Was thinking about getting a system to play games in the house but my feeling is that theres no technical lift for installing playing games. That playing the game was enough of an incentive to figure out the shell.
Curious if anyone has ideas. Thanks!
You could get a Raspberry PI (or any computer with an emulator) or a real 80s computer. Set the PI up with whatever emulator. And maybe a book like this one
https://colorcomputerarchive.com/repo/Documents/Manuals/Hard...
Getting Started With Extended Color Basic.
Or set up a normal Linux without installing a GUI.
Or set up an emulator with DOS Box.
Or install nothing but Unity/Unreal Engine/Godot on a computer and disconnect it from the internet.
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-400/
Kind of reminds me of my old Acorn Electron.
Could your parents navigate DOS? Mine sure couldn’t but it didn’t stop me from learning.
Flipper Zero
Raspberry PI
SDR
Not a computer, but still very relevant for inquisitive kids and adults:
Amateur radio (an oldie but a goodie)
Decent telescope
Decent microscope
Anyway: check (my own) https://www.endbasic.dev/ which I’ve written precisely for the situation you describe :) You would actually have to /write/ the games first though!
You never know what kinds of things kids will like. They may like building a website. Or getting the fan to turn. Or setting the prompt to "hey dude?".
My own experience is that kids like to do things - to see some result. They don't get much of that these days, so anything to encourage that vs being a clickbait consumer is good.
As for games, there were old Freddy Fish, Monkey Island games. Putt-putt does whatever was a favorite. I have not run retro-pi or whatever but I think many of those things are still available.
The missing ingredient is not the technology, but the motivation/reward.
In the 80s/early 90s, fiddling with that system setup earned you an interactive audiovisual experience that you simply couldn’t get anywhere else, not even on TV.
Today, there is very little that kids haven’t already seen on YouTube, or that can’t be played at the click of a button.
It was an era of constraint that has now passed, and isn’t coming back.
The terrifying part is that the great majority of my 9th graders are not very experienced with actual computers (laptops included). Their knowledge of computing extends no further than their phones, but because phones are so powerful, there’s nothing, particularly mysterious or compelling about computers. They were like magic boxes that you just had to figure out somehow when I was a kid.
TLDR: The author (a game developer who started with BASIC on ZX Spectrum in the 80s) asked if there's a modern equivalent of BASIC with "little to no abstraction". In the past, it used to be the BASIC-asm combo.
Second thought is Raspberry Pi - through a combination of cost & GPIO. You didn't mention hardware, but with 'computers' at the user-friendly stage they are today, that's probably the best way to recreate the feeling you want? Tinkering on the computer resulting in some real life visual/audible/etc. output. (Or RL sensors making something happen on the computer.)
Looks like their website has changed around. They used to have a kit that came with a raspberry pi (that you had to assemble yourself) and their own Linux-based OS that taught you about computers and the command line
https://github.com/KanoComputing/kano-desktop https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/kano-computer-kit-touch...
Maybe something physical would be interesting? Like programming a led-strip (nowadays you have these where you can individually address the lights), robotic arm or something like that.
If kids are into certain games, maybe there's some opportunities to explore on the modding side. Like for the Euro Truck simulator you can bring your own graphics for the trucks. No idea how complicated it is to package those, but it would probably teach a ton of things.
Here's a simple simulation of the 1980s experience: https://virtualconsoles.com/online-emulators/c64/ If your kid is like most kids, they might spend 20s on this before they get back to their Youtube/TikTok/Instagram/Roblox fix. Or maybe a few hours at best if there's a very enthusiastic adult sitting next to them explaining everything. But they'll probably be back at their regular internet distraction as soon as the adult is gone.
For a decent recreation of the 1980s experience, you'd need to shut the kids off from the internet for some extended period. But even that is only an approximation, if they have any contact with other kids.
QB64 is the modern equivalent: https://qb64.com/
Your kids won't literally need to navigate the command line to launch the games. But I think that editing config files to "hack" the game is still on the table :-)
If it were me (and it may soon be) I would get them to make a static (ie with no backend processing) web page. It is easy and can be free to publish it. The basic page can then be enhanced with interaction using scripting almost without limits.
The child can show it off to anyone with a screen. You can control the publishing since it can be built offline.
And before you say JavaScript is terrible, so is Basic!
This is the modern equivalent to what you remember.
You can also do things like having a Linux machine with a powerful GPU but no GUI installed.
It came in bits with very nice instructions for building it. Bright cables, easy Lego style diagrams. The keyboard is wireless with a built in track pad, and charges via a built in usb cable. All very neat and self contained.
We got to build a whole computer, plug it into the TV, and it behaves a bit like a console.
It has a mix of learn shell, basic programming and fun Linux games (including Minecraft). The whole OS includes a gamified points system too, to encourage more learning.
I think the OS is a free download, but you could easily get a Pi and some fun accessories and build something.
On my to-do list next is building a pi based motion sensor camera for the basement to see if we have mice. Part serious need, part fun game.
For a lot of things though he learns more left alone. Building iPad and iPhone games using some of the drag and drop gaming toolkit apps, for example. My parents had no idea what I did on the computer and couldn’t have helped. I taught myself. He likes that too
Having a working browser teach you programming is like having an android in the form of Kelly LeBrock teach you robotics. You're gonna want to do things to it that engage your little brain.
Rather than trying to find something that replicates your childhood memories for them, why let them find those themselves? I'm sure your parents brought a computer into the house, but was that so that you could have the same childhood experience growing up with computers like they had? For them that computer was probably just a tool, for you it end up becoming a world. Or maybe your parents brought that computer into house because they thought it might become important to be exposed to.
I would suggest that you expose your kids to things like science, art, technology and engineering (high level) and let them decide what they find interesting, what clicks with them. Then all you have to do is support them where you can.
My 9 year old is in love with this combo. It’s really easy to learn based off YouTube tutorials, and you can instantly share your creations with friends who don’t need to install or have anything other than a browser to play (and even works on mobile browsers well)
As for hardware . Visit a regional vintage computing festival.
There will be people very enthusiastic about what they have got working from that era.
Build a redstone computer in minecraft
However I'd recommend an inexpensive hardware one with real knobs you can turn, like one of the Korg Volca series:
https://www.korg-volca.com/en/
Recording the sounds can lead into exploring all the concepts and gear involved in recording and mixing music. It's not mutually exclusive with doing other things also, you can play with both synths and computers and being involved with something artistic can add dimensions to and an escape from the nature of classwork/work.
Some other suggestions: gardening, high voltage electronics (with lots of supervision), electronics, photography, movie making, ham radio (gnu radio), show lighting systems (there's more than disco lights, robotics is involved), robotics, acoustic instruments (guitar, piano, flute, drums), sensors (you don't necessarily have to know electronics, get a data logger with built in sensors), weather monitoring/forecasting, hydraulic systems (with supervision), wood working, metal working, 3D printing, bird watching, painting, minibikes/small engines.
Raspberry Pis were created for kids (originally built to support a BBC-sponsored educational program), and they remain fully committed to supporting kids.
Visit https://www.raspberrypi.org/ to see how they execute on that vision. Lots of great and manageable projects for kids ranging from relatively simple cook-book-based projects to sky's-the-limit adventures in insanity.
Go for nothing less than a Pi 4 8GB (required to run VScode reasonably). Or a Pi 5 obviously.
A GPIO breadboard might be a good strategy to get them hooked initially; but the novelty wears off pretty quickly. Offer to buy them any Pi hat or camera or panel that interests them. None of them are particularly expensive.
You can code it with block programming, Python, or Javascript in the MS Makecode interface.
If you have two Microbits, they can talk to each other over the built in radio.
I have created my own remote control lego robot with two microbits, a breakout board, and two micro servos.
I think there are over 25 million units sold all over the world.
The problem with that perspective is that we didn't have anything else. A c64 was literally all I had. It was either that, or go out and play in nature.
So we had a much greater incentive to figure things out.
I wonder if there is a distro that locks the kid into the command line and offers a time of help?
Python and GPIO offer tons of cool embedded system possibilities.
And a slightly different direction than what you describe. Nowadays a complete "basic environment" on a computer (say a Raspberry Pi, sure why not, but perhaps simply a used laptop) feels too complicated. Far more complicated than DOS was.
Scratch is actually both interesting for kids and a seriously competent programming environment. They can explore; they can implement basic games; they can implement ambitious games or other directions like story telling. And possibly (but not all that easily) open for cooperation, cooperating on larger projects with others.
I'd spin them up ubuntu on a newish PC or raspberry pi, let them install the packages in the terminal, steam, etc. Or experiment with some dev, and things they seem interested in. I think there are some very cool robotics kits for the pi that introduce them to a lot of things
making goofy python scripts? pygame?
style transfer for voice on google colab?
various adafruit projects with microcontrollers or rpis?
langchain and similar?
Later, they could hook up an LCD screen and keypad to do things, if they want.
Later they could move away from the world of 5 volt I/O and into the world of 3.3 volt and less Raspberry Pi, etc, where things get trickier in terms of noise, etc.