1983: PAUL DANIELS' Computer Game | Micro Live | Retro Tech | BBC Archive 

I liked this video, not a lot, but I liked it.

I met Paul Daniels a number of times as he lived locally to me, lovely guy in real life, as was his wife.

"What will I do today?" ~ Watch Paul Daniels talk about Atari programming a smarthome. I didn't see that coming...

You can tell how creative Paul was, he saw something, didn't understand it and sought out answers, that's magic

Met Paul a few times. Very down-to-earth. On one occasion I was sat behind him at a magic gala performance at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool back in 1990. He was with Deb in the audience watching the evening show. At the halfway break he stood up and and said “anybody want an ice cream?” and bought lots of ice creams for everybody sat around him. Always had time to stop and talk to people. Jeremy Beadle was also in the audience that night as he had a passion for magic and tricks.

If only this was 2-3 years later. He could have got an Amiga. Now that would have been magic.

As a boy growing up through the 80s, wanting to learn more about computer programming, I felt exactly the same way.

Gone are the days when after four hours of sweating,cursing and manual input, the family gathered around the computer mouths agape as a tiny "matchstick man" on the screen waved at you.

Good old Paul Daniels. You have to love his enthusiasm. I really do miss this era.. What Mr Daniels was saying was SMART living! The man died too young. He would love Alexa and what have you.

Paul smashing it. I never knew this about him. Gaming, home security. Wow.

RIP Paul Daniels. You great Northern wizard.

I was obsessed with magic and Paul Daniels as a kid and I pestered my grandfather to buy me a Paul Daniels magic set which I practised until I got quite slick at the tricks, and I can still do the card trick today lol. I never knew he liked computers, I guess they seemed like magic then. Fascinating, especially the proto smart home he was discussing.

Had the pleasure of meeting Paul Daniels at a charity do once. He was surprisingly down to earth, and VERY funny.

What a great resource this is. More uploads like this please!

Wow, as a kid I loved Paul Daniels. Strange that 40 years later I find he was in to programming. Loved his take on the whole magazine method and views on the books 😀. Clearly a highly intelligent person with a taste for technology. God bless him.

From "gobbledegook" to writing your own game is pretty impressive

He wanted his computer to activate th8ngs around the house, he truly was magic, we now call this Alexa.

So funny. I used and wrote programs for computers (in basic) from 1977, when I was 13. But this guy was so earnest and so devoted - plus he was lucky to get an Atari 800. If only Atari hadn’t imploded. But this video illustrates how different the world was back then.

When he said he'd written an adventure game, he meant written in the sense of created the plot. The actual coding was done by Gil Williamson. According to Gil Williamson in a comment on Atarimania, there was supposed to be a second part to the game but it was never released.

No idea how this ended up on my YT feed but my first PC was an Atari 800 with 48K memory and a floppy drive. A few of my friends had Atari PCs and I was the only one with a floppy drive... cassette loads were horrible. The skills and understanding I gained from that helped me for years to come.

I met Paul Daniels twice such a lovely guy to his fans! He once sent me a signed book that was out of print needed my address so he found out where I worked to get my address. My manager was shocked! He was so surprised to chat to the real Paul Daniels.

It's an irony and great shame that programming and actual computing has become _less_ accessible in the 41 years since then. Sure there are more resources than ever to help people get into programming, and in terms of access to information things have never been better, but the initial hurdle of getting into it and understanding what you're doing is so much greater. You can't just turn a computer on, sit down, and immediately type into a prompt and get results. That experience, I think, was invaluable in getting many people into computing back then. Just ordinary people who were interested could sit down and feel the excitement as this new world of immense possibilities dawn on them. If you asked me to picture a computer enthusiast, Paul Daniels would never have come to mind. But here he is, excited by the things he can do!

BBC computers takes me back to school in the early 80s, loved them I remember playing a game called Cat and Mouse.

That was about when I saw his show in Blackpool! Brilliant stuff.

ah - funny this guy, Paul Daniels seemed very familiar to me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I had to Google it a bit and then it all came back to me, I loved to see him on the telly doing his magic 🙂

Paul Daniels was the only man who could actually do real magic.

Legend has it he wrote and designed "Wizbit" on that very same computer.

Saw him in the ATARI Center here in Birmingham back in the early to mid 80's.

Great video, yes he could be annoying but you can't deny he was the best at what he did. Anybody else remember Rick Dangerous on the Atari? 😎

I can remember watching that when it was first shown

In later years I never remember him mentioning that he liked all this. He had his own RU-vid channel as well but never mentioned it.

Paul Daniels: the first Jargon Buster

I like hand shandy's so I buy every magazine I can!

Fantastic

Atari 800 design is AMAZING!

I love how he set up the whole scenario where he bought all the magazines, did his research, weighed up all the options... Then walked into a shop, told them he knew nothing about the subject, and got ripped off with a computer that hardly anyone in England owned for around five times the price. Nice one, Paul! 😁

Amazing

Nice video of some classic computing, made a nice choice by going with the atari 800, the only better would be an 800xl

this has inspired me to get programming :D

Now that's magic!

RIP Paul Daniels

As difficult as personal computing was in 1983 in terms of massive barriers to entry on account of cost and arcane command based user-interfaces it really took another 30 years for personal computing to **finally** become accessible to pretty much everyone in the form of touch-screen interfaces. This is even despite the quality of life improvements with graphical user interfaces popularized by Microsoft Windows. By the 90s while most people that grew up with computers (primarily Millennials but also gen-X'ers to a lesser extent) could competently operate one (at least for word processing and browsing the internet) it was still very much out-of-reach to older generations that weren't technically inclined. And even for those that knew how to use a normal desktop PC or laptop many who were not technically inclined only did so begrudgingly and out of necessity and with no joy. Only when touch-screen alternatives to mouse-and-keyboard UIs became widely available and relatively low-cost did computer use finally achieve almost complete market saturation across the demographic spectrum.

Paul Daniels came to our school in 1984 or I think 1985, either way, we gave him a hard time. He stormed off very angry LOL, and thus cancelling his magic show. Teachers were not best pleased LOL.

Good old Ted. What a guy.

I would like to know if he kept up with the computer hobby at all.

interesting because its him, but this looked like what you had to do until Windows opened it up to people not as smart as Paul. It was a geeky thing back then until we realised it had to do what we already do like posting letters, going to the shops, going to the library or going on holiday, but 1000 times quicker.

Cool video, He was into smart homes well before they were a thing.

His glamorous digital assistant, Debbie McGeee

Debbie McGee. What first attracted you to the multi millionaire Paul Daniels?

BASIC was never standardised, each manufacturer had their own variation.

If only computers had been as advanced as they are today during Paul Daniels's time. That way he wouldn't have had to spend 18 months buying every magazine and reading up on the best computer / camera / sex toy to buy - he could have just looked it up on the internet! He died before his time really.

Paul Daniels with hair. I would have been thirteen at the time. My brother was into computers in the early eighties and he joined the computer club at senior school. He had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum, playing games on it at home. My first experience of computers was the BBC Micro at junior school in 1980, aged ten. I am not really a gadgets person and certainly not a techno-wizard!

0:48 he wouldn't be listening to Queen on that hi-fi though, we know that much

Paul Daniels at the height of his powers lol.

Nice that he had £1000 (nearly £3000 in today’s money) to splash out. I remember reading about his game in the Atari I/O magazine that he mentioned, but I don’t think I ever played it, and I don’t recall ever seeing second hand copies offered to me when I was dealing in Atari 8-bit stuff.

Wow doing smart home things before 2015 lol

Before the internet: Buy every computing magazine for 18 months, and still don't understand it. Now: Watch a 1 hour tutorial on YT, all set.

I see there's a video posted on YT with some footage of Paul Daniels Magic Adventure. Hmm, I would love to know how many were sold as it appears to have been available only for the Atari 800, which makes me suspect it wasn't popular enough (despite Paul Daniels being popular in the 80's) to warrant release on other computers, such as the BBC Micro which Paul keeps referring to...

Well ahead of his time there. I like it but not a lot.

Goes to show the gap in the market back in those days .

cant believe daniels is now doing a computer programme, what happened to the magic stuff?

I wonder what he would think of smart phones,if he were still around,shame he died to young brilliant magician 🌈👌

Wow....Paul had hair, that's surreal

Paul talking about programming his Atari 800 to activate security cams and lights when burglars entered his home, rather like one controls stuff in the house with Apple's Siri. But instead he could have done all that with magic ..

Paul was a complicated man,.... Not basic.

His computer was an 8 Wizbit

I think he should have got a BBC B rather than an Atari mind.

Paul wasted his money. For the amount of cash he spent he could've bought a Vectrex with games, 28 boxes of Wham bars, 49 copies of Razzle and an ounce of weed.

Than Microsoft windows introduced for masses and rest is technology advanced to date RIP Paul he is so right it was complicated to get your hands on

If you bought a computer in the 80s, you bought it on a rainy Monday in Guernsey and then you brought it back to a house with all brown furniture.

A bit ahead of the game with home automation..

I still don't understand computers today!

Here in the US, I bought all the mags for research, then plonked down $1000 for a PAL region Sony Betamax 🤣

We had fun back in the day

Bloody hell, there was a time Paul Daniels had hair!? Not a lot.

I bet he liked Alexa.

ZX Spectrum all the way (48K obvs).

What happened to this guy?

Maybe Alan Sugar had similar thoughts about all the instruction books being gobbledegook, his Amstrad computers CPC464 and 6128 came with a really excellent, easy to understand, comprehensive users manual.

When the bbc was normal and unbiased.

Sigh the BBC was once good.

The BBC had its own computers?!

He learned all that and still bought an Atari 800!

It's not gobbledygook, it's just not understood.

Not a lot.

Anyone fancy a pint ?

So you bought every computer magazine and then went and purchased an Atari 800 😂😂😂😂

Typical Paul Daniels

He was so up himself even back then.

Check the wig. Had to sit through this guys crap shows in late 80s and early 90s. Tedious

What a little poindexter.

I always found Paul Daniels to be a little shifty...

What we need now is a magazine on gobbledygook! 🤓

Remember Paul daniels defending his use of the N word? 🤔

Not surprised the atari books seemed like gobbledegook.. Should have bought a bbc micro.. That had both an excellent Basic, AND an excellent manual that guides through early learning. Also would have been better than the atari for his hw/sw experiments.

Anyone fancy a pint ?