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35+ years of coding and only one game to show for it. 45+ year resident of Tokyo, Japan from Johnstown PA. Now retired and developing games with Unity 3D.

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The Birth of The Octagon Theory, Part 3

TokyoDan Blog

Being a foreigner in early-to-mid 1980s Japan was fun but not always easy. It was almost impossible to get a credit card issued from a Japanese bank. Same with a loan. That is unless you had someone co-sign the loan documents for you. Well that's where my girlfriend (now wife) came in. She co-signed the legal papers for that 300,000 yen just like that. Which means she'd have to pay back the loan if I didn't. Now It didn't take any convincing on my part at all. Here she was, having known me for only two years, and she fully trusted me to pay off that two-year, 300,000 loan, and not leave her in the lurch.

As for me, I fully intended to pay back that loan but I was wondering if I should really get the loan and buy that Apple. I mean, learning how to use, fix, and/or program computers could very well be way over my head. Didn't you have to be a mathematical genius to do that? I hated math and stopped paying attention to my math teachers from about the 6th grade in elementary school. Not to mention the possibility that after a few months I could completely lose interest in the Apple like I did with my childhood toys and put it away in the closet never to be used again. 300,000 yen was an expensive price then (and still is) to pay to learn such a lesson about one's self.

I decided to get the Apple.

My girlfriend and I went back to Falcom, filled out the loan papers, waited for the approval, and came back about a week later to pick up my new (used) 48K of RAM-1Mhz 6502 Motorolla CPU-able to display eight colors- Apple II+, with a 5.25" floppy drive.

We drove home, got out the Apple manuals and set the Apple up on a small wooden lawn table, connected it to my 2nd-hand TV and fired it up. Having read the manual I knew enough to put the floppy disc that I'd also bought into the drive and restart the Apple so it'd read in and execute the program on that floppy.

Did I mention that the floppy I'd bought was a game. I mean, what is a computer without at least one game, right? That game was Microwave ( video ).

My wife and I played that game over and over, for weeks. We loved that game and it was the 1st of many to follow.Anyway the very 1st night with my new (used) Apple II turned into a party, but little did I know that this was one toy that would NEVER see the inside of a closet. And little did my girlfriend know that her vote of confidence in me was going to turn out to be such a good investment.

The Birth of The Octagon Theory - Part 2

TokyoDan Blog

The Birth of The Octagon (Part 2 of who knows how many parts)

Well, since circumstances prevented me from learning about computers via formal means I decided that I would learn as much as I could on my own. But the problem was I didn't know where to start nor what I really wanted to learn. I wasn't aware of the difference between hardware and software. I didn't even know what software was. So I set out to learn what I needed to learn by visiting all the nearby electronics stores and questioning the salesmen about the pasocons on the shelves. The salesmen explained what software was - it was the instructions that those kids were typing into the computer that day I had my first run-in with computing. I learned that a pasocon was nothing without software and that software didn't have to be typed in, it could be loaded from a cassette tape or from a floppy disk.

Out of the NEC, Hitachi, and Fujitsu pasocon sitting on the shelves, The salesmen usually recommended the NEC '98 as it was the most affordable and most popular among the fast-growing computer hobbyists. ('Geek' wasn't used to describe such people in those days.) So I decided to buy a NEC which was about 80,000 yen or, in those days, about 350-400 dollars. The problem was that the user manual and programming how-tos were only in Japanese. There was nothing in English. Although I had studied Japanese and could read a little, one look at the Japanese user manual changed my mind about buying a Japanese computer.

Now what to do? I got a Byte magazine from the international section of the Kinokunia book store in Shinjuku and learned that the popular pasocons from the USA and Great Briton were Apple, Commodore, Atari, and Sinclar. Apples were too expensive even in the USA. The Sinclar seemed like a toy, so I decided I wanted a Commodore Pet or an Atari. But I couldn't find anywhere to buy either of those in Japan. As far as an Apple, well, there sure were no Apple Stores here in those days, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. Of course I could have ordered a pasocon from overseas but what if it arrived broken? And the postage was very expensive too. There was no Amazon.

Anyway, my continued search led me to one shop in Ochanomizu, near the world famous (now, not then) Akihabara geek/nerd/otaku electronics district of Tokyo. That shop was named Computer Luv and it was the only place in all of Japan that sold Apple Computers. (There might have been one other shop in Osaka). Computer Luv was a nice modern shop with a lot of equipment for serious computer hobbyists but it wasn't an official Apple dealer. They just imported Apples and sold them at quite a premium, which put them way out of my reach. The price for a 48Kb Apple II+ with no floppy drive was about 400,000 yen (about 1800-2000 dollars). My monthy salary was 250,000-300,000 yen which left me in a 10,0000-20,000 yen hole every month which I perpetually owed my girlfriend (now wife).

I was almost ready to give up on buying a computer when one night, looking out of the bus window on the final leg of my 1.5 hour commute home from work, I noticed an "Apple Computer" sign in front of a small office bulding. I wondered what such a small nondescript shop, near my home in Tachikawa to boot, had to do with Apple computers. I went there the very next morning.

Falcom was the name of the small 2nd-floor shop (Nihon Falcom is now a big company still located in Tachikawa Falcom.com) and it was run and staffed by early-day Japanese geeks who were on the forefront of game development for Japanese pasocons. They made quite a few well-known Japanese Adventure games. And they just happened to import, sell, and support Apple computers. Also they just happened to have my 1st computer - a refurbished Apple II+ with 48kb of memory.

The owner of the shop preached the marvels of this computer. He told me that the Apple with a 5.25" floppy drive gave a computing experience that was unsurpassed. Compared to using a cassette drive, a floppy drive allowed programs to be loaded almostinstantly. I could have the Apple and the floppy drive for 300,000 yen with a 6-month warranty. 100,000 yen cheaper than a new, non-floppy drive Apple from Computer Luv. I also discovered Softalk magazine which that shop was selling.

I bought that magazine!

And I wanted that Apple!

Now I just had to figure how to get the 300,000 yen?

More to come later...

The Birth of The Octagon Theory

TokyoDan Blog

The Birth of The Octagon Theory (Part 1 of who knows how many parts)

First of all let me get something straight. I have a very long story but I'll try and keep it short, sweet, and to the point because most of my time from now on will go to finishing up the coding of my game. Some of my time will go to promoting it here, on Twitter, and on other Web 2.0 venues. And a little of my time will go to writing these posts, so I'm not going to be too concerned with the spelling, punctuation, and grammar. If my story get across to you, it's good enough for me, and I hope it's good enough for you too.

So here goes...

TOKYO 1982

I was really sick of working in the exploitive eikaiwa industry (Eikaiwa is Japanese for teaching English conversation). I could see it was a dead end job. I was desperately looking for a way out. At this time personal computers were just showing up in electronics stores and articles about the personal computing hobby were in a lot of trendy Japanese magazines. Apple had released the Apple I in 1977 and by 1982 a few had been imported to these shores.

One day while checking out new audio equipment (the listening kind, not the podcasting kind) in the local electronics store I saw a couple of very excited and animated kids between 10 and 13 years old standing in front of one of the new contraptions that were just starting to take shelf space away from the audio equipment. These contraptions were "Pasocons" (Japanese contraction for personal computers).Wondering what these kids were up to I walked over and peeked over their shoulders. One kid was holding a magazine open to a page of jibberish and another kid was wildly peking away at the pasocon keyboard. I looked at the monochrome monitor that was attached to the pasocon and saw the same kind of jibberish on the screen. I recognized some words like 'loop', 'for', and 'do' mixed with what looked like convoluted math.

After confusedly looking at the screen for a while I realized that one kid was typing in the computer program that was listed in the magazine that the other kid was holding. (I now know that that listing was a Basic program for a simple game). Now the listing in the magazine looked long and I wasn't about to hang around until the kids were finished, so I walked away. But I didn't yet realize what an impact that event would have on my life.

I left that store with a kind of future shock. And at thirty three years of age I had the feeling that those young kids knew a heck of a lot more than I did about something that was going to be very important. I felt like Rip Van Winkle and was worried that if I didn't soon learn about personal computers that I'd be the old man who couldn't use one and would depend on younger people to use them for me.

Around this time I had also read an article, can't remember where though, that the 3rd best jobs would go to people who weren't afraid of computers, the 2nd best jobs would go to people who could use computers, and the best jobs would go to those who could control computers.

Knowing what kind of job I wanted I set out to learn how to control computers.

I tried applying for a mail order personal computer repairman course that I had seen advertised in the back of some magazine. Having previously spent eight years in the US Air Force, the GI Bill benefits would pay for the course so I wasn't worried about finances even though my meager eikaiwa salary alone wouldn't have allowed me to to pay for the course.

I was getting excited about trying to learn a new trade, something that would allow me to break out of the eikaiwa rut (which was almost impossible to do in those days) but the school offering the course would not deal with me because I was living in Japan.

But now I was determined. I'd find another way to learn about computers even though I was in English- information-scarce Japan, had little time and almost no extra money to spend on learning a new skill.