Avalanche and Mayhem for the VIC-20 and PET

[Darrin]

I'm going to give both of these a go on my PET 8032.

There's some great videos on that site to watch too.  I just sat through an episode of Bits & Bytes (I think it was called) as they explained cassette tapes and 5.25" floppy disks and then took us on a visit to HP's factory where we were proudly shown an 8" floppy for business use and a 6 stack hard drive around the size of a mini fridge that could hold as much data as 500 floppies!  Those were the days.  

[Darrin]

I don't think the Bits & Bytes video is hosted on the Revival Games - it is merely a YouTube "suggested video" that is (somewhat) randomly displayed when you finish watching one of YouTube videos intentionally embedded on the Revival Studios website.

Bits & Bytes is awesome though - it's a Canadian (Ontario) show from the early 1980s!

Ah, that explains the accents.  I thought it was a BBC show to start with, then they sounded American, then they started ending every sentence with "eh".  

I looked like a great show for kids and was pretty clear in the way that it explained things.  The graphics and music reminded me of Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

The one I watched seemed to be the first episode.  I loved the way they did everything using the PET and the Apple ][, and showed a couple of alternatives.  The IBM PC got about 2 seconds of air-time.

I shared it on my Facebook page so others could watch it.  

[Darrin]

At the time the show was on the air, you could sign up for course material and have it mailed to your house.  My Dad signed up and we got several books, binders and cassette tapes (you could specify which computer you owned so that the media for that platform would be sent to you).  Unfortunately, the only Commodore cassette tapes they offered were for the PET and we had a VIC-20 at the time, so the software wouldn't run.

Ah, the VIC-20... my first computer.

I noticed that the woman who hosts it had a VIC on the desk behind her (I don't think the C64 was out yet).  At the end of the show they did some clips of what was coming up on later episodes and there seemed to be one on music that used a VIC.

[Darrin]

I'll have to watch these again -- it's been decades!  Commodore was HUGE in Canada (there was a Commodore distribution centre / HQ right in Toronto where this show was filmed) and PET computers were in all the schools so naturally, all the kids asked their parents for VIC-20s when they first came out.

Yep, I bought a VIC because our headmaster got a PET 4016 and let some of us use it.  Four of us had VIC-20s and one of us bought a ZX81.  Us Vic users went on to buy C64s and he bought a Spectrum.  Talk about brand loyalty.  

PS: I just checked out the video.  I don't think that's a VIC-20 behind the woman (Luba Goy) - it looks like some sort of terminal.

I'm going to have to check again.  You're probably right because the casing seemed rather dark.  I just made out what looked like a "breadbox".