Thread by @Foone, crossing my fingers that IBM will release the 40th anniversary PC miniconsole [...]

crossing my fingers that IBM will release the 40th anniversary PC miniconsole next august.

with a bunch of classic original IBM PC games, like ROGUE and ADVENTURE and even one or two that have graphics (DONKEY.BAS?)

I can't believe I forgot the best game for the original PC... https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1229154091231637504

https://twitter.com/Foone/status/1229154091231637504

bonus points if it's just the same scale as the @rabbitengr IBM PC model, but with a tiny LCD in there

to do: 3d print a IBM PC sized around one of the 4:3 OLED displays

ok they're not exactly 4:3, more like... 2:1

although obviously I wouldn't want it in white.
it should be amber, or green.

like this, maybe? a little too blue but it's close.
also the description of this says "Needn't backlight, the display unit can self-luminous."

anyway I placed an order for some more OLEDs/LCDs so expect a tiny IBM PC and/or pregnancy test video game console in the coming days

ooh, I should build the pregnancy test into an ISA card, so you can just pee onto a cable coming out of your IBM 5150 and then anxiously look at the CGA display until it tells you if you're pregnant or not

if you want to support me doing stupid things with IBM PCs and/or pregnancy tests, feel free to send me a dollar or two: https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing

Support Foone Turing on Ko-fi.com!

Buy a Floppy Disk for Foone Turing with Ko-fi.com

https://ko-fi.com/fooneturing

it's getting expensive. all my electronic parts keep getting peed on

That joke keeps bothering me because I'm having a constant fight in my brain of "you should probably clarify that it's a joke. People are going to sour on all this pregnancy test stuff real quick if they actually think there's urine involved"

Versus the obvious counterargument that pointing out that it's a joke KILLS THE JOKE.

Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it better but the frog dies in the process.
- E.B. White

anyway one of the main games you'd need on the mini-PC, and who knows how chronologically accurate it'd be, would be PARATROOPER.

ahh, 1982. so perfectly fine.

and mobygames says it'll run on a 64k PC, so only some of the wimpiest early IBM PCs (also the ones without floppy drives) can't play it.

although I bet you could port it to a cassette tape...

TODO: port paratrooper to a cassette tape

and @robdaemon suggests Sopwith. Good idea. Bit late at 1984 but it'll run on an original PC just fine (no idea on RAM needed, though) so sure.

I should start compiling these games together for making (some version of) this.
Other early PC games we'd definitely need: Alley Cat ('84)

Digger (1983) has already been suggested

I'd suggest the ShareData gameshow classics:
Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune.

and the George Broussard(/Todd Replogle) FAST trilogy:
Pharaoh's Tomb, Arctic Adventure,

Those are actually WAY later than you'd expect, coming out in 1990 and 1991, but they are playable on a PC with CGA graphics.

I dunno how well it holds up (I suspect the answer is "not very") but as a kid I had a lot of fun playing the uncreatively named "Ninja" (Mastertronic, 1986) at a friend's house:

part of the problem of finding games for this era is that there are a lot of games that supported CGA graphics, but were actually designed for EGA or VGA, and just had it as a fallback for slow machines.
Designed-for-CGA-only games are not terribly common.

But there's a few more!
Chopper Commando, for example.