[Darren] No, they were purely for my own fun, since few games written for the old Atari 400/800 were any good ("Star Raiders" and "Mercenary" aside). I aimed for crude graphics, crude sound but very playable and increasing difficulty the longer you played.
There you have hit the nail on the head, as regards why I still play retro games. They tended to be a lot more playable. You had less in the way of graphics (generally speaking) and sound (also generally), but that made the programmers try all the harder to make games that were fun. I find many modern games extremely tiresome. I had my first computer in 1983 (an Acorn Electron), and that's the one where I first learnt to program. As time went on I moved through the C64, Amiga and now PC (not counting consoles). These days I have got myself a nice little retro collection, having added various other machines to the set (ranging from Atari 2600 to Spectrum to... well, Dreamcast!). I'm sure a part of it is simply nostalgia for childhood, but when it comes down to it, I really do find a lot of older games more entertaining than newer ones - even if the older games are not ones I grew up playing.
[Darren] Cor, another one! That's you, Kevan, me and this guy (note: lots of swearing. Lots. It's also a games-related website, for those with bonus-annoying work nannies).
[Nik] Yeah, nothing like playing on the Elk. I still have a few. When I was at CGEUK I had the opportunity to fiddle with a heavily souped-up Turbo Electron (a photo is in my Yahoo album), which boasted a 256K RAM-drive among other things.
I've had an Acorn computer of one sort or another for over 20 years. The latest, if you can call it that, is the A7000. I use it for keeping my weather records, creating my own little games and general mathematical recreations. The BBC Basic is so easy to use I can write programs blindfold, pissed and hanging from the doorway (like the young lady from Norway). (Darren) I used to write machine code stuff on the Spectrum. What a bunch of nerds we all are. :-)