My little #retrocomputing world... Several weeks of work for 30 isometric #computer pictures!

The Dungeon Master filming project continues with Level 4 and its beautiful but very dangerous flying snakes. Photo shot in my studio.

Jordan filmed his younger brother running and jumping to create the game's astonishing animation using rotoscoping. No fancy graphics cards, no 3D acceleration. Just 8-bit wizardry that made pixels feel magic. Photo shot in my studio.

At CES in '87, Commodore unveiled the Amiga 500 next to the much pricier Amiga 2000. The 500 was supposed to be the "affordable little brother," but it ended up stealing the spotlight and defining the era. Photo shot in my studio.

F-15 Strike Eagle II. Released by MicroProse in 1989, one year after F-19 Stealth Fighter. No patient radar evasive maneuvers here, but missiles and dogfights all the way. Not quite a flight simulator, not quite an arcade game, just the perfect balance. Solid manual too.

Speedball II Brutal Deluxe on the Amiga 500. Ice cream anyone? Photo shot in my studio.

XTree versus Norton Commander: two great answers to DOS file-management. Difficult to chose between them... XTree was probably the more sophisticated file-management tool. Norton Commander was probably the more elegant interactive file-navigation tool.

The Dungeon Master season begins on Retro Dream! From now until the end of the year, we’ll explore one level each week, with still shots on Saturdays and a short video on Sundays, showing the essentials of all 13 levels.

The Dungeon Master season begins! From now until the end of the year, we’ll explore one level each week, showing the essentials of all 13 levels. Level 0 is our opening prologue: the Hall of Champions. What characters did you choose for your own adventure?

Bubble Bobble, Amiga 500 with 1084S display. A great game to play with your pal after school! 100 increasingly devious levels, easy to learn, surprisingly hard to master and that incredible theme tune still refuses to leave your head. Photo shot in my studio.

Tetris on the PC: simple graphics, no sound card required, and yet more addictive than games a thousand times more complex. By 1988, the Soviet puzzle phenomenon had reached worldwide. Four little squares were enough to ruin an evening.

F-19 Stealth Fighter. A masterpiece of tactical flight sim by Microprose, 1988. Just cannot count the hours I spent on it back then. Didn't have any sound except for the PC speaker.

Lotus Turbo Challenge on the Amiga 500. Can you hear that tune just looking at this pic?

The earliest Microsoft shell interface: DOS Manager. Many first-time dos users experimented with it before moving on to Norton or XTree, and it was rather clunky compared to them, although it did the job overall.

The joy of running DEFRAG on DOS: watching those little colored blocks shuffle around the screen, slowly turning chaos into order. It felt strangely productive, almost therapeutic. And somehow, your PC always seemed faster afterwards, even when it actually wasn't.

Sensible Soccer on the Amiga 500. Tiny players, one-button controls, ridiculous speed... and somehow it felt more like football than games ten times as complicated. Sometimes a few pixels are all you need. Photo shot in my studio.

Powermonger on the Atari ST, Bullfrog’s follow-up to Populous. Its 3D landscape felt remarkably futuristic in 1990. And its universe boiled with action: villagers farmed, fished and worked while your orders travelled to distant captains by carrier pigeon

Another World on the #Commodore #Amiga 500

PC Tools was one of the big DOS utility suites competing with Norton Utilities, while also offering file-management features that overlapped with XTree.

Amiga 500 at sunset. Outrun scores screen. Photo shot in my studio.

Playing Kick-Off II on the Atari 520 ST with a Konix Navigator joystick. Like in the good old days after school with a friend, except now it's after work. Photo shot in my studio.