time required to read game tapes.

One thing I didn't know for a long time is that Lost Vikings is actually a Super Nintendo game, that got an admittedly flawless port on the PC which is what we Romanians know. For obvious historical reasons, I think the Nintendo golden age is rather obscure to us Romanians, which is a shame since that's when some really good and seminal work was done regarding not just presentation but rather gameplay. A lot of the mechanics in 2D and 3D games alike, that we take for granted now, were pretty much invented by Metroid, and were polished to perfection even back then. It's really a masterclass in how to design a game right.

Interestingly, some Romanian folks have set up a joint, 1Up Gamers Pub or something like that, which has a retro section too. How they stay afloat I couldn't even begin to guess. Anywho, their vision of retroness is patterned after the American one with Commodores and Nintendos, which is likely to draw in hipsters but never really existed here. Would sure like to see a retro bar with HC-85s for a change, heh.

The 1993-1995 period was a focal point for great DOS games. In the strategy genre we have Master of Orion and HoMM, while in action/adventure there's Doom, Gabriel Knight and Earthworm Jim, followed by a long list of more or less obscure games that still make the lists of abandonware sites for now.