The first computer I ever owned was Atari 520 ST back in the 1980's. However, the first computer I remember using was Commodore VIC-20 in the very early years of that decade. Then came C64, SVI 328, MSX and a number of other now forgotten brands. There were basically two camps within my friends: those who had C64 and those who had MSX. I was the first to have a 16-bit computer, the ST. Then came Amiga but it didn't really catch my attention since in 1990 I moved on to PC computers as my father bought an IBM PS/2 with intel 386SX processor and VGA color monitor. -- I have recently collected a back catalogue of old microcomputers. Currently I own e.g. Atari ST, MSX, Commodore Amiga, C64 and VIC plus many other more unknown systems.

The first program I ever wrote was with my friend's SVI 328: a two line print-goto loop. From the beginning I was most interested in games. In side with playing I went on to explore how to program them. With my Atari I learned GFA Basic, which was a kind of combination of pascal and basic languages. The techniques of programming never interested me: I was only concerned with the results! And to get some of my friends to actually play the games I wrote was the ultimate satisfaction.

With PC I did succeed. I moved to Turbo Pascal and Assembler. This environment was easy to choose. At that time C compilers on PCs running MS-DOS were slow as snails. Moreover, my major influences came from German computer magazines, which favored pascal code. Writing games on a PC from scratch was a great learning challenge. Luckily I met at high school a friend who helped me with programming necessary libraries and subroutines for efficient graphics and device handling. My task was to conceive and write the actual games with AI, draw graphics and add all the necessary storytelling cream on the top. As the games became more advanced I went to distribute some of the latest works as shareware and was very happy to also get more than 100 registered users for the most popular work. -- All this happened before anybody knew anything about the Internet.

Here are some links to retro-computing websites and my own PC games:

• Little Green Desktop - Atari ST
• MSX Resource Center
• C64.com - just get the games
• Turbo Pascal 5.5. - my first pascal compiler is now free
• Väldesoftware - check the PC games I've made